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In an urbanising world, neighbouring is perceived to be steadily losing significance and a remnant of the past. The same belief can also be found in China where rapid urbanisation has had a tremendous impact on the social networks and neighbourhood life of urban residents. This chapter challenges the common perception of neighbouring in demise and argues that neighbouring remains an important form of social relationship, even if the meanings and role of neighbouring have changed. This chapter first charts the changing role of neighbouring from the socialist era to post-reform China. It then provides an account of four common types of neighbourhoods in Chinese cities – work-unit estates, traditional courtyards, commodity housing estates and urban villages – and considers how and why neighbouring in different ways still matters to them. In pre-reform socialist China, neighbourhood life and neighbouring comprised much of the daily social life of residents. Since the reform era, with the proliferation of private commodity housing estates, middle-class residents prioritise comfort, security and privacy, such that neighbouring levels have subsided. Nevertheless, in other neighbourhood types, such as work-unit housing estates, traditional courtyards and urban villages, neighbours still rely upon one another for various reasons.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the necessary background information and literature in order to make this special issue self‐contained.

The paper comprises: an Introduction; Section 2 outlines the origin of the yoyo structure by presenting a brief historical account and the concept of whole evolution of systems; Section 3 introduces the literature on applications of the systemic yoyo model in areas of natural science, social science, epistemology, and practical disastrous weather forecasts; and Section 4 outlines what is contained in this special issue.

A personal account of aspects of a career in systems research and description of a personal ambition to introduce laws for social science and laws that make both natural and social sciences exact at the same time.

With regard to the systemic yoyo model, this paper presents an introduction to what has been accomplished by using this model and what will be presented in this special issue in order to provide all interested colleagues with an overall picture in terms of where the paper stands in the relevant research activities.

This paper proposes a distributed multi‐channel MAC protocol which is an extension of our early work GRID [1]. GRID is characterized by the following features: (i) it integrates a location‐aware channel assignment, (ii) it follows an “on‐demand” style to access the medium, (iii) the number of channels required is independent of the network topology, and (iv) no form of clock synchronization is required. The proposed protocol wants to further improve the GRID in two parts. First, we propose a fully distributed medium access mechanism without using a single control channel such that all of the network traffic can be distributed evenly over all data channels. Therefore, the network throughput will be increased significantly. Second, we can set the more suitable transmission range and GRID size by considering the factors of host density and packet arrival rate of the network within an specified area. Thus, all of channels will be reused more efficiently than GRID. Simulation results show that the throughput of our protocol is superior to GRID and IEEE 802.11.

Digital transformation is a foundational change in how firms operate and deliver value to customers by using digital technologies to create new business opportunities. The purpose of this study is to offer a conceptual framework by reorganizing the elements of digital transformation, including resources, technology, capabilities and performance, into a workable process and investigating how firms integrate these resources, build new capabilities and transform them into enhanced performance.

This framework builds three blocks: resource integration, organizational capabilities and outcomes, exploring the impact of resource integration on outcomes through organizational capabilities. For resource integration, this study adopts a resource-based view (RBV) and service-dominant logic (SDL) to integrate organizational resources, including information technology (IT)-based resources, which play a role in moderating the effect of resource integration. Moreover, the author argues that firms’ capabilities have two levels: higher-order capabilities and lower-order capabilities, which will convert these resources through the capabilities into organizational performance.

This framework is built to understand the process of digital transformation and its antecedents for firms’ performance in business environments. Drawing on RBV, it provides a more holistic perspective that has been linked to resource integration, organizational capabilities and outcomes at the firm level. In this way, the theoretical basis for diminishing implicitness associated with the current perspective of digital transformation can be strengthened.

This paper offers a coherent discussion of digital transformation and explains the process of digital transformation, thus advancing prior work. The major contribution is connecting the process of digital transformation through which firms integrate resources, i.e. digital technologies and valuable, rare, inimitable and nonsubstitutable (VRIN) and nonVRIN resources as well, to build organizational dynamic capabilities based on RBV and SDL.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

This paper aims to establish a systemic yoyo model for economic entities so that the most recent developments in systems research can be applied to the study of economics and finance.

The concept and methods of whole systemic evolution are employed so that each economic entity, be it an individual, a family, a company, or any organization, can be analyzed with the help of systems research.

It is first shown that, in a market of free competition, a concept as fundamental as demand and supply is about mutual reactions and mutual restrictions of different forces under equal quantitative effects. Second, each economic entity is modelled and simulated as an economic yoyo or a flow of such yoyos. Owing to the wide applicable scope and practical significance of the Rotten Kid theorem and the excellent analysis of Bergstrom concerning the fact that this theorem is not generally true, after developing the yoyo model for various economic entities, in this paper the main result is established, a sufficient and necessary condition under which the Rotten Kid theorem holds true in general in light of whole systems evolution.

For the first time in history, the general structure of systems is employed to analyze topics in household economics and a long‐sought‐for sufficient and necessary condition is obtained successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically, but briefly, outline the theoretical and empirical foundations for the validity of the general systemic yoyo model in order to lay down a solid basis for future studies of this model and relevant applications in various traditional research areas as presented in this special issue.

The paper is developed on the available theoretical knowledge from a wide range of areas, such as kinematics, fluid mechanics, vector analysis, quantitative representations of solenoidal rotations, geometry in curvature spaces, etc. and empirical facts from areas like quantum mechanics, astronomy, particle physics, meteorology, etc. The spirit of this work is truly systemic, where conclusions are drawn using cross‐disciplinary syntheses of conclusions and observations.

The paper develops a plausible and convincing series of evidence for the validity of the general systemic yoyo model and presents the relevant highlights of the dishpan experiment in order to pave the way for a follow‐up and detailed study of this yoyo model and its applications in natural and social sciences.

After the systemic yoyo model is initially proposed, this work is the first to develop the foundation of this useful model of systems research.

The present study conceptualizes and examines the interplay of transformational leadership, ambidexterity and wireless information technology (IT) competency for enhancing innovative capability.

Drawing primarily on the knowledge-based and dynamic capabilities view theory, the present study explored supply chains of a large global apparel company and their effect on innovative capability through a mixed methods approach.

The results show that transformational leaders strongly influence the development of ambidexterity and enhance radical innovative capability through wireless IT competency.

The results of this study suggest that supply chain integration through transformational leadership and wireless IT competency can promote simultaneous exploration and exploitation to enhance innovation.

The growth of cloud and/or virtual supply chains facilitated by digital wireless communications and Internet technology is advancing logistics and supply chain innovations. With increasing global competition, digitalized supply chains and ever-growing environmental uncertainty, leadership traits, especially transformational leadership and ambidextrous leaders, can be major contributing factors for successful development of wireless IT competency to support innovative capability.

Wireless IT competency facilitates knowledge integration particularly for combining prior internal knowledge of exploitative innovation with new external knowledge to develop explorative innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of supervisor gossip in the workplace. This paper proposes a hypothetical model in which supervisor gossip has an effect on leader-member exchange (LMX), in turn resulting in perceived supervisor ostracism among subordinates.

A dyadic research design was applied to collect data from Taiwanese employees. Supervisors participated in a survey containing measures of supervisor gossip and control variables, whereas subordinates responded to a questionnaire on LMX, perceived supervisor ostracism, and control variables.

The results indicated that positive supervisor gossip significantly affected LMX. Furthermore, healthy LMX reduced subordinates’ perceptions of supervisor ostracism.

All participants were recruited in Taiwan, which is a limitation for generalising the research findings. Future studies should investigate multiple societies of various cultural profiles.

To improve the quality of the supervisor-subordinate relationship, supervisors should adopt a positive informal communication style, and organisations should provide supervisors with information regarding the implications of workplace gossip, illustrating the substantial benefits of positive gossip and the potential drawbacks of negative gossip.

The present study highlighted the role of supervisor workplace gossip in the field of leadership and empirically investigated the impact of supervisor gossip on subordinates’ reactions.

The paper aims to show the existence of the systemic yoyo structure in human thoughts so that the human way of thinking is proven to have the same structure as that of the material world.

Parallel comparison is used to reveal the underlying structure existing in human thoughts.

After highlighting all the relevant ideas and concepts, which are behind each and every crisis in the foundations of mathematics, it becomes clear that some difficulties in the authors' understanding of nature are originated from confusing actual infinities with potential infinities, and vice versa. By pointing out the similarities and differences between these two kinds of infinities, then some hidden contradictions existing in the system of modern mathematics are handily picked out. Then, theoretically, using the authors' yoyo model, it is predicted that the fourth crisis in the foundations of mathematics has appeared. And, a plan of resolution of this new crisis is provided.

This paper shows the first time in history that human thought, the material world, and each economic entity, share a common structure – the systemic yoyo structure. And it proves the arrival of the fourth crisis in mathematics by using systems modeling and listing several; contradictions hidden deeply in the foundations of mathematics.