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Although additive manufacturing (AM; 3D printing/3DP) is presently in its infancy, once it becomes economically viable for mass production, it would revolutionize the operation and supply chain network of traditional businesses and manufacturing industries. To this end, approaches for ensuring a smooth transition of the economy, businesses, manufacturing centers and related services are being investigated. This review paper assesses the existing literature on the impact of AM on the maritime transportation sector.

This paper provides a systematic literature review through three methodological phases: (1) a comprehensive review of the number of English language literature studies published on the topics of AM or 3DP (1970–2021); (2) a bibliometric analysis of selected keyword combinations and (3) a detailed review on the impact of AM on different sectors.

The key findings are that existing studies do not attempt to forecast shipping volume and ton-miles that can be affected by the mainstreaming of the technology. Additionally, existing literature that focuses on the impact of the technology on different shipping categories is limited to studies on container ships.

The review identifies some potential areas of research that since maritime transportation will be affected by mainstreaming AM, it will have economic, social and environmental impacts on global trade that require future assessment.

With recent advances in artificial intelligence, the hospitality industry has introduced the concept of unmanned smart hotels staffed by service robots instead of human employees. Research is needed to understand consumers’ receptivity to such an innovation. This paper examines factors associated with consumers’ potential resistance to using automated service hotels via two sequential studies. Given that younger generations of consumers are typically early adopters of advanced technology and innovative services, our sampling approach focused on this consumer group.

Two studies were conducted. Study 1 proposed and empirically tested a theoretical model. Results revealed that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control each positively influenced individuals’ intentions to use unmanned smart hotels. In Study 2, we further investigated aspects informing perceived security, a key variable in the use of unmanned smart hotels.

Findings showed how people’s beliefs about unmanned smart hotels and security control assurances led to perceived security. These perceptions were shaped by perceived physical risks, privacy concerns, website design and hotel reputation. Overall, this research provides theoretical and practical implications for various stakeholders associated with unmanned smart hotels.

Findings of this study suggested that managers of unmanned smart hotels should design user-friendly, secure processes and offer comprehensive support resources to enhance customer experience and usage.

The findings provide a holistic understanding of consumers’ receptivity to unmanned smart hotels.

This paper presents a generic simulation model to determine the equipment mix (quay, yard and intra-terminal transfer) for a Container Terminal Logistics Operations System (CTLOS). The simulation model for the CTLOS, a typical type of discrete event dynamic system (DEDS), consists of three sub-models: ship queue, loading-unloading operations and yard-gate operations. The simulation model is empirically applied to phase 1 of the Yangshan Deep Water Port in Shanghai. This study considers different scenarios in terms of container throughput levels, equipment utilization rates, and operational bottlenecks, and presents a sensitivity analysis to evaluate and choose reasonable equipment ratio ranges under different operational conditions.

The correlations and deviations between market prices, production prices and values are critical indexes for testing the labor theory of value. However, there is not yet a universally accepted method of solving for the production price vector, and given the complexity and volatility of economic dynamics, production prices based on the assumption of economic equilibrium cannot be accurate measuring. This paper attempts to propose a new approach to test the labor theory of value.

This paper proposes a different approach. From the perspective of disequilibrium price, the paper deduces that the range of the relative prices of commodities is determined by the relative value, the rate of surplus-value and the technical structure of production inputs, with relative price fluctuating within the value range specified by the labor theory of value under market competition influences.

With empirical research results based on China’s economic data, this paper not only affirms the scientific and practical explanatory power of the labor theory of value in a more general sense but also uncovers how surplus value is distributed across sectors, which can be used to analyze market competition and technical relations and their impacts on industrial structure and distribution.

The disequilibrium analytical framework provides a new perspective for the empirical study of labor theory of value. Moreover, it evolves the labor theory of value into a robust empirical framework, breaking through the theoretical path of the traditional labor theory of value that is mostly limited to the normative discussion of exploitation.

Corporate travel represents a significant source of revenue for the tourism industry. Therefore, the quality of service is essential for maintaining and expanding corporate cliental bases. Despite the importance, the extant literature has yet sufficiently examined corporate travel service quality (SQ) and its impact. To make up for the drawback, this study aims to differentiate the impact of SQ perceptions on customer satisfaction between the online and off-line contexts through an empirical investigation in one of the top five corporate travel agencies in North America.

The well-established SERVQUAL measurement is applied in differentiating the impact of SQ dimensions between the online and off-line context. To empirically test the proposed corporate travel agency (CTA) SQ conceptual model, a set of survey data of “Welcome Back Survey” from HRG (a top five CTA in North America) was examined.

The study finds that for online services, assurance, responsiveness and empathy affect perceived SQ, whereas for off-line services, assurance, empathy and tangible are the three dimensions of perceived SQ.

By relying on the existing survey, the off-line context has one less dimension than the online context. Yet as an early effort in differentiating the differences in the impact of SQ between two service contexts, the study offers insightful findings.

The findings will be helpful for business managers of CTAs to identify the factors that influence SQ in both online booking and off-line booking context. In particular, assurance and empathy are two dimensions that exert a significant impact on customer satisfaction.

This paper is the first to compare the differences of the SQ of online and off-line corporate travel.

In this paper, the authors study the effect of consumers' fairness preferences on dynamic pricing strategies adopted by platforms in a non-cooperative game.

This study applies fair game and repeated game theory.

This study reveals that, in a one-shot game, if consumers have fairness preferences, dynamic prices will slightly decline. In a repeated game, dynamic prices will be reduced even when consumers do not have fairness preferences. When fairness preferences and repeated game are considered simultaneously, dynamic prices are most likely to be set at fair prices. The authors also discuss the effect of platforms' discounting factors, the consumers' income and alternative choices of consumption on the dynamic prices.

The study findings illustrate the importance of incorporating behavioral elements in understanding and designing the dynamic pricing strategies for platforms and the implications on social welfare in general.

The authors developed a theoretical model to incorporate consumers' fairness preference into the decision-making process of platforms when they design the dynamic pricing strategies.

In recent years, both academics and institutions have acknowledged the crucial role multinational enterprises (MNEs) can play in addressing the sustainability challenges, as formalized by the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Nevertheless, because of their extensiveness and their design as country-level targets, SDGs have proven challenging to operationalize at a firm level. This problem opens new and relevant avenues for research in international business (IB). This chapter attempts to frame the topic of extended value chain sustainability in the IB literature. In particular, it addresses a specific topic, that is, how sustainability and resilience-building practices interact in global value chains (GVCs). To do so, the present study develops the case of STMicroelectronics (ST), one of the biggest semiconductor companies worldwide.

This paper aims to study the impacts of groundwater seepage on artificial freezing process of gravel strata, the temperature field characteristics of the strata, and the strata process, closure time and thickness evolution mechanism of the frozen wall.

In this paper several laboratory model tests were conducted, considering different groundwater seepage rate.

The results show that there is a significant coupling effect between the cold diffusion of artificial freezing pipes and groundwater seepage; when there is no seepage, temperature fields upstream and downstream of the gravel strata are symmetrically distributed, and the thickness of the frozen soil column/frozen wall is consistent during artificial freezing; groundwater seepage causes significant asymmetry in the temperature fields upstream and downstream of the gravel strata, and the greater the seepage rate, the more obvious the asymmetry; the frozen wall closure time increases linearly with the increase in the groundwater seepage rate, and specifically, the time length under seepage rate of 5.00 m d⁻¹ is 3.2 times longer than that under no seepage; due to the erosion from groundwater seepage, the thickness of the upstream frozen wall decreases linearly with the seepage velocity, while that of the downstream frozen wall increases linearly, resulting in a saddle-shaped frozen wall.

The research results are beneficial to the optimum design and risk control of artificial freezing process in gravel strata.

This paper examines the impact of corporate digital transformation on employee satisfaction. Therefore, this study extends our understanding of the economic consequences of corporate digital transformation from employees’ perspectives.

The data used to construct our main proxy of employee satisfaction are collected from Kanzhun.com, which provides reviews by rank-and-file employees on their employers. This study uses a large sample of Chinese firms and adopts various empirical methods to examine the impact of digital transformation on employee satisfaction.

We find a significant positive relationship between corporate digital transformation and employee satisfaction. Moreover, we document that the relationship between corporate digital transformation and employee satisfaction is more pronounced in firms with higher labor intensity and in state-owned enterprises (SOE).

One significant limitation is that corporate digital transformation is constructed based on word frequency analysis. This approach may be influenced by variations in corporate disclosure practices and might not accurately capture the true extent of corporate digital transformation. This limitation is not only present in our research but is also pervasive in many other studies that utilize similar methodologies. Therefore, our results should be interpreted with this caveat in mind.

Our study suggests that corporate digital transformation enhances employee satisfaction, providing direct evidence for managers and regulators to promote corporate digital transformation. Through digital transformation, companies can not only improve operational efficiency but also foster employee satisfaction. This dual benefit underscores the importance of investing in corporate digital transformation for long-term success.

Our study suggests that corporate digital transformation enhances employee satisfaction, providing direct evidence for managers and regulators to promote corporate digital transformation. Through digital transformation, companies can not only improve operational efficiency but also foster employee satisfaction. This dual benefit underscores the importance of investing in corporate digital transformation for long-term success.

Our study contributes to the literature on the economic consequences of corporate digital transformation and extends existing research on the determinants of employee satisfaction. Additionally, it provides a novel measurement of employee satisfaction for a large sample of Chinese firms.

In view of organizational inertia, with the occurrence of a major event, though resource rigidity minimizes, however simultaneously, it increases process rigidity, which creates difficulties in motivating managers and dealing with the agency problem. Therefore, keeping in mind the high demand created by the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor and Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme in the cement sector of Pakistan, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of corporate governance (CG) on the cost of equity (COE) in the cement sector, to deal with the problems surging during and after the completion of these projects and highlight further opportunities for the cement sector of Pakistan.

CG is a qualitative concept therefore, eight proxies have been used to measure it along with the two control variables. This study uses balance panel data of six years from 2012 to 2017, collected from 18 companies of the cement sector of Pakistan. Descriptive statistics have been used to describe the data, correlation matrix to see the nature of the relationship, and Pooled OLS as the estimation technique, while to analyze the data a statistical package 13 has been used. To measure the COE, the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) has been used.

Regression results suggest that block ownership, insider ownership and the board size are insignificant, while CEO tenure is negatively and significantly associated with the COE. Non-executive directors, independence and CEO duality are insignificant; however, diversity is positively and significantly associated with the COE. Moreover, the mean value of the COE is 8.22 percent for the cement sector, while the coefficient of determination of the model under study is 74 percent.

This paper is based on the data from the cement sector of Pakistan only. Therefore, this is the reason that these results cannot be generalized on the whole economy of Pakistan.

This study helps in finding out the COE value specific to the cement sector, which will help this sector to evaluate the capital budgeting decision more precisely and accurately than before. Moreover, the association of diversity as positive, while independence as negative with the COE highlights a room for improvement in the implementation of CG codes by SECP. This study also helps to mitigate the impact of inertia, the after-effects of high demand, and managing the agency problem in the cement sector.

This is the first study using CG data collected just after the revised promulgation of CG codes in 2012, along with a wide range of eight proxies measuring CG and its impact on the COE in the cement sector.