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Prior research suggests that perceived levels of a subordinate auditor’s competence affects audit reviewers’ judgments. We extend this line of research by investigating the effects of perceived client competence (hereafter, ClientComp) and its interaction with subordinate auditor’s competence (hereafter, AuditorComp) on audit reviewers’ judgments. Using data from highly experienced CPA audit managers, senior managers, and partners, we find a significant main effect for AuditorComp, but not for ClientComp. We also find that when AuditorComp is high, levels of ClientComp do not affect audit reviewers’ judgments. However, we cannot support the hypothesis that when AuditorComp is low ClientComp will significantly affect audit reviewers’ judgments. These mixed results suggest that in the post-SOX (2002) era regulatory environment, audit reviewers may be exercising heightened professional skepticism about ClientComp whenever they consider clients’ assertions.

Automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) are widely used in industrial fields. But most control strategies merely take the lateral force into consideration. This will reduce the accuracy, stability and robustness and will pay additional costs. Therefore, this paper aims to design a control strategy that initially considers lateral force. Thereby, it will improve the accuracy, stability and robustness and reduce the overall cost of AGV.

To achieve the goal of comprehensively improving AGV operating performance, this paper presents a new scheme, combining the dual-wheeled chassis model (DCM) using proportional–integral–differential (PID) control and a supporting quick response (QR) code navigation technology. DCM is the core, which analyzes the deviation caused by lateral force. Then, DCM with PID control by the control law is combined to suppress the errors. Meanwhile, QR code navigation technology provides effective data support for the control strategy.

Most AGV experiments are carried out in a standard environment. However, this study prepares unfavorable scenarios and operating conditions for the experiments that generate detailed data to demonstrate this study’s strategy, which can make an accurate, stable and robust operation process of AGV under various adverse environmental and mechanical factors.

This study proposed DCM, fully considering lateral force and converting the force into velocity. Subsequently, PID controls the speed of two wheels to reduce the error. QR code provides an efficient and low – cost way to obtain information. The three are cleverly combined as a novel industrial AGV control strategy, which can comprehensively improve the operating performance while reducing overall costs.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a system with the highest discriminatory power by selecting an indicator system based on the K–S test according to the unique circumstances of small enterprises.

The proposed method relies on calculating the K–S test statistical magnitude of D iteratively to reach a system with the maximum discriminatory power.

The empirical results, demonstrated using 3,045 small businesses from a Chinese bank, show that credit rating system should focus on the indicator system’s discriminatory power rather than a single indicator’s discriminatory power, because the interaction between indicators affects the discriminatory power of the system.

The proposed method creates a credit rating system with the highest discriminatory power, rather than its indicators, which is a more reasonable and novel approach to credit rating.

The approach is unique because the final system will have high discriminatory power and has excellent potential for decision support. The authors believe that this contribution is theoretically and practically relevant because credit rating for small business is especially difficult and complicated.

This paper aims to study the removal of wide-stripe noise in hyperspectral remote sensing images. There is a great deal of stripe noises in short-wave infrared hyperspectral remote sensing image, especially wide-stripe noise, which brings great challenge to the interpretation and application of hyperspectral images.

To remove the noise and to reduce the impact based on in-depth study of the mechanism of the stripe noise generation and its distribution characteristics, this paper proposed two statistical local processing and moment matching algorithms for the elimination of wide-stripe noise, namely, the gradient mean moment matching (GMMM) algorithm and the gradient interpolation moment matching (GIMM) algorithm.

The experiments were carried out with the practical short-wave infrared hyperspectral image data and good experiment results were obtained. Experiments show that both can reduce the impact of wide-stripe noise, and the filtering effect and the application range of the GIMM algorithm is better than that of the GMMM algorithm.

Using new methods to deal with the hyperspectral remote sensing images, it can effectively improve the quality of hyperspectral images and improve their utilization efficiency and value.

This study aims to research properties of Cu/SAC0307 mixed solder balls/Al joints with different bonding temperature under ultrasonic-assisted.

A new method that 1 mm Zn particles and Sn-0.3Ag-0.7 (SAC0307) with a particle size of 25–38 mm were mixed to fill the joint and successfully achieved micro-joining of Cu/Al under ultrasonic-assisted.

The results indicated that when the bonding temperature was 180°C, there was only one layer of CuZn₅ intermetallic compounds (IMCs) at the Cu interface. However, when the bonding temperature was 190°C, 200°C and 210°C, the Cu interface IMCs had two layers: for one layer, the IMCs near the Cu substrate were Cu₅Zn₈ and for another layer, the IMCs near the solder were CuZn₅. In addition, the thickness of the Cu interfacial IMCs increased with the bonding temperature. In particular, the thickness of IMCs at the Cu interface of the Cu/Al joints soldered at 210°C was 4.6 µm, which increased by 139.6% compared with that of the Cu/Al joints soldered at 180°C. However, there was no IMC layer at the Al interface, but there might be a Zn–Al solid solution layer. The shear strength of Cu/Al joints soldered at 180°C was only 15.01 MPa, but as the soldering temperature continued to increase, the shear strength of the Cu/Al joints increased rapidly. When the soldering temperature was 200°C, the shear strength of the Cu/Al joints reached the maximum of 38.07 MPa, which was 153.6% higher than that at 180°C. When the soldering temperature was 180°C, the fracture of Cu/Al joints was mainly on the Al side. However, when soldering temperature was 190°C, 200°C and 210°C, the fracture of Cu/Al joints was mainly broken in the Zn particles layer.

A new method that 1 mm Zn particles and Sn-0.3Ag-0.7 (SAC0307) with a particle size of 25–38 mm were mixed to fill the Cu/Al joint at 210°C.

Digital transformation misalignment refers to disparities in digital transformation levels between suppliers and buyers across the production and operation process. It has negatively affected supply chain stability. However, the existing research concerning the economic consequences has not been adequately addressed. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate whether such digital transformation misalignment increases supplier financial risk and to identify the factors influencing this relationship.

This paper examines binary combinations of suppliers and buyers listed on China’s A-share market between 2011 and 2021. This group constitutes a sample to empirically test the influence of digital transformation misalignment on the supplier’s financial risk, as well as the moderating effect of the geographical and organizational distances.

The paper’s findings demonstrate that digital transformation misalignment has indeed a significant increase in the supplier’s financial risk. Moreover, the impact is more intense when the geographical or organizational distance between the supplier and the buyer is relatively large.

The existing literature rarely explores the potential risks arising from digital transformation misalignment between supply chain partners. Therefore, this paper fills a notable gap as it is the first to study the impact of digital transformation misalignment on the supplier’s financial risk and the specific applied mechanisms. The contribution significantly improves the field of corporate digital transformation, particularly, within the context of supply chain management.

Teacher education programmes are critical in developing pre-service teachers’ competencies during the apprenticeship phase (Lim et al., 2010), whereas there is evidence indicating that teacher education programmes depend on curriculum leadership (Robinson et al., 2008). The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which curriculum leaders enact their curriculum leadership to enhance teacher education programmes in a context of a normal university in Mainland China.

In this paper, three groups of curriculum leaders, from university, faculty and classroom level, respectively, are interviewed.

This study highlights the significance of curriculum leadership in teacher education programmes enhancement in China, particularly the significant impacts from curriculum leaders’ involvement on the programme processes of planning, implementation and evaluation.

Implications for research include a conceptualization of curriculum leadership in teacher education and pre-service teachers’ training in China, and a theoretical integration of curriculum leadership and the enhancement of teacher education programmes.

Implications for practice regard to restructuring curriculum leadership system and informing curriculum leadership practices, not only in Asian countries, but might be able to shed light on the curriculum leadership development in a range of educational contexts either similar to or different from that of Mainland China. This study thus would contribute to several areas of research.

With the accelerated technological advancement, innovation has become a critical factor, which affects the core competitiveness of a company. However, studies about the relationship between internal stock option mechanisms and innovation productivity remain limited. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the impact of stock options and their elements design on innovation output from an internal mechanism perspective.

Using a sample of 302 stock option incentive plans announced and implemented between 2006 and 2016, this study uses the propensity score matching and difference-in-difference model to find out whether the implementation of stock options improves the innovation outputs of enterprises.

Based on the statistical analysis, it is concluded that: stock options can stimulate corporate innovation; a stock option may drive innovation outputs through two ways, performance-based incentives and risk-taking incentives, with the latter one playing a more dominant role and the risk-taking incentives of stock options, could be optimised when the non-executives granting proportion is larger, the granting range is limited, the incentive period is longer, the exercisable proportion is increasing, the price-to-strike ratio is lower and relatively loose performance assessment criteria are applied.

The conclusion reached in the study may provide valuable information to listed firms in designing and implementing the stock option plans.

This study scrutinised Shanghai junior high school teachers’ emotions and emotion management strategies in relation to teachers’ work settings and content. A mixed-methods approach was applied to collect data via field observations, interviews, and a quantitative survey. The aim of this study was two-fold. Firstly, it aimed to identify the typical work settings in which teachers experienced work-related emotions. Secondly, it aimed to reveal teachers’ priority work in school and how it affected teachers’ choices of emotion management strategies.

The data were analysed through the lens of emotional labour theories and professional agency theories. Findings showed that classroom teaching and the professional learning community activities were two typical settings in which the teachers experienced the most intensive emotions. Most Shanghai teachers managed their momentary emotions by either genuinely expressing their emotions that matched their roles and the scenario, or by purposely suppressing emotions to meet social and organisational expectations. Furthermore, most teachers adopted the long-term mood regulation strategy by aligning their emotions with long-term goal achievement in the future. As professional agents, the Shanghai teachers did not only manage their own emotions at work using these two strategies, but also managed students’ emotions as part of the moral education.

Purpose: This chapter describes the main features of the financing of health care expenditure in the French health care system.

Methodology/Approach: This chapter presents key reforms that have been implemented to make the health care system more sustainable in the main dimensions of care: ambulatory, hospital, pharmaceuticals and insurance coverage.

Findings: Overall, French public authorities have followed three paths to improve the sustainability of the health care system: reducing public expenses, generalising access to complementary health insurance and streamlining care toward the most disadvantaged individuals. Looking in the future, the sustainability of the French health care system will mainly rely on two areas of recommendations. The first area is to respect the national annual target for health insurance spending, with a focus on responsible prescriptions, optimised care pathways and increased use of primary and ambulatory care where possible. The second area is to increase efficiency on the short to medium terms. This includes an increased quality of the care toward patients with a disability or special needs, a clearer engagement of patients within their care pathways to increase treatment compliance, and more generally a search for coordinated care that is fair and appropriate.