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In the construction of charging piles, traditional gas stations possess significant advantages in terms of regional and financial resources. The transformation of gas stations into “refueling+charging” integrated gas stations relies on charging pile manufacturers and government, involving coordination issues with them. This paper aims to propose a joint coordination contract based on the principles of cost-sharing and revenue-sharing. The objective is to achieve systemic coordination among integrated gas stations, charging pile manufacturers, and the government, optimizing the planning of the quantity of charging piles and charging prices.

We have constructed an operational system model based on the Stackelberg game between charging pile manufacturers, integrated gas stations, and government. We have analyzed the optimal quantity of charging piles and charging prices under the impact of government subsidy policies in both decentralized and centralized operation scenarios. Additionally, we have proposed a joint coordination contract based on cost-sharing and revenue-sharing to coordinate this tripartite operational system.

The study reveals that, under simple cooperative contracts, the optimal decision does not yield maximum profits for the operational system due to the “double-marginal effect”. However, under the impact of the joint coordination contract, which combines cost-sharing and revenue-sharing as proposed in this paper, gas stations will consider the charging pile manufacturer’s costs and government subsidies when determining the optimal quantity and price. This not only achieves system coordination but also results in Pareto improvement in the benefits of all system members by adjusting contract parameters.

The value of this research lies in its insights into operational strategies for the construction of charging piles for electric vehicles. By analyzing optimal decisions under different contract arrangements, the study provides guidance to relevant stakeholders, enabling the operational system to achieve greater efficiency and coordination and realize more extensive Pareto improvements. Furthermore, it extends the application of coordination contract theory in the context of charging pile construction and operations.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Manufacturing firms are seeking to engage more with service provisions due to the increasing competitive nature of the industry.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

How does business model design play a role in enabling manufacturing firms’ services? This study aims to investigate the impact of two distinct types of business model design, namely, efficiency-centered business model design (EBMD) and novelty-centered business model design (NBMD), and their effects in balanced and imbalanced configurations, on two types of services: product- and customer-oriented services.

Using matched survey data of 390 top managers and objective performance data of 195 Chinese manufacturing firms, this study uses hierarchical regression, polynomial regression and response surface analysis to test the hypotheses.

The results show that while EBMD positively affects product-oriented services, NBMD positively affects customer-oriented services. Both types of services exert a significant influence on firm performance. Furthermore, the degree of product- and customer-oriented services increases with an increasing effort level with a balance between EBMD and NBMD. Asymmetrical, imbalanced configuration effects reveal that the degree of product-oriented services is higher when the EBMD effort exceeds the NBMD effort, and the degree of customer-oriented services is higher when the NBMD effort exceeds the EBMD effort.

This study enriches the understanding of designing business models to facilitate service growth in manufacturing firms, ultimately benefiting firm performance. In addition, exploring balanced and imbalanced configurations of EBMD and NBMD offers new insights into business model dual design research.

Digital transformation (DX) is advancing in the post-pandemic era, yet regional disparities remain pronounced. This uneven distribution may be attributed to cities’ doing business environment. As the doing business environment comprises various components, we aim to explore how these components interact to affect local firms' DX, thereby identifying which configurations of the doing business environment contribute to firms' DX.

The doing business environment in our study contains seven components: public services, government, legal, innovation, market, human resources and financial services environments. We adopt a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions for firms' high-level DX. The sample consists of enterprises listed on the China Science and Technology Innovation Board.

Firstly, a single doing business environment component is unnecessary for firms to produce a high- or non-high-level DX. Secondly, four configurations of the doing business environment explain firms' high-level DX of three general types: doing business environment configurations (1) dominated by the cost hypothesis, (2) synergised by the cost and resource hypotheses and (3) dominated by the resource hypothesis. Thirdly, the configurational paths generating firms’ high- or non-high-level DX are asymmetric and only one doing business environment configuration will lead to firms' non-high-level DX.

This study presents a ground-breaking exploration of the mechanisms driving firms' DX in terms of the city-level doing business environment and its dual functions. Additionally, we elucidate the reasons for the uneven regional distribution of DX development.

Research has shown that creative self-efficacy is an important antecedent of workplace creativity, but recent research indicates that this relationship may be moderated by contextual factors. The current study investigates whether leader dialectical thinking and leader member exchange moderate the relationship between employee creative self-efficacy and employee creativity.

A survey sample of 222 employees in 43 teams from Chinese high-tech companies was collected and HLM was used to test our research model.

The positive association between employee creative self-efficacy and employee creativity was strengthened when a leader displayed a dialectical thinking style. Additional analyses failed to find support for the moderating role of leader-member exchange (LMX).

These findings establish leadership cognitive style as a potential boundary condition of the relationship between creative self-efficacy and employee creativity.

Companies can make an active effort in recruiting and training leaders who have a dialectical mindset as they can play significant roles in facilitating employee creativity.

Technological advancement and innovation is important for social welfare. This paper helps to improve the efficiency of creativity processes and finally benefits the whole society.

This is the first introduction of the leader's dialectical thinking as a moderator of the relationship between creative self-efficacy and creativity.

This paper aims to improve the anti-corrosive properties of aluminum alloy AA2024-T3 by coating of hybrid sol-gel coating incorporated with TiO₂ nanosheets and to investigate the effect of nanosheets’ size on the improvement of corrosion-resistant performance.

A series of hybrid sol-gel films incorporated with varying amounts of TiO2 nanosheets were developed to enhance the corrosion protection performance of the bare metal. Scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy were used to investigate the structure and morphology of the coatings obtained. In addition, the corrosion-resistant properties of the coatings were evaluated using salt spray test and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy.

The corrosion current was as low as 9.55 × 10-4 µA/cm² and optimal positive corrosion potential reached −0.6 V when the size and loading amount of TiO₂ nanosheet were optimized, resulting in a remarkable improvement in anti-corrosive properties.

This work first investigates the effect of incorporation of TiO₂ nanoparticles on hybrid sol-gel coating on the improvement of anti-corrosive performance of aluminum alloy AA2024-T3.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a development and error modeling of a serial redundant manipulator system applied in nuclear fusion environment. Detailed mechanical design of vacuum-compatible arms and actuators are presented, and manipulator flexibility is studied through experiments and model identification algorithm to evaluate the deformation.

First, the manipulator is designed to be several modular segments to obtain enough and flexible workspace inside the fusion device with narrow and complex geometries. Joint actuators with “rotation-linear-rotation” chains are developed to provide both huge reduction ratios and vacuum sealing. The redundant manipulator system has 11 degree of freedoms in total with a storage cask system to dock with the device vacuum vessel. In addition, to improve the position accuracy, an error prediction model is built based on the experimental study and back-propagation neural network (BPNN) algorithm.

Currently, the implementation of the manipulator system has been successfully carried out in both atmosphere and vacuum condition. Excellent performance indicates that the mechanical design is suitable. The validation of BPNN model shows an acceptable prediction accuracy (94∼98 per cent) compared with the real measurement.

This is a special robot system which is practically used in a nuclear fusion device in China. It will allow remote inspection and maintenance of plasma facing components in the vacuum vessel of fusion device without breaking the ultra-high vacuum condition during physical experiments. Its design, mechanism and error prediction strategy have great reference values to the similar robots in vacuum and temperature applications.

Although there have been considerable amounts of research documenting the effects of narcissism on workplace outcomes, studies of the impact of narcissism on job performance have produced inconclusive results. This study aims to provide insight into this issue by using a new model of narcissism, the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept model to explore the processes by which narcissism can impact job performance.

Two studies (Study 1 with 1,176 employees and 217 managers cross-sectional data; Study 2 with 209 employees and 39 managers time-lagged data) were conducted and multilevel technique was used to test the research model.

Narcissistic rivalry is associated with higher levels of family–work conflict (FWC) and that these effects are magnified when narcissists also have competing demands in the form of expectations to conform to traditional values. Furthermore, this study documents that higher levels of FWC are associated with greater emotional exhaustion and lower job performance. However, narcissistic admiration only has direct effect on job performance.

This paper not only suggests that narcissism is a previously untested dispositional antecedent for FWC, but it also uses a facet-based approach to examine when and how narcissism impacts job performance.

With the popularity of mobile devices and new technologies, such as NFC, mobile payment, which is taking the place of credit cards and cash as the chief payment method, is attracting more and more attention. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the main determinants of mobile payment use intention and proposes a model of mobile payment adoption, integrating mindfulness as a major factor.

Data for the study were collected through an online survey of a representative sample of 414 users in the United States and 380 in Spain. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to verify the validity of the variables and the relationships among them.

The results showed that mindfulness, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, subjective norms and attitude have significant influence on mobile payment use intention.

The present study is based on samples from only the United States and Spain, which limits generalization of the results. The notion of mindfulness is new in mobile payment adoption research, so future studies should analyze in more detail and in depth its effect on these adoption processes.

This is the first study to incorporate mindfulness into a mobile payment adoption process. Incorporating mindfulness complements traditional variables to show how users address the adoption process (e.g. novelty seeking, engagement, anxiety, attention paid).

Topic model has been widely applied to discover important information from a vast amount of unstructured data. Traditional long-text topic models such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation may suffer from the sparsity problem when dealing with short texts, which mostly come from the Web. These models also exist the readability problem when displaying the discovered topics. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel model called the Sense Unit based Phrase Topic Model (SenU-PTM) for both the sparsity and readability problems.

SenU-PTM is a novel phrase-based short-text topic model under a two-phase framework. The first phase introduces a phrase-generation algorithm by exploiting word embeddings, which aims to generate phrases with the original corpus. The second phase introduces a new concept of sense unit, which consists of a set of semantically similar tokens for modeling topics with token vectors generated in the first phase. Finally, SenU-PTM infers topics based on the above two phases.

Experimental results on two real-world and publicly available datasets show the effectiveness of SenU-PTM from the perspectives of topical quality and document characterization. It reveals that modeling topics on sense units can solve the sparsity of short texts and improve the readability of topics at the same time.

The originality of SenU-PTM lies in the new procedure of modeling topics on the proposed sense units with word embeddings for short-text topic discovery.