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The purpose of this paper is to gain a systematic and comprehensive understanding of deploying temporary agency work (TAW) in China in relation to the adoption, staffing pattern, and human resource (HR) configuration.

Based on the literature and theory of strategic human resource management, this inquiry identifies and analyzes three major components in the utilization of temporary agency work (TAW) in Chinese organizations.

The paper derives a framework to conceptualize the relationships among strategic vs ad hoc adoption of TAW, separated and mixed staffing patterns, as well as four HR on the utilization of TAW in the Chinese context..

This is an initial effort in exploring the phenomenon of TAW in China prior to the enactment of Labor Contract Law. The paper offers a conceptual base for further examining the evolution of TAWs in Chinese organizations.

The context‐based analysis of TAW's challenges existing frameworks in the Western literature. The resulting framework is an innovative effort for a comprehensive understanding of TAW in China, thus enriches the existing literature.

This paper seeks to propose that practical wisdom originating within the Chinese classical traditions has been instrumental in China's ascendance to the world stage. Its purpose is to analyze biographical data across 200 Chinese business leaders in order to gauge the relative influence of two competing ideologies – Maoism and Confucianism.

This paper is based on a two‐step design process. First, modern day leadership archetypes characterizing Maoist and Confucian ideology were developed from the literature. Second, these archetypes were applied in the content analysis of biographical data on Chinese business leaders.

There was evidence of both Maoism and Confucianism in the practices of Chinese business leaders. An unintended, third cohort of leaders emerged, representative of the younger end of the biographical distribution, who appear to embrace paradox in their ideological orientation.

There were three practical implications for management and leadership development: the importance of integrating the concept of paradox into management and leadership development curricula; the provision of illustrative alternatives to western world leadership exemplars; and increased emphasis on global leadership as an emergent phenomenon with particular attention to the burgeoning internationalization of Chinese enterprise and its associated ideologies.

The current leadership literature is dominated by western world exemplars. This paper offers an alternative view; one rich with the wisdom and classical traditions of the Chinese culture.

Studies the economic design of x^‐ control charts in a situation in which the duration time that the process remains in the in‐control state follows a general distribution which has an increasing hazard rate. In this situation, the active and persistent action for quality control is to design a process in which a preventive maintenance procedure is performed periodically. Addresses first the relationship between preventive maintenance and x^‐ control charts. A cost function which is opposed to those given by Banerjee and Rahim and by Hu is derived. The computational results indicate that the proposed model under a preventive maintenance policy has a lower expected total cost per hour than have those of Banerjee and Rahim’s and Hu’s Weibull shock models. Numerical examples also demonstrate that the model has great flexibility when applied in the situation previously mentioned. Presents the advantages of the combination of a preventive maintenance policy and x^‐ control charts and concludes that a preventive maintenance policy performed under a certain condition can be particularly instrumental in reducing the expected total cost per hour.

Develops a framework which provides a step towards better planning of production, scheming inspection and preventive maintenance. Studies the effects of an imperfect production process on the optimal production cycle time. The system is assumed to deteriorate during the production process and produce some proportion of defective items. Extends to the cases where the proportion of defective items and the cost of process restoration are not constant. Provides a comparative study of two monitoring policies where the preventive maintenance setting is used and not used in the deteriorating production process. These models are directly relevant to the management of the quality and reliability of the production process. When scheming inspection is adopted, it is shown that the optimal inspection intervals are equally spaced in the imperfect production process under the different policies, respectively. Provides a numerical example to illustrate the derivation of the optimal production cycle time in the models.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the tribological properties of Polyamide 1010 (PA 1010) in rolling friction with traction.

PA1010 composites filled with zinc oxide whiskers (ZnOw) were prepared by hot compression molding. The compressive properties of the composites were measured with an electronic material tester and the tribological behavior in rolling friction with traction of nylon composites was studied with a two‐roller contact rolling tester.

The results indicate that the compression modulus of composites increases with the rising content of ZnOw. Both the ultimate compression strength and the compression yield strength of composites increase to the maximum value when the content of ZnOw is 15 wt%. Both the traction coefficient and the slip ratio of each composite were influenced by the traction load and the normal load. In addition, the ZnOw proportion affected the slip ratio of the composites. The experimental results demonstrate that composites including 10 wt% and 15 wt% ZnOw exhibit lighter wear and lower slip ratio. The wear rate of the nylon composites is increased as the normal load increases due to the rising acting pressure against the nylon composites. The rising traction load also causes inflation in the wear rate of the composites.

The tests in the paper were carried out according to the conditions of tramcars in mining.

PA 1010 composites filled with ZnOw presented the preferable mechanical and tribological properties of PA1010, which can be used in the driving wheel of tramcars in mining and other components requiring high traction coefficient.

The paper studied the tribological properties of PA 1010 composites including ZnOw with special dimensional structure.

Develops the joint economic designs of • and S² control charts under four operating policies to monitor the process in a situation where the occurrence of the assignable cause follows a general distribution with an increasing hazard rate. The four operating policies can be chosen by quality controllers to cope with the specific process situation. Policy I and policy II assume that the process performs the preventive maintenance programme at equal and decreasing sampling time intervals, respectively. Policy III and policy IV in turn merely take samples using the non‐uniform and uniform sampling interval schemes without preventive maintenance. The derivation of the four models is not very difficult, so it can be used to derive another model. Offers numerical examples to compare the economic designs and the total expected costs per hour of the four models. Finds, from the computational results, policy II is the best for adoption in the design of • and S² control charts. The results also show that the proposed solution procedure is more accurate and better than Rahim et al.’s and Chung and Chen’s procedures. Concludes with remarks and some advantages of introducing the periodic preventive maintenance policy into a process.

Understanding the construction of individual entrepreneurial identity for entrepreneurship education is an important but understudied issue. Prior studies indicate that entrepreneurship learning is associated with not only learning critical entrepreneurial skills and knowledge but also facilitating the construction of a personal entrepreneurial identity. However, educators are constantly challenged by the task of facilitating such an identity within students via learning-by-doing processes in the context of entrepreneurial teams. Additionally, while effective conflict management is essential to productive entrepreneurial learning in entrepreneurial teams, studies that investigate the relationships between interpersonal conflicts of entrepreneurial teams and the students' entrepreneurial identity are absent.

The approach of an in-depth case study was adopted to achieve our research purpose.

A conceptual model that describes the construction of the entrepreneurial identity of students of entrepreneurial teams in a learning-by-doing environment from the perspectives of conflicts and task characteristics are developed.

The research findings highlight the preliminary relationships between task characteristics (i.e. task interdependence, task uncertainty, resource competition and tension regarding responsibility allocation) and interpersonal conflicts of entrepreneurial teams, and their impacts on the entrepreneurial identity of team members.

This study is among the first group of studies that especially explores the relationships among task characteristics of entrepreneurship projects, interpersonal conflicts and the development of students' entrepreneurial identity.

Brand information is ubiquitous online and offline; consumers exhibit brand avoidance tendencies towards brand stimuli when there is a discrepancy between a brand image/personality and one’s self-concept. Given the multifaceted culturally constituted self-domains and self-importance, this research investigates how cultural variation affects reactions to self-brand discrepancy, considering two types of narcissist orientations.

Using national culture as proxy for cultural orientation, sample data were collected through surveys administered to 410 participants (210 in China and 200 in the USA). A multi-group structural equation model was adopted to examine the conceptual model and proposed hypotheses. The follow-up qualitative study was conducted to allow further discussion of the quantitative results.

The results show that self-brand discrepancy can only be converted into brand avoidance tendency through the activation of cognitive dissonance for both Americans and Chinese. Specifically, for Chinese consumers only (ideal) social identity self-brand discrepancies can activate avoidance behaviour. In addition, grandiose and vulnerable narcissism orientations co-exist for both Chinese and Americans, these negatively moderate the relationship between social self-brand discrepancies and cognitive dissonance. For US consumers, idealised identity discrepancies mitigate dissonance; only those with a vulnerable narcissistic orientation would act on avoidance when experiencing dissonance.

By incorporating cultural variations in the investigations of self-brand discrepancy, this paper advances existing knowledge on dissonance and coping mechanisms. In addition, by bringing narcissistic orientations to the fore, it allows for a deeper understanding of how these cultural variations operate. In addition, our research provides important guidelines for brand practitioners to better leverage their marketing campaigns in offline and online contexts and to reduce brand avoidance tendencies across the international marketplace.

Scholars have emphasized intellectual capital’s importance for universities in obtaining competitive advantages and creating value. The purpose of this paper is to identify the influences of two components of intellectual capital, relational and human capital at the international level, and psychological capital on international orientation of academic entrepreneurs, and the mediating effects of international relational and human capital.

On the basis of a literature review, a theoretical model is proposed to explain the relationship between the studied variables. Our hypotheses are tested on a sample of 173 academic spin-offs of Spanish universities using bootstrapping methodology.

The results show that the international market relational capital and international human capital of academic entrepreneurs influence their international orientation, and that their psychological capital is directly, and indirectly, related to international orientation through international human capital and international market relational capital.

This study provides a better understanding of the antecedents of the international orientation of academic entrepreneurs, which would provide an important contribution to the literature on intellectual capital, academic entrepreneurship and internationalization. The achieved results highlight important implications for training of academic entrepreneurs and for managers and management teams of companies willing to enter, or even those already operating in, international markets.

In this study, the international orientation of academic entrepreneurs is explained through the psychological capital that is studied jointly with two components of intellectual capital, relational and human capital at the international level. Although some recent work has focused on the study of the internationalization of academic spin-off, this line of research is still incipient.

The National People’s Congress (NPC) of People’s Republic of China, the highest organ of state power, is popularly seen as a rubber-stamp entity. However, it has been substantially evolving its roles to accommodate the governance discourses within China’s political system over the decades. This study aims to explore the changes of governance discourse of the NPC within China’s political system through which to offer a thorough understanding of the NPC’s evolving substantial role in current China.

This study deploys a historical approach to explore the changes of governance discourse of the NPC that has seen a growing importance in China’s political agenda, as argued by this study.

The authors find that the NPC has been substantially evolving its role within China’s political system in which the Chinese Communist Party has created different governance discourses. Besides, the NPC and its Standing Committee have asserted its authority as a substantial actor within China’s political system. The NPC is no longer functioned as a rubber-stamp institution, though it is still popularized as a rubber stamp by many scholars.

This study is a historical elaboration on the development of NPC under three governance discourses. It might be, to some extent, relatively descriptive in nature.

This study, therefore, sheds some light on a revisit on the governance discourses in current China.