The purpose of the paper is to investigate how cross-cultural elements such as cultural difference and stereotype are integrated into collaborative modes and actions and to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to investigate how cross-cultural elements such as cultural difference and stereotype are integrated into collaborative modes and actions and to explore their corresponding effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample of the quantitative content analysis is drawn from the posts with the topic of China on Quora. A collaborative case, where two users have a question-and-answer interaction, is taken as the unit of analysis. The effectiveness of collaboration is operationalized as the extent to which a collaboratively produced answer is visited and favorably reviewed, using the feedback index (the number of upvotes*1,000/views). One of the sampled collaborative cases is further analyzed qualitatively to see how cultural differences, stereotypes and other factors are incorporated into users' interaction.
Findings
This content analysis reveals nine modes of collaborative production of knowledge on Quora: initial questioning, pointed answering, raising doubts, responding to others, agreeing with others, correcting mistakes, enriching content, further questioning and extending issues. Diversity of the cross-cultural acts of collaborative production, particularly two of often-used collaborative actions, correcting stereotypes and supplementing cultural differences, helps to enhance overall collaborative effectiveness.
Practical implications
This paper offers new perspectives and ideas for strategies to change socially problematic stereotypes, e.g. to correct stereotypes where necessary and use more convincing resources such as reliable images as collaborative actions to bridge cultural differences. It also calls on social Q&A website developers to create more international users-friendly design by providing various channels for users with diverse cultural backgrounds to interact with each other.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first to investigate online collaborative knowledge production within a broader cross-cultural context. Specifically, cultural factors and cross-cultural collaborative actions have been innovatively integrated into this research, enriching the dimensions that can be used for collaboration classification. It is helpful for users from different countries to actively adopting different strategies to overcome cultural differences, preconceptions and other negative factors that are not conducive to communication and knowledge acquisition.
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Yumeng Yue, Nate Zettna, Shuoxin Cheng and Helena Nguyen
In many contemporary service organizations, service teams or service units are the main engines used to deliver key services to customers, client or patients. However, it remains…
Abstract
Purpose
In many contemporary service organizations, service teams or service units are the main engines used to deliver key services to customers, client or patients. However, it remains unclear how teamwork mechanisms (i.e. the ways team members work together) influence customer service outcomes, and whether these relationships vary across different service contexts. To advance knowledge on the nature of teamwork in service teams and to set an agenda for further work in this area, there is a need to integrate and synthesize findings across the diverse literature on service teamwork. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objectives.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a meta-analytic approach, the authors analyzed a substantial pool of relevant effect sizes (a total of 372 effect sizes from 82 studies, with 14,291 service teams/units) to examine the effects of affective, behavioral, cognitive, motivational as well as perceptual teamwork mechanisms on customer service outcomes. The authors also investigated two key service context variables (service climate and service type) as boundary conditions on these effects.
Findings
The authors found that cognitive teamwork mechanisms were more strongly positively associated with customer evaluative outcomes than other mechanisms, whereas motivational and perceptual teamwork mechanisms had stronger associations with financial outcomes. Further, four of the five teamwork mechanisms demonstrated stronger correlations under a high service climate. The strength of the correlations between the teamwork mechanisms and customer service outcomes also exhibited different patterns when considered for different service types.
Research limitations/implications
As with all meta-analysis, the quality of the primary studies influences the quality of the insights obtained from summarized effects. As most studies are cross-sectional design, the relationships examined in this paper cannot be interpreted causally. The authors cannot rule out the possibility of reverse causality, for example, reciprocal effects of customer service outcomes on teamwork dynamics due to the reciprocal feedback loop between customers and service providers.
Practical implications
The results hold important practical implications for enhancing customer evaluation and financial performance. First, the overall findings point to the need for employers to emphasize on certain types of teamwork training in order to encourage employee collaboration within service teams. For instance, service organizations could plan team building activities for service teams to promote trust, strengthen interpersonal bonds and improve problem-solving.
Originality/value
The results of this study provide an integration of previous research on service teamwork and fill two important gaps in the knowledge: (1) which aspect of teamwork is more important in determining customer service outcomes? And (2) does the effect of teamwork on customer service outcomes differ across different service contexts?
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Yongliang Wang, Yifeng Duan, Yanpei Song and Yumeng Du
Supercritical CO2 (SC–CO2) fracturing is a potential technology that creates a complex fracturing fracture network to improve reservoir permeability. SC–CO2-driven intersections…
Abstract
Purpose
Supercritical CO2 (SC–CO2) fracturing is a potential technology that creates a complex fracturing fracture network to improve reservoir permeability. SC–CO2-driven intersections of the fracturing fracture network are influenced by some key factors, including the disturbances generated form natural fractures, adjacent multi-wells and adjacent fractures, which increase the challenges in evaluation, control and optimization of the SC–CO2 fracturing fracture networks. If the evaluation of the fracture network is not accurate and effective, the risk of oil and gas development will increase due to the microseismicity induced by multi-well SC–CO2 fracturing, which makes it challenging to control the on-site engineering practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The numerical models considering the thermal-hydro-mechanical coupling effect in multi-well SC–CO2 fracturing were established, and the typical cases considering naturally fracture and multi-wells were proposed to investigate the intersections and connections of fracturing fracture network, shear stress shadows and induced microseismic events. The quantitative results from the typical cases, such as fracture length, volume, fluid rate, pore pressure and the maximum and accumulated magnitudes of induced microseismic events, were derived.
Findings
In naturally fractured reservoirs, SC–CO2 fracturing fractures will deflect and propagate along the natural fractures, eventually intersect and connect with fractures from other wells. The quantitative results indicate that SC–CO2 fracturing in naturally fractured reservoirs produces larger fractures than the slick water as fracturing fluid, due to the ability of SC–CO2 to connect macroscopic and microscopic fractures. Compared with slick water fracturing, SC–CO2 fracturing can increase the length of fractures, but it will not increase microseismic events; therefore, SC–CO2 fracturing can improve fracturing efficiency and increase productivity, but it may not simultaneously lead to additional microseismic events.
Originality/value
The results of this study on the multi-well SC–CO2 fracturing may provide references for the fracturing design of deep oil and gas resource extraction, and provide some beneficial supports for the induced microseismic event disasters, promoting the next step of engineering application of multi-well SC–CO2 fracturing.
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Yucheng Zhang, Zhongwei Hou, Xingxing Zhou, Yumeng Yue, Siqi Liu, XiaoXiao Jiang and Ling Li
Despite recent organizational behavior studies have witnessed considerable progress in abusive supervision research; some demerits for both theory and methodology still remain in…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite recent organizational behavior studies have witnessed considerable progress in abusive supervision research; some demerits for both theory and methodology still remain in the past years. To clarify the current state of knowledge in the field, this study aims to analyze the current state of theories and methods on abusive supervision and provides a detailed future research agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper conducted a literature review for both theory and methodology of the abusive supervision research using a content analysis of 134 publications.
Findings
For the theory part, this paper summarized the theories that had been applied to explain the relationship between abusive supervision and its consequences as well as antecedents. For the methodology part, this paper outlined some critical issues regarding country of origin, research design, measurement, analysis strategy and also summarized with a discussion of the relationship between methodological issues and article impact. Finally, this paper concluded by presenting an agenda for future abusive supervision research regarding both theory and methodology.
Originality/value
First, this paper summarizes the main theories, antecedents and consequences often used in abusive supervision research to allow scholars to carry out theoretically driven research investigating abusive supervision in the future. Second, through a content analysis of the methods sections of abusive supervision research in the samples (i.e. country of origin, research design, measurement and analytical procedures), this paper identified the potential reasons underlying the inconsistency in the conclusions of abusive supervision research and provide some guidance for future empirical studies. Third, based on the qualitative review, this paper provides an agenda for future research investigating abusive supervision by developing a content-specific theoretical framework to benchmark abusive supervision research against other research related to leadership and offers an accurate response to scholars’ criticisms of abusive supervision research.
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Zhihai Yang, Ning Yin, Amin William Mugera and Yumeng Wang
This paper analysed survey data of 715 rice-producing households in China to assess the determinants of adoption of five mutually exclusive soil conservation practices (SCPs) and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper analysed survey data of 715 rice-producing households in China to assess the determinants of adoption of five mutually exclusive soil conservation practices (SCPs) and their impact on rice yield and chemical fertiliser use.
Design/methodology/approach
The multinomial endogenous treatment effects model was used to account for selection bias and endogeneity arising from both observed and unobserved heterogeneity.
Findings
Farms that adopted SCPs as a package experienced an increase in rice yield and decrease in chemical fertiliser use. Adoption of SCPs as a package led to a 12.0% increase in yield and 15.2% decrease in chemical fertiliser use; these results have policy implications for the non-point source pollution control in the agricultural sector. In contrast, adoption of straw retention only significantly reduced yield by 4.9% and increased chemical fertiliser use by 18.1%.
Originality/value
The authors evaluate and compare multi-type of SCPs, such as straw retention, deep tillage and use of organic fertiliser, separately or in combination, and their impacts on smallholder farmers’ rice yield and chemical fertiliser usage.
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Kishore Gopalakrishna Pillai, Piyush Sharma, Joep Cornelissen, Yumeng Zhang and Smitha R. Nair
This paper aims to propose mechanisms of the dark side of interorganizational relationships from a social psychological perspective. The purpose is to understand the role of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose mechanisms of the dark side of interorganizational relationships from a social psychological perspective. The purpose is to understand the role of boundary spanners’ social psychological processes that may trigger the dark side effects.
Design/methodology/approach
Multple mechanisms are developed through three social psychological theories, namely, social identity theory, system justification theory and social learning theory.
Findings
Boundary spanners’ social psychological processes can trigger the dark side of interorganizational relationships via mechanisms such as excessive cooperation, reification, system justification and path dependence in learning.
Practical implications
This paper concludes with a discussion that offers a new perspective on research on dark side effects and the managerial implications of the present analysis.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the current literature by extending the interpersonal social psychological processes that could explain the dark side of interorganizational relationships. This paper is a step forward to answer the calls for multilevel considerations of the dark side effects and inspire future research on the role of social psychological processes in dark side effects.
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Vitus Mwinteribo Tabie, Chong Li, Wang Saifu, Jianwei Li and Xiaojing Xu
This paper aims to present a broad review of near-a titanium alloys for high-temperature applications.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a broad review of near-a titanium alloys for high-temperature applications.
Design/methodology/approach
Following a brief introduction of titanium (Ti) alloys, this paper considers the near-α group of Ti alloys, which are the most popular high-temperature Ti alloys developed for a high-temperature application, particularly in compressor disc and blades in aero-engines. The paper is relied on literature within the past decade to discuss phase stability and microstructural effect of alloying elements, plastic deformation and reinforcements used in the development of these alloys.
Findings
The near-a Ti alloys show high potential for high-temperature applications, and many researchers have explored the incorporation of TiC, TiB SiC, Y2O3, La2O3 and Al2O3 reinforcements for improved mechanical properties. Rolling, extrusion, forging and some severe plastic deformation (SPD) techniques, as well as heat treatment methods, have also been explored extensively. There is, however, a paucity of information on SiC, Y2O3 and carbon nanotube reinforcements and their combinations for improved mechanical properties. Information on some SPD techniques such as cyclic extrusion compression, multiaxial compression/forging and repeated corrugation and straightening for this class of alloys is also limited.
Originality/value
This paper provides a topical, technical insight into developments in near-a Ti alloys using literature from within the past decade. It also outlines the future developments of this class of Ti alloys.
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Nidal H. Abu-Hamdeh, Ömer Akbal, Hakan F. Öztop, Abdullah M. Abusorrah and Mohannad M. Bayoumi
The purpose of this paper is to solve the problem of a three-dimensional computational analysis for an elliptic-shaped cavity in a pipe under constant temperature.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to solve the problem of a three-dimensional computational analysis for an elliptic-shaped cavity in a pipe under constant temperature.
Design/methodology/approach
The three-dimensional computational solution of governing equations was performed by using finite volume method with different temperature difference.
Findings
The parafin wax was chosen as a phase change material (PCM), and melting fraction, streamlines and isotherms are formed for different time step. It is found that position B give better results than that of position A, and temperature difference effects the duration of melting of PCM.
Originality/value
The three-dimensional analysis of melting in an ellipsoidal pipe with inner pipe with higher temperature is the main originality of this work.