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Modern construction projects are increasingly complex and rely heavily on multi-discipline collaboration, and this leads to a more and more decentralized project-based structure widely adopted in the construction industry. While job satisfaction (JS) and job performance (JP) have been heavily studied previously, few considered the impact of organizational structure and none investigated the relationship between the organizational decentralization degree with JS and JP. This research aims to fill this research gap and investigate the impacts of organizational decentralization degree on JS and JP and facilitate a better project management practice for large-scale construction projects.

This research firstly establishes four hypotheses based on the literature review on general project-based organizations, then the hypotheses are tested by a survey covering 25 large complex construction projects in China. A hierarchical linear model analysis was carried out to analyze the survey data and to study the relationships between organizational decentralization degree, job satisfaction and job performance.

Analysis results show that projects' employees' JS and JP are positively correlated with the construction project organizations' decentralization degree, respectively. The decentralization degree has a higher impact on JS than on JP. Employees' JP is positively correlated with their JS, and a higher decentralization degree leads to a more significant positive impact that JS puts on JP.

The findings are new evidence of how construction organization structure and its decentralization degree can affect project employees' JS and JP. This research provides valuable guidance for the industry's management practice and is particularly important for large, complex and highly decentralized construction projects.

An inter-story isolation structure (IIS) for AP1000 nuclear power plants (NPPs) is provided to resolve the conflict of seismic safety and the optimal location of air intakes.

The effect of passive cooling system (PCS) is better with lower altitude of air intakes than that in the original design of AP1000 NPPs. Seismic performances of IIS NPPs, including the seismic responses, damping frequency bandwidth and seismic reduction robustness, are improved by combining the position of air intakes lower and the optimal design method.

Theoretical analysis and numerical simulation are illustrated that the seismic reduction failure of IIS NPPs is the lowest probability of occurrence when PCS has highest working efficiency.

The IIS NPPs can transfer the contradiction between PCS work efficiency and seismic safety of NPPs to the mutual promotion of them.

This paper takes the Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect as a quasi-natural experiment and investigates the impact of capital market liberalization on the corporate debt maturity structure. It also aims to provide some policy implications for corporate debt financing and further liberalization of the capital market in China.

Employing the exogenous event of Shanghai-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect and using the data of Chinese A-share firms from 2010 to 2020, this study constructs a difference-in-differences model to examine the relationship between capital market liberalization and corporate debt maturity structure. To validate the results, this study performed several robustness tests, including the parallel test, the placebo test, the Heckman two-stage regression and the propensity score matching.

This paper finds that capital market liberalization has significantly increased the proportion of long-term debt of target firms. Further analyses suggest that the impact of capital market liberalization on the debt maturity structure is more pronounced for firms with lower management ownership and non-Big 4 audit. Channel tests show that capital market liberalization improves firms’ information environment and curbs self-interested management behavior.

This research provides empirical evidence for the consequences of capital market liberalization and enriches the literature on the determinants of corporate debt maturity structure. Further this study makes a reference for regulators and financial institutions to improve corporate financing through the governance role of capital market liberalization.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the recent recession affected Iowa's gaming industry by analyzing gaming volumes before and through the recession.

This study used autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) with intervention analysis to examine Iowa statewide aggregated monthly slot coin-in, table drop, and admission from December 2001 through June 2012.

The results of analyses show that: slot coin-in was not affected by the recession; table drop was slightly affected, but started to recover in late 2010; and monthly admission was not affected by the recession, and showed a significant increase after the recession. The results also indicate that the decrease in table drop in Iowa casinos represented only a very small amount of state gaming revenue in 2008. Therefore, the findings of this study suggest that Iowa's gaming volume was not significantly affected by the recent recession. In other words, Iowa's gaming industry is still recession-proof.

Current economic conditions suggest that the threat of a double-dip recession is quite real. The findings of this study are expected to help casino managers in Iowa understand how non-destination casinos behaved differently through the recession and strategically plan for a possible future economic downturn. In fact, the significant increase of monthly admission during the last recession implies that the Iowa gaming industry has actually benefited from the recession by accommodating more patrons. Therefore, to capitalize on the next recession, Iowa's casino operators should consider reducing the number of table games and increasing the number of slot machines to accommodate more slot players and reduce operating costs.

Most existing gaming-related research focuses on gaming destinations such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City. No known study on gaming volume in non-destination gaming markets has been identified. By examining Iowa's gaming volume through the recession, this study provides initial empirical evidence of the impact of recession on non-destination gaming markets.

This study aims to attempt to examine whether the increase in hotel room capacity in the USA had a significant impact on nationwide aggregated weekly revenue per available room (RevPAR) during the recession of 2007-2009 and forecast average RevPAR, Occupancy and Average Daily Rate (ADR) for 2013 and 2014.

Using Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average with Intervention analysis technique, this study examined the significance of the fluctuations in weekly RevPAR, room capacity and market demand through the recent recession and forecasted hotel performance for 2013 and 2014.

The results of time series analysis suggest that the fast growth of room capacity during the recession was one of the main causes of the decrease in RevPAR. The 9,878 more than expected increase in average weekly number of rooms probably caused at least $0.10 more than expected decrease in average weekly RevPAR. The findings of this study also suggest that the US lodging industry has been facing more severe oversupply since the recession and fully rebound of RevPAR cannot be expected in the very near future.

The findings of this study will help stakeholders make more informed decisions to cope with possible future economic downturns. By quantifying the capacity increase and forecasting future market demand, this study provides hotel investors with empirical evidence on the overdevelopment and insights into expected overall hotel performance in next two years. This study has also discussed the cyclical patterns of hotel development during the past two recessions.

By identifying overdevelopment as one of the main causes of RevPAR decrease during the recession, this study contributes to the literature by adding an alternative explanation of RevPAR fluctuations and deepens the understanding of the adverse effects overdevelopment has on the lodging industry. The findings of this study will help hotel investors develop more informed future expansion plans.

Study on the internal legalization process of strategic change for a large number of ultra-large enterprises in China.

This paper takes formulation process of Suning Appliance Group’s 10-year strategy (2010–2020) as the research case, designs the research issues, propositions and analysis unit of the case study, and uses the data collection and analysis methods in the grounded theory to realize the theoretical development from data to viewpoint conceptualizing and to proposition categorizing.

There are four key concepts that affect the judgment of overall strategic legitimacy of super-large enterprises: Emerging-market opportunities and strategic operational positioning, legitimacy perspective mainly manifests as legitimacy judgment of strategic direction within organization. Positioning of core resources (including intangible resources) and their value identification methods or value evaluation criteria, the legitimacy perspective is mainly reflected in the organization's internal legitimacy judgment of functional planning, especially implementation path. The impact factors of the key performance of each SBU are positioned, and the legitimacy perspective is mainly reflected in the organization’s internal judgment on the legitimacy of strategic supporting measures, especially the resources needed for the implementation of the strategy and capacity development. The periodical strategic objectives and performance measurement indicators of each SBU are mainly reflected in the organization’s internal legitimacy judgment on strategic alignment and specific action plans for strategic operational units. The legitimacy of these four key concepts is strongly influenced by the rationality of these strategic concepts, which are closely related to their shaping patterns driven by right-brain and left-brain thinking modes.

This case is a longitudinal study of the strategic decision-making process, not a longitudinal follow-up of the actual implementation of the strategy. In addition, given that the case enterprise was facing the emerging market at that time and focused on pushing firms to seize opportunities, not much research has been done on the impact of external legitimacy on the strategic formulation process, a variable that is increasingly being focused on today.

This model has guidance significance and practical demonstration role for a large number of enterprises that are implementing the “+Internet” strategic change under traditional offline operation.

According to the summary of the connection between data and propositions in several rounds, this paper constructs a theoretical model of left and right brain thinking mode driving key concepts to achieve the internal legalization process of strategic changes.

In the analysis process, the legalization theory and the sense-making method are introduced into enterprises’ strategy making process. Based on this analysis framework, this paper analyzes in detail that the top decision-making level and the middle and high executive level form key strategic concepts to promote the internal legalization process of strategic decision-making driven by the right-brain intuitive thinking mode and the left-brain rational thinking mode, which greatly improves the quality of strategy formulation and the operability of strategy implementation.

The purpose of this study was to create a more balanced, comprehensive and valid illustration of the relationships between casino gaming volume and employment during economic downturns in urban and rural locations in nondestination gaming states.

This study analyzes gaming volumes and employment prior, during and after the recession of 2007–2009, using a time series with intervention analysis on a monthly coin in, table drop and regression analysis on employment impacts of casinos.

Findings indicate that while there was a slight drop in gaming revenue and employment figures during the economic downturn, nondestination gaming locations such as Indiana proved relatively resilient to an economic downturn.

The Great Recession had no significant impact on gaming volume because gamblers chose to spend their more limited entertainment dollars on less expensive gaming options; in other words, casinos closer to home requiring the expenditure of fewer dollars on travel and/or hotel rooms. The current pandemic and pressures of the macro-environment again threaten the US gaming and casino market with an economic downturn and the results of this study are as timely as ever for hospitality professionals and social scientists to understand the behavior of casinos in recessionary environments.

Environmental emissions are increasing in the urban areas. Much of the emissions arise from public procurement activities given that public sector firms are major customers to many supplying firms. Given the tremendous contribution, this study aims to examine the adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices among public sector firms through assessing the impact of urban environmental governance, government environmental communication and organizational environmental governance.

Data for the study were collected in a single time period from central procuring and disposing entities (public sector firms) in the urban areas. A sample of 105 public sector firms in were used. One procurement officer and one member of the contracts committee were the key informants in the study. AMOS SPSS version 26 was used to obtain the results for the structural model and measurement model, respectively.

The findings indicate that the adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices among public sector firms is significantly influenced by government environmental communication, organizational environmental governance and urban environmental governance. Urban environmental governance significantly influences organizational environmental governance. Urban environmental governance fully mediates the relationship between government environmental communication and public sector firms’ adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices. Also, urban environmental governance and organizational environmental governance mediate the relationship between government environmental communication and adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices.

This study examined the adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices among public sector firms. However, the study was conducted in a public procurement setting rather than a private sector procurement setting. Also, the study examined the impact of government environmental communication on public sector firms’ adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices ignoring the impact of internal communications made within the public sector firms on environmental issues.

This study examined the adoption of environmentally friendly urban freight logistics practices among public sector firms. Freight logistics in public sector procurement has not been given significant attention in earlier research. Emphasis is placed on sustainable public sector procurement ignoring other aspects that would help curb environmental emissions that may arise during and after the delivery of public procurement requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the use of Chinese medicine in the prevention and treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China and Asia.

This paper provides a brief overview of the COVID-19. Based on the syndrome differentiation (辨證論治), the concept of clearing heat and detoxifying lung in traditional Chinese medicine is used to prevent and treat COVID-19 through restoring the vital qi (正氣) in human body and regulating the lung as well as spleen to strengthen the immune system. Traditional Chinese medicine has been used as a complementary therapy for the possible intervention of COVID-19 including traditional Chinese herbal decoctions, Chinese traditional patent medicines, acupuncture and moxibustion as well as the traditional health exercises in China and parts of Asia.

Traditional Chinese medicine plays a significant role in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 pandemic. The infection cases of China are around 80,000 and a steady decline compared with the USA which has 5,000,000 infection cases and continuous increases. It is shown that more than 90% of patients recovered after the treatment of traditional Chinese herbal decoctions and Chinese traditional patent medicines without any side-effect compared to the use of Remdesivir (GS-5734). Acupuncture (針灸) and moxibustion (艾灸) stimulate the immune and nervous systems for preventing infectious diseases. Taichi (太極) and Baduanjin (八段錦) as the auxiliary aerobic exercise under the theory of Chinese medicine can enhance the immune system and improve the lung function. Thus, an integration of traditional Chinese Medicine and Western medicine is the best strategy for the prevention, treatment and control of COVID-19 pandemic in the future.

This paper describes traditional Chinese medicine as an effective way for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.