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The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a conceptual framework to analyze how inter-organizational knowledge sharing facilitates enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation.

Data were collected from a 2014 survey on 283 Chinese companies. Structural equation modeling was used to test the structural model of the framework.

The results of the study indicated that organizational preparedness (in terms of internal culture, organizational structure, availability of resources, and technological capabilities), positive benefits and costs perception, and external influences (in terms of environmental uncertainty, competitive pressure, and partner readiness) would facilitate inter-organizational knowledge sharing, which in turn, would enhance ERP implementation effectiveness.

Convenience samples from an author’s MBA classes were used in the survey, and a single respondent from each organization answering all questions for such complicated issues also posed the risk of measurement bias and inaccuracy.

The study provided evidences to practitioners about how organizations should collaborate with supply chain partners at a full scale in knowledge generation, maintenance, dissemination, and application in order to enhance their effectiveness on ERP implementation.

ERP projects are predominately observed in existing research as internal initiatives that companies take independently within their own organizational boundaries. This study represents one of the early large-scale empirical efforts to investigate ERP implementation from an inter-firm supply chain collaboration perspective. Additional contribution includes some interesting empirical evidences on the current state of ERP utilization in the Chinese market.

The advent of e-commerce has prompted the proliferation of digital platforms for virtual products. This reinforces the importance of the contract design problem between the virtual product supplier (he) and the digital platform retailer (she). The purpose of this paper is to investigate a principal-agent problem in a virtual product supply chain, in which the retailer’s sales-effort investment level to sell the virtual product is unobservable to the supplier, and the market demand is unknown to both parties.

In this study, the supplier designs two kinds of contracts (wholesale price contract and two-part tariff contract) to maximize his profit, while the retailer determines her sales-effort investment level and the virtual product’s retail price. The results of two different types of contracts are compared to explore in depth the effect of contract choices on the participants’ profits.

The authors show that the comparative results of the optimal wholesale prices, retail prices and sales-effort investment levels between these two kinds of contracts all rely on the retailer’s risk-averse degree. Specifically, both the supplier and the whole supply chain prefer the two-part tariff contract rather than the wholesale price contract, the retailer should do opposite when she is low risk-averse, whereas there is no distinction for the retailer’s utilities between these two kinds of contracts when she is more risk-averse.

The value of the research rests on the use of principal-agent theory in the contracts of virtual products considering the retailer’s sales-effort and risk-aversion degree. The research will serve as a guide for the virtual products’ supplier and the platform retailer in decision-making processes.

Built upon the balance theory and schema theory, this study examined the impact of sponsors' intangible attributes, including consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) and brand-event image fit (BEIF), on consumer responses to emerging local events (ELEs), as well as major boundary conditions of this mechanism.

Theoretical hypotheses were tested using multivariate analysis of covariance and structural equation modeling with the data from two experiments: the experiment in the pilot study was used to calibrate sponsor stimuli, and the experiment in the main study was designed to assess consumer responses to different sponsor-event combinations.

Results of this experimental study illustrated the dominant role of CBBE in influencing individuals' perceived event value and intention to participate in the context of ELEs and revealed the noticeable but limited moderating effects of BEIF and sport identification.

This study highlighted the importance of sponsorship in the marketing communications of ELEs and suggested prioritizing the overall attributes of sponsors in the sponsor-selection. This study also called for more research attention directed toward the intangible benefits that sporting events could receive from sponsorship deals.

This study aims to investigate how sports customers adopted over-the-top (OTT) services to consume sport content. Inspired by the technology acceptance model (TAM), the study aims to understand users' behavior when consuming sporting events and users' perceptions toward OTT services.

The participants of the study are Chinese sports consumers that use streaming services to watch live sport content. An online survey was distributed through HUPU Sports, a Chinese online communication community where sports fans can share opinions. To make sure all responses qualified to take part in the study, skip logic questions were added at the beginning of the questionnaire to ask participants to answer whether they used streaming services for watching sports. A total of 352 responses were received and there were 327 useable questionnaires.

The results revealed that viewing convenience, free of commercials and viewing quality were the main reasons impacting them to adopt OTT services. In terms of users' perceptions, paid users rated higher in perceived enjoyment, perceived value, perceived usefulness (PU) and ease of use than nonpaid users. OTT users' fandom and PU could predict the time the users spent on using these services, while the users' fandom and perceived value are positively related to the money users spent on these services. In addition, this study also found that users' fandom, perceived value, content quality, and ease of use are positively associated with users' intention to continue to use the service.

The study is one of the first attempts to explore how sports audiences adopted OTT services to consume sport content and explore the audiences' perceptions toward OTT usage. Previous studies have already investigated how users adopted music streaming services (Fernandes and Guerra, 2019) and other online streaming services (Shin and Park, 2021), but little attention has been given to sports streaming services specifically. Therefore, the findings of the study fill the gap in the extant knowledge of sport consumers' behavior and provide more insights to their online behaviors. Moreover, the authors also contribute to the growing digital media literature by advancing our understanding perceptional differences between paid users and unpaid users. The streaming services literature has primarily focused on general users (Fernandes and Guerra, 2019), but the services neglect to understand the differences in between paid and unpaid users.

This paper aims to investigate weight-climbing assistance strategy for the biomechanical design of passive knee-assisting exoskeleton (PKAExo) and evaluate a designed PKAExo which stores energy when the knee joint flexes and releases the energy to assist ascending when the knee joint extends.

The authors constructed theoretic modeling of human weight-climbing to analyze characteristics of knee angle and moment. They then conducted camera-based movement analysis, muscle strength and endurance tests and surface electromyography (sEMG) measures to verify the relationship of knee angle and moment with both stair height and load weight. Afterwards, the authors proposed an assistant strategy for passive knee assistance, then gave out designed PKAExo and conducted mechanical experiment to test the knee-assisting torque. Finally, the authors conducted comparison experiment based on measuring the sEMG signals of knee extensor to verify the assistance effect of the PKAExo for weight-climbing.

The knee extensor produces the maximum force during weight-climbing, and the muscle force provided by knee extensor has significant increasing rate along with the stair height. Thus, the assistance torque of PKAExo is designed to increase nonlinearly along with increasing knee angle. It stores energy when knee flexes and assists when knee extends. Both the mechanical experiment and comparison experiment have demonstrated that the PKAExo is able to provide nonlinear assistance torque for weight-climbing, thus decreasing the average maximum load of knee extensor by about 21 per cent, reducing muscle fatigue and enhancing wearer’s weight-climbing ability.

The authors construct theoretic maximum force model produced by knee extensor for weight-climbing in static situation and conduct a series of experiments to verify and revise the model, which is the fundamental reference for knee-assisting mechanism designed for weight-climbing. The authors have also provided and validated an assistant strategy and the mechanism based on the biomechanical analysis, which aims to translate wearer’s energy-providing mode form high load to mid-low load by storing energy when knee flexes and assisting when knee extends. The PKAExo decreases the maximum load of knee extensor, reduces muscle fatigue and helps people to easily climb with load.

A lack of visibility into the manufacturer’s production cost information impedes a retailer’s ability to maximize her own profits, especially when market demand is uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of an option contract within a one-period two-echelon supply chain in the presence of asymmetric cost information.

Based on the principal-agent model, the retailer, acting as a Stackelberg leader, offers a menu of option contracts to mitigate the risk of uncertain demand and reveal asymmetric production cost information. The optimal contract in asymmetric and symmetric information scenarios is derived. Finally, the impact of production costs on the optimal contracts and the actors’ profits is explored by numerical experiments.

By comparing the optimal equilibrium solutions in two scenarios, the authors show that asymmetric cost information has a large impact on the optimal option contract and profits. In addition, information rent is affected by the type differential. The results prove that the level of information asymmetry plays a vital role in option contracts and profits.

Different from the existing literature on private demand information, this paper considers a supply chain with asymmetric cost information in the context of option contracts. Interestingly, not only the production cost but also the probability of a low production cost can affect the option strike price. In addition, from the perspective of the manufacturer, a high cost does not always bring a high information rent. These findings can provide some guidance to decision-makers.

Two friction models of Fe-Fe and Diamond-like carbon (DLC)-Fe were established by molecular dynamics (MD) method to simulate the friction behavior of traditional fracturing pump plunger and new DLC plunger from atomic scale. This paper aims to investigate the effects of temperature and load on the friction behavior between sealed nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) and DLC films.

In this study, MD method is used to investigate the friction behavior and mechanism of DLC film on plungers and sealing NBR based on Fe-Fe system and DLC-Fe system.

The results show that the friction coefficient of DLC-Fe system exhibits a downward trend with increasing load and temperature. And even achieve a superlubricity state of 0.005 when the load is 1 GPa. Further research revealed that the low interaction energy between DLC and NBR promoted the proportion of atoms with larger shear strain in NBR matrix and the lower Fe layer in DLC-Fe system to be much lower than that in Fe-Fe system. In addition, the application of DLC film can effectively inhibit the temperature rise of friction interface, but will occur relatively large peak velocity.

In this paper, two MD models were established to simulate the friction behavior between fracturing pump plunger and sealing rubber. Through the analysis of mean square displacement, atomic temperature, velocity and Interaction energy, it can be seen that the application of DLC film has a positive effect on reducing the friction of NBR.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of rapid prototyping eddy current sensors using 3D printing technology. Making full use of the advantages of 3D printing, the authors study on a new method for fabrication of an eddy current sensor.

In this paper, the authors establish a 3D model using SolidWorks. And the eddy current sensor is printed by the fused deposition modeling method.

Measurement results show that the 3D printing eddy current sensor has a wider linear measurement range and better linearity than the traditional manufacturing sensor. Compared to traditional eddy current sensor fabrication method, this 3D printed sensor can be fabricated at a lower cost, and the fabrication process is more convenient and faster.

This demonstrated 3D printing process can be applied to the 3D printing of sensors of more sophisticated structures that are difficult to fabricate using conventional techniques.

In this work, the process of rapid prototyping eddy current sensors using 3D printing is presented. Sensors fabricated with the 3D printing possess lots of merits than traditional manufactures. 3D printed sensors can be customized according to the configuration of the overall system, thus reducing the demand of sensor's rigid mounting interfaces. The 3D printing also reduce design costs as well as shortens the development cycle. This allows for quick translation of a design from concept to a useful device.

E-commerce poverty alleviation (EPA) is an innovative poverty alleviation model in China. The institutional mechanisms of the e-commerce platform improve the effect of EPA and exert online shopping purchase power in rural China. From a socio-technical perspective, this paper used adoption readiness of farmers and perceived risk to construct an integrated model to discern the effect of enhanced e-commerce institutional mechanisms on farmers' online shopping intention in the context of EPA.

The survey included 832 valid samples from rural farmers in Shanxi province. This study analyses using structural equation modelling (SEM) and bootstrap methods used to empirically test the model.

Findings suggest that enhanced e-commerce institutional mechanisms have significant direct and indirect positive impacts on farmers' online shopping intention; adoption readiness and perceived risk play partial mediation roles in determining the relationship between farmers' online shopping intention and enhanced e-commerce institutional mechanisms; and the indirect mediation effect of adoption readiness is greater than that of perceived risk.

Although the proposed model was supported in the questionnaire survey, the investigation method was not completely excluded. Future research can combine the method of panel data and apply the framework to other e-commerce platforms, as well as to other cultural settings.

The study suggests that enhanced e-commerce institutional mechanisms that are based on the needs of farmers from poverty-stricken areas change the shopping habits of farmers. Moreover, enhanced e-commerce institutional mechanisms should allow farmers' perceived adoption readiness to play its promoting role and reduce the impeding role of perceived risk. The results of this study are conducive to the intensive implementation of the ‘Three Rural Issues’ strategy in China.

A new model to generate a two-factor mediation effect model by integrating the perceived effectiveness of enhanced e-commerce institutional mechanisms with farmers, farmers' adoption readiness, perceived risk and online shopping intention. The study explored the relationship between enhanced e-commerce institutional mechanisms and farmers' online shopping intention, bridging the gap in related empirical studies. Besides, this study first proposed farmers' adoption readiness and clarifies the mediating role of farmers' adoption readiness and perceived risk, which highlights the previously unnoticed role of farmers' adoption readiness.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Olympic audiences utilized Twitter to follow American National Governing Bodies (NGBs) during the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

Guided by economic demand theory, the researchers sought to explore whether factors such as the content of social media messages, athlete’s performance, event presentation, scheduling, and TV broadcasting contribute to enhancing fans’ interests in following NGBs on Twitter during the Olympic Games. In total, 33 American NGB Twitter accounts formed the data set for this study. Each of NGBs’ Twitter data was collected every night at midnight from August 7 to 23, 2016. Data collected from each NGB account included number of followers, number of accounts followed, number of tweets, and number of “likes.”

Results of this study revealed that team’s performance and the number of tweets had direct and positive relationships with increasing the number of NGB’s Twitter followers on each competition day. The number of “likes,” however, had a significant negative relationship with fans’ interests in following NGBs’ Twitter.

The results of the study are expected to help Governing Bodies in the Olympic sports have a better understanding of fans’ social media usage.