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The goal of this study is to investigate the mediating effect of referral rewards on consumer willingness to recommend poverty-alleviating products and to identify the most effective referral rewards for incentivizing consumers to recommend poverty-alleviating products.

Tournament rewards and piece-rate rewards are designed based on the theory of indebtedness, the related literature and the actual background. SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 17.0 are used to analyze the structural equation model.

According to the structural equation analysis, the following findings were found: under the tournament reward condition, social image, feelings of indebtedness and perceived reward value negatively affect consumer willingness to recommend. Under the piece-rate reward condition, social image and feelings of indebtedness significantly negatively affect consumer recommendation willingness, while perceived reward value significantly positively affects consumer recommendation willingness. The mean recommendation willingness of the tournament reward group is significantly lower than that of the control group. In contrast, the mean recommendation willingness of the piece-rate rewards group is significantly higher than that of the control group.

Based on the study findings, the authors propose that enterprises apply piece-rate rewards to incentivize consumers to recommend poverty-alleviating products when designing such rewards. In this way, the sale of poverty-alleviating products can be improved.

This study aims to explore how the ideal employee effects of internal marketing are created and sustained. It aims to reveal the role that outbound marketing activities play in the reproduction of a brand-centric employee culture.

From an organizational ritual perspective, this study conducts a qualitative study of a Chinese department store’s anniversary celebration, which is a multi-day annual sales event. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, supplemented with corporate documents and field observation.

This study reveals that the focal event remains a success because the well-managed coordination of its onstage and backstage activities serves to reproduce an employee culture of espousing and voluntarily enacting corporately mandated role norms, values and beliefs.

For the management of retail events with the aim of building organizational culture, this study points to the importance of emphasizing the symbolism of the sales promotion aspects of an event and paying as much attention to employees’ backstage experiences as to the public execution of a consumer event.

This study shows that external marketing could set the stage for internal marketing, with the ideal effects of internal marketing actually constructed and institutionalized during activities and procedures comprising outbound marketing. This suggests that a more nuanced view of the practice of internal marketing is warranted.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to address the problem of selecting risk response actions (RRAs) considering the risk dependency that is seldom considered in the existing studies.

First, a method based on the Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical-Based Evaluation Technique (MACBETH) is proposed to measure the dependencies between the risks, and then a preference coefficient denoting the relative importance of the risk dependency is introduced. Besides, an exponential utility function is used to describe the project manager’s (PM) risk-averse behaviour. Finally, a mathematical model that incorporates the risk dependency and risk preference of the PM is constructed for selecting the RRAs.

Risk dependency plays an important role in the process of RRA selection. First, more expected utility can be obtained when the risk dependency is considered. Second, more attention should be paid to the risk dependency for coping with critical risks when the budget is tight.

This method can be applied to determine the RRAs when the risk dependency exists between the project risks.

This paper proposes a model to select RRAs with consideration of the risk dependency, which is an important issue from a theoretical as well as a practical perspective in project risk management.

Over the past three decade, China has established a housing finance system that borrows from the collective experiences of advanced economies. After examining the evolution of China’s housing finance system, the paper focuses on analyzing its challenges and recent changes. The paper argues that China’s highly-centralized financial system prefers financial stability but neglects financial liberalization, and then resulted in severe financial repression, which hurts the efficiency and equality of the housing finance service. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis via high-cost financial intervention, China took some policy innovations to promote a decentralized finance mechanism, expand finance resources, and support affordable housing financing, through which China hopes to provide a more stable, affordable, and equal housing finance service to help more households own homes.

This paper aims to examine the performance of low-pressure cold-sprayed zinc–nickel (Zn-Ni) composites coating, i.e. whether it has the same performance as Zn-Ni alloy coating.

In this paper, Zn-Ni composites coatings containing four different nickel contents were prepared with commercial DYMET 413 low-pressure cold spraying system under the same parameters. Corrosion behaviors of four kinds of coatings were examined with potentiodynamic polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy methods, combined with scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction.

Corrosion behavior of Zn-Ni composites coating is similar to Zn-Ni alloy coating. In the early stages of immersion, the anodic dissolution of zinc happens, which results in the formation of a zinc hydroxide layer. With the continuous infiltration of chloride ion, zinc hydroxide will get converted to zinc oxide, basic zinc chloride and basic zinc carbonate. The presence of nickel in coatings can prevent zinc hydroxide from converting into zinc oxide.

Further research should be done on improving the deposition efficiency, as the deposition efficiency of low-pressure cold spray is lower than 30 per cent.

Low-pressure cold spray coating can be used in cyclic dry/wet conditions to prolong the life of a steel structure.

Low-pressure cold spray Zn-Ni coating is an environmentally friendly anticorrosion method which can be used as an alternative of hexavalent chromium passivation coating.

Zn-Ni composite coating can be deposited on steel directly by low-pressure cold spray by mechanically mixing the powders together. The composite coating also has the same long-term anticorrosion performance as Zn-Ni alloy coating.

This chapter examines China’s corporate governance and accounting environment that shapes the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards. Specifically, it examines international influences, including supranational organizations; foreign investors and international accounting firms; domestic institutional influences, including the political system, economic system, legal system, and cultural system; and accounting infrastructure. China’s convergence is driven by desired efficiency of the corporate sector and legitimacy of participating in the global market. Influenced heavily by international forces in the context of globalization, corporate governance and accounting practices are increasingly becoming in line with internationally acceptable standards and codes. While convergence assists China in obtaining legitimacy, improving efficiency is likely to be adversely affected given that corporate governance and accounting in China operate in an environment that differs considerably from those of Anglo-American countries. An examination of the corporate governance and accounting environment in China suggests heavy government involvement within underdeveloped institutions. While the Chinese government has made impressive progress in developing the corporate governance and accounting environment for the market economy, China’s unique institutional setting is likely to affect how the imported concepts are interpreted and implemented.

The purpose of this paper is to design a climbing robot connected by a connecting rod mechanism to achieve multi-functional tasks such as obstacles crossing and climbing of power transmission towers.

A connecting rod type gripper has been designed to achieve stable grasping of angle steel. Before grasping, use coordination between structures to achieve stable docking and grasping. By using the alternating movements of two claws and the middle climbing mechanism, the climbing and obstacle crossing of the angle steel were achieved.

Through a simple linkage mechanism, a climbing robot has been designed, greatly reducing the overall mass of the robot. It can also carry a load of 1 kg, and the climbing mechanism can perform stable climbing. The maximum step distance of the climbing robot is 543 mm, which can achieve the crossing of angle steel obstacles.

A transmission tower climbing mechanism was proposed by analyzing the working environment. Through the locking ability of the screw nut, stable clamping of the angle steel is achieved, and a pitch mechanism is designed to adjust the posture of the hand claw.

Substantial research has examined the pivotal role of ethical leadership in generating employee outcomes. To date, though, little is known about the relationship between ethical leadership and newcomers' adjustment. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this gap by examining the effect of ethical leadership on newcomers' adjustment. In doing so, the authors highlighted positive emotions of newcomers as a mediating mechanism that explains the aforementioned association.

Data were drawn from a two-wave sample of 271 newcomers. The hypotheses were tested by using hierarchical regression analyses and Hayes' PROCESS macro.

The results demonstrated that ethical leadership affects employees' positive emotions which, in turn, positively relates to newcomers' adjustment. Additionally, newcomers' social comparison orientation moderated the effect of ethical leadership on newcomers' positive emotions.

The research uses a correlational research design, making it difficult to derive causal inferences from the data. Moreover, the data we obtained on the variables were all based on employees' self-reports, which might inflate the relationship between some of the variables.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study that illustrates the role of ethical leadership in enhancing both newcomers’ positive emotions and adjustment.

The purpose of this study is to synthesize a semiconductor photocatalyst which responds to both UV light and visible light in removal of organic dyes.

ZnO nanoparticles were pre-synthesised via sol-gel method using zinc nitrate tetrahydrate and methanamine at 90°C for 20 h. Subsequently, the as-synthesised ZnO nanoparticles were filtered, washed and dried. To synthesize ZnO-MnO₂ core shell nanocomposites (CSNs), 2:3 M ratio of KMnO₄ and MnSO₄ solution was stirred for an hour. Next, ZnO nanoparticles were added into the solution. The solution was heated at 160°C for 3 h for the formation of ZnO-MnO₂ CSNs. The structural, optical and photocatalytic properties of ZnO-MnO₂ CSNs were characterised by field emission scanning electron microscope, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffractometer and PL spectroscopy, respectively.

The photodegradation efficiencies of rhodamine B (RhB) dye by ZnO-MnO₂ CSNs as photocatalysts are 87.1 per cent under UV irradiation and 76.6 per cent under visible light irradiation, respectively. Their corresponding rate constants are 0.016 min⁻¹ under UV irradiation and 0.013 min⁻¹ under visible light irradiation. It can be concluded that N-deethylation was the dominant step during the photodegradation of RhB dye as compared to cycloreversion. The ZnO-MnO₂ CSNs demonstrated good photostability after three consecutive runs.

ZnO-MnO₂ CSN photocatalyst which could response to UV and visible light in degradation of RhB dye was synthesised using sol-gel method. The analysis shows that N-deethylation was the key photodegradation mechanism of RhB by ZnO-MnO₂ CSN.