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Three types of industrial buyer-seller relational process models are available: joining theory, stage theory, and state theory. However, historically, these models have developed based on the knowledge and cultural context of the Western world. Several researchers note that national culture may have an impact on international industrial buyer-seller relationships. Including culture in the models is highly important, especially as the business environment is increasingly more global and different countries have different business cultures. The goal of this paper is to define the most suitable industrial buyer-seller relational process models for describing relationships in various contexts. The paper includes a through literature review and a single case study in order to reach this objective. A new state theory model evolved during the research. It consists of two beginning states: searching and starting; four purely middles states: constant/static, decline, growth, and troubled; and a purely end state: termination. The state of dormant/inert is both a middle state and an end state, that is, when the relational actors are not in contact does not mean that the relationship has ended, but instead, for example, new legislation may have been implemented, which requires the actors to evaluate their relationship and its future. A relationship goes through the two beginning states in the order mentioned above, but after that, any state may occur.

This article reviews and discusses issues in the translation of international brand names to Chinese, and provides a framework for international brand managers who want to expand into China. Linguistic differences between Chinese and English are wide and deep, making translation of brand names difficult. Cultural context, pronunciation, written vs. oral language, and the meaning of characters are just a few examples of such difficulties. We discuss four global product‐naming strategic alternatives available to country/brand managers, along with their usage. The four approaches include (1) dual extension, (2) brand meaning extension, (3) brand feeling extension, and (4) dual adaptation. We also provide examples of brands utilizing the different approaches.

This paper reviews the strategic responses of successful local Chinese banks (LCBs) in the changeable Hong Kong banking sector over the past decades. Given the mixed outlook of the industry resulting from the handover of sovereignty, financial internationalization, and regional and domestic economic developments, this paper also discusses the benefits of using strategic alliance as a means for LCBs to meet current and future challenges. Based on case reviews, the paper demonstrates the values of strategic management concepts for small banks to cope with an externally oriented and politically uncertain operating environment.

The purpose of this paper is to study the evolution and growth of aerosol particles in a turbulent planar jet by using the newly developed large eddy simulation (LES)-differentially weighted operator splitting Monte Carlo (DWOSMC) method.

The DWOSMC method is coupled with LES for the numerical simulation of aerosol dynamics in turbulent flows.

Firstly, the newly developed and coupled LES-DWOSMC method is verified by the results obtained from a direct numerical simulation-sectional method (DNS-SM) for coagulation occurring in a turbulent planar jet from available literature. Then, the effects of jet temperature and Reynolds number on the evolution of time-averaged mean particle diameter, normalized particle number concentration and particle size distributions (PSDs) are studied numerically on both coagulation and condensation processes. The jet temperature and Reynolds number are shown to be two important parameters that can be used to control the evolution and pattern of PSD in an aerosol reactor.

The coupling between the Monte Carlo method and turbulent flow still encounters many technical difficulties. In addition, the relationship between turbulence, particle properties and collision kernels of aerosol dynamics is not yet well understood due to the theoretical limitations and experimental difficulties. In the present study, the developed and coupled LES-DWOSMC method is capable of solving the aerosol dynamics in turbulent flows.

Looks at attitudes of Chinese adolescents to materialism, including the effect of age on materialism and the influence of family and peers. Outlines the values of Chinese culture: thrift, respect for parents, group orientation, social harmony, good manners, face, and academic achievement; these values could impact both positively and negatively on endorsement of materialistic values. Points out that parental expectations of their children’s material success have increased since the one child per family policy. Finds that older adolescents were more materialistic than younger ones, that more materialistic adolescents tended to communicate more with their peers and less with their parents, and that television (which now reaches 92 per cent of households) has no effect because the Chinese government’s strict rules about TV programmes’ content requires them to reflect traditional values.

Manpower is the most valuable asset in the construction industry. Based on an examination of literature, selected key data sources, and views from 29 key informants, this paper addresses the important labour resource context related to the construction industry in the case of Hong Kong. These include the trends of the critical indicators of the labour market in construction and the implications of the changing markets and technology on the future pattern of skill requirements, and the government policies on construction personnel. The findings are of immense importance to anyone involved in the construction industry, particularly training organizations and policy makers in their mission to maintain a skilled, competitive and adequate workforce able to meet the future demands of the industry. The changing labour market trends and skill requirements pose challenges for construction personnel in terms of upgrading their skills. Further research is recommended to construct robust models predicting the occupational trends in labour resources for effective manpower planning and to establish a labour market information system which could lead to capturing periodic labour market signals with a view to assisting the process of policy making on various human resource development aspects of construction workforce in Hong Kong.

This paper aims to build a novel model and approach that assist an aircraft MRO procurement and overhaul management problems from the perspective of aircraft maintenance service provider, in order to ensure its smoothness maintenance activities implementation. The mathematical model utilizes the data related to warehouse inventory management, incoming customer service planning as well as risk forecast and control management at the decision-making stage, which facilitates to alleviate the negative impact of the uncertain maintenance demands on the MRO spare parts inventory management operations.

A stochastic model is proposed to formulate the problem to minimize the impact of uncertain maintenance demands, which provides flexible procurement and overhaul strategies. A Benders decomposition algorithm is proposed to solve large-scale problem instances given the structure of the mathematical model.

Compared with the default branch-and-bound algorithm, the computational results suggest that the proposed Benders decomposition algorithm increases convergence speed.

The results among the same group of problem instances suggest the robustness of Benders decomposition in tackling instances with different number of stochastic scenarios involved.

Extending the proposed model and algorithm to a decision support system is possible, which utilizes the databases from enterprise's service planning and management information systems.

A novel decision-making model for the integrated rotable and expendable MRO spare parts planning problem under uncertain environment is developed, which is formulated as a two-stage stochastic programming model.

The purpose of this paper is to study the complex aerosol dynamic processes by using this newly developed stochastically weighted operator splitting Monte Carlo (SWOSMC) method.

Stochastically weighted particle method and operator splitting method are coupled to formulate the SWOSMC method for the numerical simulation of particle-fluid systems undergoing the complex simultaneous processes.

This SWOSMC method is first validated by comparing its numerical simulation results of constant rate coagulation and linear rate condensation with the corresponding analytical solutions. Coagulation and nucleation cases are further studied whose results are compared with the sectional method in excellent agreement. This SWOSMC method has also demonstrated its high numerical simulation capability when used to deal with simultaneous aerosol dynamic processes including coagulation, nucleation and condensation.

There always exists conflict and tradeoffs between computational cost and accuracy for Monte Carlo-based methods for the numerical simulation of aerosol dynamics. The operator splitting method has been widely used in solving complex partial differential equations, while the stochastic-weighted particle method has been commonly used in numerical simulation of aerosol dynamics. However, the integration of these two methods has not been well investigated.

The Mass Transit Railway Corporation Ltd (MTR) of Hong Kong implemented a total management system (TMS) in its operations engineering department in 1998. In view of the many benefits brought about by TMS upon its implementation, the system has extended to cover the railway operations since 1999. Comparing performance before and after the implementation of TMS, almost all balanced scorecard indicators have shown improvement well beyond the target levels. This paper highlights the performance differences before and after the implementation of the TMS.