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The purpose of this study is to predict the thermal protective performance (TPP) of flame-retardant fabric more economically using machine learning and analyze the factors affecting the TPP using model visualization.

A total of 13 machine learning models were trained by collecting 414 datasets of typical flame-retardant fabric from current literature. The optimal performance model was used for feature importance ranking and correlation variable analysis through model visualization.

Five models with better performance were screened, all of which showed R2 greater than 0.96 and root mean squared error less than 3.0. Heat map results revealed that the TPP of fabrics differed significantly under different types of thermal exposure. The effect of fabric weight was more apparent in the flame or low thermal radiation environment. The increase in fabric weight, fabric thickness, air gap width and relative humidity of the air gap improved the TPP of the fabric.

The findings suggested that the visual analysis method of machine learning can intuitively understand the change trend and range of second-degree burn time under the influence of multiple variables. The established models can be used to predict the TPP of fabrics, providing a reference for researchers to carry out relevant research.

The findings of this study contribute directional insights for optimizing the structure of thermal protective clothing, and introduce innovative perspectives and methodologies for advancing heat transfer modeling in thermal protective clothing.

The paper aims to reveal the relationship among energy efficiency, thermal comfort and thermal regulation of electrically heated footwear and to investigate influencing factors on the energy efficiency and thermal comfort.

A finite volume model was proposed to simulate the two-dimensional heat transfer in electrically heated footwear (EHF) under an extremely cold condition. The model domain consists of three-layer footwear materials, a heating pad, a sock material, an air gap and skin tissues. Model predictions were verified by experimental data from cold-contact exposure. Then the influencing factors on the energy efficiency and thermal comfort were investigated through parametric analysis.

The paper demonstrated that the skin temperature control (STC) mode provided superior thermal comfort compared to the heating pad temperature control (HPTC) mode. However, the energy efficiency for the HPTC mode with a heating temperature of 38 °C was 18% higher than the STC mode. The energy efficiency of EHF while reaching the state of thermal comfort was strongly determined by the arrangement and connection of heating elements, heating temperature, thickness and thermal conductivity of footwear materials.

The findings obtained in this paper can be used to engineer the EHF that provides optimal thermal comfort and energy efficiency in cold environments.

The effects of gendered views on employee voice are of great importance for knowledge sharing within public universities. Yet, they are still neglected by current human resource management and entrepreneurship literature. While strengthening themselves by reinforcing the strengths and opportunities, public universities can generate entrepreneurial opportunities through various knowledge-sharing mechanisms, including social networks and employee voice. This became a crucial lever for public universities to leverage competitive advantages and to support entrepreneurial activities through network knowledge-based sharing. For this purpose, this study aims to examine the various aspects of entrepreneurship via the voice of employees, emphasizing the moderating effect of gender and the mediating role of social networks on the link between employee voice and the entrepreneurial atmosphere of universities.

The authors collected survey data from a cross-sectional sample of 335 employees engaged in entrepreneurship activities within public universities in an emerging economy context and analyzed the data using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with the Smart-PLS software.

The PLS-SEM analysis found that different dimensions of the university entrepreneurial climate (communication, knowledge sharing and innovative climate) positively impact members’ voices within public universities. This effect is amplified by social networks, which are crucial for spreading knowledge among faculty, thereby fostering a more open and collaborative academic environment.

When acting, the university top management team should encourage the generation and dissemination of entrepreneurial ideas to nurture a dynamic entrepreneurial atmosphere and social involvement, ultimately supporting sustainable competitive advantages through a culture of strategic knowledge sharing. The results have practical implications for university managers, entrepreneurship education actors, administrators, policymakers and entrepreneurial ecosystem actors, by demonstrating how social networks can amplify the dissemination of ideas and entrepreneurial spirit.

This research explores how entrepreneurship and social networks can help faculty members have a stronger influence in academic settings. It also fills in the gaps in knowledge about how human resource management and entrepreneurship can work together to create a more communicative and innovative academic environment. Additionally, this study brings new ideas to existing literature by looking at how gender differences can affect employee voice, particularly emphasizing the importance of women in leadership roles at universities. This study is also the first to delve into how entrepreneurship and social networks, along with gender perceptions, play a role in shaping the voice of employees in a public university.

Maritime transportation plays an important role in facilitating both the global and regional merchandise trade, where accurate trend prediction is crucial in assisting decision-making in the industry. This paper aims to conduct a macro-level study to predict world vessel supply and demand.

The automatic autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) is used for the univariate vessel supply and demand time-series forecasting based on the data records from 1980 to 2021.

For the future projection of the demand side, the predicted outcomes for total vessel demand and world dry cargo vessel demand until 2030 indicate upward trends. For the supply side, the predominant upward trends for world total vessel supply, oil tanker vessel supply, container vessel supply and other types of vessel supply are captured. The world bulk carrier vessel supply prediction results indicate an initial upward trend, followed by a slight decline, while the forecasted world general cargo vessel supply values remain relatively stable. By comparing the predicted percentage change rates, there is a gradual convergence between demand and supply change rates in the near future. We also find that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the time-series prediction results is not statistically significant.

The results can provide policy implications in strategic planning and operation to various stakeholders in the shipping industry for vessel building, scrapping and deployment.

The study investigates the motivations, learning experiences and impacts of Chilean student mobility in China, focusing on postgraduate students. It analyzes how this education has influenced their professional trajectories and Sino-Chilean relations.

The methodology employs a qualitative approach, based on 13 semi-structured interviews, with an analysis covering aspects such as the reasons for studying in China, the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese, the academic experience and professional projections.

The research concludes that these students, trained in China, significantly contribute to strengthening bilateral ties in various fields, highlighting cultural diplomacy as a key factor in expanding collaboration between the two countries.

Additionally, it underscores the need to consider student mobility as an essential component of relations between Chile and China, in particular, and among different Global South countries in general, transcending the limitations of financing criteria and the Eurocentric orientation that predominates in the internationalization policies of Chilean higher education.

This study aims to examine the predictors of the managers’ work performance under the risk-as-feelings hypothesis during the Covid-19 pandemic in four European countries. Specifically, it aims to investigate the impact of risk-related job stressors and behavioral and emotional reactivities on non-managers and managers performance in risky circumstances.

The author assessed simultaneously the effects of occupational health risk perception and the resulting feelings and emotional state such irritability and commitment change, the effects of income and others organizational and personal variables as performance stressors. The author used a sample of 652 employees divided on two groups (71% non-managers and 23% managers). Data are obtained from the dataset in Prochazka et al., (2020) collected using online survey delivered to employees employed in their companies for a minimum of five months in the period between Mai and June 2020.

The results confirm the risk-as-feelings hypothesis and show significant effect of occupational health risk perception and associated emotional responses (irritability and commitment) on the work performance for non-managers’ group. However, for managers’ group the main determinant of work performance is the organizational commitment as explained by the job-demands-resources-model (JDRM).

The originality of this study is to employ the risk-as-feelings hypothesis (Loewenstein et al., 2001) in a management research question such as job performance predictors. Thus, this study contributes to the literature on job performance in two significant ways. First, it examines the risk-related job’s stressors as determinants of managers and non-managers performance under the risk-as-feelings hypothesis. Second, it tests the importance of functional differences as an approach to better investigate the framework of the JDRM (Bakker and Demerouti, 2017).

This study aims to reveal the positive effects of workplace fun forms on employee positive affect state and workplace well-being. This study also aims to examine workplace friendship opportunity and workplace friendship prevalence in the context of fun events and workplace well-being.

The research model developed and tested with responses from 1,000 thousand Indian frontline employees of five-star hotels who have worked in the hospitality industry for at least two years and who have been exposed to fun committees at their workplace.

This study revealed that workplace fun forms are the main causes of employee positive affective reactions, and they have positive effects on frontline employees' positive affect. The study also found that fun activities, customer interaction with fun and manager support for fun as workplace events are strong proximal causes for forming positive affect when they have workplace friendship opportunity. Coworker socialization can induce employee positive affect in the workplace, even without the moderating effect of workplace friendship opportunity. Additionally, the positive effect of positive affect was found to be significant on workplace well-being.

Hospitality management is required to foster fun culture with fun activities, coworker socialization, manager support for fun and customer interaction with fun that enhance employee affective reactions to uplift employee positive affect state. This study also presents more interesting practical implications for practitioners and managers.

This study empirically tested deferential workplace fun forms on positive affect, and study provides novel insights into positive affect and workplace well-being. Four mediation mechanisms examined on fun forms and workplace well-being. Four moderating roles of workplace friendship opportunity tested on positive affect and fun events. Workplace friendship prevalence moderation on positive affect and workplace well-being helped to understand employee cognitive mechanism.

This study aims to inspect the impact of US climate policy uncertainty (CPU) on the economic growth of Asian countries with the moderating role of crude oil price (COP) changes.

The Im-Pesaran Sin and Fisher-type tests are used for stationarity check, while Kao and Pedroni tests are used for cointegration analysis. The Hausman test is applied for model selection, where pooled mean group autoregressive distributed lag (PMG/ARDL) has been selected and applied. Besides, the fully modified ordinary least squares is also used for robustness analysis. Additionally, the literature review and descriptive statistics have been used.

The main findings disclosed that US CPU negatively impacted the economic growth of Asian economies with high significance in the long run whereas insignificant in the short run. The results further concluded that COP positively affected economic growth both in the short and long run. Furthermore, the results also revealed that COP significantly and positively moderates the relationship between CPU and COP in the long and short run.

The study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of the US CPU on the economic growth of Asian economies. Second, it further revealed the moderating role of COP between US CPU and economic growth. Third, a large panel of data from Asian countries has been considered. Fourth, the study adds to the current literature by using the PMG/ARDL model to determine the impact of US CPU on economic growth. Additionally, this study focuses on the US CPU because it is a developed country playing a significant role in energy and climate issues, and has been very uncertain.

This paper examines how firms respond to local government’s environment initiatives through textual analysis of government work reports (GWRs). This study aims to provide insights into how firms strategically respond to government’s environmental initiatives through their disclosure and investment practices.

This study uses a textual analysis of GWRs from China’s provinces. The frequency and change rate of environmental keywords in these reports are used as a measure of the government’s environmental initiatives.

This study finds that environmental disclosure scores in environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports increase with the frequency or change rate of environmental keywords in provincial GWRs. This effect is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises, firms in highly marketized provinces or those listed in a single capital market. However, there is no significant relationship between firms’ environmental investments and government initiatives, except for cross-listed firms in provinces with consistently high frequency of environmental keywords in their GWRs.

The findings indicate that government environmental initiatives can shape firms’ disclosure behaviors, yet have limited influence on investment decisions, suggesting that environmental disclosure could potentially be opportunistic. This underscores the need for more effective strategies to stimulate firms’ environmental investments.

This study provides valuable insights into the differential impacts of government environmental initiatives on firms’ disclosure and investment behaviors, contributing to the understanding of corporate environmental responsibility in the context of government initiatives.

This study responded to the call to empirically reconcile conflicting findings in unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) literature. It did so by examining the influence of organizational culture on the relationship between affective organizational commitment and UPB.

Using a sample of 710 U.S. service sector employees based on a three-wave data collection design, structural invariance assessment was utilized to evaluate the relationship between affective organizational commitment and UPB across organizational cultures with opposing effectiveness criteria (i.e. focused on stability vs flexibility).

The result indicated a statistically significant positive direct effect between affective organizational commitment and UPB for the stability-focused cultures, while finding a statistically insignificant effect for the flexibility-focused cultures. These results support organizational culture research, which shows that organizational cultures with opposing effectiveness criteria (i.e. stability vs flexibility) can either encourage or discourage ethical behavior.

While leaders and managers encourage employee commitment to the organization, it is important to understand that increased organizational commitment is not limited to positive outcomes. Cultivating elements of flexibility-oriented cultures, like promoting teamwork (as in clan cultures) or fostering innovation and adaptability (as in adhocracy cultures), can be a strategic approach to minimize the chances of UPB among committed employees.

By integrating insights from social exchange theory, Trevino’s interactionist model and the competing values framework, we have contributed to a nuanced understanding of how different organizational cultures can suppress or stimulate UPB.