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Compared with traditional industrial processing technologies of sulfurized isobutylene, the one-step synthesis method involving high pressure is more environment-friendly and leads to better product performance. However, products from various sources perform differently because of the difference in the contents of their components. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between sulfide components of high-pressure sulfurized isobutylene and load carrying capacities.

A typical high-pressure sulfurized isobutylene was chosen, and the structure and contents of its sulfide components were characterized using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and gas chromatography (GC). Extreme-pressure properties of the sample at different concentrations were evaluated using a four-ball tribometer.

A multiple regression equation model was established, and tert-butyl trisulfide made the greatest contribution to the extreme-pressure properties according to the equation coefficient, while tert-butyl tetrasulfide had no effect. The results can be attributed to the fact that the structure of a sulfurized additive having an impact is application-specific.

A precise and fast way to predict weld load values of high-pressure sulfurized isobutylene by using GC and the established equation model were successfully developed. Moreover, the empirical equation shows the relationships between sulfide component concentrations and load carrying capacities.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare metallocene polyalphaolefin 8 (mPAO8) by the oligomerization of olefin from coal with metallocene catalyst system and compare it with commercially available polyalphaolefin 8 (PAO8) from Chevron.

Molecular structures, component and mass were determined by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, gas chromatography and gel permeation chromatography, respectively. The physico-chemical properties, including Noack volatility, viscosity index and elemental analyses, were studied. The oxidative stability was evaluated by pressurized differential scanning calorimetry, whereas the thermal stability was studied by thermo-gravimetric analysis.

The produced mPAO8 consisted of a large part of tetramer, pentamer and a small part of trimer and hexamer. Additive T501 significantly improved the oxidation stability of PAO8 from Chevron and the synthesized mPAO8. Both samples had similar properties, such as oxidative stability, additive response, pour point and Noack volatility loss. But mPAO8 possessed a higher thermal stability, better viscosity index and flash point than PAO8. Therefore, the mPAO8 prepared by the oligomerization of olefin from coal could be used as base oil for lubricant development.

The mPAO8 base oil was successfully prepared by successive carbon numbers and shows similar properties with commercially available PAO8 products from Chevron. The findings can cover the shortage of the synthesis lubricants market in China.

Research on the effects of feedback frequency has reported mixed findings. To tackle this problem, the current study focuses on specific feedback signs (i.e. negative feedback). By integrating the face management theory and attribution theory, this study examined the mediating effect of trust in supervisors and the moderating effect of employee-attributed performance promotion motives for negative feedback.

A field study with 176 participants and two supplemental experiments with 143 and 100 participants, respectively, were conducted to test the theoretical model.

Results revealed that the frequency of supervisory negative feedback negatively influenced employees’ trust in supervisors, which in turn influenced employees’ perceptions of feedback utility and learning performance. These indirect effects can be alleviated when employees have high degrees of performance promotion attribution for supervisor motives.

This research extends feedback research by integrating feedback frequency with a specific sign of feedback and revealing a moderated mediation effect of the negative feedback frequency.

Goal orientation shapes employees’ approach to and interpretation of workplace aspects such as supervisors’ behavior. However, research has not fully examined the effect of goal orientation as an antecedent of abusive supervision. Drawing from victim precipitation theory, this study aims to fill this research gap by investigating how employees’ goal orientation influences their perception of abusive supervision.

Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, 181 employees in 45 departments participated in the survey, and multilevel confirmatory factor analysis, two-level path model and polynomial regression were used. In Study 2, 108 working adults recruited from a professional online survey platform participated in a two-wave time-lagged survey. Confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical linear regression and polynomial regression were used.

This study found that employees’ learning goal orientation was negatively related to their perception of abusive supervision. In contrast, performance-avoidance goal orientation was positively related to their perception of abusive supervision, whereas performance-approach goal orientation was unrelated to this perception. Moreover, employees’ perception of abusive supervision was greater when learning and performance-approach goal orientation alignment occurred at lower rather than higher levels, and when performance-avoidance and performance-approach goal orientation alignment occurred at higher rather than lower levels.

This research identified two novel victim traits as antecedents of abusive supervision – employees’ learning goal orientation and performance-avoidance goal orientation. Furthermore, adopting a multiple goal perspective, the authors examined the combined effects of goal orientation on employees’ perception of abusive supervision.

Abusive supervision provokes subordinates’ interpersonal deviant behavior. It is, therefore, essential to explore the contingent factors of this relationship. Drawing upon gender role theory, this study aims to explore how subordinate and leader genders moderate the relationship between abusive supervision and subordinate interpersonal deviance. Furthermore, this study posits a three-way interaction effect of abusive supervision with leader and subordinate genders on interpersonal deviance.

Multisource survey data were collected from 45 supervisors and 170 subordinates in eight companies in China. The data were analyzed using the PROCESS macro in SPSS.

The results showed that the positive relationship between abusive supervision and interpersonal deviance was stronger among female leaders than male leaders. Furthermore, the authors found a three-way interaction effect between abusive supervision and leader and subordinate genders on subordinates’ interpersonal deviance. Compared with female subordinates, male subordinates engaged in significantly more interpersonal deviance when experiencing abusive supervision from a female leader than from a male leader.

The authors reveal that gender differences exist in the effect of abusive supervision on subordinates’ interpersonal deviant behavior. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate that subordinate and leader genders jointly influence the effect of abusive supervision. Finally, the findings extend the literature on gender’s moderating effects from constructive and neutral leader behaviors to destructive leader behaviors.

This study aims to map and analyze health-care pricing information research. This work highlights current gap in pricing information research in health care and proposes future research avenues to academia and industry professionals.

A bibliometric method was adopted to analyze extant literature on pricing information asymmetry. Semistructured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in health care to triangulate the findings.

Pricing information is crucial for all stakeholders including health-care consumers, providers and regulators. The popular research areas were the rising health-care cost, cost-saving, outcome-based pricing, price based on service supply and demand, insurance and out-of-pocket spending. Cost–quality perceived linkages, cost–demand correlation in health-care service and cost–price interlinked drivers were the dominant themes in extant literature. The study highlighted that pricing information asymmetry pushed patients from weaker sections into a debt trap due to unplanned out-of-pocket health-care expenses. The study suggests areas of research to minimize this pricing information asymmetry.

The emerging themes in health pricing asymmetry will help key stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and take remedial actions in the health-care domain.

This study is a pioneering effort to summarize extant literature published in the health-care information pricing domain and analyze it from a bibliometric perspective. The study also triangulates the finding with primary data from key stakeholders and highlights emerging research areas.

This paper aims to examine the effects of managerial ability (MA) on the likelihood and the timeliness of goodwill impairment and explore whether the desirable effect of MA vary with the degree of agency problems.

The authors propose a unified framework to simultaneously examine the effects of MA on the likelihood and the timeliness of goodwill impairment by incorporating a market-based impairment indicator (denoted as BTM), MA and the interaction of BTM with MA to this study’s regression model to account for the likelihood of goodwill impairment. BTM addresses the timeliness of goodwill impairment.

This study finds that firms with higher MA have lower likelihood of goodwill impairment, and such firms are more likely to recognize goodwill impairment in a timely manner when the underlying value of goodwill is economically impaired. This desirable effect of MA is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprise (SOEs) and firms without chief executive officer (CEO) duality.

Firms can reduce the losses arising from goodwill impairment by enhancing the ability of their management teams combined with improved corporate governance structure.

This paper provides novel insights on understanding the role of MA in not only reducing the likelihood but also enhancing the timeliness of goodwill impairment. The findings help advance the upper echelons theory by uncovering the heterogenous effects of executives with different levels of ability.

To evaluate the level of digital innovation in the smart home industry.

By employing bibliometric analysis and grounded theory, this study aims to assess the innovation capabilities of leading manufacturing enterprises and establish a digital innovation evaluation system for smart homes.

Scientific arguments show that the cultivation of innovation capability should focus on three aspects of knowledge innovation, product innovation and technological innovation. Utilizing the four first-level indicators and 15 second-level indicators derived from the previous sections, we conducted TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency) words frequency matching on the annual reports of A-share smart home listed companies. The resulting score for the company across these four primary indicators was then considered as the score for the digital innovation level indicator.

The evaluation system includes first-level indicators such as technological innovation, production innovation, management innovation and sales innovation and second-level indicators such as digital technology, intelligent manufacturing, industrial Internet, green intelligent manufacturing, flexible robot production and cross-border integration, which provides smart home enterprises with a reference to understand the level of digital innovation, improve the deficiencies and promote the development of the smart home industry.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the distributional characteristics and evolutional patterns in source periodicals, topics, authors, funding, and institutes of research papers in Chinese Agricultural Economics so as to understand the current situations and developmental tendency of Chinese agricultural economics research over the past decade.

Using the citation analysis method, this paper analyzed the distributional characteristics and evolution of source periodicals, fields, authors and topics of 2,203 highly cited journal papers from the database of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and 189 cited journal papers from database of Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) in agricultural economics first-authored by Chinese scholars from 2006 to 2015.

First, over the past decade, agricultural economics research in China has seen a rapid development. Specially, 103 scholars and 42 institutes have played key roles in the development, and 12 Chinese periodicals and 3 international journals have been the most influential outlets. Second, the coverage of the topics in Chinese agricultural economics research is broad and has expanded over the past decade. The rural land issue has been the most popular topic, while the issues regarding rural institutional arrangements and industrialization in rural areas have been explored extensively. However, issues in other fields, such as agricultural markets and trade, rural labor, food safety, etc. have to be further studied. Third, the improvements of economic theory and quantitative analytic techniques, the supports from research funding, and an increase in the collaboration between Chinese scholars and those from other countries have made great contribution to the rapid development of Chinese agricultural economics research over the past decade.

This paper is an original work that identifies the most influential journal papers including highly cited journal papers from CNKI and cited journal papers from SSCI, using citation frequency and standard Essential Science Indicators method. This is a contribution relative to the methods used by previous studies, which did not account for frequency of citation of a paper. Moreover, this study is based on data from two databases, CNKI and SSCI, suggesting that the coverage of sample papers is broader compared to those of previous studies.