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This chapter presents data and analysis to conceptualise the role of the executive principal, and how the executive principal practises leadership in formal school partnerships in China. To achieve this, this research draws on Foucault’s concept of pastoral power, enriching it through interplay with Chinese notions of morality. This research is anchored in one innovative educational organisation – the Education Collective (EC). The EC is a large-scale and multi-level educational organisation formed by two or more schools or campuses guided by a common concept and bound by a contract. Education collectivisation has now become the mainstream model of running compulsory education in China. The head of the EC, often referred to as the executive principal, is the legal representative of each EC and is responsible for the entire collective.

This chapter explores how the development of football fandom for the Chinese national team and local football clubs is strongly associated with societal changes. Although the performances of Chinese football teams, especially the national team, have failed to impress the world, football remains the most popular because of millions of supporters with loyalty and passion. Most studies related to fans mainly focus on the economic and political implications of spectatorship along with the rise of China. Nevertheless, few articles are available to answer the fundamental questions, such as ‘When did these supporters come out?’ and ‘What were the factors of the development of fandom?’. By going through archival records and published documents over the last decades, this chapter offers a comprehensive and historical analysis of the development of football fandom in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and deals with these unanswered questions. As such, this chapter does not intend to be the most authoritative one but is one of the rare sources to lay down the foundation for research on Chinese football fandom. Furthermore, this chapter also proves that studies on football fandom can be a useful window for observing Chinese society.

This chapter critically evaluates whether football can attain recognition as a national sport in China. Article No. 11, released by the Chinese government in 2015, aimed to develop a new national strategy centralised on the sport of football to foster consumption and enhance national soft power. Consequently, this also means encouraging Chinese football fans to support the national football team. Comparing the significance of local football clubs and the national football team to Chinese football fans is deemed meaningless and unable to generate useful information to comprehend Chinese people's attitudes towards local and national communities. Through literature comparisons with established Chinese national sports such as Chinese martial arts, badminton and table tennis, the discussion reveals that football currently falls short of meeting the general criteria of invention and popularity to be considered a Chinese national sport. In the specific Chinese context, it also proves that football fails to meet the criterion of politics, hindering its identification as a national sport. Consequently, the chapter rebuts the assumption and advocates for the validity of comparing how fans assess their fandom for local and national football teams.

This study aimed to facilitate a rapid evaluation of track service status and vehicle ride comfort based on car body acceleration. Consequently, a low-cost, data-driven approach was proposed for analyzing speed-related acceleration limits in metro systems.

A portable sensing terminal was developed to realize easy and efficient detection of car body acceleration. Further, field measurements were performed on a 51.95-km metro line. Data from 272 metro sections were tested as a case study, and a quantile regression method was proposed to fit the control limits of the car body acceleration at different speeds using the measured data.

First, the frequency statistics of the measured data in the speed-acceleration dimension indicated that the car body acceleration was primarily concentrated within the constant speed stage, particularly at speeds of 15.4, 18.3, and 20.9 m/s. Second, resampling was performed according to the probability density distribution of car body acceleration for different speed domains to achieve data balance. Finally, combined with the traditional linear relationship between speed and acceleration, the statistical relationships between the speed and car body acceleration under different quantiles were determined. We concluded the lateral/vertical quantiles of 0.8989/0.9895, 0.9942/0.997, and 0.9998/0.993 as being excellent, good, and qualified control limits, respectively, for the lateral and vertical acceleration of the car body. In addition, regression lines for the speed-related acceleration limits at other quantiles (0.5, 0.75, 2s, and 3s) were obtained.

The proposed method is expected to serve as a reference for further studies on speed-related acceleration limits in rail transit systems.

There is a wealth of value hidden in regional cultural heritage, but its preservation status is not optimistic. This study introduces a method that focuses on the inherent cultural value of regional cultural heritage to preserve it by value construction and release.

Based on the great value of regional cultural heritage due to spatial adjacency and temporal continuity, this paper focuses on its inherent cultural value to explore the preservation path and chooses Shichahai cultural heritage digital resources for a case study. This paper draws lessons from the narrative method of ancient Chinese historiography, constructs a cultural space and tells cultural stories. A linked data organization model for digital resources is created to construct a conceptual cultural space. Then, the space is materialized by linked dataset creation. The authors tell cultural stories discovered from the space, which are presented by various user interfaces using visualization technologies.

A cultural space promotes the development of a fine-grained description of regional cultural heritage and aids in relationship discovery to enhance the value construction ability. Additionally, storytelling via interactive user interfaces is helpful in the utilization and dissemination of knowledge extracted from a cultural space and enhances the value release of regional cultural heritage. In this way, a path with the inherent cultural value of regional cultural heritage as the core is established, and preservation is achieved.

This study focuses on the inherent cultural value of regional cultural heritage and proposes a new path to preserve these resources. This approach will enrich research on the preservation of regional cultural heritage and contribute to the construction and release of its cultural value.

The study aims to add to the existing literature on food supply chains by specifically taking into the redesigning of the alignment of storage, packaging and distribution practices in the modern complex supply chain. The redesign of the food supply chain’s storage, distribution and packaging is a transformative endeavor ultimately aimed at enhancing efficiency, sustainability and reliability.

In order to identify, classify and prioritize the main challenges, this study conducted an extensive analysis of the literature and experts’ opinions in the areas of academia, information technology and the food supply chain (FSC) using combined compromise solution method (CoCoSo) and complex proportional assessment (COPRAS).

The top three classes of key indicators revealed in this study are dynamic route optimization and on-demand delivery pods (RD4), implementation of active packaging with nanotechnology (RP3) and collaborative last-mile (RD2). The findings reveal that dynamic route optimization and on-demand delivery pods (RD4) and collaborative last-mile (RD2) are maintaining a balance between collaborative delivery networks through route optimization which is a very discussable theme in recent literature.

The research provides fresh insights into how perishable food shelf life parameters and the use of distribution networks within the short supply chain can be taken into consideration when redesigning the storage, packaging and distribution system for food supply chains.

This study aims to investigate environmental efficiency based on energy change by using energy-related or nonenergy-related variables by reckoning with months and years as decision-making units (DMUs) for a hospital under radial and nonradial models.

The non-oriented slack-based measures (SBM)-data envelopment analysis (DEA) model considering desirable and undesirable outputs has been embraced in this study, where its obtained results were compared with the results of other DEA models are output-oriented SBM-DEA and Banker, Charnes, & Cooper-DEA. For this purpose, this research has used a data set covering the 2012–2018 period for a reference hospital, which includes energy-related and nonenergy-related variables.

The results demonstrate that environmental efficiency based on energy reached the highest level in the winter months, whereas the summer months have the lowest efficiency values arising from the increasing electricity consumption due to high cooling needs. According to results of the non-oriented SBM model, the month with the highest efficiency in all periods is January with a 0.936 average efficiency score, the lowest month is August with a 0.406 value.

This paper differs from other studies related to energy and environmental efficiencies in the literature with some aspects. First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first one that takes into account time periods (months and years) as (DMUs for a single organization. Second, this study investigates environmental nonefficiencies, which are derived from energy uses and factors affecting energy use.

This paper aims to examine the role of local/provincial government in influencing corporate social and environmental reporting (CSER) in China, and more specifically, how the underlying economic and political factors associated with local government have influenced the quality of CSER.

The authors used 234 environmentally sensitive companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges during 2013 and 2015 as the research sample to test the relationship between CSER and local government’s political connection and economic prioritisation and the potential mediating effect of local economic prioritisation.

The analysis provides evidence that local/provincial government’s political geographical connectedness with the central government has directly and positively influenced the level of CSER, while local prioritisation of economic development has a direct but negative effect on CSER in China. In addition, local/provincial prioritisation of economic development has mediated the relationship between local–central political geographical connectedness and CSER.

While local/provincial governments are heavily influenced by the coercive pressure from the central government, they also act in their own political and economic interests in overseeing CSER at the local level. This study raises the question about the effectiveness of the top-down approach to improving CSER in China and suggests that the central government may need to focus more on coordinating and harmonising different local/provincial governments’ interests to enable achieving a common sustainability goal.

The authors provide evidence revealing how the economic and political contexts of local government have played a significant role in shaping CSER in China. More specifically, this paper addresses a gap in the literature by highlighting the importance of local government oversight power for CSER development and how such oversight is determined by local prioritisation of economic development and political geographical connectedness of local and central governments.

Based on upper echelon theory and signaling theory, we aim to examine the impact of returnee executives on firms’ relative exploratory innovation focus and the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty on this relationship.

Using panel data of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2020, we obtained empirical evidence to support our arguments.

Returnee executives positively influence firms’ relative exploratory innovation focus. This means that firms with returnee executives will shift the focus of their innovation activities toward exploratory innovation more than exploitative innovation. In addition, we find that economic policy uncertainty strengthens this relationship.

First, by showing how returnee executives positively influence firms’ shift in focus to exploratory rather than exploitative innovation, we expand our understanding of firms’ trade-offs between exploratory and exploitative innovation. Second, this study examines how returnee executives influence the relative importance that firms place on exploratory and exploitative innovation, allowing us to build a realistic and nuanced view of how returnee executives influence firms’ strategic choices. Finally, this study expands the strategic leadership literature and responds directly to the call for studies focusing on how institutional environmental conditions and executive characteristics work together to shape firm outcomes.

Over the past decade, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have rapidly advanced organizational management, with many organizations adopting AI-based algorithms to enhance employee management efficiency. However, there remains a lack of sufficient empirical research on the specific impacts of these algorithmic management practices on employee behavior, particularly the potential negative effects. To address this gap, this study constructs a model based on the psychological ownership theory, aiming to investigate how algorithmic management affects employees’ knowledge hiding.

This study validates the model through a situational experiment and a multi-wave field study involving full-time employees in organizations implementing algorithmic management. Various analytical methods, including analysis of variance, regression analysis and path analysis, were used to systematically test the hypotheses.

The study reveals that algorithmic management exerts a positive indirect influence on knowledge hiding through the psychological ownership of personal knowledge. This effect is particularly pronounced when employees have lower organizational identification, highlighting the critical role of organizational culture in the effectiveness of technological applications.

This study is among the first empirical investigations to explore the relationship between algorithmic management and employee knowledge hiding from an individual perception perspective. By applying psychological ownership theory, it not only addresses the current theoretical gap regarding the negative effects of algorithmic management but also provides new theoretical and empirical support for the governance and prevention of knowledge hiding within organizations in the context of AI algorithm application. The study highlights the importance of considering employee psychology (i.e. psychological ownership of personal knowledge) and organizational culture (i.e. organizational identification) under algorithmic management. This understanding aids organizations in better managing knowledge risks while maximizing technological advantages and effectively designing organizational change strategies.