Yong Liu, Wenwen Ren, Qian Xu and Zhiyang Liu
This paper aims to deal with the coordination problem of the supply chain through cost sharing of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and government subsidy.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to deal with the coordination problem of the supply chain through cost sharing of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and government subsidy.
Design/methodology/approach
With respect to the coordination problem of the supply chain with CSR, this paper constructs a three-stage game model consisting of a dominant retailer, n suppliers and government. From the perspective of cost sharing and government subsidies, this paper discussed the decentralized and centralized decision-making, respectively. On this basis, this paper designed a coordination mechanism considering both cost sharing and government subsidies and explore the impact of cost sharing rate and government subsidy rate on CSR efforts, members’ profits and social welfare.
Findings
CSR can improve the profits of supply chain members and the overall performance of the supply chain. Then the profits of supply chain nodal enterprises will be affected by the fulfillment level of CSR of their partners. Furthermore, excessive CSR will erode the supply chain profits and cause resource waste. High CSR costs often make retailers low CSR effort level, while a high CSR cost sharing rate can reduce the profits of suppliers and the supply chain. In addition, excessive government subsidies will lead to the decline of social welfare. Excessive government subsidies will cause the dependence of enterprises and affect their operating efficiency.
Practical implications
The proposed coordination mechanism can effectively do with the coordination problem of the supply chain.
Originality/value
The proposed coordination mechanism considering cost sharing and government subsidies simultaneously can effectively deal with conflict problems and guarantee the supply chain members and the supply chain to maximize their profits and social welfare.
Details
Keywords
Zuhui Xu, Bin Li, Zhiyang Liu and Jie Wu
Research on entrepreneurship toward poverty reduction has outlined how micro-level characteristics of entrepreneurs capture entrepreneurial opportunities in settings of poverty;…
Abstract
Purpose
Research on entrepreneurship toward poverty reduction has outlined how micro-level characteristics of entrepreneurs capture entrepreneurial opportunities in settings of poverty; however, little is known about the influence of previous military experience in this context. This paper investigates how previous military experience influences poverty-reduction entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses data from two main sources. First, individual-level and firm-level information come from a nationwide survey of founders of private enterprises. Second, province-level information is taken from the Marketization Index and the China Statistics Yearbook. An analysis of the Logit moderation model renders strong support for our conjectures.
Findings
Via novel integration of imprinting theory and research on previous military experience, we propose that entrepreneurs with previous military experience have a strong sense of self-sacrifice, and as a result, are better able to participate in poverty-reduction entrepreneurship. In addition, we build on the resource availability and stakeholder expectations arguments and predict that the main effect of previous military experience on poverty-reduction entrepreneurship will be strengthened by reduced corporate philanthropy and increased government intervention.
Originality/value
Our study adds to the extant literature in the following ways. First, it enriches the literature on entrepreneurship toward poverty reduction. Second, it contributes to imprinting theory in the entrepreneurial field. Third, it adds knowledge to the social entrepreneurship literature.
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Lingcheng Kong, Zhiyang Liu, Yafei Pan, Jiaping Xie and Guang Yang
The online direct selling mode has been widely accepted by enterprises in the O2O era. However, the dual-channel (online/offline, forward/backward) operations of the closed-loop…
Abstract
Purpose
The online direct selling mode has been widely accepted by enterprises in the O2O era. However, the dual-channel (online/offline, forward/backward) operations of the closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) changed the relationship between manufacturers and retailers, thus resulting in channel conflict. The purpose of this paper is to take a dual-channel operations of CLSC as the research target, where a manufacturer sells a single product through a direct e-channel as well as a conventional retail channel; the retailer are responsible for collecting used products in the reverse supply chain and the manufacturer are responsible for remanufacturing.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors build a benchmark model of dual-channel price and service competition and take the return rate, which is considered to be related to the service level of the retailer, as the function of the service level to extend the model in the reverse SC. The authors then analyze the optimal pricing and service decision under centralization and decentralization, respectively. Finally, with the revenue-sharing factor, wholesale price and recycling price transfer payment coefficient as contract parameters, the paper also designs a revenue-sharing contract led by the manufacturer and explores in what situation the contract could realize the Pareto optimization of all players.
Findings
In the baseline model, the results show that optimal price and service level correlate positively in centralization; however, the relation relies on consumers’ price sensitivity in decentralization. In the extension model, the relationship between price and service level also relies on the relative value of increased service cost and remanufacturing saved cost. When the return rate correlates with the service level, a recycling transfer payment can elevate the service level and thus raise the return rate. Through analyzing the parameters in revenue-sharing contract, a point can be reached where lowering the wholesale price and raising the transfer payment coefficient will promote retailers to share revenue.
Practical implications
Many enterprises establish the dual-channel distribution system both online and offline, which need to understand how to resolve their channel conflict. The conflict is especially strong in CLSC with remanufacturing. The result helps the node enterprises realize the coordination of the dual-channel CLSC.
Originality/value
It takes into account the fact that there are two complementary relationships, such as online selling and offline delivery; used product recycling and remanufacturing. The authors optimize the strategy of product pricing and service level in order to solve channel conflict and double marginalization in the closed-loop dual-channel distribution network.
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Miao Yanzi, Wang Xiaolin, Zhang Yuanhao, Ji Liang, Wang Yizhou and Xu Zhiyang
The purpose of this paper is to improve the precision of gangue detection. In the real production environment, some gangue features are not obvious, and it is difficult to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to improve the precision of gangue detection. In the real production environment, some gangue features are not obvious, and it is difficult to distinguish between coal and gangue. The color of the conveyor belt is similar to the gangue, the background noise also brings challenge to gangue detection. To address the above problems, we propose a feature aggregation method based on optical flow (FAOF).
Design/methodology/approach
An FAOF is proposed. First, to enhance the feature representation of the current frame, FAOF applies the timing information of video stream, propagates the feature information of the past few frames to the current frame by optical flow. Second, the coordinate attention (CA) module is adopted to suppress the noise impact brought by the background of convey belt. Third, the Mish activation function is used to replace rectified linear unit to improve the generalization capability of our model.
Findings
The experimental results show that the gangue detection model proposed in this paper improve 4.3 average precision compared to baseline. This model can effectively improve the accuracy of gangue detection in real production environment.
Originality/value
The key contributions are as follows: this study proposes an FAOF; this study adds CA module and Mish to reduce noise from the background of the conveyor belt; and this study also constructs a large gangue data set.
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Yuxin Cui, Yong-Hua Li, Dongxu Zhang, Yufeng Wang and Zhiyang Zhang
Aiming at the inefficiency of solving the Sobol index using the traditional mathematical analytical method, a Sobol global sensitivity analysis method is proposed.
Abstract
Purpose
Aiming at the inefficiency of solving the Sobol index using the traditional mathematical analytical method, a Sobol global sensitivity analysis method is proposed.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, a support vector regression (SVR) surrogate model is constructed to solve the Sobol index. The optimal combination of SVR hyperparameters is obtained by using the improved beluga whale optimization (IBWO). Meanwhile, in order to solve the problem that Sobol sequences will form correlation regions in high-dimensional space leading to the uneven distribution of sampling points, a scrambled strategy is introduced in the Sobol sensitivity analysis using IBWO-SVR. Thus, the IBWO-SVR-SS sensitivity analysis model is established.
Findings
The results of two test functions show that the method further improves the accuracy of the sensitivity analysis. Finally, the first-order Sobol index and second-order Sobol index are solved by the IBWO-SVR-SS method using the metro bogie frame as an engineering example. Through the analysis results, the key design parameters of the frame and the design parameter combinations with more obvious coupling relationships are identified, providing a strong reference for the subsequent analysis and structural optimization.
Originality/value
Sobol sensitivity analysis using the surrogate model method can effectively improve the efficiency of the solution. In addition, IBWO is used for the optimization of the SVR hyperparameters to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the optimization, and finally, the correction of the Sobol sequence through the introduction of the disruption strategy also further improves the accuracy of the sensitivity analysis of Sobol.
Details
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Xiangning Wang, Xianming Zeng and Zhiyang Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to estimate the cost and profit efficiency (PE) of Chinese commercial banks in the last ten years and investigate how market power affects bank…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to estimate the cost and profit efficiency (PE) of Chinese commercial banks in the last ten years and investigate how market power affects bank efficiency and stability.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper builds a stochastic frontier analysis model to evaluate the cost and PE of commercial banks. The paper then uses a Lerner index and Z-index to represent market power and stability, respectively. In addition, the paper empirically analyzes the relationship between market power and bank efficiency, stability in the last ten years.
Findings
The results show that the efficiency of banks on the Chinese mainland increased during the study period, but is still lower than that of banks in Hong Kong; moreover, the efficiency of four state-owned commercial banks is lower than that of medium and small banks. Market power has a negative relationship with efficiency while its relationship with stability varies among Chinese banks.
Research limitations/implications
The results imply that the promotion of financial liberalization and banking reform to introduce an appropriate competition mechanism has had a positive effect on the efficiency and stability of Chinese commercial banks.
Practical implications
Thus, the paper will contribute to deepen reform and opening up the banking sector in China.
Social implications
The healthy development of banking can enhance the ability of banks to withstand financial risks, to promote the harmonious development of society.
Originality/value
The paper estimates the cost and PE of Chinese commercial banks using SFA model and investigates how market power affects bank efficiency and stability. The study design has a certain novelty, where Lerner index and Z index are used, respectively, to measure market power and stability and management efficiency of commercial banks is investigated from two aspects – PE and cost efficiency – by the translog cost function, instead of Douglas production function. In addition, the paper tries to put some of Hong Kong banks included in the study sample, and has a certain reference value.
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Jinsheng Wang, Zhiyang Cao, Guoji Xu, Jian Yang and Ahsan Kareem
Assessing the failure probability of engineering structures is still a challenging task in the presence of various uncertainties due to the involvement of expensive-to-evaluate…
Abstract
Purpose
Assessing the failure probability of engineering structures is still a challenging task in the presence of various uncertainties due to the involvement of expensive-to-evaluate computational models. The traditional simulation-based approaches require tremendous computational effort, especially when the failure probability is small. Thus, the use of more efficient surrogate modeling techniques to emulate the true performance function has gained increasingly more attention and application in recent years. In this paper, an active learning method based on a Kriging model is proposed to estimate the failure probability with high efficiency and accuracy.
Design/methodology/approach
To effectively identify informative samples for the enrichment of the design of experiments, a set of new learning functions is proposed. These learning functions are successfully incorporated into a sampling scheme, where the candidate samples for the enrichment are uniformly distributed in the n-dimensional hypersphere with an iteratively updated radius. To further improve the computational efficiency, a parallelization strategy that enables the proposed algorithm to select multiple sample points in each iteration is presented by introducing the K-means clustering algorithm. Hence, the proposed method is referred to as the adaptive Kriging method based on K-means clustering and sampling in n-Ball (AK-KBn).
Findings
The performance of AK-KBn is evaluated through several numerical examples. According to the generated results, all the proposed learning functions are capable of guiding the search toward sample points close to the LSS in the critical region and result in a converged Kriging model that perfectly matches the true one in the regions of interest. The AK-KBn method is demonstrated to be well suited for structural reliability analysis and a very good performance is observed in the investigated examples.
Originality/value
In this study, the statistical information of Kriging prediction, the relative contribution of the sample points to the failure probability and the distances between the candidate samples and the existing ones are all integrated into the proposed learning functions, which enables effective selection of informative samples for updating the Kriging model. Moreover, the number of required iterations is reduced by introducing the parallel computing strategy, which can dramatically alleviate the computation cost when time demanding numerical models are involved in the analysis.
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Keywords
This paper aims to deal with the trade-off of the stability and the accuracy in learning human control strategy from demonstrations. With the stability conditions and the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to deal with the trade-off of the stability and the accuracy in learning human control strategy from demonstrations. With the stability conditions and the estimated stability region, this paper aims to conveniently get rid of the unstable controller or controller with relatively small stability region. With this evaluation, the learning human strategy controller becomes much more robust to perturbations.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the criterion to verify the stability and a method to estimate the domain of attraction are provided for the learning controllers trained with support vector machines (SVMs). Conditions are formulated based on the discrete-time system Lyapunov theory to ensure that a closed-form of the learning control system is strongly stable under perturbations (SSUP). Then a Chebychev point based approach is proposed to estimate its domain of attraction.
Findings
Some of such learning controllers have been implemented in the vertical balance control of a dynamically stable, statically unstable wheel mobile robot.
Details
Keywords
Zhi Yang, Jinglan Yang and Xiao Liang
How an entrepreneurial organisation sets the problem space determines the future venturing mode. However, the factors that contribute to differences in problem space are still not…
Abstract
Purpose
How an entrepreneurial organisation sets the problem space determines the future venturing mode. However, the factors that contribute to differences in problem space are still not well-developed. Based on sensemaking theory, this study explores the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of organisational sensemaking on effectual problem setting.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on survey data from 162 entrepreneurial organisations in China. Hierarchical regression is used for analysing the data and testing the hypotheses.
Findings
Organisational sensemaking has a negative effect on effectual problem setting and a positive impact on outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability; outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability has a negative effect on effectual problem setting; outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability plays a partially mediating role in the relationship between organisational sensemaking and effectual problem setting. Organisational size negatively moderates the relationship between organisational sensemaking and outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability. It also negatively moderates the indirect effect of organisational sensemaking on effectual problem setting through outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability.
Originality/value
First, this study contributes to the research on effectual problem setting by introducing organisational sensemaking as an antecedent. Second, this study extends the literature on organisational sensemaking by showing how organisational sensemaking affects entrepreneurial uncertainty, instead of treating uncertainty as an exogenous shock. Third, this study introduced the outside-in entrepreneurial marketing capability to reveal the mediating mechanism between organisational sensemaking and effectual problem setting.