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Drawing on social exchange theory and a cultural perspective, this study examines the relationship between workplace ostracism and job engagement by focusing on the mediating role of felt obligation and the moderating role of collectivism.

A two-wave survey was conducted over four months in a private service business in China. The participants comprised 108 Chinese employees.

The results indicate that workplace ostracism has a negative relationship with job engagement through a reduced sense of felt obligation. Collectivism strengthens the main effect of workplace ostracism on felt obligation and its indirect effect on job engagement via felt obligation.

This study contributes to understanding of the internal mechanism of the workplace ostracism–job engagement model by identifying the mediating role of felt obligation. It also emphasizes that collectivist cultures can enhance the effects of workplace ostracism. However, the generalizability of our findings may be limited due to this cultural factor.

Our findings show that workplace ostracism plays a significant role in reducing job engagement. Therefore, it is essential to reduce the incidence of ostracism in the workplace.

By addressing the previously unexplored mechanism that mediates the relationship between workplace ostracism and job engagement, this study provides new directions for research on workplace ostracism and job engagement.

The rapid development of smart cities and green logistics has stimulated a lot of research on reverse logistics, and the diversified data also provide the possibility of innovative research on location-routing problem (LRP) under reverse logistics. The purpose of this paper is to use panel data to assist in the study of multi-cycle and multi-echelon LRP in reverse logistics network (MCME-LRP-RLN), and thus reduce the cost of enterprise facility location.

First, a negative utility objective function is generated based on panel data and incorporated into a multi-cycle and multi-echelon location-routing model integrating reverse logistics. After that, an improved algorithm named particle swarm optimization-multi-objective immune genetic algorithm (PSO-MOIGA) is proposed to solve the model.

There is a paradox between the total cost of the enterprise and the negative social utility, which means that it costs a certain amount of money to reduce the negative social utility. Firms can first design an open-loop logistics system to reduce cost, and at the same time, reduce negative social utility by leasing facilities.

This study provides firms with more flexible location-routing options by dividing them into multiple cycles, so they can choose the right option according to their development goals.

This research is a pioneering study of MCME-LRP-RLN problem and incorporates data analysis techniques into operations research modeling. Later, the PSO algorithm was incorporated into the crossover of MOIGA in order to solve the multi-objective large-scale problems, which improved the convergence speed and performance of the algorithm. Finally, the results of the study provide some valuable management recommendations for logistics planning.

Drawing on the social cognitive theory, this study investigated the effect of mentors' drinking norms on their protégés' alcohol misuse by focusing on the mediating role of conformity drinking motives and the moderating role of moral disengagement. We conducted a three-wave survey of 148 mentor–protégé dyads and found that mentors' drinking norms were positively related to their protégés' alcohol misuse and that this relationship was fully mediated by conformity drinking motives. Moreover, the moderated mediation model revealed that moral engagement strengthens the main effects of mentors' drinking norms on conformity drinking motives and the indirect effects of mentors' drinking norms on protégés' alcohol misuse via enhanced conformity drinking motives. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Research on mentorship has been dominated by the West and little is known about the cultural variations of the mentoring phenomenon in Asian countries. A richer understanding of the cultural context that is more attuned to mentoring experience in Asia can help to improve workplace experience, in general, for those working in and for those who intend to work in the region. This chapter captures the important theoretical lenses in the mentoring literature, and also provides a clear demarcation between negative mentoring and dysfunctional mentoring. This is followed by contextualizing mentoring as per four of Hofstede's six cultural dimensions by dwelling on mentoring experience in countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. It is hoped that this chapter will pave the way for further research, which may be a precursor for theory development.

An exact pattern prototype is a prerequisite for female girdle pattern-making. The purpose of this paper is to develop new ways to make girdle pattern prototypes based on 3D technology.

This paper presented two novel methods for creating girdle pattern prototypes. The first one was the girdle's parametric foundation pattern developing method based on 3D geometric modeling. In this method, considering the different characteristics of a female's lower body shape, several models were created to define the relationship between the female's lower body shape and the pattern, such as a side-waist curvature model, an interior-posterior waist-warping model, a buttocks' parametric model and an abdomen parametric model. Then, parameters of drawing the prototype were abstracted to facilitate transforming the 3D geometric model into the 2D pattern. Another method was implemented by 3D virtual modeling and unwrapping. The whole process included surface division, surface reconstruction and surface unwrapping.

The prototypes created by these two methods were tested using the 3D virtual trying-on examination. Trial tests showed that the patterns can be dressed in the right positions on the virtual model with little pressure. This means that the proportions and shapes of the pattern are correct. The prototypes obtained through the methods proposed in this paper have good effects and high precision. Both methods can be used for making the girdle's foundation pattern.

Two pragmatic approaches of girdle's prototype building have been put forward. The parametric prototype designing method has changed the unconstrained state of free modeling. The pattern structure can be controlled by parameter constraints. In the other method, with 3D scanning and surface modeling technology, personalized girdle's pattern is generated, and the segmentation lines of the girdle can be designed flexibly according to the requirements. These findings also can be used in other tight garments' prototype making.

The purpose of this research on the control of three-axis aero-dynamic pendulum with disturbance is to facilitate the applications of equipment with similar pendulum structure in intelligent manufacturing and robot.

The controller proposed in this paper is mainly implemented in the following ways. First, the kinematic model of the three-axis aero-dynamic pendulum is derived in state space form to construct the predictive model. Then, according to the predictive model and objective function, the control problem can be expressed a quadratic programming (QP) problem. The optimal solution of the QP problem at each sampling time is the value of control variable.

The trajectory tracking and point stability tests performed on the 3D space with different disturbances are validated and the results show the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.

This paper proposes a nonlinear unstable three-axis aero-dynamic pendulum with less power devices. Meanwhile, the trajectory tracking and point stability problem of the pendulum system is investigated with the model predictive control strategy.

This paper aims to investigate a probabilistic mixture model for the nonrigid point set registration problem in the computer vision tasks. The equations to estimate the mixture model parameters and the constraint items are derived simultaneously in the proposed strategy.

The problem of point set registration is expressed as Laplace mixture model (LMM) instead of Gaussian mixture model. Three constraint items, namely, distance, the transformation and the correspondence, are introduced to improve the accuracy. The expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm is used to optimize the objection function and the transformation matrix and correspondence matrix are given concurrently.

Although amounts of the researchers study the nonrigid registration problem, the LMM is not considered for most of them. The nonrigid registration problem is considered in the LMM with the constraint items in this paper. Three experiments are performed to verify the effectiveness and robustness and demonstrate the validity.

The novel method to solve the nonrigid point set registration problem in the presence of the constraint items with EM algorithm is put forward in this work.

A qualitative development is discernible in China’s pursuit of global influence in knowledge following the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China has embarked on expanding the frontiers of its higher education and research enterprise in different geographies, a subset of its global power project. This paper employs the geointellect concept to analyze this phenomenon.

The paper applies the geointellect model, formed inductively, to illuminate China’s geographical expanse in higher education and research.

The BRI has provided a platform for China to shape the educational architecture of the participating countries, apart from receiving a boost in its prestige by leading educational alliances and opening overseas research centres. In quantitative terms, it has made progress in specific knowledge metrics. Nevertheless, certain challenges and limitations need to be overcome.

The role of a foreign policy in boosting a country’s knowledge profile has been identified. Future research directions have been provided in using the geointellect model.

This study provides a direction to evaluate the implications of China’s foreign policy for its knowledge segment, especially in terms of capturing its leading prowess in higher education and research.

It contributes a conceptual model to capture the different facets of China’s geointellect, with foreign policy, geography, higher education, and research being its constituents.