Ning Qian, Muhammad Jamil, Wenfeng Ding, Yucan Fu and Jiuhua Xu
This paper is supposed to provide a critical review of current research progress on thermal management in grinding of superalloys, and future directions and challenges. By…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper is supposed to provide a critical review of current research progress on thermal management in grinding of superalloys, and future directions and challenges. By understanding the current progress and identifying the developing directions, thermal management can be achieved in the grinding of superalloys to significantly improve the grinding quality and efficiency.
Design/methodology/approach
The relevant literature is collected from Web of Science, Scopus, CNKI, Google scholar, etc. A total of 185 literature is analyzed, and the findings in the literature are systematically summarized. In this case, the current development and future trends of thermal management in grinding of superalloys can be concluded.
Findings
The recent developments in grinding superalloys, demands, challenges and solutions are analyzed. The theoretical basis of thermal management in grinding, the grinding heat partition analysis, is also summarized. The novel methods and technologies for thermal management are developed and reviewed, i.e. new grinding technologies and parameter optimization, super abrasive grinding wheel technologies, improved lubrication, highly efficient coolant delivery and enhanced heat transfer by passive thermal devices. Finally, the future trends and challenges are identified.
Originality/value
Superalloys have excellent physical and mechanical properties, e.g. high thermal stability, and good high-temperature strength. The superalloys have been broadly applied in the aerospace, energy and automobile industries. Grinding is one of the most important precision machining technologies for superalloy parts. Owing to the mechanical and physical properties of superalloys, during grinding processes, forces are large and a massive heat is generated. Consequently, the improvement of grinding quality and efficiency is limited. It is important to conduct thermal management in the grinding of superalloys to decrease grinding forces and heat generation. The grinding heat is also dissipated in time by enhanced heat transfer methods. Therefore, it is necessary and valuable to holistically review the current situation of thermal management in grinding of superalloys and also provide the development trends and challenges.
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This paper aims to study the impact of CEOs' cultural background on corporate innovation. The paper constructs a measure of CEOs' cultural individualism based on their birthplaces…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the impact of CEOs' cultural background on corporate innovation. The paper constructs a measure of CEOs' cultural individualism based on their birthplaces and investigates its relationship with firms' patents and citations. The study aims to shed light on the interaction of culture and corporate decisions and focuses on the role of top managers. The paper also investigates the mechanism of how top management can affect corporate innovation output.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper constructs the measure of individualism using the westward expansion in US history. To do so, the paper uses the US county-level duration of exposure of the frontier territory in the 19th century and links the counties to CEOs' birthplaces. The paper argues the cultural characteristics of birthplaces can affect a person's later management styles and decisions, hence affecting corporate innovation policies. Using regression and difference-in-differences estimations, the paper explores the relation and causality between cultural individualism and innovation output.
Findings
The paper finds that CEO cultural individualism is positively related with the number of patents produced by the firm and the citations received by the firm. Difference-in-differences tests using CEO turnovers support that the relation is causal. The paper also investigates the economic mechanism of how individualistic CEOs achieve such results. It finds that individualistic CEOs tend to hire more talented employees and improve the workplace environment to attract top inventors.
Originality/value
This paper provides firm-level evidence of culture and innovation. Prior studies in this area focus on cross-country evidence and suffer the limitation of confounding factors. Using a county-level measure of individualism and a sample of firms in USA, the paper alleviates the concern and provides evidence with better granularity. This paper also provides a novel mechanism for attracting top inventors, while existing literature tend to focus on risk-taking activities.
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Baojuan Ye, Shunying Zhao, Hohjin Im, Liluo Gan, Mingfan Liu, Xinqiang Wang and Qiang Yang
This study aims to examine how the initial ambiguity of COVID-19 contributed to tourists' intentions for visiting a once-viral outbreak site in the future.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine how the initial ambiguity of COVID-19 contributed to tourists' intentions for visiting a once-viral outbreak site in the future.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study (N = 248) used partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to examine whether perceptions of ambiguity and mismanagement of COVID-19 are indirectly related to intentions to travel to Wuhan in a post-pandemic world through perceptions of risk and tourism value. Further, whether the model effects differed as a function of individual safety orientation was examined.
Findings
Perceptions of COVID-19 risk and tourism value serially mediated the effects of perceived COVID-19 ambiguity on post-pandemic travel intentions. Safety orientation did not moderate any paths. Perceived risk was a negative direct correlate of post-pandemic travel intentions.
Originality/value
The current study's strength is rooted in its specific targeting of post-pandemic travel intentions to Wuhan—the first city to experience a widescale outbreak of COVID-19 and subsequent international stigma—compared to general travel inclinations.
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Elena Carvajal-Trujillo, Jesús Claudio Pérez-Gálvez and Jaime Jose Orts-Cardador
The main objective of this article is to visualize the structure and trends of pro-environmental behavior (PEB) between 1999 and 2023 through mapping and in-depth analysis. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The main objective of this article is to visualize the structure and trends of pro-environmental behavior (PEB) between 1999 and 2023 through mapping and in-depth analysis. The aim is to analyze PEB, which has received considerable academic attention in recent years due to its key role in the conservation of the environment and the protection of local communities in tourist destinations. This paper provides an important summary of the recent research that has explored the role that tourists have in protecting the environment through PEB.
Design/methodology/approach
This study presents a visual analysis of 2005 scholarly articles between the years 1999 and 2023 related to PEB. Using the knowledge mapping based on VOSviewer it presents the current status of research, which includes the analysis of citation analysis, co-citation analysis, co-citation network and longitudinal analysis.
Findings
PEB is an emerging topic due to its relevance to protecting the environment in the context of travel. The citation and co-citation analysis show the relevance of the behavior of tourists with regard to protecting the environment. The co-word analysis highlights the current significance of research concerning green hotels and the destination image of environmentally responsible destinations.
Originality/value
This study sheds light on the current research progress of PEB in the context of tourism through a comprehensive analysis (citation, co-citation and co-word). In addition, we provide theories and factors that have been previously used to study PEB in the context of tourism. The findings contribute to a broad and diverse understanding of the concept of PEB, which can provide important insights for policymakers in formulating management strategies and policies aimed at reducing environmental impacts in destinations.
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Palitha Konara, Zita Stone and Alex Mohr
The authors combine options logic with transaction cost economics to explain why firms maintain, divest or buy out their international joint ventures (IJVs). It is suggested that…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors combine options logic with transaction cost economics to explain why firms maintain, divest or buy out their international joint ventures (IJVs). It is suggested that a decline in environmental risk and higher partner-related risk makes a firm more likely to acquire an IJV but less likely to divest an IJV. The study also investigates how IJV age moderates the effects of a decline in environmental risk and higher partner-related risk.
Design/methodology/approach
The study employs competing risks analyses to examine the drivers of different termination outcomes using a dataset consisting of 459 IJVs in the People's Republic of China, of which 110 were either acquired or divested by their foreign parent.
Findings
The study finds that changes in environmental risk and partner-related risk affect how firms terminate their IJVs in the People's Republic of China. Specifically, the authors find that the effect of exogenous and endogenous risk are more pronounced for the acquisition of IJVs than for the divestment of IJVs.
Research limitations/implications
The study contributes to international marketing research by complementing options logic with transaction cost economics to provide a theoretical explanation of the different ways in which IJVs in the People's Republic of China are terminated.
Practical implications
IJVs continue to be an important yet often unstable method to serve international markets. Our findings increase managers' awareness of the effect that two important sources of risk may have on the termination of IJVs in the People's Republic of China.
Originality/value
The study provides novel insights into the effect that changes in exogenous and endogenous risk have on a firm's choice of termination mode drawing on novel data on the different ways in which foreign firms have terminated their IJVs in the Peoples' Republic of China.
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Quincy Merx, Mark Steins and Gaby Odekerken
This study aims to propose a service robot option to address shortages of human frontline employees (FLEs) in long-term care (LTC) service settings. With a field study, the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to propose a service robot option to address shortages of human frontline employees (FLEs) in long-term care (LTC) service settings. With a field study, the authors investigate the effect of psychological comfort with robot reminders of LTC residents and human FLEs on acceptance and attentive engagement, ultimately resulting in effort and willingness to interact with the service robot. The outcomes provide valuable insights into human-robot interaction in the LTC sector.
Design/methodology/approach
The 45 residents and 49 human FLEs who participated in the field study completed a survey measuring various perceptual variables after deploying a service robot.
Findings
Both the residents’ sample and the FLE sample demonstrate that psychological comfort with robot reminders increases robot acceptance. This increased acceptance evokes greater attentive engagement, ultimately leading to a higher willingness to exert effort to interact with the service robots.
Research limitations/implications
This study highlights service robots with well-received reminder functions and the ability to prompt efforts by both residents and employees during their implementation at LTC services. The findings suggest further research avenues for designing service robots that can be effectively integrated.
Originality/value
This study leverages a service robot in a field study involving LTC residents and human FLEs rather than hypothetical scenarios, which is rather limited in current studies. The findings are both timely and relevant, considering the gradual implementation of service robots into LTC services.
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We expand the recent literature on the dynamics of capital structure decisions by investigating the impact of national culture on firms' optimal debt ratios and their dynamic…
Abstract
Purpose
We expand the recent literature on the dynamics of capital structure decisions by investigating the impact of national culture on firms' optimal debt ratios and their dynamic re-adjustment process. To this end, we aim at estimating firm-specific speeds of leverage adjustment, allowing for heterogeneous dynamics in firms' capital structure.
Design/methodology/approach
We use dynamic panel data estimators to analyze the impact of cultural factors on the dynamics of debt ratios.
Findings
We show that national culture affects the optimal level of leverage and the dynamic rebalancing of debt ratios, both directly and indirectly, by altering the effect of firm characteristics and macroeconomic factors on firms' financing behavior. Firms converge faster towards the optimal leverage in countries with a stronger attitude to conform with the norm, while they are slower where there is a higher propensity to intellectual autonomy. A higher risk aversion and long-run propensity induce over-levered firms to reduce leverage faster, making the adjustment process strongly asymmetric. Moreover, national culture also produces indirect effects by mitigating the impact of asymmetric information on capital structure decisions. Indeed, firms in more individualistic countries display a lower speed of adjustment and a stronger effect of firm characteristics associated with higher agency costs. On the contrary, firms in countries with a higher tendency to conform to social norms, less individualistic and more long-term oriented have a higher adjustment speed and appear to suffer less from agency issues. Our results therefore highlight how national culture affects agency problems within firms, thus suggesting the adoption of country-specific corporate governance provisions accounting for the effects of local cultural traits on managers' behavior.
Originality/value
We expand the capital structure and governance literature by showing how cultural traits impact on the dynamics of debt ratios. In particular, we show how cultural traits may mitigate or exacerbate the role of agency issues on firms' behavior, hence suggesting that cultural factors may interact with governance rules in shaping firms' decisions. Therefore, our work highlights how policy-makers should include cultural aspects when defining regulation concerning corporate governance.
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Robin K. Chou, Kuan-Cheng Ko and S. Ghon Rhee
National cultures significantly explain cross-country differences in the relation between asset growth and stock returns. Motivated by the notion that managers in individualistic…
Abstract
National cultures significantly explain cross-country differences in the relation between asset growth and stock returns. Motivated by the notion that managers in individualistic and low uncertainty-avoiding cultures have a higher tendency to overinvest, this study aims to show that the negative relation between asset growth and stock returns is stronger in countries with such cultural features. Once the researchers control for cultural dimensions, proxies associated with the q-theory, limits-to-arbitrage, corporate governance, investor protection and accounting quality provide no incremental power for the relation between asset growth and stock returns across countries. Evidence of this study highlights the importance of the overinvestment hypothesis in explaining the asset growth anomaly around the world.
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Abdel Latef M. Anouze and Ahmed S. Alamro
Despite the wide availability of internet banking, levels of intention to use such facilities remain variable between countries. The purpose of this paper is to focus on e-banking…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the wide availability of internet banking, levels of intention to use such facilities remain variable between countries. The purpose of this paper is to focus on e-banking in a country with low intention to use e-banking – Jordan – and to explain the slow uptake.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative method employing a cross-sectional survey was used as an appropriate way of meeting the research objectives. The survey was distributed to bank customers in Amman, Jordan, collecting a total of 328 completed questionnaires. SPSS and AMOS software were used, and multiple regression and artificial neural networks were applied to determine the relative impact and importance of e-banking predictors.
Findings
The statistical techniques revealed that several major factors, including perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, security and reasonable price, stand out as the barriers to intention to use e-banking services in Jordan.
Originality/value
This study theorizes a series of implications on intention to use e-banking. It draws the attention of Jordanian banks to the full functionality of their e-banking systems, emphasizing positive safety features, which could contribute to changing negative customer perceptions. It also contributes to eliciting the theory of customer value among banks by focusing on how they should properly enhance their use of shared value. Moreover, it will present to managers how e-banking predictors can send meaningful and timely information to customers.