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Although big data may enhance the visibility, transparency, and responsiveness of supply chains, whether it is effective for improving supply chain performance in a turbulent environment, especially in mitigating the impact of COVID-19, is unclear. The research question the authors addressed is: How do logistics firms improve the supply chain performance in COVID-19 through big data and supply chain integration (SCI)?

The authors used a mixed-method approach with four rounds of data collection. A three-round survey of 323 logistics firms in 26 countries in Europe, America, and Asia was first conducted. The authors then conducted in-depth interviews with 55 logistics firms.

In the first quantitative study, the authors find mediational mechanisms through which big data analytics technology capability (BDATC) and SCI influence supply chain performance. In particular, BDATC and SCI are two second-order capabilities that help firms develop three first-order capabilities (i.e. proactive capabilities, reactive capabilities, and resource reconfiguration) and eventually lead to innovation capability and disaster immunity that allow firms to survive in COVID-19 and improve supply chain performance. The results of the follow-up qualitative analysis not only confirm the inferences from the quantitative analysis but also provide complementary insights into organizational culture and the institutional environment.

The authors contribute to supply chain risk management by developing a three-level hierarchy of capabilities framework and finding a mechanism with the links between big data and big disaster. The authors also provide managerial implications for logistics firms to address the new management challenges posed by COVID-19.

Porous titanium is used in many bioimplant and electrode applications because of its interconnected pore structure and good corrosion resistance. The purpose of this paper is to study the anodic polarization behavior of porous titanium in different electrolytes and clarify the influences of the porosity and macro‐pore size on the corrosion resistance.

The porous titanium with 10‐70% porosities and average macro‐pore sizes in the range of 100‐500 μm was prepared by the powder metallurgy method using polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) as a space holder. Electrochemical corrosion tests were performed on porous titanium as well as solid titanium (with the same irregular and isolated micro‐pore structures as that on the interconnected spheroidal macro‐pore walls of porous titanium) in the 0.1 M H₂SO₄, 1 M NaOH and 0.9% NaCl (37 °C) solutions.

It was found that porous titanium exhibited an active‐passive transition behavior in the 1 M NaOH and 0.1 M H₂SO₄ solutions. In contrast, a self‐passivation transition behavior was observed in the 0.9% NaCl solution (37 °C).

The paper demonstrates that both the porosity and macro‐pore size of porous titanium play an important role in determining the corrosion rate, rather than the corrosion potential.

The purpose of this paper is to design intelligent robots operating in such dynamic environments like the RoboCup Middle-Size League (MSL). In the RoboCup MSL, two teams of five autonomous robots play on an 18- × 12-m field. Equipped with sensors and on-board computers, each robot should be able to perceive the environment, make decision and control itself to play the soccer game autonomously.

This paper presents the design of our soccer robots, participating in RoboCup MSL. The mechanical platform, electrical architecture and software framework are discussed separately. The mechanical platform is designed modularly, so easy maintainability is achieved; the electronic architecture is built on industrial standards using PC-based control technique, which results in high robustness and reliability during the intensive and fierce MSL games; the software is developed upon the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS); thus, the advantages of ROS such as modularity, portability and expansibility are inherited.

Based on this paper and the open-source hardware and software, the MSL robots can be re-developed easily to participate in the RoboCup MSL. The robots can also be used in other research and education fields, especially for multi-robot systems and distributed artificial intelligence. Furthermore, the main designing ideas proposed in the paper, i.e. using a modular mechanical structure, an industrial electronic system and ROS-based software, provide a common solution for designing general intelligent robots.

The methodology of the intelligent robot design for highly competitive and dynamic RoboCup MSL environments is proposed.

Chinese firms were operating within a closed economic environment before the “opening up” in the late 1970s, but it has only been in the late 1990s that China has recognized the importance of innovation. The Chinese government has attempted to rectify this liability by providing funding to assist Chinese firms in developing innovation capability by increasing R&D collaborations and employing external experts. The purpose of this paper is to study the innovation of Chinese firms by examining how internal and external resources interactively impact the innovation capability.

Panel data collected from Chinese manufacturers are used to test the hypothesized relationships.

The results have shown that the interplay between internal and external resources exhibits differential patterns of impact on innovation capability. The authors discover different moderating patterns of the two types of external resources: visiting experts are helpful in enhancing the effects of internal human resources, while R&D collaborations are useful in exploiting internal financial and physical resources, even when the main effect of financial resources on innovation capability is not significant.

The study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidences on the roles of absorbed external resources and knowledge to catalyze internal resources in building up innovation capability in an emerging economy.

Although supply chain collaboration (SCC) theoretically boosts the adoption of supply chain finance (SCF) through information sharing and cost savings, many companies with good supply chain partnerships still hesitate to engage in SCF. To disentangle this puzzle, this study aims to explore how two dimensions of information transparency (i.e. information quantity and information quality) and two types of transaction dependence (i.e. dependence on suppliers and dependence on customers) influence the relationship between SCC and SCF adoption.

This study uses secondary survey data from a Chinese bank, including 464 Chinese companies that have adopted SCF to varying degrees. This study then performs the logistic regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

This study empirically confirms that SCC shows a positive relationship with SCF adoption. More interestingly, information quantity negatively moderates this positive relationship, whereas information quality positively moderates this positive relationship. Most surprisingly, dependence on customers rather than dependence on suppliers strengthens this positive relationship.

This study makes theoretical contributions to the SCF literature by demonstrating the distinct moderating mechanisms regarding the relationship between SCC and SCF adoption. The findings also help companies reexamine their interactions with supply chain members.

Drawing upon relative absorptive capacity (AC) perspective, this study proposes a research model connecting R&D investment, three types of supply chain AC—AC from suppliers, customers and university and research institutes (U&RIs)—and firm innovativeness and investigates the contingent effects of dysfunctional competition on the link between R&D investment and supply chain AC.

The authors used data collected from 262 manufacturers in three areas of China to empirically examine the conceptual model. The corresponding hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling and regression analysis.

The empirical results demonstrate that AC from customers and AC from U&RIs play significant mediating roles in the relationship between R&D investment and firm innovativeness. Moreover, R&D investment has a significantly greater effect on AC from U&RIs under high levels of dysfunctional competition.

First, by conceptualizing AC from a relative view, this study discloses the unique roles of knowledge from different supply chain partners in realizing the benefits of R&D investment in innovation. Second, the exploration of the contingent roles of dysfunctional competition in the emerging economy of China enriches insights on the roles of institutional environment on knowledge absorption and the knowledge on relative AC in emerging economies.

As an important part of steel bridge deck pavement, if waterproof adhesive layer performance does not meet requirements, numerous kinds of bridge deck pavement distress may be encountered. To study the adhesive behavior of rubber asphalt waterproof adhesive layers in steel bridge gussasphalt pavement, the pull-off and direct-shear tests have been used in the study to mechanically simulate steel bridge deck pavement under vehicles loading.

Several potentially influential factors associated with the adhesive strength of rubber asphalt are investigated including temperature, spraying quantity and environmental conditions.

Results indicate that rubber asphalt was associated with good performance with respect to its use as a waterproof adhesive layer; simulated performance was negatively correlated with increasing temperatures. A necessary spraying quantity of 0.4 Lm^-2 is required for appropriate adhesive strength of the composite structure, with a decrease in adhesive strength noted when spraying quantity is significantly greater or less than this.

The current paper presents an examination of the adhesive performance of a rubber asphalt adhesive layer on steel bridge deck pouring construction, while additionally examining potentially influential factors and conditions via use of both pull-off and shear tests.

This paper aims to introduce the history and major achievement of the Chinese private enterprise survey (CPES), which is one of the most enduring large-scale nationwide sample surveys in China, providing important micro firm-level data for understanding and studying the development of Chinese enterprises and entrepreneurs over the past 26 years.

The main body of this paper is based on a bibliometric analysis of all literature using CPES until 2017.

This paper discusses problems that users may encounter during data mining. By doing so, it can assist other researchers to get a better understanding of what has been done (e.g. journals, topics, scholars and institutions) and do their research in a more targeted way.

As members of the survey project team, the authors also take a prospect of the future data design and use, as well as offer some suggestions about how to use the CPES data to improve high-quality development and business environment evaluation in China.

This paper is the first to provide an overall picture of academic papers in China and abroad that have used the CPES data.

When a vehicle passes through a long highway tunnel, the smoke it discharges accumulates in the tunnel. High smoke concentration has an important influence on the driver’s health and driving safety. The use of numerous jet fans to diffuse the smoke causes excessive energy consumption, so it is of significant practical value to design suitable tunnel ventilation.

The study is based on the continuum hypothesis, incompressible hypothesis, steady flow hypothesis and similar hypothesis of gas in a long highway tunnel. These hypotheses calculate the gas emissions and wind demand in a long highway tunnel given the deployment of the jet fan program.

This program selects each of the two 1120-type jet machine group and sets up 13 groups; each group has an interval of 184.5 m in the end. The analysis of air test results when the tunnel is in operation shows that CO and smoke concentrations meet the design requirements, which can provide reference for a similar engineering design later.

At present, a highway tunnel is recognized at home and abroad by means of clearance of longitudinal ventilation, which is 2,000 m. In view of this, this paper is based on the theory of longitudinal jet ventilation of a highway tunnel, whose length is more than 2,000 m, to calculate the ventilation and apply it to a tunnel’s ventilation design.

The purpose of this study is to enrich the literature on employee relations with a new model focusing on the effect of institutional structure and that of employees’ organizational identification on the relationship between institutional structure in an organization and employees’ pro-environmental behaviors, which represents an alternative approach for understanding employees’ pro-environmental performance.

We collect multi-level and multi-source data from 52 four- or five-star hotels in China (N = 963). For data analysis, we adopt the approach of multilevel structural equation modeling.

The results suggest that organizations’ green institutional structure (G-structure) can significantly influence employees’ organizational identification, which in turn can increase their pro-environmental performance.

We propose a new multi-level theoretical perspective to explain employees’ pro-environmental behaviors. While prior studies on the issue mainly consider only the effects of such micro-level variables as ability, motivation and personality, we focus on the effect of organizational institution and its interaction with micro-level variables so that we can evaluate the effect a commonly-studied contextual variable, i.e. green institutions, on the behaviors. Moreover, in this new theoretical model, we also take into account the effect of another insufficiently-tested micro-level variable, i.e. employees’ identification, which has not been considered as frequently as other micro-level variables in studying employees’ pro-environmental performance. Our results highlight the importance of all these variables and suggest a valuable alternative model for more comprehensive research of employees’ green performance.