Hei Chia Wang, Yu Hung Chiang and Yi Feng Sun
This paper aims to improve a sentiment analysis (SA) system to help users (i.e. customers or hotel managers) understand hotel evaluations. There are three main purposes in this…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to improve a sentiment analysis (SA) system to help users (i.e. customers or hotel managers) understand hotel evaluations. There are three main purposes in this paper: designing an unsupervised method for extracting online Chinese features and opinion pairs, distinguishing different intensities of polarity in opinion words and examining the changes in polarity in the time series.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, a review analysis system is proposed to automatically capture feature opinions experienced by other tourists presented in the review documents. In the system, a feature-level SA is designed to determine the polarity of these features. Moreover, an unsupervised method using a part-of-speech pattern clarification query and multi-lexicons SA to summarize all Chinese reviews is adopted.
Findings
The authors expect this method to help travellers search for what they want and make decisions more efficiently. The experimental results show the F-measure of the proposed method to be 0.628. It thus outperforms the methods used in previous studies.
Originality/value
The study is useful for travellers who want to quickly retrieve and summarize helpful information from the pool of messy hotel reviews. Meanwhile, the system will assist hotel managers to comprehensively understand service qualities with which guests are satisfied or dissatisfied.
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Jian-Gen Liu, Yi-Ying Feng and Hong-Yi Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to construct the algebraic traveling wave solutions of the (3 + 1)-dimensional modified KdV-Zakharov-Kuznetsve (KdV-Z-K) equation, which can be…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to construct the algebraic traveling wave solutions of the (3 + 1)-dimensional modified KdV-Zakharov-Kuznetsve (KdV-Z-K) equation, which can be usually used to express shallow water wave phenomena.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors apply the planar dynamical systems and invariant algebraic cure approach to find the algebraic traveling wave solutions and rational solutions of the (3 + 1)-dimensional modified KdV-Z-K equation. Also, the planar dynamical systems and invariant algebraic cure approach is applied to considered equation for finding algebraic traveling wave solutions.
Findings
As a result, the authors can find that the integral constant is zero and non-zero, the algebraic traveling wave solutions have different evolutionary processes. These results help to better reveal the evolutionary mechanism of shallow water wave phenomena and find internal connections.
Research limitations/implications
The paper presents that the implemented methods as a powerful mathematical tool deal with (3 + 1)-dimensional modified KdV-Z-K equation by using the planar dynamical systems and invariant algebraic cure.
Practical implications
By considering important characteristics of algebraic traveling wave solutions, one can understand the evolutionary mechanism of shallow water wave phenomena and find internal connections.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the algebraic traveling wave solutions have not been reported in other places. Finally, the algebraic traveling wave solutions nonlinear dynamics behavior was shown.
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Yi-Ying Chang, Feng-Yi Chiang, Qilin Hu, Ian Hodgkinson, Paul Hughes and Che-Yuan Chang
Participative leadership's influence on employee task performance has garnered significant attention in a rapidly evolving organizational landscape. This study explores the…
Abstract
Purpose
Participative leadership's influence on employee task performance has garnered significant attention in a rapidly evolving organizational landscape. This study explores the multilevel dynamics of participative leadership congruence between unit managers and direct supervisors and its effects on employee task performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on two longitudinal studies based on the firms randomly selected from the Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) database, the research observes the mediating role of Person-Unit fit and the moderating influence of Unit-Member Exchange in the participative leadership-performance relationship.
Findings
The findings reveal how participative leadership congruence enhances person-unit fit, which in turn benefits employee task performance. Unit-member exchange plays a critical role in augmenting the participative leadership congruence? Person-unit fit? Employee task performance relationship.
Originality/value
The study extends leadership literature by highlighting the significance of leadership alignment across levels and the interplay between psychological and social factors in improving employee performance.
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Yi-Feng Chen, Yi Kang and Dean Tjosvold
How can governments and survivors prepare for and manage natural disasters? Post-disaster reconstruction researchers advocate that community involvement is needed to help…
Abstract
Purpose
How can governments and survivors prepare for and manage natural disasters? Post-disaster reconstruction researchers advocate that community involvement is needed to help survivors recover effectively. This study aims to propose that cooperative goals between government officials and survivors develop guanxi relationships and constructive controversy wherein survivors voice their opinions to aid disaster recovery.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopted the critical incident technique (CIT), which has proved especially useful for studying complex issues, as well as site-intensive research for interviews and participant observation. After developing a local reputation and rapport by working in a residential resettlement area for two months, an author used the CIT to ask 118 survivors of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to describe specific incidents when they interacted with government officials about recovery issues and then to rate survey items that measure independent and dependent variables.
Findings
Results, including structural equation analyses, support the reasoning that cooperative goals between government and survivors facilitate guanxi and constructive controversy, which in turn produced effective disaster recovery, as indicated by survivors’ social support, satisfaction, reduced stress and beliefs that government officials led effectively.
Research limitations/implications
The data are self-reported and subject to biases and may not be accurate.
Practical implications
In addition to developing theoretical understanding, the results can have important practical implications for strengthening relationships and constructive controversy between government and survivors.
Social implications
Results suggest that communities have practical ways to prepare for disasters. Structuring cooperative goals among survivors, encouraging guanxi relationships, and training in constructive controversy should promote effective recovery from natural disasters.
Originality/value
The paper develops theory and research on how leaders can promote community involvement for effective disaster management. The paper proposes that high-quality interpersonal relationships, also referred to guanxi, and the open-minded discussion of opposing ideas, labeled constructive controversy, are major components of effective community involvement. The paper adds to the literature by empirically documenting the utility of the Western-developed theory of cooperation and competition and the concept of constructive controversy for understanding the effectiveness of government leadership for disaster recovery in China.
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The real estate industry has experienced frequent changes in corporate executives in recent years. A total of 147 A-share listed firms witnessed a total of 191 corporate…
Abstract
Purpose
The real estate industry has experienced frequent changes in corporate executives in recent years. A total of 147 A-share listed firms witnessed a total of 191 corporate executives' departure. This wave of corporate executive departures is significantly different from previous waves. This study aims to examine whether industry evolution influence the characteristics of corporate executives? If so, then how?
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on upper echelons theory, this study analyzed the effects of industry life cycle on the characteristics of corporate executives. The data of A-share listed companies in the textile, real estate and computer industries in China from 1992 to 2014 were collected.
Findings
There are significant differences in the characteristics of corporate executives that match the life cycles of different industries. Companies at the growth stage in the life cycle of an industry were more likely to select and appoint younger corporate executives with political capital, peripheral functions and output functions, whereas companies at the maturity stage were more likely to select and appoint older corporate executives with throughput functions.
Originality/value
By using the upper echelons theory as a starting point, this study analyzed the effects of industry life cycle on corporate executive's characteristics. The research findings offer theoretical implications for the upper echelons theory and provide managerial implications.
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Edmond Yeboah Nyamah, Yuansheng Jiang, Yi Feng and Evelyn Enchill
The purpose of this paper is to examine the key risk components (probability and consequence) and their respective thresholds affecting agri-food supply chain operations in Ghana…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the key risk components (probability and consequence) and their respective thresholds affecting agri-food supply chain operations in Ghana. In addition, it seeks to understand the relationship between the major risk sources and to fathom the risk/disruption impact on agri-food supply chain performance in Ghana.
Design/methodology/approach
Cross-sectional survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire. The risks threshold associated with agri-food supply chain were categorized using the risk matrix scale and classification described in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (Project Management Institute, 2013). Next, the Pearson correlation was used to understand the relationship between the various risks and agri-food chain performance. Lastly, to investigate how firms’ supply chain operations have been affected by risks/disruptions, an ordinary least square regression model was employed to quantify the impact of some major risk sources on agri-food chain performance in Ghana.
Findings
The results in this paper show variations in risks’ probability, impact and threshold in agri-food supply chain. While risk sources such as periodic change in interest/exchange rate policies and volatility in customer demand are high-rated risks, uncertain land policies/tenure and poor quality control are low rated risks in the operations of the chain. The performance of the agri-food chain significantly but negatively correlates with all the major risks studied. Whereas demand, supply, weather, logistics/infrastructure and financial risk sources significantly undermined the chain’s performance, risks emerging from biological/environmental, management/operational, policy/regulations and political-related issues insignificantly affect the performance of agri-food supply chain in Ghana.
Research limitations/implications
This research is an area biased. However, some insightful managerial implications can be drawn from this paper to manage agri-food chain operations in a similar unstable environment. The result implies that risks are inevitable in agri-food chain but they differ in terms of menace to the chain’s operation. Therefore, to manage agri-food supply chain risks effectively, managers should periodically identify, quantify and categorize risk sources before making risk response decisions. In addition, the results show that risks account for about half of the overall agri-food chain performance in Ghana. This infers that managers/practitioners could improve the performance of the agri-food chain if limited resources are allocated to plan and effectively respond to major risks sources (such as demand, supply, finance, weather and logistical/ infrastructural services-related risks) undermining the performance of the chain.
Originality/value
This research contributes to the agri-food chain risk literature and provides managers/practitioners with empirical evidence of risk thresholds and their corresponding major impact on agri-food chain’s performance. Since risks explained about half of agri-food chain performance in Ghana, this research would prompt decision makers to improve on their risk assessment and responds (e.g. by employing efficient demand, supply and weather forecasting systems, logistic/infrastructure services, hedge to finance, etc.) to improve the chain’s performance.
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Yi Feng, Abeer Hassan and Ahmed A. Elamer
This paper aims to contribute to the existing capital structure and board structure literature by examining the relationship among corporate governance, ownership structure and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to contribute to the existing capital structure and board structure literature by examining the relationship among corporate governance, ownership structure and capital structure.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a panel data of 595 firm-year observations from a unique and comprehensive data set of 119 Chinese real estate listed firms from 2014 to 2018. It uses fixed effect and random effect regression analysis techniques to examine the hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that the board size, ownership concentration and firm size have positive influences on capital structure. State ownership and firm profitability have inverse influences on capital structure.
Research limitations/implications
The findings suggest that better-governed companies in the real estate sector tend to have better capital structure. These findings highlight the unique Chinese context and also offer regulators a strong incentive to pursue corporate governance reforms formally and jointly with the ownership structure. Finally, the results suggest investors the chance to shape detailed expectations about capital structure behavior in China. Future research could investigate capital structure using different arrangement, conducting face-to-face meetings with the firm’s directors and shareholders.
Practical implications
The findings offer support to corporate managers and investors in forming or/and expecting an optimal capital structure and to policymakers and regulators for ratifying laws and developing institutional support to improve the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms.
Originality/value
This paper extends, as well as contributes to the current capital structure and corporate governance literature, by proposing new evidence on the effect of board structure and ownership structure on capital structure. The results will help policymakers in different countries in estimating the sufficiency of the available corporate governance reforms to improve capital structure management.
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Md. Rakibul Hasan, Yosef Daryanto, Tutul Chandra Roy and Yi Feng
The advancement of technology opens many opportunities for retailing businesses to increase their profit through innovative strategies, such as discount offers, preorder programs…
Abstract
Purpose
The advancement of technology opens many opportunities for retailing businesses to increase their profit through innovative strategies, such as discount offers, preorder programs and online payment services. The purpose of this study is to investigate decision-making methods for retailers who sell deteriorating products that utilize an e-commerce platform and offering preorder.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors study the optimum price and replenishment cycle when multiple discounts policy is implemented for customers when they purchase during the preorder period and make the payment via an online system. The proposed economic order quantity model works for noninstantaneous deteriorating items that will maximize the total profit. Moreover, it considers the effect of selling price and advertisement on customer demand. The concavity of the profit function is proved. Then, a comparison is carried out between the traditional payment system and online payment. Finally, two numerical examples and the sensitivity analysis are performed.
Findings
The results show the benefit of the system with online payment compared to the traditional one. Further analysis shows that the total profit increases when the frequency of advertisement, interest from the banking company, location perimeter and the nondeterioration time increase.
Originality/value
The proposed model guides e-commerce retailers optimizing the price and inventory decision when they offer a discount, preorder program and online payment service. No researcher has undergone a study with this complexity.
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Edmond Yeboah Nyamah, Yi Feng, Evelyn Yeboah Nyamah, Richard Kofi Opoku and Matilda Ewusi
This paper employs the positivism paradigm, quantitative approach and explanatory research design. It analyses primary data obtained from manufacturing firms via structured…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper employs the positivism paradigm, quantitative approach and explanatory research design. It analyses primary data obtained from manufacturing firms via structured questionnaires and uses the partial least square-structural equation modelling technique to establish the effect of individual procurement process risk on procurement performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Procurement risks are inevitable in manufacturing procurement process; a situation that could undermine the performance of manufacturing firms if not properly managed. Yet, with procurement accounting of about 14–19% of developing countries gross domestic product, the effects of procurement process risk on performance remain scarce in manufacturing firms in developing countries. Therefore, the paper aims to investigate the effect of procurement process risk on procurement performance of manufacturing firms.
Findings
In this paper, five out of the six procurement process risks studied were found to be undermining procurement performance of manufacturing firms significantly. However, the risk threshold effect on the performance differs.
Research limitations/implications
Although this research is geographically/sector bias, several insightful managerial implications can be drawn to manage procurement process risk in manufacturing settings irrespective of the area of operation. The results of this research imply that manufacturing firms' procurement process is risk prone and the effect of risk surrounding each procurement process on procurement performance differs. Hence, the need to identify and analyse the risks surrounding each procurement process before making managerial decision to spend firms limited resources in response to the individual risk to improve procurement performance in the manufacturing sector.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to provide existing and future procuring practitioners/firms with in-depth empirical evidence of the effect of the procurement process risks on procurement performance in manufacturing firms operating in developing economies.
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“Clothes from heaven are without seam (Tian Yi Wu Feng)”, the Chinese idiom says. A study has been carried out to investigate the past and present techniques, processes and…
Abstract
“Clothes from heaven are without seam (Tian Yi Wu Feng)”, the Chinese idiom says. A study has been carried out to investigate the past and present techniques, processes and procedures that enable creation of seamless fashion towards innovative ends. This paper puts the study into context, summarises these techniques and processes as well as their procedures in creating seamless objects and/or clothing items. and further appraises the favourability of these techniques towards the ends of seamless fashion creation.