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This paper aims to reveal the role of conflict management in the process of trust development. Specifically, this study investigates how the salience of conflict varies with different conflict-handling behaviors and behavioral outcomes and how the variation of the salience of conflict influences the trust development between contracting parties.

A questionnaire survey was undertaken to collect data from 310 experienced project practitioners. Hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping with a structural equation model were mainly used to test the hypotheses.

This paper finds that the relational degree of conflict handling behaviors can influence the salience of conflict and furthermore to influence trust between contracting parties, with this relationship mediated by the behavioral outcomes; however, all these relationships are contingent on the stage where relational conflict handling behaviors are adopted and the specific type of outcomes the behaviors result in.

This study provides some specific directions for the practitioners to conduct relational conflict handling behaviors and generate positive outcomes to keep trust developing between contracting parties in conflictual situations.

This study contributes to the knowledge of inter-organizational trust development as well as conflict management, by investigating the relationship between conflict and trust in a direction, which is less examined and revealing the process of conflict management, where the conflict handling behaviors influence behavioral outcomes to further manage conflict, in trust development.

In China, engineering insurance has been questioned as not being beneficial as expected. This paper seeks to further understand how China's engineering insurance industry functions and to provide a macro perspective explanation for engineering insurance's underdevelopment.

Three industrial organization hypotheses were extended to the engineering insurance context: structure conduct performance (SCP), relative market power (RMP) and efficiency structure (ES) hypotheses. This paper employed the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) bootstrap to test the hypotheses using panel data from 2008 to 2017.

The results suggest that the SCP paradigm is validated in China's engineering insurance market, indicating a concentrated market where the welfare of consumers (e.g. owners, contractors and designers) may be eroded. Several factors are identified to have significant impacts on engineering insurers' performance, such as the investment return, percentage of engineering business, the ratio of outstanding claims, the number of large contractors, market rivalry and entry barriers.

Despite the sheer size of China's construction industry and the urgent need to improve risk management, the insurance industry that serves construction firms engineering insurance is underdeveloped. Engineering insurance is yet to be understood from a macro perspective, which may reveal the underlying reasons for engineering insurance's underdevelopment. The industrial organization theories provided a theoretical framework to test the functioning of this specific industry. The disaggregated data (engineering line specific) is employed to ensure effective regulation and policymaking.

3D garment design technology is developing rapidly thereby creating a need for different approaches to developing the patterns. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the 3D dynamic ease distribution for a 3D garment design.

Standard garments were created from Size 2 to Size 14 for ten human subjects. Landmarks location on both human body and the standard garment under dynamic postures are recorded, and he fit and comfort evaluation of the standard garment were collected from the ten human subjects. Finally, these data were used to evaluate the 3D dynamic ease distribution for a 3D garment design.

3D dynamic ease evaluation is challenging and the findings showed that the upper-arm design is a core element of the whole 3D garment design. The upper arm is not only a connecting part for both front and back pieces of the garment, but is also the main active part of the body, so it is the essential element to affect the comfort and fit of the garment under dynamic postures.

This research provides a novel 3D ease evaluation by analyzing the landmarks location of both human body and standard garment, and fit and comfort evaluation of the standard garment, which are all carried under dynamic postures.

This paper analyzes Fang Fang's 2020 Wuhan Diary‐Dispatches from a Quarantined City, to show how the author communicates the coronavirus crisis in Wuhan in a global information ecosystem. The success of the diary showcases how the actual health emergency has been transformed into a communication issue.

This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature. The authors conducted a thematic analysis (TA) of Wuhan Diary, in which we decided to focus on the aspects of sousveillance and solidarity. For the purposes of our paper, we used the English translation of the text by Dr. Michael Berry.

The authors focus on two major themes in their exploration of the corona crisis as a global communication issue: sousveillance and solidarity. The authors argue that the diary's ways of seeing perform a version of “sousveillance” or “undersight” in juxtaposition to surveillance or “oversight” (Mann, 2017). Fang Fang calls for solidarity as an effective measure for individuals, communities and societies to contain the pandemic and a potential misinfodemic.

Since Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wuhan Diary presents an unprecedented narrative account of life under quarantine that could function as a litmus test for other cities and countries. Fang Fang's diary provides a countermeasure to official accounts of the pandemic in Wuhan, which has resonated both with people in China and abroad.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of perceptual image to clothing, study the effect of bra components on the perceptual image of Chinese female consumers aged 18 to 27, explore the relationship between them, promote the computer-aided bra design to be more rapid and accurate and meet consumer's needs better.

In this paper, cognitive psychology and mathematical analysis methods were used, and two experiments were conducted. A reaction time experiment was conducted based on 3D virtual bra samples, proving that bra components have an effect on the consumer's perceptual image and obtaining a revised bra component design indicator system by multi-dimensional Scaling (MDS). A projection experiment was conducted to study what kind of relationship exists between the two, and a prediction model was constructed by the quantitative I-class theory.

It is found that bra components have an effect on perceptual image of Chinese female consumers aged 18 to 27. A total of five important components (cup area, center front height, torso width, side wing width and center back shape) that affect the consumer's perceptual image were identified by MDS and references analysis, and then a bra perceptual image space composed of five pairs of words was constructed by subjective evaluation and cluster analysis. What is more, a prediction model was obtained by the quantitative I-class theory; after testing, the model can visually and effectively predict consumer's perceptual image according to bra components indicators, which provide a convenience for the positive design of bras.

In this article, the authors just studied bra components, but did not take fabric, color and other factors that also affect the perceptual image into consideration. Further research can use this method to study other important influential factors as well as their comprehensive impact. Also, the subjects are Chinese young women; consumers of other age or from other countries are not involved, and more extensive research can be done in the future.

The bra component indicator system can help to build a more systematic and clearer bra design library, which provides convenience for designers to search and use them quickly, improving the efficiency of bra design. The prediction model is also helpful to bra designers and companies. When they already design a bra, they can use this model to predict consumer's perceptual image, thus carry out more accurate market positioning and promotion. When they want to satisfy consumers or design a specific effect, they can also refer to this model to reverse design of components. In general, the outcomes of this paper can help companies to quickly establish a computer-aided bra design system, which is conducive to designers to accurately design and better meet market's needs, and the method is also a good attempt to apply the theory of perceptual image in psychology to clothing and can be extended to other relevant fields in the future.

Based on cognitive psychology, this paper attempts to apply the theory of perceptual image in psychology into clothing and takes bra as an example to study the relationship between bra components and consumer's perceptual image. The prediction model constructed here is conducive to the development of bra design and to meet personalized needs of consumers. This method can also be extended to other fields in the future.

The massive number of pavements and buildings coupled with the limited inspection resources, both monetary and human, to detect distresses and recommend maintenance actions lead to rapid deterioration, decreased service life, lower level of service and increased community disruption. Therefore, this paper aims at providing a state-of-the-art review of the literature with respect to deep learning techniques for detecting distress in both pavements and buildings; research advancements per asset/structure type; and future recommendations in deep learning applications for distress detection.

A critical analysis was conducted on 181 papers of deep learning-based cracks detection. A structured analysis was adopted so that major articles were analyzed according to their focus of study, used methods, findings and limitations.

The utilization of deep learning to detect pavement cracks is advanced compared to assess and evaluate the structural health of buildings. There is a need for studies that compare different convolutional neural network models to foster the development of an integrated solution that considers the data collection method. Further research is required to examine the setup, implementation and running costs, frequency of capturing data and deep learning tool. In conclusion, the future of applying deep learning algorithms in lieu of manual inspection for detecting distresses has shown promising results.

The availability of previous research and the required improvements in the proposed computational tools and models (e.g. artificial intelligence, deep learning, etc.) are triggering researchers and practitioners to enhance the distresses’ inspection process and make better use of their limited resources.

A critical and structured analysis of deep learning-based crack detection for pavement and buildings is conducted for the first time to enable novice researchers to highlight the knowledge gap in each article, as well as building a knowledge base from the findings of other research to support developing future workable solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the operation strategy of high-performance alliance portfolios by analyzing the effect of alliance portfolios on the performance of focal firms, using post-structuralism of social network theory and contingency theory. In detail, this paper refines alliance portfolios into three dimensions, and studies the moderating role of context on the relation between alliance portfolios and firm performance.

The empirical study was carried out with second-hand data gathered from Internal Revenue Service. In total, this paper gathered data from 506 focal firms in Zhejiang Province from 2001 to 2010 as the sample to test the hypotheses.

Based on the empirical results, the authors find the positive effect of relational dimension (weak alliance portfolios) and partner dimension (the diversity of partners) on performance. The effect of the former will become weaker with the increasing environmental dynamic, while the effect of the latter will become stronger. However, the structural dimension (alliance portfolios size) and relational dimension (new partners) have the negative effect on performance. And the negative effect will become stronger under high environmental dynamic. Moreover, the negative effect of non-local partners on performance becomes stronger when the environmental dynamic is high.

The paper reveals that with the industry transformation caused by “internet +,” companies have been required go beyond traditional dyadic alliance management perspective. That is to say, individual alliance relationship should be seen as a part of a much broader picture of alliance portfolio. As such, the framework may help companies to manage their alliance portfolios by matching high-performance alliance portfolios to the external environment to produce a synergistic effect (Lea et al., 2006; Tritos et al., 2013; Keith et al., 2014) taking the characteristics of the configuration of alliance portfolios into consideration.

The paper presents a model that explains the effect of three dimensions of alliance portfolios on the performance of focal firms in different contexts through empirical study. This paper also integrates post-structuralism of social network theory and contingency theory to enable the understanding on the configuration of alliance portfolios.

The purpose of this study was to examine hospitality revenue management (RM) research in the recent decade, to identify emergent issues/topics and suggest directions for future research.

A systematic process of literature review involving content analysis was adopted. The process involved searching for published articles in three major online databases for hospitality and tourism journals, evaluating and selecting the relevant articles, analyzing and synthesizing the findings of the selected papers and organizing the findings to determine what is known and what is yet to be known.

The paper established a broad range of topics that have engaged the attention of hospitality and tourism researchers in contemporary times. These topics were structured into seven major themes constituting the core activities of hospitality RM process and another eight themes covering the factors influencing the practice of RM.

The classification of the literature into core activities of RM process and factors influencing RM serves as a useful guide for practitioners and academics to trace relevant literature on various aspects of RM and to visibly notice the gaps in the existing literature.

By developing an RM framework and using it to evaluate existing literature, this study brings cohesion into the hospitality and tourism RM literature.