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This study aims to examine the impact of China's “Manufacturing and Internet Integration Development Pilot Demonstration Project” (MIP) policy on the digital transformation (DT) and labor structure optimization (LSU) of manufacturing enterprises, reveal the relationship between DT and LSU at the micro level and investigate the mechanism between them.

This study employs MIP as a quasi-natural experiment and develops a time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) model based on a sample of 2,445 Chinese A-share listed manufacturing enterprises in the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets from 2013 to 2021.

The implementation of MIP significantly increases DT by 0.4366 and optimizes LSU by 0.0507. By enhancing the two mediated variables of organizational learning inputs (SI) and employees' personal digital cognition (PDC), DT can optimize the LSU of pilot enterprises by 0.035 and 0.034, according to the results of the mechanism analysis. The study also reveals that the impact of MIP on LSU is highly heterogeneous. With effects of 0.0691 and 0.0632, the optimization effect is more pronounced in state-owned firms and firms with low ownership concentration, respectively.

This study demonstrates the dual effects of the MIP pilot on DT and LSU. In addition, this study pioneers research on the significance of optimizing the labor structure through SI and PDC on the basis of DT, which provides an empirical foundation for the Chinese Government to expand the scope of MIP pilots and revise policy content, as well as for manufacturing enterprises to upgrade the labor structure.

This paper aims to report findings of up-to-date insights to fill the knowledge gap of lack of theoretical and practical understandings of how knowledge is used in medium-sized enterprises (MEs) for ensuring their performance excellence, healthy survival and growth, particularly using the contextual background of quality improvement as the standing point to concretise the research content and research participants’ mind-set for data collection.

The empirical data were attained by conducting first a multiple-case study and thereafter a structured interview. Insights were obtained through analysing the collected data and triangulating the findings with the contention from the extant literature where available.

A set of approaches for effective quality improvement knowledge (QIK) utilisation in MEs have been identified and attested, as well as prioritised for a clear guidance on their application by practical businesses.

As a pioneering study on the particularly focussed issue, namely, a current knowledge gap – QIK utilisation in MEs, theoretically the research contributes to the enrichment of the current KM and QI literature with a primary focus on knowledge utilisation in MEs. Practically its findings provide insightful guidance to practice on the approaches of QIK utilisation.

This paper aims to investigate the differences in hot corrosion behavior of the GTD222 superalloy and TiC/GTD222 composite in a mixed salt of 75% Na₂SO₄ and 25% K₂SO₄ at 900°C.

The GTD222 superalloy and TiC/GTD222 nickel-based composite were prepared using selective laser melting (SLM). Subsequently, the hot corrosion behavior of the two alloys was systematically investigated in a salt mixture consisting of 75% Na₂SO₄ and 25% K₂SO₄ (Wt.%) at 900°C.

The TiC/GTD222 composite exhibited better hot corrosion resistance compared to the GTD222 superalloy. First, the addition of alloying elements led to the formation of a protective oxide film on the TiC/GTD222 composites 20 h before hot corrosion. Second, TiC/GTD222 composite corrosion surface has a higher Ti content, after 100 h of hot corrosion, the composite corrosion surface Ti content of 10.8% is more than two times the GTD222 alloy 4% Ti. The Ti and Cr oxides are tightly bonded, effectively resisting the erosion of corrosive elements.

The hot corrosion behavior of GTD222 superalloy and TiC/GTD222 composites prepared by SLM in a mixed salt of 75% Na₂SO₄ and 25% K₂SO₄ was studied for the first time. This study provides insights into the design of high-temperature alloys resistant to hot corrosion.

The concept of postponement has been developed over many years. Past empirical research has been conducted almost entirely in Western countries. This paper aims to investigate the current status of postponement applications in Greater China (including Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) to ascertain the effects of some determinants (i.e. environmental uncertainty, production techniques, and information system (IS) maturity) on postponement application.

A field survey of big manufacturers of electronic/information technology, clothing, and electric appliances is conducted. A total of 106 usable responses are received from 411 surveys yielding a satisfactory response rate of 25.8 percent.

The result indicates that the number of applications of postponement in Greater China is growing and the incidence of postponement applications is higher than in the Western countries. Environmental uncertainty, production techniques, and ISs maturity have have positive effects on applications of postponement techniques. Some specific postponement strategies for the three industries studied are noted.

From an exploratory perspective, the findings present in this paper may be useful in the sense that they give a broad and general picture of the current situation of the use of postponement in certain industries in Greater China.

This chapter explained the findings of a research that is aimed at studying the effectiveness of cross-border knowledge transfer from Japanese companies to their business affiliates in Malaysia by looking into Japanese organizational culture and the mediating effect of the business affiliate’s learning intent. By focusing on attributes identified by existing literature, there were three aspects being investigated to study their roles in influencing the effectiveness of cross-border knowledge transfer. These aspects are intensive and extensive job training, employee involvement and human relations, and leadership styles. The results indicate that all three aspects indeed led to a higher learning intention. The research also found that the business affiliates’ learning intent significantly mediates the relationship between organizational culture and the effectiveness of cross-border knowledge transfer. This study provides academicians and human resource managers deeper insights on how to improve knowledge transfer in cross-culture organizations by managing organizational culture more effectively.

Olfaction plays a very important role in daily life. The olfactory system has the ability to recognize, discriminate and identify thousands of odorant compounds with extremely high sensitivity and specificity. The research on olfactory system has very important values in exploring the mechanisms of information processing in the other sensory nervous systems and brain. Recently, with the development of molecular biological and microelectronics technology research, the study of olfactory cell-based sensors has made great progress. The purpose of this paper is to provide details of recent developments in olfactory cell-based sensors.

Following an introduction, this paper first discusses some olfactory cell-based biosensors, which focus on the light-addressable potentiometric sensors and the microelectrode arrays. Second, surface modification, microfabrication and microfluidic technology which can improve the efficiency of cell immobilization will be summarized. The research trends of olfactory cell-based sensor in future will be proposed.

This paper shows that the biosensors’ performance is expected to be greatly improved due to the fast development of nanotechnology, optical technology and microelectronics. More and more emerging intelligent olfactory sensors will have a promising prospect in many application fields, including food quality and safety assessment, environmental monitor and human diseases detection.

This paper provides a detailed and timely review of the rapidly growing research in the olfactory cell-based sensors.

While the phenomenon of R&D offshoring has become increasingly popular, scholars have mostly focused on R&D offshore outsourcing from the point of view of the client firms, who are often from an advanced country. By examining vendor firms, in this paper the authors shift the focus to the second party in the dyadic relationship of R&D offshore outsourcing. Specifically, the authors compare vendor firms with nonvendor firms from the same emerging economy and industry to look at whether vendor firms from emerging economies can improve their innovation performance by learning from their clients. The authors also look at the role of depth and breadth of existing technological capabilities of the vendor firm in its ability to improve its innovation performance.

This study is based on firm-level data from the Indian biopharmaceutical industry between 2005 and 2016. The authors use the Heckman two-stage model to control for self-selection by firms. The authors compare the innovation performance of vendor firms with nonvendor biopharmaceutical firms (group vs nongroup analysis) as well as innovation performance across vendor firms (within group comparison).

The authors find that, compared to nonvendor firms, R&D offshore outsourcing vendor firms from emerging economies have higher innovation performance. The authors argue that this higher innovation performance among vendor firms is due to learning from their clients. Among vendor firms, the authors find that the innovation gains are contingent upon the two factors of depth and breadth of the vendor firms' technological capabilities.

This paper makes three contributions: First, the authors augment the nascent stream of research on innovation from emerging economy firms. The authors introduce a new mechanism for emerging economy firms to learn and upgrade their capabilities. Second, the authors contribute to the literature on global value chains, by showing that vendor firms are able to learn from their clients and upgrade their capabilities. Third, by examining the innovation by vendor firms, the authors contribute to the R&D offshore outsourcing, which has largely focused on the client.

The study findings have important implications for both clients and vendors. For client firms, the authors provide evidence that knowledge spillovers do happen, and R&D offshore outsourcing can turn vendors into potential competitors. This research helps firms from emerging economies by showing that becoming vendors for R&D offshore outsourcing is a viable option to learn from foreign firms and improve innovation performance. Going outside geographic boundaries may be a large hurdle for these resource-strapped, emerging economy firms. Providing offshore outsourcing services for narrow slices of R&D activities may be a starting point for these firms to upgrade their capabilities.

This paper is among the first to quantitatively study the innovation performance of vendor firms from emerging economies. The authors also contribute to the nascent literature on innovation in emerging economy firms by showing that providing R&D offshore outsourcing services to client firms from advanced countries can improve firms' innovation performance.

Against the background of actively promoting the reform of mixed ownership in China, this study regards government ownership in private sector enterprises (PSEs) as an important political connection mechanism and examines private holding listed companies in high-polluting industries that sold China A-shares from 2012 to 2019.

Using regression models such as Tobit and negative binomial estimation, the research empirically examines the impact of government ownership in PSEs on the corporate fulfillment of their environmental responsibilities.

Government ownership can effectively promote PSEs to fulfill their environmental responsibilities. Government ownership, as a corporate-level political connection mechanism, enables the government to provide firms with more environmental protection subsidies and environmental tax incentives, encouraging firms to fulfill their environmental responsibilities. When considering the policy risks faced by PSEs, government ownership effectively reduces the impact of policy uncertainty on firms’ fulfillment of environmental responsibilities. Additionally, verifying the economic development level of the city in which the firm is located makes the positive impact of government ownership on fulfillment of environmental responsibilities of PSEs in regions with lower economic development levels more significant.

Unlike existing studies that generally use the personal political identity of entrepreneurs to measure the political connections of PSEs, this study regards government ownership in PSEs as an important political connection mechanism. It provides a useful reference for China to formulate environmental protection policies for PSEs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between environment turbulence, knowledge transfer and innovation performance for emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) in an asymmetric international R&D alliance.

Data were collected through a survey of high-tech firms in Zhejiang Province of China from 2013 to 2015.

Innovation performance of EMNEs is positively influenced by knowledge transfer activities (knowledge replication and knowledge adaption), technological and market turbulence, while negatively influenced by institutional turbulence. In addition, different aspects of environmental turbulence moderate the relationship between knowledge transfer practices and innovation performance of EMNEs differently.

Future studies could use a longitudinal design to capture the dynamism driving innovation performance of EMNEs through R&D alliances.

Practical guidelines are provided particularly for EMNE managers on how to develop an innovation strategy by leveraging external knowledge, adaptive innovation and environmental turbulence.

This study deepens the knowledge of how EMNEs enhance their innovation by building the linkage between environmental turbulence and absorptive capacity through knowledge transfer activities in an asymmetric international R&D alliance.

Preprint has become an important vehicle for academic communications and discussions. However, in preprint, there is a lack of a sufficient quality control mechanism such as peer review, which is a proven quality assurance practice that is used in traditional academic publishing services. To address the problem leveraging on the power of this practice, the authors introduce into preprint a self-organizing peer review method by applying the concept of token economy and the blockchain technology.

Specifically, this paper proposes an idea that applies the token economy concept to the design of the incentive and penalty mechanisms for peer reviewers in preprint to assure the qualities of its publications. Steemit has been studied to demonstrate the characteristics of the mechanisms.

A token economy-enhanced framework for self-organizing peer review in preprint is also proposed. The resulting preprint system is an academic community-oriented, self-organizing and blockchain-based content publishing system that is designed to run on both permissioned and permissionless blockchains.

First, since peer review is on a voluntary basis and not profits oriented, the “monetary” incentive and penalty mechanisms borrowed from Steemit may conflict with academic ethics. Second, the authors proposed to deploy the authors’ token economy on blockchain, but the current mainstream decentralized blockchain services are too few to warrant a foreseeable successful future for the authors’ application. In fact, as the flagship of blockchain 2.0, the Ethereum blockchain suffers from the problem of scalability, which leads to its applications' lower performances, longer response times and eventually more negative user experiences as time goes by. Finally, the authors’ proposed version of preprint has not been implemented, and hence, its practical effectiveness and acceptance by academia are yet to be evaluated.

In this paper, the authors proposed a token economy-based framework for self-organizing peer review in preprint leveraging on blockchain technology. This framework encourages positive interactions between authors and reviewers, which helps to establish a healthy academic ecology that produces more contents with better qualities. Application of a solution based on the authors’ framework should impact the current academic communities by offering a new academic peer reviewing tool that has a built-in mechanism for self-behavior correction and quality assurance.

Through adaption, the framework can be applied to other domains as well. In such domains, a large amount of feedbacks from partakers are needed and there exists a tremendous amount of work to filter noises in feedbacks so as to ensure that as many the quality ones as possible are delivered for a variety of purposes. The authors’ framework essentially impacts almost all domains where there exists a need to collect and filter large amount of feedbacks, and using the authors’ framework-based solution is cost-saving, which can be seen as a major potential contribution of the research.

The incentive and penalty mechanisms encourage positive interactions between authors and reviewers, and it helps to establish a healthy academic ecology that produces high-volume contents with good qualities.