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The purpose of this paper is to provide the possible and better selection for pedestrian flow evacuation.

Simulation.

First, according to the model with self-decision agents, the paper figures out that the effect of evacuation guided by the random-walk mechanism exceeds that guided by the inertial mechanism, and specifically, the effect of evacuation could significantly improve if random-walk agents restraint the probability of random walk under 0.4. Besides, on neighborhood reference mechanism, individuals who take neighbors’ average direction as reference tend to achieve better effect of evacuation than that of following majority rule. Furthermore, this paper proposes that an optimal ratio of the proportion of clever individuals and system density exists for evacuation effect improvement. Finally, the evacuating effect with barrier locating in different space is also studied in our research.

The effect of evacuation could significantly improve if random-walk agents restraint the probability of random walk under 0.4. On neighborhood reference mechanism, individuals who take neighbors’ average direction as reference tend to achieve better effect of evacuation than that of following majority rule.

This study aims to focus on the authority formation process of Chinese enterprise leaders, with the purpose of finding out how an ordinary newly established firm leader develops into a real top leader and achieves the status of legitimacy in a well-known enterprise.

Based on constructivist grounded theory, this paper investigates the formation mechanism of entrepreneurial authority in China by using the rich data of Liu Chuan-zhi’s leader activities.

In the “evolution” path of authority formation, leaders continually consolidate and improve their authority through two classes of exceptional management activities: “emergency rescue” and “promotion activities”. The successful realization of exceptional management activities benefits from a leader’s management experience accumulation and relationship maintenance with the government. In the “design” path of authority formation, leaders consolidate and improve their authority by exercising their position of power. Leaders’ legitimacy is reflected by making strategic decision and demonstrating discretion of position power. Additionally, passing on an inspiring leader’s thoughts and ideas to an organization’s members is accomplished through the construction of organization culture, institutionalization and convention.

First, the findings are based on only Liu Chuan-zhi’s case. The authors still need more cases to compare and develop the findings and seek theoretical saturation in a broader sense. Second, the qualitative analysis is based on secondary data and future research could consider the introduction of interviews, video and other types of research data.

Under the parallel paths which are “evolution” and “design”, the dynamic leader authority formation model in China is founded.

For decades, financing constraints have been a major obstacle to corporate performance. Volumes have been written about the probable factors that can help firms alleviate such financial constraints. Nonetheless, empirical evidence concerning the various perspectives on how inventory control may influence financing constraints has been surprisingly scant. Using the resource- and region-based view as theoretical lenses, this study seeks to estimate the relationship between lean inventory, regional financial technology (fintech) and financing constraints.

Utilizing a large-scale sample of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China's manufacturing sector, the authors empirically test their hypotheses by using hierarchical linear regression models with multiple high-dimensional fixed effects.

Results indicate that firms with higher levels of inventory leanness and those located in more fintech-developed regions are less likely to encounter financing constraints. Furthermore, inventory leanness and regional fintech ecosystem development interact with each other to mitigate financing constraints. Moreover, inventory leanness significantly decreases firms' financing constraints when the regional fintech ecosystem is highly developed.

The present research contributes to the literature on the interface of supply chain management and financial management. It also provides managerial implications for policymakers and SME stakeholders.

This study conceptualizes the digital transformation (DT) strategy in a supply chain context, identifies its drivers from intra- and inter-organizational perspectives and examines the effect of the DT strategy on the strategic agility and financial performance of Chinese manufacturing firms.

The authors constructed a theoretical model by synthesizing the diffusion of innovation and organizational information processing theory (OIPT) and provided a set of hypotheses. The authors empirically tested the arguments using partial least squares structural equation modeling using data from a sample of 200 manufacturing firms in China.

The findings indicate that while supply chain connectivity positively affects DT adoption and DT routinization, data analytics capability and organizational learning positively influence DT adoption but not DT routinization. The mediation analysis also shows that DT strategy has significant direct effects on financial performance and a stronger indirect influence on financial performance via improved strategic agility.

This study responds to repeated calls for a new understanding of supply chain DT strategy. In addition, the study offers important contributions to the literature by identifying the potential discord between the existing DT strategy and the supply chain context and proposes a new framework that provides essential theoretical underpinnings.

This study enriches the literature by conceptualizing and validating the dimensions, driving factors and performance implications of DT strategy in strategic supply chain management.

This study aimed to investigate how different supply chain integrations (SCIs) (i.e. information integration and organisational integration) would impact product- and service-oriented mass customisation capability (MCC) differently and the moderating role of characteristics of customer needs (i.e. customer need tacitness and diversity).

From the perspective of information processing theory (IPT), the authors tested the hypotheses using survey data from 277 Chinese manufacturers.

The findings indicate that both information and operational integration contribute to product- and service-oriented MCCs. Operational integration promotes product-oriented MCC more, whereas information integration has a greater impact on service-oriented MCC. In addition, customer need tacitness negatively moderates the impact of operational integration on both product- and service-oriented MCC. Customer need diversity negatively moderates only the impact of operational integration on service-oriented MCC.

Managers should focus on not only the position (internal or external) but also the function of SCI when making decisions towards enhancing MCC. Diverse abilities to integrate with different functions are associated with different MCCs.

This study distinguishes between product- and service-oriented MCCs and provides novel insights for understanding how to enhance MCC from a SCI perspective.

The growth of social media and the sharing economy is generating abundant unstructured image and video data. Computer vision techniques can derive rich insights from unstructured data and can inform recommendations for increasing profits and consumer utility – if only the model outputs are interpretable enough to earn the trust of consumers and buy-in from companies. To build a foundation for understanding the importance of model interpretation in image analytics, the first section of this article reviews the existing work along three dimensions: the data type (image data vs. video data), model structure (feature-level vs. pixel-level), and primary application (to increase company profits vs. to maximize consumer utility). The second section discusses how the “black box” of pixel-level models leads to legal and ethical problems, but interpretability can be improved with eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods. We classify and review XAI methods based on transparency, the scope of interpretability (global vs. local), and model specificity (model-specific vs. model-agnostic); in marketing research, transparent, local, and model-agnostic methods are most common. The third section proposes three promising future research directions related to model interpretability: the economic value of augmented reality in 3D product tracking and visualization, field experiments to compare human judgments with the outputs of machine vision systems, and XAI methods to test strategies for mitigating algorithmic bias.

The high-quality development of the real estate industry is crucial to the transformation of China's economy. However, few studies apply the productivity to explore the development path of the real estate industry in China. To fill this gap, this study mainly investigates the total factor productivity (TFP) of the real estate industry of 30 sample provinces in mainland China from 2007 to 2016.

The Malmquist index is applied to estimate the productivity (i.e. TFP) of the real estate industry, based on the data envelopment analysis (DEA). Then, the truncated tobit regression analysis explores the external influencing factors on the TFP of the real estate industry.

Through empirical analysis, it is found that the high-quality development of the real estate industry depends on the technological innovation by the real estate enterprises and the targeted policies by the provincial government. Moreover, the development of the real estate industry has a positive correlation with the growth of China's economy but a negative correlation with the development of other industries.

TFP mainly reveals the development status of the provincial real estate industry and identifies the driving force for exploring the high-quality development mode of the real estate sector. Furthermore, the fluctuation rule of TFP can be applied to predict the development trend of the real estate industry in the future.

As an application, this study measures the TFP of the Chinese real estate industry in different provinces and periods. The results have meaningful policy implications for policymakers regulating the real estate industry.

This paper aims to research the effect of different concentrations for Nd(NO₃)₃ and Ce(NO₃)₃ on the microstructures and corrosion resistance of Ni-W-P composite coatings through electroless plating method.

Scanning electron microscope, attached energy dispersive spectroscopy system and X-ray diffraction were used in this work. Meanwhile, the immersion test and electrochemical tests were used to characterize the corrosion behavior of the coating.

The coatings prepared at 1.00 g·L⁻¹ Nd(NO₃)₃ exhibit a dense structure and high phosphorus content (12.38 wt.%). In addition, compared to the addition of Ce(NO₃)₃, when Nd(NO₃)₃ was introduced at a concentration of 1.00 g·L⁻¹, the minimum corrosion rate of the coating was 1.209 g·m⁻²·h⁻¹, with a noble E_corr (−0.29 V) and lower I_corr (8.29 × 10⁻⁴ A·cm⁻²).

The effects of rare earths on the deposition and corrosion resistance mechanisms of Ni-W-P composite coatings were explored, with the rare earth elements promoting the deposition of nickel and tungsten atoms. Simultaneously, the amorphization of the coating increases, which excellently enhances the corrosion resistance of the coating.

Special education in China has lagged behind regular education for many years, however, the past few decades, the government has made considerable efforts to develop and improve the special education system. While the citizens of China have had a generic moral interest in disability since ancient times, the development of special education schools did not occur until American and European missionaries started schools for the visually and hearing impaired in the 19th century. The next major influence in the development of the special education system occurred with China’s Cultural Revolution in 1978. Interestingly, there is not any exclusive legislation on special education but in the 1980s, the government started Learning in Regular Classrooms (LRC), which is China’s version of inclusion. LRC has progressed rapidly the past two decades; however, the quality of instruction is low due to a lack of specialists, a shortage of personnel, inadequate funding, and limited technology as well as other barriers that are delineated in the chapter. The chapter emphasizes the government’s recent efforts in in-service teacher training, the preparation of preservice teachers, working with families, developing community rehabilitation training programs, and implementing evidence-based practices. Special education in China today is at a good place but it has quite a way from the ideal situation.