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Prolonged hospital stay in the course of management of microbial keratitis patients has been a burden to the resources of a multi‐disciplinary tertiary hospital. The paper aims to evaluate the impact of streamlining the workflow and increased cross‐disciplinary interactions on the average length of hospitalisation. It also seeks to study secondary outcomes including the average time for initiation of therapy, microbial culture positive rate, patients' satisfaction and resource savings.

The authors employed the model of clinical practice improvement (CPI) (New South Wales Health Department) methodology for a systematic approach to improve processes of care and service delivery. A team consisting of ophthalmologist, microbiologist, pharmacist and nursing staff was formed to brainstorm and highlight the problems. A new workflow was formulated and data were prospectively collected to evaluate and to identify areas where improvements could be made.

The average length of hospitalisation stay was reduced from 7.43 to 5.93 days with a mean difference of 1.50±0.63 days (p<0.05). The microbial keratitis culture positive rate increased from 54.6 to 73.0 per cent (p>0.05). The average time taken to initiate antibiotic eye drops after first contact with the doctor was 26.1 minutes (n=28), and 74.4 per cent of the patients surveyed were satisfied with their length of stay.

Intervention was carried out on the top 20 per cent of areas for improvement after voting by the team members.

The reduction in average length of hospitalisation can be improved by strict adherence to a formulated workflow and coordinated cross‐disciplinary interactions.

The management protocol discussed in the paper for microbial keratitis enables more effective and efficient treatment for the inpatients. Increased cross‐discipline and nursing coordination decreases length of hospitalisation of microbial keratitis patients and achieve better care for these patients.

The purpose of this article is to report the first part of a recent interview with Dr Ming-Jer Chen. He shares his values, beliefs and philosophies on life, business and scholarship, how these philosophies have shaped his approach to teaching, research and service and his strategies for making important career and professional decisions.

This article is based on a recent interview with Dr Ming-Jer Chen.

Dr Ming-Jer Chen's firm belief in the oneness (Fixed graphic 1) is reflected in his constant pursuit of “making the world smaller” by closing divides of various kinds. During his career journey, Dr Chen has applied the philosophy of “keeping a balanced and integrated view” to tackle professional and career challenges with the wisdom of an ambicultural perspective. Practices influenced by his East–West background include management education and decision-making, as well as teaching, research and professional services.

Dr Chen's unique life and career experiences make him a role model for those who intend to pursue a career in management research. His ambicultural insight and the “balanced and integrated view” he applies may help junior scholars in dealing with challenges in their professional lives.

The interview profiles a thought leader and strategist in management research and education, whose experience and wisdom may enlighten junior scholars along their career paths.

Confucianism underpins Chinese traditional culture and the values of the Chinese people. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between adherence to Confucianism and corporate irregularities.

The authors use the historical numbers of Jinshi (Imperial Scholars) in the Ming and Qing dynasties within 200 km of a company's location to proxy for the influence of Confucianism on the company, presenting strong evidence that Confucianism significantly reduces corporate irregularities.

The authors' findings are robust even when criticized with alternative definitions of Confucianism, sensitivity analysis and instrumental variable regression. The authors also discover that this effect is weaker in state-owned and foreign enterprises and weakened by the influence of Western culture.

This paper brings a new traditional-cultural perspective to the understanding of corporate irregularities and contributes to the literature on culture and finance. This paper also helps the authors understand the “China Puzzle” that is China's rapid economic development under an imperfect legal system.

The paper aims to propose general design rules and route plan for automated guided vehicle system (AGVS). The AGVS is applied to automated meter verification areas through a case study of meter verification shop floor to verify the feasibility.

The paper gives an appropriate route design for AGVS and proposes an optimized strategy for designed routes and a control system to manage traffic conflict.

This case study indicates that the application of AGVS can highly improve the efficiency of manufacturing and production. Besides, a reasonable transportation plan is beneficial in making the system run smoothly and in cutting conveying time.

The application of AGVS integrates a variety of advanced technologies (i.e. information technology, artificial intelligence, etc.) into the electricity meter verification system, which brings great economic and social benefits via enhancing the verification efficiency and reducing the total labor costs.

The application proposed in the paper solves the problem that the verification almost relies on workers, labor intensity is high and work efficiency is hard to improve. Furthermore, the general rules and strategies of AGVS transportation can be applied not only to the automated electricity meter verification but also in other industrial areas.

Social live streaming services (SLSS) have infused gamification into interface design and feature applications. Firms adopt gamification mechanisms to win customer loyalty in the live streaming and SLSS markets. Based on the mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics (MDA) framework and uses and gratifications 2.0 theory (UGT 2.0), this study aims to investigate the effects of game mechanics (mechanics) on enjoyment and user retention (aesthetics) through rewards and social interaction (dynamics) in the context of SLSS.

This study used an online survey via Google Forms, SurveyCake and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Line to collect data from 232 SLSS users in Taiwan. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was adopted to analyze the data.

The results validated the relationships between game mechanics and dynamic elements (rewards and social interaction) that triggered aesthetic elements (enjoyment feelings) among users. In addition, users experienced a sense of enjoyment that led to usage retention when using the gamified SLSS. Further, this study found enjoyment crucial for users to stay interactive with gamified services.

Driven by UGT 2.0, this study closed the gaps by integrating the MDA framework into the SLSS context and better understanding how game mechanics are connected to rewards and social interaction, leading to enjoyment and user retention when using SLSS. This study provides fresh insights into gamification-oriented SLSS practices. It offers significant theoretical and managerial implications and provides guidelines for SLSS platform operators on fostering user retention.

Drawing on the tenets of institutional theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Confucianism on technology for social good, while also considering the moderating influence of extrinsic informal institutions (foreign culture) and intrinsic formal institutions (property rights).

This study constructs a comprehensive database comprising 9,759 firm-year observations in China by using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2016 to 2020. Subsequently, the hypotheses are examined and confirmed, with the validity of the results being upheld even after conducting endogenous and robustness tests.

The findings of this study offer robust and consistent evidence supporting the notion that Confucianism positively affects technology for social good through both incentive effect and normative effect. Moreover, this positive influence is particularly prominent in organizations with limited exposure to foreign culture and in nonstate-owned enterprises.

The findings contribute to the literature by fostering a deep understanding of technology for social good and Confucianism research, and further provide a nuanced picture of the role of foreign culture and property rights in the process of technology for social good in China.

This paper aims to address the pressing problem of prediction concerning shipment times of therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic using a novel artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) approach.

The present study used organic real-world therapeutic supplies data of over 3 million shipments collected during the COVID-19 pandemic through a large real-world e-pharmacy. The researchers built various ML multiclass classification models, namely, random forest (RF), extra trees (XRT), decision tree (DT), multilayer perceptron (MLP), XGBoost (XGB), CatBoost (CB), linear stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and the linear Naïve Bayes (NB) and trained them on striped datasets of (source, destination, shipper) triplets. The study stacked the base models and built stacked meta-models. Subsequently, the researchers built a model zoo with a combination of the base models and stacked meta-models trained on these striped datasets. The study used 10-fold cross-validation (CV) for performance evaluation.

The findings reveal that the turn-around-time provided by therapeutic supply logistics providers is only 62.91% accurate when compared to reality. In contrast, the solution provided in this study is up to 93.5% accurate compared to reality, resulting in up to 48.62% improvement, with a clear trend of more historic data and better performance growing each week.

The implication of the study has shown the efficacy of ML model zoo with a combination of base models and stacked meta-models trained on striped datasets of (source, destination and shipper) triplets for predicting the shipment times of therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines in the e-pharmacy supply chain.

The novelty of the study is on the real-world e-pharmacy supply chain under post-COVID-19 lockdown conditions and has come up with a novel ML ensemble stacking based model zoo to make predictions on the shipment times of therapeutics. Through this work, it is assumed that there will be greater adoption of AI and ML techniques in shipment time prediction of therapeutics in the logistics industry in the pandemic situations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the historical background of genealogical records and analyze the value of Chinese genealogical research through the study of names and genealogical resources.

The paper examines the historical evolution and value of Chinese genealogical records, with the focus on researching the Islamic Chinese names used by the people living in Guilin. The highlight of this paper includes the analysis and evolution of the Islamic Chinese names commonly adopted by the local people in Guilin. It concludes with the recommendations on emphasizing and making the best use of genealogical records to enhance the research value of Chinese overseas studies.

The paper covers the history of Islam and describes how the religion was introduced into China, as well as Muslims' ethnicity and identity. It also places focus on the importance of building a research collection in Asian history and Chinese genealogy.

This research study has a strong subject focus on Chinese genealogy, Asian history, and Islamic Chinese surnames. It is a narrow field that few researchers have delved into.

The results of this study will assist students, researchers, and the general public in tracing the origin of their surnames and developing their interest in the social and historical value of Chinese local history and genealogies.

The study of Chinese surnames is, by itself, a particular field for researching the social and political implications of contemporary Chinese society during the time the family members lived.

Very little research has been done in the area of Chinese local history and genealogy. The paper would be of value to researchers such as historians, sociologists, ethnologists and archaeologists, as well as students and anyone interested in researching a surname origin, its history and evolution.

Aiding information is frequently adopted to calibrate the errors from inertia-generated trajectories in pedestrian positioning. However, existing calibration methods lack interior connections and unanimity, making it difficult to incorporate multiple sources of aiding information. This paper aims to propose a unanimous anchor-based trajectory calibration framework, which is expandable to encompass different types of anchor information.

The concept of anchors is introduced to represent different types of aiding information, which are, in essence, different constraint conditions on inertia-derived raw trajectories. The foundation of the framework is a particle filter which is implemented based on various particle weight updating strategies using diverse types of anchor information. Herein, three representative anchors are chosen to elaborate and validate the proposed framework, namely, ultra-wide-band (UWB) ranging anchors, iBeacons and the building structure-based virtual anchors.

In the simulations, with the particle reweighting strategies of the proposed framework, the positioning errors can be compensated. In the experimental test in an office building in which three anchors, including one UWB anchor, one iBeacon and one building structure-based virtual anchor are deployed; the final positioning error is decreased from 1.9 to 1.2 m; and the heading error is reduced from about 21° to 7°, respectively.

Herein, an anchor-based unanimous trajectory calibration framework for inertial pedestrian positioning is proposed. This framework is applicable to the schemes with different configurations of the anchors and can be expanded to adopt as much anchor information as possible.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among choice of industry diversification, capabilities and business group performance, as well as to point out the potential concern about endogenous role of industry diversification.

Using data from the top 100 business groups in Taiwan from TEJ database. This study uses Heckman’s two-step estimation procedure and contingency model to achieve unbiased results and examine our hypotheses.

The results of this study find that if business groups’ marketing or operational capabilities are strong they should adopt a high level of diversification strategy and if business groups’ R&D capability is strong they should adopt a low level one. The results of this study also show that the endogenous problem of industry diversification exists, and needs to be considered. Moreover, our finding confirms the importance of capability–strategy fit, which, in turn, can achieve better performance.

On average, high industry diversification groups perform better than low industry diversification groups after controlling for endogeneity issues. Business groups can achieve better performance if their strategy choices match the capabilities they encounter. Managers should pay attention to strategy-capability fit issues. Specifically, they should review their organizational capabilities as well as check their strategies within firms.

This study is one of the first that attempts to explore the endogenous role of diversification strategy choices, and empirical examine strategy-capability fit on business group performance.