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Perhaps the marvel is that there should exist at all a department in a British official body at national level dedicated to the support of research into information needs and the problems of providing and operating library and information services. That it does exist may be regarded as the product of a typically British combination of conscious decision‐making and historical accident.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the review of the existing literature attached to the grey economic system theory and applications and aims to offer a comprehensive picture of the contribution brought by the researchers to this particular field. Also, the paper underlines the main research areas within the grey economic theory and applications and serves as an informative summary kit for future research works and research directions.

For appreciating the scientific progress made since the grey systems theory has been initiated to the present, with an accent on the literature dedicated to the economic field, a bibliometrics analysis has been conducted. The Perish or Publish software was used for extracting the needed data from Google Scholar for the entire period since the appearance of grey systems to now-a-days. In addition, an ISI Web of Science (WoS) search has been performed for extracting the grey economic papers. As the main focus is on the economic subject area of the grey systems, only the papers related to this field have been selected.

The total number of grey economic paper from both Google Scholar and ISI WoS database, the number of authors, some citation metrics, H-index, authors’ provenience country, papers’ language, etc., have been presented and analysed. Also, a list with the most cited papers in the grey economic relational analysis, grey economic prediction models and grey economic incidence is putted forward.

Through the bibliometric analysis on grey economic papers written over time, a qualitative analysis was performed on this field in order to underline the main research direction, to analyse what has been done in this field and to determine which can be the next research directions that can emerge from here.

The paper succeeds in enlarging the view regarding the usage of grey systems theory in the economic field, offering a suitable analysis on the considered areas. Even though bibliometrics analysis have been conducted on the grey systems theory field, a grey economic bibliometric analysis has not been done yet, to the authors’ knowledge. Therefore, a synthesized of the existing literature attached to the grey economic system theory and applications is presented in order to offer a more comprehensive picture of the contribution brought by the researchers to this particular field.

This study aims to investigate the initial corrosion behavior in aqueous solution of 20# seamless steel under (CO₂/aqueous solution) gas–liquid two-phase stratified flow conditions.

The initial corrosion behavior was studied through the weight loss methods, scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction.

The corrosion rate of 20# steel obviously increases with the increasing gas pressure at different corrosion time when the CO₂ pressure is less than 0.11 MPa, and the increase of corrosion rate tends to be steady when the pressure exceeds 0.11 MPa. With the increase of CO₂ pressure, the corrosion products changed from flocculent to acicular, granular and scaly. A four-stage model for the growth of the corrosion product layer was proposed, namely, the diffusion reaction stage, the local film formation stage, the complete film formation stage and the densification stage of the product film.

A four-stage model for the growth of the corrosion product layer on the pipe wall surface under this condition was proposed, namely, the diffusion reaction stage, the local film formation stage, the complete film formation stage and the densification stage of the product film. The growing process and densification mechanism of corrosion products layer were discussed.

The author argues and explains that the indigenous Eastern epistemological frame of yin-yang balancing can be taken as a unique system of thinking toward a meta-perspective. It is not only deeply rooted in the indigenous Eastern culture traditions, but also bears salient global implications, especially in the domain of paradox management. The purpose and contribution of this chapter are twofold: (1) to explain the unique and salient features of yin-yang balancing (the “either/and” system to reframe paradox into duality as partially conflicting and partially complementary, both spatially and temporarily) as compared with the Western logic systems (the “either/or” and “both/or” or “both/and” systems); and (2) to explore the global implications of the “either/and” system for future paradox research, including the three unique themes of overlap between opposites with the “seed” of one opposite inside the other; threshold from the contingent balance between partial separation and partial integration in line with specific contexts through three operating mechanisms, and knot for the special role of third-party to shift paradox from a dyadic level to a triadic and even a multiplex level.

This study aims to examine the problems of the concession system that Macao has long-term adopted to regulate its gaming industry and discuss alternatives.

Theoretical reflection was used to provide qualitatively different insights about governmental supervision of the gaming industry.

Two options for reform are proposed: (1) replace the concession system with a licensing system that does not restrict the number of concessionaires or the period of concession or (2) adopt a modified form of the concession system that changes the number of concessionaires, period of concessions and methods for selecting concessionaires.

This study’s results have implications for the Macao government and other gaming jurisdictions in Asia.

This study provides a comprehensive examination of the concession system for governmental supervision of the gaming industry.

Current performance measurement systems (PMSs) are mainly designed to measure performance at the organizational level. They tend not to assess the value created by the collaboration of multiple organizations and by the involvement of users in the value creation process, such as in healthcare. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the development of PMSs that can assess the population-based value creation process across multiple healthcare organizations while adopting a patient-based perspective.

The paper analyzes the development of a new healthcare PMS according to a constructive approach through the development of a longitudinal case study. The focus is on the re-framing process of the PMS put in place by a large group of Italian regional health systems that have adopted a collaborative assessment framework.

Framing information according to the population served and the patients’ perspective supports PMSs in assessing the value creation process by evaluating the contribution given by the multiple organizations involved. Therefore, it helps prevent each service provider from working in isolation, and avoids dysfunctional behaviors. Re-framing PMSs contributes to re-focusing stakeholders’ perspective toward value creation; legitimizes organizational units specifically aimed at managing transversal communication, cooperation and coordination; supports the alignment of professionals’ and organizations’ goals and behaviors; and fosters shared accountability among providers.

The paper contributes to the scientific debate on PMSs by investigating a case that focuses on value creation by adopting a patient-centered perspective. Although this case comes from the healthcare sector, the underlying user-centered approach may be generalized to assess other environments, processes, or contexts in which value creation stems from the collaboration of multiple providers (integrated co-production).

Research on grey systems is becoming more sophisticated, and grey relational and prediction analyses are receiving close review worldwide. Particularly, the application of grey systems in marine economics is gaining importance. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and review literature on grey models, providing new directions in their application in the marine economy.

This paper organized seminal studies on grey systems published by Chinese core journal database – CNKI, Web of Science and Elsevier from 1982 to 2018. After searching the aforementioned database for the said duration, the authors used the CiteSpace visualization tools to analyze them.

The authors sorted the studies according to their countries/regions, institutions, keywords and categories using the CiteSpace tool; analyzed current research characteristics on grey models; and discussed their possible applications in marine businesses, economy, scientific research and education, marine environment and disasters. Finally, the authors pointed out the development trend of grey models.

Although researches are combining grey theory with fractals, neural networks, fuzzy theory and other methods, the applications, in terms of scope, have still not met the demand. With the increasingly in-depth research in marine economics and management, international marine economic research has entered a new period of development. Grey theory will certainly attract scholars’ attention, and its role in marine economy and management will gain considerable significance.

Grey Systems: Theory and Application (GSTA) journal started publication in 2011 and completed a decade in 2021. The purpose of this study is to provide a detailed bibliometric analysis of the articles published in GSTA and their content primary trends and themes.

This study uses the Web of Science (WoS) database to analyze the content of published articles. A range of bibliometric analyses and indicators are applied to analyze the GSTA article content using science mapping tools of the Bibliometrix package in the R environment.

The GSTA publishes around 28 articles each year with citations of this work steadily growing over time. The impact of these publications is measured as total mean citations which increased from 0 to 11. The journal has attracted contributors from around the globe, most often affiliated with China, India and Europe. Thematic evolution of the journal's themes reveals that it has expanded its scope to include topics such as relational analysis, decision making, incidence analysis, and forecasting, hybrid grey-fuzzy or grey-rough modeling, etc.

The study is majorly based on GSTA data available on the WoS database.

This study provides the first overview of GSTA's publication and citation trends as well as the evolution of its thematic structure. It also suggests future directions that the journal might take to strengthen its position.

LOCATION of industry policy in Great Britain has its origins in the Special Areas Act of 1934, which marked the beginning of government's acknowledgment of the need to influence the distribution of industry. Since then, successive governments have continued to accept the need. But ideas on how the need should be met have changed considerably, although almost entirely constrained by the principle of taking the work to the workers. Such changes as have taken place in location policy have often led to companies alleging inconsistency on the part of government since the companies have found themselves left high and dry by a change in policy which, having influenced a decision on location, now by‐passes them.

The literature on corruption and whistleblowing is increasing over the past years. However, the authors contend that individual reactions to a corrupt proposal could differ from the mentioned behaviours. On these grounds, the authors contend that a “grey zone” between accepting corruption and whistleblowing does exist. This paper aims to explore what are the behaviours defining this “grey zone” as nuanced behaviours adopted to react to a corrupt proposal.

The authors draw from Miceli and Near’s process of whistleblowing to open the scope for the comprehension of grey behaviours in the decision-making process following to a triggering event. The authors adopted a qualitative and explorative approach by interviewing 27 Italian public servants through open questions and storytelling to explore what kind of behaviours could define the grey zone.

The findings unveil nuanced behaviours in the grey zone configuring neither as corruption nor whistleblowing, ranging from ignoring the corrupt proposal to explicit contraposition. Also, they reveal different social and individual outcomes affecting future relationships in organizations. The findings allow to extend Miceli and Near’s process of whistleblowing to the wider spectrum of response behaviours to triggering events such as receiving or assisting to a corrupt proposal.

Limitations might be recognized in that the situations detected could be only a part of a possible wider “grey zone”. However, the authors believe that the findings could encourage future research to continue exploring the grey zone to enrich its comprehension. Also, the paper offers useful and interesting insights on an undebated issue that has a prominent value under the theoretical, practical, social and policymaking perspectives.

From the practical and policymaking perspective, the advancement of a debate contending the existence of a grey zone made of nuanced behaviours between corruption and whistleblowing could provide support both for organizations and policymakers to a better understanding of individual behaviours and improving actions and policies to prevent corruption and encourage whistleblowing.

As the authors are at least unaware of studies debating on the grey zone with specific reference to corruption and whistleblowing, the paper advances a discussion on the grey zone between corruption and whistleblowing as a continuum of nuanced behaviours that could provide a starting point for further fine-grained analyses.