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The purpose of this paper is to present an upscale theory of the thermal-mechanical coupling particle simulation for non-isothermal problems in two-dimensional quasi-static system, under which a small length-scale particle model can exactly reproduce the same mechanical and thermal results with that of a large length-scale one.

The objective is achieved by extending the upscale theory of particle simulation for two-dimensional quasi-static problems from an isothermal system to a non-isothermal one.

Five similarity criteria, namely geometric, material (mechanical and thermal) properties, gravity acceleration, (mechanical and thermal) time steps, thermal initial and boundary conditions (Dirichlet/Neumann boundary conditions), under which a small-length-scale particle model can exactly reproduce both the mechanical and thermal behavior with that of a large length-scale model for non-isothermal problems in a two-dimensional quasi-static system are proposed. Furthermore, to test the proposed upscale theory, two typical examples subjected to different thermal boundary conditions are simulated using two particle models of different length scale.

The paper provides some important theoretical guidances to modeling thermal-mechanical coupled problems at both the engineering length scale (i.e. the meter scale) and the geological length scale (i.e. the kilometer scale) using the particle simulation method directly. The related simulation results from two typical examples of significantly different length scales (i.e. a meter scale and a kilometer scale) have demonstrated the usefulness and correctness of the proposed upscale theory for simulating non-isothermal problems in two-dimensional quasi-static system.

After three decades of reform and opening up, China’s economy has experienced huge changes. Against the background of economic globalization, foreign direct investment (FDI) plays an important role in China’s economy. China has become one of the world’s largest FDI inflow countries, which has had an important impact on its economic development. FDI has preferred the industrial sector, which also has serious environmental pollution. This study will consider vertical and horizontal FDI location choice theory and conduct theoretical analysis concerning the FDI location choice within the industrial sectors, as well as empirical analysis to test the distribution of FDI in pollution-intense industries. Furthermore, the “Catalog of Industries for Foreign Investment” is one of China’s important industrial policies to guide foreign investment. Since being implemented in 1995, it has made five adjustments. The analysis of the distribution of FDI in the polluting industries and the impact of the change process will provide advice instructive for the government to amend the catalog.

How do entrepreneurs use simple rules to build their business models? Based on an inductive study of three Chinese Internet and technology firms, the authors find that business models emerge from simple rules that entrepreneurs learn from their experience. Simple rules also guide entrepreneurs to actualize and exploit opportunities in the marketplace, and they can help business models evolve through market feedback, especially in internationalization. This paper aims to delve into the black box of entrepreneurial decision-making and offer a better depiction of the business model development process in uncertain and fast-changing environments and thus provide guidance for future entrepreneurs.

Following the case method (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2003), the authors first present a thick description of characteristics of three companies and the dynamics of their business models. They then code these descriptions into first-order measures. Finally, they aggregate these measures into abstract constructs. They constantly compare the theoretical constructs and the emerging theory with the existing literature on business models.

The authors generate three key insights from the findings: business models emerge from simple rules learned from entrepreneurs’ experience, simple rules help entrepreneurs exploit and actualize opportunities in the marketplace and simple rules help businesses expand and evolve business models through market feedback, especially in internationalization.

This paper falls into the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship – an emerging new field of strategic entrepreneurship – and is concerned with how businesses create and sustain a competitive advantage while simultaneously identifying and exploiting new opportunities. The authors bring people – the individual decision-makers for businesses – back in strategy research and depict a more realistic picture of the behavior of successful entrepreneurs and their business model development process.

Despite the recent extending research on knowledge hiding, there is still scant research on social stressor phenomena-related contextual antecedent factors and new cognitive mechanisms of knowledge hiding behaviors. To shed new light on this unexplored gap, this research explores the multi-level moderated mediation model that examines how and when negative gossip experienced by targets in the workplace induces their knowledge hiding from coworkers drawing from the lens of social learning and cognitive theories. More specifically, this study aims to evaluate the relationship between negative workplace gossip and knowledge hiding via moral disengagement, and this mediation effect is also moderated by team relational conflict as a novel boundary condition.

This study collected multi-wave 338 employees’ data from 68 teams of cross-sectional industries in China, which were nested within teams. The collected nested nature data were analyzed by employing multi-level analysis based on hierarchical linear modeling.

The results suggested that negative workplace gossip first triggers moral disengagement and thereby, leads to knowledge hiding. Furthermore, the direct positive association between negative workplace gossip and moral disengagement was strengthened by increasing intra-team relational conflict. In addition, the mediation effect of moral disengagement between negative workplace gossip and knowledge hiding was also strengthened through increasing intra-team relational conflict.

This study first empirically examines the multi-level model using a new underlying mechanism (moral disengagement) and team-level boundary condition (relational conflict) and enriches the current literature on knowledge management and workplace gossip. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings and future research lines are also discussed, which will facilitate practitioners and academicians to curb counterproductive knowledge behavior.

Pesticide overuse has caused a series of negative impacts on environment and human health. The purpose of this paper is to examine the farmers’ behavior of pesticide overuse and to identify the underlying determinants, based on the survey data from Shandong Province, China.

A two-stage semiparametric approach and the binary probit model were employed in this study to analyze the marginal pesticide productivity and investigate the determinants of the pesticide overuse.

Results suggest that the marginal pesticide productivity is negative, indicating a serious overuse of pesticides in the surveyed area. Both market factors and government regulation have impacts on farmers’ use of pesticides.

This study estimates marginal pesticide productivity with an innovative methodology, and explores the role of market factors and government regulation in regulating farmers’ behavior of pesticide use, especially in a typical vegetable growing area and targeting a specific type of vegetable.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a feasible sequence-oriented new discrete particle swarm optimization (NDPSO) algorithm with novel particles’ updating mechanism for solving simple assembly line balancing problems (SALBPs).

In the NDPSO, a task-oriented representation is adopted to solve type I and type II SALBPs, and a particle directly represents a feasible task sequence (FTS) as a permutation. Then, the particle (permutation) is updated as a whole using the geometric crossover based on the edit distance with swaps for two permutations. Furthermore, the fragment mutation with adaptive mutation probability is incorporated into the NDPSO to improve exploration ability.

Case study illustrates the effectiveness of the NDPSO. Comparative results between the NDPSO and existing real-encoded PSO (CPSO) and direct discrete PSO (DDPSO) against benchmark instances of type I SALBP and type II SALBP show promising higher performance of the proposed NDPSO.

A novel particles’ updating mechanism for FTS-encoded particle is proposed to solve the SALBPs. The comparative results indicate that updating of FTS as a whole seems superior to existing updating of FTS by fragment with respect to exploration ability for solving SALBPs. The novel particles’ updating mechanism is also applicable to generalized assembly line balancing problems.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the advances in grey system theory research and various application achievements in science and engineering. At the same time, it commemorates the 40th anniversary of the birth of grey system theory and the 10th anniversary of Grey Systems–Theory and Application.

Firstly, the innovations of theoretical research in grey system theory were summarized and some of the widely recognized new results are briefly described. By searching and combing the research results of grey system theory in China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) database and Web of Science by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), this paper shows the rapid development trend of grey system theory in the past 40 years, and the successful applications of grey system theory in the fields of social sciences, natural sciences and engineering technologies.

More than 227 thousands literature were found by input 10 phrases such as grey system, grey number and sequence operator etc. in CNKI database. After entering the new century, the number of grey system papers included in CNKI database is increasing rapidly. Since 2008, more than 10 thousands papers have been included per year and more than 15 thousands papers have been included per year since 2014. Grey system method and model are widely used in physics, chemistry, biology and other fields of natural science, as well as transportation, electric power, machinery and other fields of engineering technology, and a large number of valuable results have been achieved.

It can be seen that the grey system theory plays an important role in promoting China’s scientific and technological progress, innovation and development and high-level talent training from tens of thousands of literatures marked with important national science and technology projects and a large number of grey system literatures published by China’s double first-class universities and double first-class discipline construction universities.

Both innovations of theoretical research and practical application play important role in the growth of new theory. The innovations of theoretical research provide methods and tools for practical application, which is conducive to improve application efficiency and broaden application fields. A large number of practical applications needs have become the source of theoretical innovation and the solid background for the birth of theoretical innovation achievements.

Drawing on the theory of belongingness, this study scrutinizes the impact of linguistic ostracism on knowledge sharing, knowledge hiding and knowledge hoarding and the moderating role of cultural intelligence (CQ) in a diverse and multi-cultural work setting.

A two-phase sampling of judgmental and random sampling techniques was used to recruit local and foreign workers in the Jordanian service industry. The present study empirically analyzes the sample of 394 employees' responses by applying variance-based structural equation modeling (VB-SEM).

VB-SEM results indicate that linguistic ostracism lessens knowledge sharing behavior and heightens knowledge hiding and hoarding. CQ moderates two of the said associations, specifically by buffering the causal link between linguistic ostracism and knowledge hiding, as well as linguistic ostracism and knowledge hoarding. Consequently, CQ did not moderate the causal link between linguistic ostracism and knowledge sharing.

The study's findings can help managers and decision-makers in such workplaces better understand the deleterious effects of linguistic ostracism and how CQ functions as a buffer. The study concludes with theoretical and managerial implications.

Very few investigations have been conducted to determine the consequences of linguistic ostracism in today's multi-cultural and diverse work environment. This paper is among the first to unveil the association of linguistic ostracism and CQ with various knowledge management (KM) concepts.

This study, based on the moderated-mediation model, investigates the indirect effect of facades of conformity in the relationship between supervisor ostracism and unethical work behaviour. Furthermore, this study tested the moderating role of perceived organizational obstruction in the aforementioned relationship through facades of conformity.

Employing a multi-wave and two-source data from employees and peers (n = 264) of the services sector in Pakistan, the authors tested the proposed framework using Hayes and Preacher moderated-mediation technique.

The findings reflect that supervisor ostracism encourages unethical behaviour at the workplace. Further, results revealed that facades of conformity mediated this direct relationship. Moreover, the authors found that perceived organizational obstruction moderated the relationship between supervisor ostracism and facades of conformity. Results also confirm that perceived organizational obstruction moderates the mediated relationship.

The paper concludes with a discussion, managerial implications, limitations and directions for future research.

This study added value in the literature of supervisor ostracism, facades of conformity, unethical work behaviour and perceived organizational obstruction.

Rural poverty has been a significant problem in Indonesia for decades. To address this issue, rural microfinance institutions play an essential role. Badan Kredit Desa (Village Credit Institution/BKD) is an existing microfinance institution at the village level. This study aims to assess the financial health of BKD and explore whether transformation into a formal form of microfinance institutions can be done to help improve the welfare and economy of people in rural areas. This study used a mixed-method approach to understand the rural microfinance institution's condition by analyzing financial data for the 2016–2018 period and conducting an in-depth interview with BKD stakeholders to explore the possibility of transformation. This study found 15 out of 20 BKDs with relatively healthy criteria that can be transformed into a formal microfinance institution. In comparison, five BKDs that fall under the criteria cannot be transformed into formal ones. Moreover, BKDs have to face internal and external problems that might cause their low financial performance in conducting their operational activities. This research has several significant implications; first, as a baseline for local governments to determine the future of BKDs; second, transformed BKD will foster entrepreneurship by giving productive loans to village people; third, more economic activities as a result of increased entrepreneurship will lower poverty levels in the village; fourth, increased entrepreneurship and reduced poverty will support positive economic growth for Indonesia.