Search results

Examines the three‐way interaction between budget emphasis, participation and task difficulty affecting managerial performance within the framework suggested by Harrison (1992) with a sample of 197 functional heads from Singaporean and Australian manufacturing companies. The results support a three‐way interaction between budget emphasis, budgetary participation and task difficulty affecting managerial performance and second, cultural differences between Singapore and Australia (pertaining to power distance) which interact neither with budgetary participation nor budget emphasis. The results also suggest that high budgetary participation (regardless of budget emphasis) in high task difficulty situations and high budget emphasis (regardless of budgetary participation) in low task difficulty situations are associated with improved managerial performance in Singapore and Australia.

The development of low-carbon production is impeded by the investment costs of green technology research and development (R&D) and carbon emission reduction while facing the uncertain risk of emission reduction investment. With the government's carbon emission constraints, green manufacturers implement the advance selling strategy to increase both profit and reduction level. However, few studies consider the consumer's green preference and emission constraints in advance selling market and spot market independently. The authors' paper investigates the optimal strategies of advance selling pricing and reduction effort for green manufacturers to maximize profits.

The authors' paper designs a stochastic model and investigates the manufacturer's optimal strategies of advance selling price and emission reduction efforts by categorizing different purchasing periods of low-carbon consumers. With the challenges of uncertain demand and government's emission constraints, the authors' develop the non-linear optimization model to investigate the manufacturer's profit-oriented decisions.

The results show the government's carbon constraints cannot influence the manufacturer's profit, but the consumer's low-carbon preference in the advance selling period can. Interestingly, the manufacturer will make fewer reduction efforts even when the consumers have stronger environmental awareness. In addition, the increasing consumer price sensitivity will exacerbate the profit loss from mandatory emissions reduction. Overall, for achieving a win–win situation between emission reduction and profit growth, green manufacturers should not only consider the sales strategies, market demand, and government constraints in a low-carbon market, but also pay attention to the uncertainty of green technology innovation.

With the consideration of the government's carbon emission constraints, uncertain demand, and low-carbon consumer's preferences, the authors' study innovatively incorporates the joint impacts of advance selling strategy and emission reduction effort strategy and then differentiates between two cases that pertain to the diverse carbon emission regulations.

The rapid growth of the solo economy in the Asia-Pacific area indicates an economic transition. In East Asia, solitary households are growing along with low marital rates and birth rates under high economic pressure. Because of these population changes, malls must provide good quality service to meet the specific needs of solitary households and social households. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In this study, relationships among service quality, customer satisfaction (CS), perceived value, corporate image and customer loyalty were compared between social and solitary customers of Taiwan click-and-mortar malls. The effects of five service quality dimensions on CS and customer loyalty were investigated by structural equation modeling.

The analytical results show that all hypothesized relationships among factors were supported with the exception of the impact of perceived value on satisfaction and the impact of the corporate image on satisfaction. Additionally, the comparison between solitary and social customers showed that service quality, corporate image and customer loyalty have strong relationships without differences between both kinds of customers. Solitary and social customers only differed in the impact of perceived value on loyalty.

The managerial implication of this study is that, to satisfy both social and solitary customers and to increase their loyalty, Click-and-mortar malls (CAM malls) should apply different service quality strategies for social and solitary customers. To satisfy both types of customers, a strategy for increasing visible cares should be applied in social customers, and a strategy for increasing the perception of reliability, assurance and visible cares should be applied in solitary customers. To enhance the loyalty of solitary customers, a CAM mall should enhance the value perceived by solitary customers, which can help CAM malls increase the loyalty of solitary customers in the solo economy.

The solo economy is a hot topic in East Asia because the issue of solo economy impacts the market. A CAM mall must evolve its business to attract solitary customers. However, no studies compared perceived quality, satisfaction, perceived value, corporate image and loyalty between solitary customers and social customers. This study is the first study investigated the business model of CAM malls.

This paper aims to explore one question: to what extent does urban rehabilitation impact the housing search cost of the low-income tenants.

This paper adopts the fixed effects time-on-market (TOM) model and pricing model to study the research question.

Urban rehabilitation lifts the subdivided units (SDUs’) prices by around 7%. For the SDU located in old districts, urban rehabilitation gives rise to the rental price up by 11%–12%. The SDUs in the area without urban rehabilitation experience a short marketing period of 16%–17%. The SDU located in the old district that is without urban rehabilitation would have a short marketing time.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the pioneering research to investigate the relationship between rehabilitation and low-income rental housing from the improved search theory. The improved search theory posits that under the circumstance of urban rehabilitation, low-income tenants’ options are limited and the search behavior will be restricted in the affordable areas, and then TOM will be shortened. With the concentration of SDUs in Hong Kong, the test of the search theory is broken down into two hypotheses. (H1) Urban rehabilitation leads to low-income housing prices increase. (H2) Low-income housing located in areas without urban rehabilitation has a shorter TOM.

This paper aims to examine the optimal sourcing strategies and pricing decisions of competing toy manufacturers and to discuss how manufacturers’ decisions are impacted by competition.

The authors consider a single-period model to characterise the competition between two competing toy manufacturers. Both of them are free to choose between virgin material and recycled material. The authors consider two types of consumers: sensitive consumers who are concerned about product safety and prefer the toy made of virgin material and insensitive consumers who do not care what material is used in the toy. The competing manufacturers play a Cournot competition.

The results reveal a special case of a win-win situation for both the manufacturer and the consumer. In addition, an increasing number of sensitive consumers does not always raise the price of virgin-material toys.

The authors derive the manufacturer’s equilibrium sourcing strategies, corresponding market-clearing prices and profits obtained.

The paper investigates how toy manufacturers’ optimal sourcing strategies are impacted by competition, considering market segments.

The low-temperature sintering of silica glass combined with additive manufacturing (AM) technology has brought a revolutionary change in glass manufacturing. This study aims to carry out in an attempt to achieve precious manufacturing of silicate glassy matrix through the method of slurry extrusion.

A low-cost slurry extrusion modelling technology is used to extrude silicate glassy matrix inks, composed of silicate glass powder with different amounts of additives. Extrudability of the inks, their printability window and the featuring curves of silicate glassy matrix are investigated. In addition, the properties of the low-temperature sintering green part as a functional part are explored and evaluated from morphology, hardness and colour.

The results showed that the particle size was mainly distributed from 1.4 µm to 5.3 µm, showing better slurry stability and print continuity. The parameters were set to 8 mm/s, 80% and 0.4 mm, respectively, to achieve better forming of three-dimensional (3D) samples. Besides, the organic binder removal step was concentrated on 200°C–300°C and 590°C–650°C was the fusion bonding temperature of the powder. The hardness values of 10 test samples ranged from 588 HL to 613 HL, which met the requirements of hard stones with super-strong mechanical strength. In addition, the mutual penetration of elements caused by temperature changes may lead to a colourful appearance.

The custom continuous AM technology enables the fabrication of a glass matrix with 3D structural features. The precise positioning technology of the glass matrix is expected to be applied more widely in functional parts.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of plasma nitriding and Ti-C:H coating deposition on AISI 316L and to find the best tribological performance of various specimens.

An experimental investigation is performed into the effects of plasma nitriding and Ti-C:H sputtering on the tribological properties of AISI 316L biomedical stainless steel. Five samples are prepared, namely, original AISI 316L stainless steel (code: 316L), nitrided 316L (code: N316), 316L and N316 sputtered with Ti-C:H (codes: D316 and DN316, respectively) and polished N316 sputtered with Ti-C:H (DN316s). The microstructure, mechanical properties and coating adhesion strength of the various samples are investigated and compared. The tribological properties of the samples are then evaluated by means of reciprocating wear tests performed in 8.9 Wt.% NaCl solution against three different counterbodies, namely, a 316L ball, Ti₆Al₄V ball and Si₃N₄ ball.

It is shown that plasma nitriding followed by Ti-C:H deposition (DN316s) improves the tribological properties of AISI 316L; the sample provides the best tribological performance of the various specimens and has a wear rate approximately 156 times lower than that of the original 316L substrate.

The results suggest that nitriding followed by polishing and Ti-C:H sputtering provides an effective means of improving the service life of AISI 316L biomedical implants.

For nanostores, striving to become the community group-buying leader is gaining prominence. This paper aims to construct Hotelling linear models to investigate whether nanostores should be registered as leaders and their decisions in a competitive environment.

This paper constructs three Hotelling linear models: neither nanostore registers as community leader, only one nanostore registers as community leader and both nanostores register as community leader. The competitive operation strategies of two general nanostores under three scenarios are solved.

The study finds that nanostores without a cost advantage may benefit from being the first leader. The nanostore's preferred decisions depend on the investment cost parameters of its own and competitors which may lead to market share competition. Furthermore, consumers' sensitivity to community group-buying service has a negative effect on nanostores' profit.

The study is one of the few to consider the competition between community leaders. Besides, the study considers that the utilities functions of consumers are concurrently impacted by the service decisions, along with the price in different nanostores. It can provide nanostores useful implications in the dynamic industry.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain the optimal N₂/Ar ratio parameters for preparing Ta (C, N) coating. Three coatings with different N₂/Ar ratios were prepared on the TA15 substrate, and their effects on the wear properties of the coatings were discussed.

Ta(C, N) coatings with three different N₂/Ar ratios were prepared on TA15 substrates using the double cathode glow metallurgical plasma alloying technique (DGMPA) using a step-by-step diffusion method.

With the increase of N₂/Ar flow ratio, the hardness and elastic modulus of the coating first increase and then decrease. Compared with the S1 sample (N₂/Ar gas ratio 25: 75) and the S3 sample (N₂/Ar gas ratio 75: 25), the S2 sample (N₂/Ar gas ratio 50: 50) has better mechanical properties, with hardness increased by 48.45% and 6.8%, respectively, and elastic strain ratio increased by 22.8% and 28.5%, respectively. Moreover, the wear degree of the S2 sample is less than other samples. The wear rate of the S2 sample was 32.4% lower than the S3 sample at 300°C and 14.3% lower than the S3 sample at 500°C. Therefore, the S2 sample has the best mechanical properties and the best high temperature wear resistance.

Ta(C, N) coatings were prepared by DGMPA technology, and the wear mechanism of Ta(C, N) coatings with different N₂/Ar ratios was investigated to reduce the wear rate.

This paper aims to build a scientific evaluation index system for regional low-carbon circular economic development. Taking Sichuan Province as the empirical research object, the paper evaluates its low-carbon circular economy (LCCE) development level and proposes policy recommendations for climate change improvement based on the evaluation results.

This paper, first, built an evaluation index system with 30 indicators within six subsystems, namely, economic development, social progress, energy consumption, low-carbon emissions, carbon sink capacity and environmental carrying capacity. Second, develop an “entropy weight-grey correlation” evaluation method. Finally, from a practical point of view, measure the development level of LCCE in Sichuan Province, China, from 2008 to 2018.

It was found that Sichuan LCCE development had a general downward trend from 2008 to 2012 and a steady upward trend from 2012 to 2018; however, the overall level was low. The main factors affecting the LCCE development are lagging energy consumption and environmental carrying capacity subsystem developments.

This paper puts forward relevant suggestions for improving the development of a low-carbon economy and climate change for the reference of policymakers.

This paper built an evaluation index system with 30 indicators for regional low carbon circular economic development. The evaluation method of “entropy weight-grey correlation” is used to measure the development level of regional LCCE in Sichuan Province, China.