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This study aims to explore the relationship between social intelligence (SI) and problem-solving (PS) style of handling conflict.

Data on SI and PS were collected with questionnaires from 406 faculty members, and the data were averaged by departments. This resulted in a sample of 43 departments, and all the data analyses were performed with this sample of 43. SI is defined as the ability to be aware of relevant social situations, to handle situational challenges effectively, to understand others’ concerns and feelings and to build and maintain positive relationships in social settings.

Data analyses with LISREL at the department level suggest that SI is positively associated with PS.

Data were collected from only one public university in the USA, which might limit the generalizability of the results. The department chairs need to acquire the four components of SI to improve faculty members’ PS. This will hopefully lead to constructive management of many faculty–department chair conflicts.

One of the strengths of this study is that the measures of endogenous and exogenous variables were analyzed at the department level, not individual level. This study contributed to our understanding of the relationships of situational awareness, situational response, cognitive empathy and social skills with each other and to PS.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt the uses and gratifications theory (Katz et al., 1974) to understand the phenomenon of relationship building on Facebook. In addition to company-related uses and gratifications, self-related uses and gratifications – expressing self-concept and seeking social interactions and entertainment – were identified. Company reputation and tribalism were incorporated in the theoretical model as underlying mechanisms to explain the effect of the company Facebook page usage on relationship building and engagement behaviors.

A survey was conducted in a Southeastern university in the USA with 459 college students. A three-phased model was proposed and analyzed using structural equational modeling.

The study results demonstrated that the use and gratification of expressing self-concept led to better perceptions of company tribalism and improved relational outcomes (trust and satisfaction). Company-related uses and gratifications, on the other hand, increased trust and satisfaction by increasing perceived company reputation. Satisfaction was found to significantly encourage individuals’ word-of-mouth activities about the company as well as Facebook engagement.

Although extensive research has been conducted on the topic of companies’ social media pages, most prior studies focused on company communication practices and strategies. This study explored this phenomenon from the public’s perspective regarding various usage motivations and patterns. Company tribalism, as a relatively new concept, was introduced to explain how expressing self-concept through companies’ social media pages could benefit relationship building and eventually result in engagement behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to address gaps in the knowledge about human resource (HR) professional involvement in strategic decision-making in China compared with that in Australia.

First, the authors compare the strategic involvement of Chinese and Australian HR professionals. Second, based on the upper echelon theory, the authors compare the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) and top management team (TMT) between both countries on HR involvement in strategic decision-making. Data were collected from matched pairs of HR and TMT executives in China (n = 168) and in Australia (n = 102).

Results indicate a difference, despite of no statistical significance, in HR involvement in strategic decision-making between Chinese and Australian samples. TMT behavioural integration was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in a collectivistic culture (i.e. in China), but not in an individualistic culture (i.e. in Australia). However, CEO support for HRM was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in Australia, whereas it is not related in China.

The paper conducts a comparative study and practical, and research implications are discussed at the end.

The purpose of this research was to develop clothing-typed soft wearable robot embedded with textile-based actuators on ankles for elderly adults needing gait assistance.

Design guidelines were developed and they included function (type, targeting area, routing line and anchor points), design (size/fit, fabric/material, fastener, detail, color) and actuator (shape memory alloy type, size, deformation type, integration material, integration technique and evaluation method). Fabric-based actuator, integration methods to fabrics, routing lines and anchoring points were developed based on the guidelines and evaluated. Then, three long socks types and a pants type were designed and prototyped. Routing line position displacement measurement test was conducted with the prototypes. A survey was conducted to investigate satisfaction, likeness and use intention on the design/prototype to modify the designs.

Important design factors were identified, and design guidelines for clothing-typed soft wearable robots (SWRs) were developed. People satisfied the developed SWR designs and prototypes with mean scores over 4.60.

The results are expected to be helpful for designers and developers of SWRs in the development process, and they will ultimately be beneficial to members of the elderly population who have gait difficulties.

Despite the availability of many metrics and tools for marketing performance measurement, the way in which firms use their marketing metrics remains underexplored. This study aims to address this gap by empirically establishing the differing effects of the diagnostic and interactive uses of marketing metrics on firms’ market-sensing capability, contingent on competitive intensity and focus on market-related metrics.

This study builds on survey data collected from 210 Irish-based firms, complemented by 21 in-depth interviews with business managers. Survey data are analysed using regression analysis.

This study finds that firms using marketing metrics interactively to communicate organizational focus are better able to sense their markets, especially under high competition. The authors observe a positive impact of the interactive use of metrics on market-sensing capability, but a U-shaped impact of their diagnostic use, the magnitudes of which further depend on competitive intensity and firms’ focus on market-related metrics.

This study provides a nuanced view of marketing performance measurement (MPM) practices within firms, particularly focussing on diagnostic versus interactive uses of marketing metrics. It also sheds further light on how two diverse uses of marketing metrics – diagnostic and interactive uses – influence a firm’s market-sensing capability. Moreover, the identification of boundary conditions also contributes to the discussion of contextuality in MPM, highlighting the importance of aligning a firm’s uses of marketing metrics with its business environment.

This study provides novel insights into how diverse uses of marketing metrics may benefit firms. The differing effects of diagnostic and interactive uses of marketing metrics on market sensing highlight a primary need for developing the latter and for using the former only with caution. It establishes that all firms would equally benefit from an interactive use of marketing metrics that is pivotal to improving their ability to anticipate, detect and sense market changes.

This study provides novel understanding of the role of marketing metric uses in firms’ market-sensing capability and contributes to the discussion of contextuality in marketing performance measurement. It highlights the importance of aligning a firm’s use of marketing metrics with its business environment.

This study proposes a novel method utilising a speech-word pair bipartite network to examine the correlation structure between members of parliament (MPs) in the context of the UK- China relationship.

We construct MP-word pair bipartite networks based on the co-occurrence relationship between MPs and words in their speech content. These networks are then mapped into monopartite MPs correlation networks. Additionally, the study calculates correlation network indicators and identifies MP communities and factions to determine the characteristics of MPs and their interrelation in the UK-China relationship. This includes insights into the distribution of key MPs, their correlation structure and the evolution and development trends of MP factions.

Analysis of the parliamentary speeches on China-related affairs in the British Parliament from 2011 to 2020 reveals that the distribution and interrelationship of MPs engaged in UK-China affairs are centralised and discrete, with a few core MPs playing an integral role in the UK-China relationship. Among them, MPs such as Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, David Cameron, Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Howell of Guildford formed factions with significant differences; however, the continuity of their evolution exhibits unstableness. The core MP factions, such as those led by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon and David Cameron, have achieved a level of maturity and exert significant influence.

The research has several limitations that warrant acknowledgement. First, we mapped the MP-word pair bipartite network into the MP correlation network for analysis without directly analysing the structure of MPs based on the bipartite network. In future studies, we aim to explore various types of analysis based on the proposed bipartite networks to provide more comprehensive and accurate references for studying UK-China relations. In addition, we seek to incorporate semantic-level analyses, such as sentiment analysis of MPs, into the MP-word -pair bipartite networks for in-depth analysis. Second, the interpretations of MP structures in the UK-China relationship in this study are limited. Consequently, expertise in UK-China relations should be incorporated to enhance the study and provide more practical recommendations.

Firstly, the findings can contribute to an objective understanding of the characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations, thereby informing adjustments of focus accordingly. The identification of the main factions in the UK-China relationship emphasises the imperative for governments to pay greater attention to these MPs’ speeches and social relationships. Secondly, examining the evolution and development of MP factions aids in identifying a country’s diplomatic focus during different periods. This can assist governments in responding promptly to relevant issues and contribute to the formulation of effective foreign policies.

First, this study expands the research methodology of parliamentary debates analysis in previous studies. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study the UK-China relationship through the MP-word-pair bipartite network. This outcome inspires future researchers to apply various knowledge networks in the LIS field to elucidate deeper characteristics and connotations of UK-China relations. Second, this study provides a novel perspective for UK-China relationship analysis, which deepens the research object from keywords to MPs. This finding may offer important implications for researchers to further study the role of MPs in the UK-China relationship.

This study proposes a novel scheme for analysing the correlation structure between MPs based on bipartite networks. This approach offers insights into the development and evolving dynamics of MPs.

The pandemic crisis has resulted in global chaos that had caused massive disruption to the supply chain. The pharmaceutical industry, in particular, has been working tirelessly to ensure that they can cater to the people who need them. With restrictions being imposed to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the movement of raw materials required has been affected, thus creating the need for the procurement function to be innovative. This study proposes the application of Industry 4.0 concepts into the procurement activities of an organization to make it more resilient and efficient.

To study the intensity of the challenges, Total Interpretive Structural Modelling is used alongside the “Matrice des Impacts Croises Multiplication Appliquee a un Classement” (MICMAC) technique.

Resilience can be achieved through the collaboration between the organization and its network of suppliers. This is however easier said than done. High and unclear investments have been identified as the challenge that is taking a toll on all technological investments in the pandemic era. The study also shows that organizational inertia which is present in established and structured firms are a deterrent as well.

This study is based on the application of procurement 4.0 to ensure that pharmaceutical supply chains stay least affected since they are essentials. This study using a multi-criteria decision-making approach to prioritize the challenges. This will help practitioners make decisions faster.

This study aimed to identify driving factors of safety attitudinal ambivalence (AA) and explore their influence. Construction workers' intention to act safely can be instable under conflicting information from safety management, co-workers and habitual unsafe behaviour. Existing research explained the mechanism of unsafe behaviours as individual decisions but failed to include AA, as the co-existence of both positive and negative attitude.

This study applied system dynamics to explore factors of construction workers' AA and simulate the process of mitigating the ambivalence for less safety behaviour. Specifically, the group model building approach with eight experts was used to map the causal loop diagram and field questionnaire of 209 construction workers were used to collect empirical data for initiating parameters.

The group model building identified five direct factors of AA, namely the organisational safety support, important others' safety attitude, emotional arousal, safety production experience and work pressure, with seven feedback paths. The questionnaire survey obtained the initial values of the factors in the SD model, with the average ambivalence at 0.389. The ambivalence between cognitive and affective safety attitude was the highest. Model simulation results indicated that safety experience and work pressure had the most significant effects, and safety experience and positive attitude of co-workers could compensate the pressure from tight schedule and budget.

This study provided a new perspective of the dynamic safety attitude under the co-existence of positive and negative attitude, identified its driving factors and their influencing paths. The group model building approach and field questionnaire surveys were used to provide convincible suggestions for empirical safety management with least and most effective approaches and possible interventions to prevent unsafe behaviour with tight schedule and budget.

This study aims to reduce the construction safety accidents of prefabricated building (PB) projects, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of safety supervision by government departments, and provide theoretical reference for improving the safety supervision system of PB construction.

Considering the information asymmetry between government supervision departments and construction contractors and the interactive relationship between the two parties under bounded rationality, we propose an evolutionary game model for the construction safety dynamic supervision of PBs and analyze the evolutionary strategy of the game. The system dynamics (SD) method is used to simulate and analyze the evolutionary game process under a dynamic supervision strategy and the adjustment of external variables.

The cost difference between the government's strong and weak supervision, the construction contractor's additional expenditure for strengthening safety management, and other factors affect system stability. The government can dynamically adjust the penalties based on the construction contractor's subjective willingness to ignore safety management and further adjust their rate of change based on the completion of the supervision goals to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of construction safety supervision.

This study makes contributions in two areas. Through a combination of SD and an evolutionary game, it provides new insights into the strategic choice of the main body related to PB construction safety. Additionally, considering the nonlinear characteristics of construction safety supervision, it provides useful universal suggestions for PB construction safety.

Contemporary changes have occurred in country-level policies and tourists’ intentions in recent years. The role of maintaining a country’s image is trendy in crisis control but has not yet been discussed in domestic tourism research. Extending the Stimulus Organism Response model, this study aims to focus on “trustable WOM creation” in China. In addition, it aimed to discover how behavioral changes encourage domestic tourism intention (DTI).

This study explored the mediating role of DTI and the moderating role of maintenance of country image (MCI) for trustable word of mouth (WOM) creation. Using the snowball sampling technique, a structural equation modeling analysis (Smart PLS-4) was employed to analyze the data of 487 Chinese tourists.

Findings confirm that behavioral changes positively encourage domestic tourism and discourage international tourism, with significant negative moderation by MCI. MCI has an insignificant positive moderating effect between government-media trust and DTI. Furthermore, DTI positively and directly affects the creation of trustable WOM. In addition, it had a 20% mediation effect (VAF%) between behavioral changes and WOM creation, higher than the rejected mediation effect (12%), in the causal relationship between government-media trust and WOM creation.

WOM creation varies from different behavioral changes, but findings suggest that government-media trust and DTI influenced it significantly. Based on the study findings, the government and media can enhance domestic tourism by maintaining the country’s image. These findings both encourage and control the recovery of tourism.

This study provides a theoretical explanation for tourists' behavioral changes during the pandemic. Moreover, it shows that despite avoiding international tourism due to behavioral changes and government-media trust, MCI moderation with the mediation effect of DTI can create trustable WOM. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to theoretically promote tourism through DTI-induced psychology as a mediator and an organism affect prevailing among Chinese tourists.