Search results

Via dialectical perspective and configurational approach, this paper aims to explore the relationship between female representation and long-term firm performance when combined with environmental conditions.

For necessary condition analysis and time-series qualitative comparative analysis, a sample of 614 listed Chinese manufacturing firms between 2017 and 2020 was obtained.

The inclusion of female executives can aid firms in their long-term performance and resilience. Seven configurations, categorized as chimpanzee type, African elephant type and queen bee type, can prompt long-term firm performance. Chimpanzee-type configuration is the most prevalent path for firms to achieve long-term performance.

Firms could reconsider the role of female executives in achieving long-term success, assist in breaking the invisible “glass ceiling” and “glass cliff,” and refrain from viewing them as mere “tokens.” Policymakers can improve female representation by institutionally guaranteeing women’s opportunities for empowerment, education and promotion.

This study presents evidence for the legitimacy of female representation by demonstrating the intricate causality between female representation and firm performance beyond the controversy between business ethics and coercive policy. This paper also builds upon and extends the literature on female representation and provides alternative ways to improve female representation by combining female executives’ percentages, professionalism and positions.

Light field images (LFIs) have gained popularity as a technology to increase the field of view (FoV) of plenoptic cameras since they can capture information about light rays with a large FoV. Wide FoV causes light field (LF) data to increase rapidly, which restricts the use of LF imaging in image processing, visual analysis and user interface. Effective LFI coding methods become of paramount importance. This paper aims to eliminate more redundancy by exploring sparsity and correlation in the angular domain of LFIs, as well as mitigate the loss of perceptual quality of LFIs caused by encoding.

This work proposes a new efficient LF coding framework. On the coding side, a new sampling scheme and a hierarchical prediction structure are used to eliminate redundancy in the LFI's angular and spatial domains. At the decoding side, high-quality dense LF is reconstructed using a view synthesis method based on the residual channel attention network (RCAN).

In three different LF datasets, our proposed coding framework not only reduces the transmitted bit rate but also maintains a higher view quality than the current more advanced methods.

(1) A new sampling scheme is designed to synthesize high-quality LFIs while better ensuring LF angular domain sparsity. (2) To further eliminate redundancy in the spatial domain, new ranking schemes and hierarchical prediction structures are designed. (3) A synthetic network based on RCAN and a novel loss function is designed to mitigate the perceptual quality loss due to the coding process.

Despite the ongoing scholarly interest in greenwashing, it is not well known the impact of multiple institutional pressures on greenwashing in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Following the institutional logics perspective, this study investigates how three distinct logics – commercial, public, and social welfare – drive greenwashing and whether organizational capability for blending diverse CSR expectations reverses this link.

The current study conceptualized and tested an original model on how three institutional logics influence greenwashing in CSR, with the mediation effect of hybridization capability as a response to logic plurality. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was performed on a survey data, which was collected from 150 middle managers in Turkey.

The results show that while commercial logic has no direct or indirect impact on greenwashing, public and social welfare logics drive greenwashing in CSR. However, these effects are reversed when the CSR hybridization capability increases.

This study contributes to the understanding of what predicts CSR greenwashing by integrating a comprehensive theoretical framework involving multiple institutional logics, conflicting stakeholder demands, and organizational hybridity.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that theoretically and empirically analyzed how the exposure of multiple external pressures affects the CSR greenwashing and how it can be reversed by CSR hybridization capability. This capability mitigates the threats and challenges of multiple logics and turns them into an opportunity to gain legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders by preventing greenwashing.

This study aims to investigate if engineered compression variations using moisture-responsive knitted fabric design can improve breast support in seamless knitted sports bras.

An experimental approach was used to integrate a novel moisture-responsive fabric panel into a seamless knitted bra, and the resulting compression variability in dry versus wet conditions were compared with those of a control bra. Air permeability and elongation testing of between breasts fabric panels was conducted in dry and wet conditions, followed by three-dimensional body scanning of eight human participants wearing the two bras in similar conditions. Questionnaires were used to evaluate perceived comfort and breast support of both bras in both conditions.

Air permeability test results showed that the novel panel had the highest variance between dry and wet conditions, confirming its moisture-responsive design, and increased its elongation coefficient in both wale and course directions in wet condition. There were significant main effects of bra type and body location on breast compression measurements. Breast circumferences in the novel bra were significantly larger than in the control bra condition. The significant two-way interaction between bra type and moisture condition showed that the control bra lost compressive power in wet condition, whereas the novel bra became more compressive when wet. Changes in compression were confirmed by participants’ perception of tighter straps and drier breast comfort.

These findings add to the limited scientific knowledge of moisture adaptive bra design using engineered knitted fabrics via advanced manufacturing technologies, with possible applications beyond sports bras, such as bras for breast surgery recovering patients.

This paper aims to solve the problems of low stacking efficiency and long production time in the supercapacitor module assembly process, a stacking system based on monocular vision is proposed, including bracket visual positioning, grasping and stacking, and it is applied in actual production.

To enhance the robustness of the workpiece location method and improve the location accuracy, the improved U-Net network and image processing algorithms are used to segment the collected images. In addition, for the extracted feature points, the objective function that can be globally optimized is obtained by parameterizing the rotation matrix to construct a polynomial equation system and, finally, the equation system is solved to obtain the final pose estimation, which could improve the accuracy of workpiece location.

The result indicates that the proposed method is successfully performed on the manipulator. Besides, this method can well solve the problem of object reflection on the conveyor belt. The Intersection over Union of the image segmentation of the object is 0.9948, and the Pixel Accuracy is 0.9973, which has a high segmentation accuracy for the image. The error range between the method proposed in this paper and the pose estimation is within 2 mm, and the qualified rate of supercapacitor module stacking products is over 99.8%.

This paper proposes a method of accurately extracting feature points by integrating an improved U-Net network and image processing and uses the workpiece positioning algorithm of the optimal solution PnP problem algorithm. The calculation results show that the algorithm improves the positioning accuracy of the workpiece, realizes the assembly of stacked supercapacitor modules and is applied in industrial production.

The agricultural sector is a critical component of global economic development, and its significance has grown significantly in recent years. The risks associated with agriculture and the behaviors of farmers in handling these risks are becoming increasingly important, given the sector’s increasing dependence worldwide. Various activities related to agriculture are vulnerable to multiple risks, which can have severe consequences for farmers’ livelihoods. The purpose of this systematic review is to present a comprehensive analysis of the sources of risk faced by farmers and their choices in adopting risk management strategies worldwide.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol was utilized to select relevant literature, and a total of 102 studies were analyzed. Through the use of Venn diagrams and graphical methods, the authors provide a transparent overview of the risks faced by farmers and the adoption of risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

From the analysis, the authors found that, in terms of risk management strategies, diversification, reserve credit and accumulated assets are frequently used in developing countries, while developed countries tend to rely on future/forward contracts, crop insurance and hedging. Diversification is the most widely used risk management strategy across both developed and developing countries. Our study also highlights the different perceptions of weather-related risks among growers in developed and developing countries.

This systematic review provides valuable insights into the risks associated with agriculture and farmers' strategies in managing these risks, which could inform policy decisions and promote sustainable agricultural practices. For instance, understanding the individualistic nature of farmers' risk perception and the varying risk sources and management strategies depending on the locality and provide assistance to the farmers accordingly.

The paper explains how farmers behave during uncertainty in terms of risk perception and their decision to adopt risk management strategies in developed and developing countries.

This paper aims to present an overview of permanent magnet linear flux-switching machines (PMLFSM), field excited LFSM and hybrid excited LFSM (HELFSM) topologies as presented in literature for transportation systems such as high-speed trains and maglev systems.

The structural designs of different configurations are thoroughly investigated, and their respective advantages and disadvantages are examined. Based on the geometry and excitation sources, a detailed survey is carried out. Specific design and space issues, such as solid and modular structures, structure strength, excitation sources placement, utilization of PM materials, and flux leakage are investigated.

PMLFSM provide higher power density and efficiency than induction and DC machines because of the superior excitation capability of PMs. The cost of rare-earth PMs has risen sharply in the past few decades because of their frequent use, so the manufacturing cost of PMLFSM is increasing. Owing to the influence of high-energy PMs and magnetic flux concentration, the efficiency and power density are higher in such machines. PM is the only excitation source in PMLFSM and has constant remanence, limiting its applications in a wide speed operation range. Therefore, the field winding is added in the PMLFSM to flexibly regulate the magnetic field, making it a hybrid excited one. The HELFSM possess better flux linkage, high thrust force density and better flux controlling ability, leading to a wide speed range. However, the HELFSM have problems with the crowded mover, as PM, field excited and armature excitation are housed on a short mover. So, for better performance, the area of each excitation component has to compete with each other.

Transportation of goods and people by vehicles is becoming increasingly prevalent. As railways play a significant role in the transportation system and are an integral part of intercity transportation. So, this paper presents an overview of various linear machines that are presented in literature for rail transit systems to promote sustainable urban planning practices.

This study aims to solve the problem that both the speed and the required driving power of electric vehicles (EVs) will change during the dynamic wireless charging (DWC) process, making it difficult to charge EVs with a constant power considering the overall efficiency of DWC system, the numbers of EVs and the power supply capacity. Therefore, this paper proposes the power control and efficiency optimization strategies for multiple EVs.

The wireless power charging system for multiple loads with a structure of double-sided LCC compensation topology is established. The expressions of optimal transmission efficiency and optimal equivalent impedance are derived. Taking the Tesla Model 3 as an example, a method to determine the number of EVs allowed by one transmitter coil and the overall charging power is proposed considering EV speed, power supply capacity, safe braking distance and overall efficiency. Then, the power control strategy, which can adapt to the changes of EV speed and the efficiency optimization strategy under different numbers of EVs are proposed.

In this paper, a method to determine the numbers of EVs allowed by one transmitter coil and the overall charging power is proposed considering EVs speed, power supply capacity, safe braking distance and overall efficiency. The accuracy of the charging power is good enough and the overall efficiency reaches a maximum of 91.79% when the load resistance changes from 5Ω to 20Ω.

In this paper, the power control and efficiency optimization strategy of DWC system for multiple EVs are proposed. Specifically, a method of designing the number of EVs and charging power allowed by one transmitter coil considering the factors of EV speed, power supply capacity, safe braking distance and overall efficiency is designed. The overall efficiency of the experiment reaches a maximum of 91.79% after adopting the optimization strategy.

The purpose of this study is to campare the corrosion behavior of Az91 films and bulk sample, in the objective to provide reference for the corrosion resistance improvement of Mg alloys.

AZ91 films with various thickness values are produced by magnetron sputtering technique, and the corrosion behavior was characterized by immersion tests and electrochemical measurements.

The AZ91 films exhibited a preferred orientation with basal planes parallel to the surface and increased densification with the increase of thickness, and a superior corrosion resistance for the AZ91 films compared with the bulk sample.

The preferred (0002) basal planes in AZ91 films benefited the corrosion resistance and the nanoscale AZ91 films facilitated the development of a dense passivation film. Consequently, AZ91 film exhibited a superior corrosion resistance.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of social media analytics on firm performance using a sample of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand. This study also investigated whether entrepreneurial orientation (EO) moderated the effects of social media analytics on firm performance.

This study used SMEs listed in the Department of Business Development of Thailand as the sampling frame. Probability sampling was used to draw the sample. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 334 firms. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results supported the positive association between social media analytics practices on firm performance. Moreover, this study found that EO moderated this association significantly. In particular, the positive association between social media analytics practices on firm performance was higher for firms that exhibit a high EO than those that exhibit a low EO. This result indicated that firms that implement social media analytics practices achieved higher performance when they exhibited a high EO.

Social media data analytics should be implemented to strengthen the technological competence of firms. Moreover, firms should integrate EO practices into their implementation of social media analytics to increase their ability to generate substantial improvements in their strategic implementation, thereby enabling them to gain sustainable competitiveness in their market.

Because SMEs are the driving force for economic growth and development in Thailand, their ability to achieve higher performance when they effectively integrate EO practices into their implementation of social media data analytics could be beneficial for the sustainable development of Thailand, especially in the current data-driven era.

The result that EO moderates the effect in enhancing social media analytics practices’ influence on firm performance provides new knowledge that extends the boundary of research on this topic. The authors provided a theoretical explanation to clarify the way the implementation of social media analytics practices should be integrated with EO to increase the level of performance that firms achieve from such practices.