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Understanding employees’ multi-dimensional motivations is at the core of realizing the potential of a well-designed human resource (HR) system. This study aims to investigate whether the effects of HR practices on employee motivations, and their performance would be dependent on the service orientation of HR department.

The authors collected data in two surveys: a pilot survey and a main survey with a two-wave design. The pilot survey with 93 respondents was to verify the newly developed HR service orientation scale. In the main survey, a total of 276 supervisor-subordinate pairs from 48 companies were valid for analysis.

The authors find support for their hypothesis that promotion-oriented motivation mediates the relationship between discretionary HR practices and employee outcomes [in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB)]. Furthermore, the indirect effect of discretionary HR practices on employee outcomes is stronger when the HR service orientation is higher. Transactional HR practices, however, are not evidenced to relate to employee prevention-focused motivation and outcomes.

The findings illustrate a comprehensive process of HR practices on employees’ multi-dimensional motivations. High service skills of HR professionals in handling internal employees’ needs could amplify employees’ promotion-focused motives, which in turn increase their in-role performance and OCB.

In sum, the authors' study contributes to both human resource management (HRM) and employee motivation literature by demonstrating the different impacts of discretionary and transactional HR practices on employees’ motivations. In addition, by revealing HR service orientation as an important contingency factor, the authors shed greater light on when and how HR practices can motivate employees.

Differential settlement between foundations’ elements induces additional stresses in the structural elements. In general, the amount of settlement that a structure can undergo without distress is large, provided that the structure settles uniformly. However, based on the fact that the soil under the foundation may not be uniform in nature and the loads transferred from the superstructure to the foundation are variable, differential settlements between the foundation elements are expected. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the stresses induced in a typical ten-storey reinforced concrete building subjected to excessive differential settlement.

In this investigation, excessive differential settlement up to 75 mm is assigned to the center column on the ground floor that represents the most critical case. A three-dimensional finite element model is developed to perform structural analysis using the software SAP2000, and the nonlinear static pushover analysis is performed.

The results of this study show that the building behaves elastically up to 25 mm of differential settlement between its foundation elements, which agrees well with the recommendation given in design manuals. Beyond this value, significant inelastic response is observed in the lower floors and decreases gradually in the higher floors and accordingly, some members have consumed the factor of safety and are in the verge of failure.

Based on the results of this study, recommendations are made for better communication between the structure and the geotechnical engineers to either limit the differential settlements or incorporate these additional stresses during the design stage of the building. Furthermore, the results of the study can be used to recommend to building codes or design manuals to add a load component due to the anticipated differential settlements of the foundation.

Because of increasing wealth inequality, China has been confronted with resentment against the rich (referred to hereafter as RAR or Choufu in Chinese), which is a growing concern owing to its potential to foment social conflict. Drawing on social comparison and deonance theories, this paper aims to provide theoretical insights into RAR within the Chinese context and to develop an RAR scale. Following spillover theory, the attitudinal and behavioral outcomes of RAR in organizational settings will be explored.

This research consists of two studies. Study 1 conceptualizes RAR and develops an RAR scale by using three separate samples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses are conducted to establish scale reliability and validity. Study 2 uses hierarchical linear regression analysis to test whether employees’ RAR attitude spills over from the societal to the organizational setting.

Results suggest that RAR can be conceptualized as two distinct but related dimensions – emotional RAR and moral RAR. These two forms spill over to the workplace, influencing employees’ work attitudes and behaviors. Emotional RAR relates negatively to life satisfaction and prosocial organizational behaviors and positively to unethical organizational behaviors. Moral RAR relates negatively to pay satisfaction and positively to prosocial behaviors.

This research suggests that RAR has spillover effects from societal to organizational settings and demonstrates that a more robust understanding of employees’ workplace experience requires acknowledging social experiences, such as conflicts beyond the workplace.

This research contributes to the conflict management literature by exploring RAR as a negative attitude that serves to potentially ignite social conflict. It not only develops a theory-grounded, conceptual RAR model and a reliable RAR scale but also for the first time explores RAR attitudinal and behavioral outcomes beyond the social domain. This study serves as a meaningful touchstone for future research to incorporate social attitudes into organizational behavior research.

This study has two purposes. The first is to identify the determinants influencing the selection of a container number recognition system via a quantitative method to thereby establish an evaluation structure. The second purpose is to conduct an empirical study to determine the weights of the criteria and alternatives.

The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) were applied to determine the evaluation structure and weights of the criteria and alternatives, respectively.

An empirical study based on a dedicated terminal at Keelung Port is conducted. The result demonstrates that the radio-frequency identification (RFID) system is a suitable system for the terminal under consideration in this study.

The value of this study is twofold. First, EFA was applied to extract common factors from a wide questionnaire survey, thereby establishing a hierarchical analysis structure. This method and comprehensive evaluation structure are useful references for both practitioners and researchers to deal with problems of gate automation. Second, fuzzy AHP was used to decide the weights of the hierarchical structure. The weights obtained by this method are more objective and rational as the imprecision expressions in returned samples have been considered and dealt with.

Relativism, at least in some of its forms, is antithetical to sociology as traditionally practiced and conceived. (See, for instance, Benton and Crabb, 2001, pp.50‐74 and 93‐1006; Collins 1996a; Mann, 1998; Murphy, 1997; and Taylor‐Gooby, 1994). Hence, sociologists should consider abandoning traditional sociology or rejecting relativism. An example of the sort of relativism I have in mind is the philosophical theory that the truth and falsity of propositions is relative to the social context of their promulgation. Such epistemological relativism is expressed by Newton‐Smith when he says: “The central relativist idea is that what is true for one tribe, social group or age might not be true for an other tribe, social group or age” (Newton‐Smith, 1982, p.107).

The purpose of this paper was to develop a new interactive guiding system allowing people to use their own smart mobile devices, such as smart phones or tablet PCs, to activate the guiding services at the art gallery. The system provided interactions between visitors and exhibit items. It focused on the highly interactive functions between visitors and artworks authors as well as among visitors at both exhibition sites and social network sites (SNSs).

The system used quick response (QR) codes as the context aware elements, Facebook as the platform of SNSs, and smart mobile devices as the human-machine interfaces. Visitors carrying their own smart phones or tablet PCs can activate the guiding services by scanning the QR codes of the interested exhibit items. A system usability scale (SUS) survey was conducted to understand the visitors' perceptions on system usability. A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect the visitors' and authors' attitudes on releasing messages through Facebook.

The system was implemented at an art centre where lacquer artworks were on display. The SUS survey showed that 94 per cent of the participated visitors have satisfactorily rated this new guiding system, indicating rather high usability of the system. Most participated visitors agreed on Facebook as an ideal channel to release messages and they would pay more attention to the highly-recommended exhibit items. All the artworks authors consented to this new guiding system with potential power to disseminate their works over the cyberspace.

This new system possesses some important features in blending real world and cyberspace activities. Visitors at exhibit sites can become more informed and captivated because the interactive guiding system enables them to share knowledge and commentary opinions with others who were, are or will be at the same exhibition. It also allows people to share with their cyberspace friends who may have no times or opportunities to visit the exhibition. Most importantly, the new system may immensely expand the number of potential visitors in ways to make the authors and their artworks rapidly recognized.

The ability for learners to interact online via their avatars in a 3-D simulation space means that virtual worlds afford a host of educational opportunities not offered by other learning technology platforms, but their use also raises several pertinent issues that warrant consideration. This chapter reviews the educational use of virtual worlds from a design perspective. Virtual-world definitions are explored, along with their key educational characteristics. Different virtual-world environments are briefly contrasted, including Second Life, Active Worlds, Open Sim, and Minecraft. A wide variety of virtual-world uses in schools and universities are examined so as to understand their versatility. Key educational benefits of virtual worlds are distilled from the literature, such as the ability to facilitate 3-D simulations, role-plays, construction tasks, and immersive learning. Emergent issues surrounding the use of virtual worlds are also analyzed, including cognitive load, safety, and representational fidelity. One higher education and one school level vignette are provided in order to offer more detailed insight into the use of virtual worlds in practice. Recommendations for learning design and implementation are presented, based on the thematic analysis of contemporary virtual-worlds research.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a benchmarking framework to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the hotel industry, in a multi‐period context, with consideration of perishable traits and carry‐over activities. The sustained high performers in the case study are identified and their business strategies are discussed.

The dynamic DEA (data envelopment analysis) approach is used to identify the multi‐period sustained high performers. The super‐efficiency DEA approach is employed to conduct a thorough ranking under an input‐output‐consumption structure. The supplementary analysis is further implemented to help elucidate the benchmarking results.

In total, nine out of 80 international tourist hotels in Taiwan during 2006‐2010 are identified as the sustained high performers. These hotels have diverged business strategies in terms of employees (intensive versus economical labor forces), products (room versus F&B (food and beverage) services), prices (extremely expensive versus very inexpensive room rates), guests (business versus tourism guests), and others (e.g. location advantages).

This study contributes to benchmarking literature and to hotel industry in several aspects. Compared with conventional single‐period benchmarking in efficiency aspect only, the proposed multi‐period benchmarking framework under input‐production‐consumption structure can take into account the carry‐over activities, account for perishable traits, provide more robust results, and add more useful information to facilitate the hotel managers to ameliorate the efficiency and effectiveness. The proposed framework should be readily applied to other service industries (e.g. transport).

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the accuracy of linear and quasi-steady aerodynamic models of aircraft aerodynamic models when a small unmanned aerial system flies in the presence of strong wind and gust at a high angle of attack and a high sideslip angle.

Compatibility analysis were done to improve the quality of recorded flight test data. A robust method called fuzzy logic modeling is used to set up the aerodynamic models. The reduced frequency is used to represent the unsteadiness of the flow field according to Theodorsen’s theory. The work done by the aerodynamic moments on the motions is used as the criteria of stability.

In portions of flight, aircraft’s stability and control derivatives were unstable and nonlinear functions of airflow angles and angular rates. The roll angle had an important effect on unsteadiness of directional oscillatory damping derivatives. The pilot-induced oscillation and wing rock possibilities were investigated and dismissed so that the lateral directional oscillatory motion was classified as a nonlinear Dutch roll oscillation. Major modeling enhancements or real-time parameter identification are required for the control of a small unmanned aerial system in off-nominal conditions. The robustness tests of all-weather autopilot systems must be done with consideration of sign change.

Oscillatory damping derivatives were reconstructed using flight test data and the inadequacy of engineering level software in predicting this type of instability observed and demonstrated for a flight in the presence of wind shear and external disturbances.

The purpose of this paper is to reduce the crop losses at two ends and both sides of a plate in the rolling process, to produce a rectangular plan view pattern plate and to enhance the total product yield of the plates.

Based on sample data and the unchangeable principle of the slab volume in the rolling process, the predictive MAS control models were set‐up. They are width broad MAS predictive model, width broad MAS control model, gaugemeter automatic gauge control (GM‐AGC) model, and plates tracking model. After the models were tuned, the rolling test was implemented at LinFen Iron & Steel Co., Ltd.

It is found that by accurately predictive online modeling of MAS methods, the plan view pattern control can be applied in plate mills.

As the rolling process is in high temperature, the plan view pattern is difficult to be detected. Normally, the real‐time abnormity distortion cannot be obtained.

The test results showed that the crop losses are reduced and the product yield is greatly increased.

This paper presents an accurately predictive online modeling of MAS method.