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This paper aims to examine three of the major issues relating to the welfare of seafarers, including wages, social security benefits and onboard and ashore welfare facilities and services. It is impossible to research all countries here, so this paper selects Greece – which is one of today’s primary shipping countries as for shipowning, as well as for global supply and demand for seafarers – to conduct an empirical case study.

Based on the existing knowledge and scholarship, and primary data collected in several phases of fieldwork, this paper intends to critically examine three major issues relating to the welfare for Greek seafarers, namely, wages, social security benefits and onboard and ashore welfare facilities and services.

This paper finds that they face poor labour conditions, which are getting worse due to the depressed world and Greek economies and intense financial pressures on shipping companies. The entry into force of the Maritime Labour Convention 2006 has a significant impact on the world maritime industry.

This paper critically examines the three major issues relating to the welfare of Greek seafarers.

Such issues, which Greece is facing are also common in other countries, so the findings and suggestions revealed from this paper are of importance for the global shipping industry and other states.

The purpose of this paper is to enable robots to intelligently adapt their damping characteristics and motions in a reactive fashion toward human inputs and task requirements during physical human–robot interaction.

This paper exploits a combination of the dynamical system and the admittance model to create robot behaviors. The reference trajectories are generated by dynamical systems while the admittance control enables robots to compliantly follow the reference trajectories. To determine how control is divided between the two models, a collaborative arbitration algorithm is presented to change their contributions to the robot motion based on the contact forces. In addition, the authors investigate to model the robot’s impedance characteristics as a function of the task requirements and build a novel artificial damping field (ADF) to represent the virtual damping at arbitrary robot states.

The authors evaluate their methods through experiments on an UR10 robot. The result shows promising performances for the robot to achieve complex tasks in collaboration with human partners.

The proposed method extends the dynamical system approach with an admittance control law to allow a robot motion being adjusted in real time. Besides, the authors propose a novel ADF method to model the robot’s impedance characteristics as a function of the task requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to present a method which enables a robot to learn both motion skills and stiffness profiles from humans through kinesthetic human-robot cooperation.

Admittance control is applied to allow robot-compliant behaviors when following the reference trajectories. By extending the dynamical movement primitives (DMP) model, a new concept of DMP and stiffness primitives is introduced to encode a kinesthetic demonstration as a combination of trajectories and stiffness profiles, which are subsequently transferred to the robot. Electromyographic signals are extracted from a human’s upper limbs to obtain target stiffness profiles. By monitoring vibrations of the end-effector velocities, a stability observer is developed. The virtual damping coefficient of admittance controller is adjusted accordingly to eliminate the vibrations.

The performance of the proposed methods is evaluated experimentally. The result shows that the robot can perform tasks in a variable stiffness mode as like the human dose in the teaching phase.

DMP has been widely used as a teaching by demonstration method to represent movements of humans and robots. The proposed method extends the DMP framework to allow a robot to learn not only motion skills but also stiffness profiles. Additionally, the authors proposed a stability observer to eliminate vibrations when the robot is disturbed by environment.

This study seeks to examine the relationship between individual's cultural values of individualism, collectivism, selected personality traits and the psychological contracts they tend to form.

Surveys were used to collect data from China and US sample sets. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to explore the impact of selected cultural values and personality traits on individuals' tendency to form transactional contract or relational contract.

Personality characteristics of equity sensitivity and external locus of control were found to be positively related to transactional contract type for both samples, and conscientiousness was found to be positively related to relational contract, but the relationship was only found for the Chinese sample. The impact of the individualistic cultural value on the type of psychological contract one forms with the employer is uncertain, but the individualism value was found to have a mediator effect between age and transactional contract type for the Chinese sample.

The study contributes evidence that can help explain why employees who face the same job conditions and employment relationships may develop different psychological contracts with their employers. The finding on the mediating effect of individualism between age and transactional contract highlight challenges faced by managers in China's changing economy in terms of motivating and retaining young employees.

The study contributes to research on personality and psychological contracts. In the domain of personality, the study attempts to explore how personality affects organizational behavior. From the perspective of psychological contract, the paper contributes evidence that can help explain why employees who face the same job conditions and employment relationships may develop different psychological contracts with their employers.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the joint effects of lead time, information sharing and the accounts receivable period on reverse factoring (RF) adoption from the suppliers’ perspective.

Supported by one of the largest commercial banks in China, survey data are collected from 424 Chinese manufacturing firms and analyzed using regression methods.

The results suggest that lead time positively affects suppliers’ RF adoption directly and indirectly through the accounts receivable period. Meanwhile, information sharing has a positive, direct and a negative, indirect influence on suppliers’ RF adoption.

The findings give suppliers and financial institutions a better understanding of how to leverage the benefits of RF.

In this study, we examine the implementation of purchase order finance (POF) which is an innovative supply chain finance (SCF) solution by an innovative SCF lender (i.e. supply chain service provider (SCSP)). The effect of information integration between the SCSP (lender) and product designers (borrowers) on the lender's POF decisions and the borrowers' new product launch is investigated.

We conduct a case study in the Chinese smartphone industry. A mixed methods design is used, and data are collected from both the supply chain service provider (SCSP) and product designers. We first conduct a qualitative study. Hypotheses are developed concerning the relationships between information integration, in terms of social interaction and information system integration, POF and new product launch. We then conduct a quantitative study. The multilevel structural equation modelling method is used to test the hypotheses.

We find that information system integration is positively associated with POF but has no significant effect on new product launch. Social interaction is negatively associated with POF but positively associated with new product launch. POF is positively associated with new product launch.

This study contributes to the literature by empirically examining the implementation of POF from both the lender's and borrower's perspectives. We find that information system integration and social interaction have different effects on POF and new product launch. The results thus provide insights into how a lender makes POF decisions and reveal the benefits of POF for borrowers.

Self-crosslinked long fluorocarbon acrylate polymer latex has good hydrophobic and oleophobicity, weather resistance, aging resistance, stability and other excellent properties, which make the polymer be widely used in coatings, dyes, adhesives and other products. The purpose of this study is to prepare self-crosslinked long fluorocarbon acrylate polymer latex via semi-continuous seeded emulsion technology and carry out comparative study on two different cross-linked monomers.

Methyl methacrylate (MMA) and butyl acrylate (BA) were used as the main monomers, dodecafluoroheptyl methacrylate (DFMA) as the fluoromonomer, hydroxypropyl methacrylate (HPMA) and N-methylol acrylamide (NMA) as cross-linked monomers, and 1-allyloxy-3–(4-nonylphenol)-2-propanol polyoxyethylene (10) ether (ANPEO10) and 1-allyloxy-3–(4-nonylphenol)-2-propanol polyoxyethylene (10) ether ammonium sulfate (DNS-86) as compound emulsifiers via the semicontinuous-seeded emulsion polymerization.

The properties of the polymer emulsions, which are prepared with two different cross-linked monomers, are compared and discussed, and it is concluded that HPMA is more suitable for the preparation of self-crosslinked polymer emulsions. The formula of the polymer latex is ANPEO10: DNS-86 = 1:1, and the mass ratio of the monomers used in the polymer is MMA: BA: DFMA: HPMA = 14.40:14.40:0.60:0.60.

Self-crosslinked long fluorocarbon acrylate polymer latex can be used in many fields such as coatings, dyes, adhesives and other products.

The self-crosslinked long fluorocarbon acrylate polymer latex is prepared by mixing the nonionic emulsifier ANPEO10 and the anionic emulsifier DNS-86 when potassium persulfate is used as the thermal decomposition initiator and the semicontinuous-seeded emulsion technology is adopted and the comparative study on two different cross-linked monomer is carried out, which is not reported in the open literatures.

This paper examines the changes suggested by maritime stakeholders to achieve gender equality in seafaring, a male-dominated profession.

Adopting a four-stage career cycle framework, this paper analyzes changes proposed by 423 industry stakeholders to promote gender equality in seafaring. These proposed changes were posted on the Day of Seafarers 2019 virtual wall set up by the International Maritime Organization, which served as a forum for industry stakeholders from all over the world to voice their opinions and suggestions.

The data analysis shows that the suggested changes reflect many challenges and barriers women seafarers face. While stakeholders from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries are more likely to call for changes to remove barriers in the retention and development stage, gender equality in seafaring in non-OECD countries is still seriously hindered by barriers in the recruitment stage. The paper also reveals that comparatively male stakeholders are less likely to appreciate the problems women seafarers face.

This paper takes a comparative approach, comparing the changes proposed by seafarers and other industry stakeholders from different parts of the world. This approach provides a nuanced understanding of issues related to gender equality in seafaring by showing that stakeholders from different backgrounds have different priorities.