Fatao Wang, Di Wu, Hongxin Yu, Huaxia Shen and Yuanjun Zhao
Based on the typical service supply chain (SSC) structure, the authors construct the model of e-tailing SSC to explore the coordination relationship in the supply chain, and big…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the typical service supply chain (SSC) structure, the authors construct the model of e-tailing SSC to explore the coordination relationship in the supply chain, and big data analysis provides realistic possibilities for the creation of coordination mechanisms.
Design/methodology/approach
At the present stage, the e-commerce companies have not yet established a mature SSC system and have not achieved good synergy with other members of the supply chain, the shortage of goods and the greater pressure of express logistics companies coexist. In the case of uncertain online shopping market demand, the authors employ newsboy model, applied in the operations research, to analyze the synergistic mechanism of SSC model.
Findings
By analyzing the e-tailing SSC coordination mechanism and adjusting relevant parameters, the authors find that the synergy mechanism can be implemented and optimized. Through numerical example analysis, the authors confirmed the feasibility of the above analysis.
Originality/value
Big data analysis provides a kind of reality for the establishment of online SSC coordination mechanism. The establishment of an online supply chain coordination mechanism can effectively promote the efficient allocation of supplies and better meet consumers' needs.
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Regarding human resource and labour relations management, academia focuses mainly on cities; however, rural areas are an integral part of China's economic structure. This study…
Abstract
Purpose
Regarding human resource and labour relations management, academia focuses mainly on cities; however, rural areas are an integral part of China's economic structure. This study focuses on the movie projection industry in China's rural areas and explores how human resource practices (HRPs) are transformed and the labour process is reconstructed in digital transformation.
Design/methodology/approach
We adopt a case study of a rural movie projection company. The company's HRPs reconstructed the labour process of movie projection, and they have been promoted as national standards. Data were collected from in-depth interviews, files and observations.
Findings
Rural movie projection companies combine high-performance and paternalistic HRPs in the media industry's digital transformation. HRPs and digital technology jointly reconstruct the labour process. First, the HRPs direct labour process practices towards standardisation. Second, the digital supervision platform guides the control style from simple to technical, placing projectionists under pressure while increasing management efficiency. Third, rural movies made using digital technology have disenchanted rural residents. Accordingly, the conventional relationships between the “country and its citizens,” “individuals themselves,” and “models and individuals” have been removed, and a new relationship between “individuals themselves” is formed thanks to the novel HRPs.
Originality/value
This research plays a crucial role in exposing researchers to the labour process of rural movie projection, which is significant in China but often ignored by Western academia and advances the Chinese contextualisation of research on labour relations.
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Lin Wang, Huaxia Gao and Yang Zhao
Contextual cues have become a hot research topic in the field of mobile consumer behavior, owing to the continuous rise of digital marketing. However, the complex online shopping…
Abstract
Purpose
Contextual cues have become a hot research topic in the field of mobile consumer behavior, owing to the continuous rise of digital marketing. However, the complex online shopping scene makes it challenging to directly identify the association between the characteristics of contextual cues and consumer behavior. Presently, few studies have only systematically extracted and refined the types and characteristics of contextual cues. The purpose of this study is to explore the types and mechanisms of contextual cues in online shopping scenarios.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses the word2vec algorithm, grounded theory and co-occurrence cluster method, along with online shopping word-of-mouth (WOM) text and consumer behavior theory, in order to explore different types of contextual cues and its efficiency from 5,619 comment corpus.
Findings
This study puts forward the following conclusions. (1) From the perspective of online shopping, contextual cues comprise aesthetic perception cues, value perception cues, trust-dependent cues, time perception cues, memory attention cues, spatial perception cues, attribute cues and relationship cues. (2) Based on the online shopping scenarios, contextual cues and their interaction effects exert an effect on consumer satisfaction, recommendation, purchase and return behavior.
Originality/value
The study conclusions are helpful to further reveal the deep association between contextual cues and consumer behavior in the process of online shopping, thus providing practical and theoretical enlightenment for enterprises to not only effectively reshape the scene but also promote the consumers' active purchase behavior.
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Much of the criticism directed toward banking in China revolves around self-dealing in relationships between bankers and their clients. Corruption, nepotism, high levels of…
Abstract
Purpose
Much of the criticism directed toward banking in China revolves around self-dealing in relationships between bankers and their clients. Corruption, nepotism, high levels of non-performing loans, and the inefficiency of government-directed lending have all been laid at the door of embedded guanxi networks. While valid to an extent, this criticism ignores two important, related points: guanxi networks bring disciplining mechanisms as well as the potential for corruption, and those mechanisms may improve banking governance.
Methodology/approach
Employing theory from relationship banking, information economics, and the business ethics of guanxi, I examine how monitoring by netizens will lead to greater disclosure.
Findings
Relationship banking in a Chinese context – with the influence of guanxi in banking – further increases reputational costs when self-dealing is uncovered. Costs of bad banking behavior are increasing just as benefits from staying rich increase. Increased disclosure affects chances of staying rich as disclosure increases the chance that a corrupt relationship will lead to loss of wealth and reputation.
Research limitations/implications
This paper presents a theoretical construct informed by selected examples. An empirical analysis of netizen monitoring leading to improved banking governance would provide additional support for the theoretical construct.
Practical implications
Bankers, financiers, and government officials must be aware of monitoring by netizens, which forces more ethical financial contracting.
Social implications
Rather than weakening financial system governance, guanxi may begin to strengthen the disciplinary measures inherent in relationship banking as information disclosure increases and private sector monitoring grows.
Originality/value
This paper provides an extension to private monitoring theory in financial contracting which may be applied to netizen monitoring in other regions and countries.
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Wenping Xu, Wenwen Du and David G. Proverbs
This study aims to determine the key indicators affecting the resilience of the construction supply chain to flooding and calculate the resilience of the urban construction supply…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to determine the key indicators affecting the resilience of the construction supply chain to flooding and calculate the resilience of the urban construction supply chain in three cases city.
Design/methodology/approach
This study combines expert opinions and literature review to determine key indicators and establish a fuzzy EWM-GRA-TOPSIS evaluation model. The index weight was calculated using the entropy weight method, and GRA-TOPSIS was used for comprehensive evaluation.
Findings
The results of the study show that the three cities are ranked from the high to low in order of Hangzhou, Hefei and Zhengzhou.
Originality/value
The innovative method adopted in this study comprising EWM-GRA-TOPSIS reduced the influence of subjectivity, fully extracted and utilized data, in a way that respects objective reality. Further, this approach enabled the absolute and relative level of urban construction supply chain resilience to be identified, allowing improvements in the comprehensiveness of decision-making. The method is relatively simple, reasonable, understandable, and computationally efficient. Within the approach, the entropy weight method was used to assign different index weights, and the GRA-TOPSIS was used to rank the resilience of the construction supply chain in three urban cities. The development of resilience provides a robust decision-making basis and theoretical reference, further enriching research methods, and having strong practical value. The study serves to improve risk awareness and resilience, which in turn helps to reduce losses. It also provides enhanced awareness regarding the future enhancement of supply chain resilience for urban construction.
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Over the past three decade, China has established a housing finance system that borrows from the collective experiences of advanced economies. After examining the evolution of…
Abstract
Over the past three decade, China has established a housing finance system that borrows from the collective experiences of advanced economies. After examining the evolution of China’s housing finance system, the paper focuses on analyzing its challenges and recent changes. The paper argues that China’s highly-centralized financial system prefers financial stability but neglects financial liberalization, and then resulted in severe financial repression, which hurts the efficiency and equality of the housing finance service. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis via high-cost financial intervention, China took some policy innovations to promote a decentralized finance mechanism, expand finance resources, and support affordable housing financing, through which China hopes to provide a more stable, affordable, and equal housing finance service to help more households own homes.
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Wenping Xu, Jinting Cong and David G. Proverbs
The purpose of this study is to undertake an evaluation of the resilient capacity of the infrastructure systems in the city of Wuhan. This evaluation focuses on the ability of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to undertake an evaluation of the resilient capacity of the infrastructure systems in the city of Wuhan. This evaluation focuses on the ability of the infrastructure to cope with extreme weather from multiple dimensions and to propose effective interventions against such risks.
Design/methodology/approach
This research draws on a review and synthesis of the theory of resilience and adopts the literature induction method to build an evaluation index for five urban systems, namely: roads; water supply and drainage; energy and power; urban disaster reduction; and communications. Index data from the period of 1990–2019 are combined with the views of experts from Wuhan and analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA) to calculate the weightings of the five urban systems. A fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is then used to investigate the resilient capacity of these five urban infrastructure systems in the city.
Findings
Generally, the results show that the resilience of the infrastructure systems in Wuhan are at a high level. Based on the results, the communications and roads systems are found to have higher levels of resilience, while the disaster mitigation system is found to have a relatively low level of resilience. Recommendations are suggested to help improve resilience and prioritize investments in the development of the city's infrastructure systems.
Research limitations/implications
The development of these specific indicators and quantitative requirements have not been studied in detail, so a more comprehensive, systematic evaluation of quantitative indicators and methods of urban infrastructure resilience is still required. In addition, the research on the resilience of urban infrastructure under extreme weather is still in its infancy, and it is essential to further increase the quantitative assessment of the resilience of urban infrastructure under construction. This will also be indispensable information in the subsequent implementation of a resilient planning process.
Originality/value
This research builds a rigorous and reliable evaluation model that avoids any subjective bias in the results and represents a new approach to evaluate the resilience of the infrastructure systems in the city of Wuhan, which could be applied to other cities.
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Greg G. Wang, Yichi Zhang, David Lamond and Jie Ke
The purpose of this study is to review the current status of the Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management (JCHRM) in this initial stage and present a number of emerging unique…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to review the current status of the Journal of Chinese Human Resource Management (JCHRM) in this initial stage and present a number of emerging unique Chinese phenomena for scholarly attention in relation to JCHRM entering its fifth year.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a review of JCHRM's status, we further reviewed literature and media reports to identify new research opportunities for indigenous Chinese human resource management (HRM) research.
Findings
JCHRM has demonstrated its strength and uniqueness in contributing to management knowledge production and dissemination in the first four years, thanks to enthusiastic support from the worldwide research community. Moving forward, we identify a number of intriguing indigenous phenomena, including distinctive social political contexts in state-owned enterprises, emerging trends in embracing the Party Branches (dang zhi bu, Fixed graphic 1) by multinational corporations (MNCs) in China and the indigenous Chinese suzhi (Fixed graphic 2) phenomenon, for new opportunities in Chinese HRM research.
Research limitations/implications
The three indigenous phenomena constitute only a few samples. Developing a theoretical understanding of Chinese HRM phenomena has a long way to go. Continued inquiries in this area will not only help build local knowledge on complex organizational dynamics but also enrich the overall management knowledge base.
Originality/value
We review the status of JCHRM in its first four years and bring a sample of intriguing indigenous Chinese phenomena to the attention of the worldwide scholarly community for future research.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the transformations of prosthetic practices in China, as well as the daily experiences and dilemmas arising from the everchanging practices…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the transformations of prosthetic practices in China, as well as the daily experiences and dilemmas arising from the everchanging practices since 1949. On the basis of materials, this paper explores an everyday perspective to review the history of technology.
Design/methodology/approach
Ethnography was collected with the application of participant observations, informal interviews and in-depth interviews during a 13-months study at a rehabilitation center in Chengdu, China. The literature on prosthetic manufacturing was also reviewed for this paper.
Findings
China's prosthetic technology seems to evolve from traditional to modern. However, this progressive narrative – innovation-based timeline (Edgerton, 2006, xi) – has been challenged by daily practices. Due to institutional pressures, prosthetists are in a dilemma of selectively using their knowledge to create one kind of device for all prosthesis users with a certain kind of disability, thereby regulating the physical and social experiences of prosthesis users. Besides, prosthesis users are accustomed to prostheses made with old techniques, and must correct themselves from old experiences to the daily practices recognized by the selected techniques.
Originality/value
This paper provides a cross-cultural case to reexamine Edgerton's criticism of the progressive and orderly innovation-centric technological narrative. More importantly, it reviews the history and practices of China's prosthetics from daily experiences rather than Edgerton's concentration on technology; therefore, it provides an everyday perspective for future research on technological transformations.
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Linhua Sang, Mingchuan Yu, Han Lin, Zixin Zhang and Ruoyu Jin
Embracing big data has been at the forefront of research for project management. Although there is a consensus that the adoption of big data has significantly positive impact on…
Abstract
Purpose
Embracing big data has been at the forefront of research for project management. Although there is a consensus that the adoption of big data has significantly positive impact on project performance, far less is known about how this innovative information technology becomes an effective driver of construction project quality improvement. This study aims to better understand the mechanism and conditions under which big data can effectively improve project quality performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting Chinese construction enterprises as samples, the theoretical framework proposed in this paper is verified by the empirical results of the two-level hierarchical linear model. The moderated mediation analysis is also conducted to test the hypotheses. Finally, the empirical findings are validated by a comparative case study.
Findings
The results show that big data facilitates the development of technology capability, which further produces remarkable quality performance. That is, a project team's technology capability acts as a mediator in the relationship between organizational adaptability of big data and predictive analytics and project quality performance. It is also observed that two types of project team interdependence (goal and task interdependence) positively moderate the mediation effect.
Research limitations/implications
The questionnaire study from China only represents the relationship within a short time interval in the current context. Future studies should apply longitudinal designs to properly test the causality and use multiple data sources to ensure the validity and robustness of the conclusions.
Practical implications
The value of big data in terms of quality improvement could not be determined in a vacuum; it also depends on the internal capability development and elaborate design of project governance.
Originality/value
This study provides an extension of the existing big data studies and fuels the ongoing debate on its actual outcomes in project management. It not only clarifies the direct effect of big data on project quality improvement but also identifies the mechanism and conditions under which the adoption of big data can play an effective role.