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This study aims to explore the relationship between the degree of state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) mixed reform and the environmental response of enterprises, against the background of actively promoting the reform of mixed ownership in China.

The study is conducted on a sample of A-share listed manufacturing companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen of China, investigated for the period 2015 to 2020. The baseline regression results are robust to a series of robustness and endogeneity tests. To deal with the issue of endogeneity, the technique of instrumental variable method has been applied.

The study confirms the U-shaped effect of the depth and restriction of mixed ownership on SOEs’ environmentally responsive behaviour in the manufacturing industry, especially for lower environmental regulation and higher level of risk-taking firms. The findings indicate that the government, shareholders and other stakeholders of enterprises should not simply consider that the mixed reform is directly promoting or reducing the environmental response behaviour of enterprises.

SOEs should improve their shareholding structures to undermine performance enhancement at the expense of the environment and increase environmentally beneficial behaviours. Regulators and governments should improve the institutional mechanism of environmental regulation and make efforts to promote corporate awareness of the environment.

Although the adoption and implementation of environmentally friendly policies are costly, improved environmental response and other social responsibilities are helpful to corporate long-term growth and reputation and obtain more capital market attention. Therefore, firms would benefit from improving their environmental response to protect nature, as well as to enjoy the economic and social benefits of a better environmental response.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is a lack of studies focussing on the environmental behaviour of SOEs of mixed reform. As the mixed reform in China has come to a climax phase in recent several years, SOEs of mixed reform is an ideal environment for research. The study focusses on manufacturing firms as these firms are more susceptible to contribute to environmental pollution, exploitation of natural resources and labour concerns.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate different 3D structures for humidity sensing that will enable the fabrication of complex geometries with high moisture sensitivity.

Humidity sensors based on alumina ceramics were fabricated using direct ink write (DIW) technique. Different engineered surface area, polymer binder ratio and post-processing treatment were considered to increase moisture sensitivity.

It was found that the binder ratio plays an important role in controlling the rheology of the paste during printing and determining the pore size after post-processing treatment. The sensibility of the fabricated humidity sensor was investigated by measuring its capacitance response toward relative humidity (RH) varying from 40% to 90% RH at 25°C. It is shown that using 3D lattice design, printed alumina humidity sensor could improve sensitivity up to 31.6 pF/RH%, over an order of magnitude higher than solid alumina.

Most of the alumina humidity sensors available are films in nature because of manufacturing difficulties, which limited its potential of higher sensitivity, and thus broader applications. In this paper, a novel 3D alumina humidity sensor was fabricated using DIW 3D printing technology.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain the role of individual learning and development in acquiring tacit knowledge in the context of the inexorable and intense continuous change (technological and otherwise) that characterizes our society today, and also to investigate the software (SW) sector, which is at the core of contemporary continuous change and is a paradigm of effective and intrinsic knowledge sharing (KS). This makes the SW sector unique and different from others where KS is so hard to implement.

The study employed an inductive qualitative approach based on a multi-case study approach, composed of three successful SW companies in China. These companies are representative of the fabric of the sector, namely a small- and medium-sized enterprise, a large private company and a large state-owned enterprise. The fieldwork included 44 participants who were interviewed using a semi-structured script. The interview data were coded and interpreted following the Straussian grounded theory pattern of open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The process of interviewing was stopped when theoretical saturation was achieved after a careful process of theoretical sampling.

The findings of this research suggest that individual learning and development are deemed to be the fundamental feature for professional success and survival in the continuously changing environment of the SW industry today. However, individual learning was described by the participants as much more than a mere individual process. It involves a collective and participatory effort within the organization and the sector as a whole, and a KS process that transcends organizational, cultural and national borders. Individuals in particular are mostly motivated by the pressing need to face and adapt to the dynamic and changeable environments of today’s digital society that is led by the sector. Software practitioners are continuously in need of learning, refreshing and accumulating tacit knowledge, partly because it is required by their companies, but also due to a sound awareness of continuous technical and technological changes that seem only to increase with the advances of information technology. This led to a clear theoretical understanding that the continuous change that faces the sector has led to individual acquisition of culture and somatic knowledge that in turn lay the foundation for not only the awareness of the need for continuous individual professional development but also for the creation of habitus related to KS and continuous learning.

The study reported in this paper shows that there is a theoretical link between the existence of conducive organizational and sector-wide somatic and cultural knowledge, and the success of KS practices that lead to individual learning and development. Therefore, the theory proposed suggests that somatic and cultural knowledge are crucial drivers for the creation of habitus of individual tacit knowledge acquisition. The paper further proposes a habitus-driven individual development (HDID) Theoretical Model that can be of use to both academics and practitioners interested in fostering and developing processes of KS and individual development in knowledge-intensive organizations.

Nurses' work engagement is critical for the service quality of the hospital. Thus, investigation on the influencing factors of nurses' work engagement has become an important issue. This study addresses this issue by exploring the effect of daily family-to-work conflict (FWC) on next-day work engagement among Chinese nurses.

The theoretical model was tested using 555 experience sampling data from 61 nurses collected for 10 workdays in China.

Nurses' daily FWC is associated with their next-day ego depletion. Moreover, increased ego depletion ultimately reduces their next-day work engagement. In addition, a between-individual factor of frequency of perceived patient gratitude mitigates the effect of FWC on ego depletion and the indirect effect on work engagement via ego depletion.

This study is important to the management of health-care organizations as it carries significant implications for theory and practice toward understanding the influence of FWC among nurses. On the one hand, the authors apply the job demands-resources (JD-R) model as the overarching theoretical framework, which contributes to the authors’ understanding of how FWC impairs work engagement. On the other hand, the authors extend extant theoretical models of FWC by identifying the frequency of perceived patient gratitude as an important contextual factor that counteracts the negative effects of FWC among nurses. Moreover, organizations could encourage patients to express their gratitude to nurses by providing more channels, such as thank-you notes, to offer nurses some support for overcoming the destructive effect of FWC.

The purpose of this study is to identify and explain the role of individuals’ awareness and motivation in facilitating knowledge sharing (KS) in the real world of practice, as well as to establish areas of convergence between theory and practice that can be of use to both academics and practitioners involved in knowledge intensive organisations.

This study used Grounded Theory (GT) as an inductive methodology to collect, analyse and interpret data from multiple case-studies. 44 participants from Chinese software organisations were selected on the basis of their role in SW design and development and were interviewed using a semi-structured interview script. The data analysis followed a Straussian approach to coding, which consists of open coding, axial coding and selective coding. The analysis focused on the impact of individuals’ awareness and motivation to share knowledge.

The findings of this research show that the motivation for KS – a time consuming and demanding activity – is indeed related to awareness by managers and developers of the benefits of KS in their professional practice. Practitioners shared their experiences and tacit knowledge with others, partly because it was required by their companies, but also because they have a sound awareness of the need to share knowledge both inside and outside their organisations.

As a typical social science inductive study, this research is bounded by the context in which the theory proposed emerged from. Further research should be conducted into a richer variety of organisational and national contexts, as suggested by good theoretical sampling practice, which could provide further insights or contrasts.

Despite a number of theoretical propositions found in the literature, there is a clear lack of implementation strategies and models that explain the role of awareness and motivation in facilitating KS in the world of practice. This issue of applicability of theoretical propositions is now recognised as one of the fundamental key issues in KS. This study provides new and practice grounded insights in this area and is of interest to both practitioners and theoreticians as it explains and bridges the individuals’ awareness and motivation for tacit KS.

Shape memory polymers (SMPs) are classified as smart materials owing to their inherent stimulus-induced response. SMPs are capable of recovering partially or totally to its original shape after a high degree of deformation by external stimulus. The most used stimuli are thermal, light, magnetic field and electricity. This research aims to characterize the toughness property of thermo-responsive SMP specimens fabricated by the material extrusion (ME) process and to investigate the impact of ME parameters on specimen maximum load and load-displacement curves. Moreover, to investigate the recovery efficiency based on the initial and post toughness generated by the compact tension test.

A design of experiments with three parameters (temperature, velocity and layer height) defined the ME settings to fabricate the specimens. The ME raster orientation factor was also evaluated separately. In addition, one more specimen group assisted by a clamp during the recovery process was compared with a specimen control group. After fabrication, specimens were submitted to a thermo-mechanical cycle that encompasses a compact tension test and a thermo-recovery process. Comparison studies of load-displacement, toughness and recovery efficiency of the specimens were carried out to determine the optimized fabrication parameters.

It was found that ME parameters and raster orientation impacted the test results. Samples with the clamp support during recovery returned a higher toughness than samples without support. Finally, results showed that the shape memory effect can contribute with up to 43 per cent recovery efficiency in a first recovery and up to 23 per cent in a second recovery of damaged specimens.

This paper is a reference for toughness and recovery properties of SMP parts produced by the ME fabrication process.

Shape memory polymer (SMP) is capable of recovering its original shape from a high degree of deformation by applying an external stimulus such as thermal energy. This research presents an integration of two commercial SMP materials (DiAPLEX and Tecoflex) and a material extrusion (ME) printer to fabricate SMP parts and specimens. The material properties such as Young’s modulus of the specimens was examined as a process output. Furthermore, stress-strain curve, strain recovery, instant shape-fixity ratio, long-term shape-fixity ratio and recovery ratio of SMP specimens during a thermo-mechanical cycle were investigated.

The ME fabrication settings for the SMP specimens were defined by implementing a design of experiments with temperature, velocity and layer height as process variables.

It was found, according to main effect and iteration plots, that fabrication parameters have an impact on Young’s modulus and exist minimum iteration among variables. In addition, Young’s modulus variation of DiAPLEX and Tecoflex specimens was mostly caused by velocity and layer height parameters, respectively. Moreover, results showed that SMP specimens were able to recover high levels of deformation.

This paper is a reference for process control and for rheological properties of SMP parts produced by ME fabrication process.

The 21st century is a new century of environmental protection. Environmental protection is one of the most important subject matters yet to come. Moreover, as the public pays more attention to environmental problems, enterprises should increase their investment in environmental management. Therefore, determining the investment level for environmental management and allocating the investment to associated environmental management activities has become a major task. The principal and agent theory and sales response functions are used for analysis in this research. The allocation of capital investment in environmental management is found to have significant impact on the aggregate sales response, aggregate profit and investment level. Therefore, in preparing the budget for environmental management, enterprises should focus on investment allocation decisions, determine the investment level and allocation method using integrated means, and apply submarket data in the allocation decision‐making process. In other words, in setting the investment level, executive management should take managers’ willingness into consideration. In allocating capital investment, managers should identify the optimal allocation method based on submarket characteristics.

This paper aims to develop a feasible visual weld detection method to solve the problems in multi-layer welding detection (e.g. cover pass welding detection) for seam tracking and non-destructive testing. It seeks for an adaptive and accurate way to determine the edge between the seam and the base metal in the grayscale image of weld automatically. This paper tries to contribute to next-generation real-time robotic welding systems for multi-layer welding.

This paper opted for invariant moments to characterize the seam and the base metal for classification purposes. The properties of invariant moments, such as high degree of self-similarity and separation, affine invariance and repetition invariance, were discussed to verify the adaptability of the invariant moment in weld detection. Then, a weld detection method based on invariant moments was proposed to extract the edge between the seam and the base metal, including image division, invariant moment features extraction, K-Means adaptive thresholding, maximum connected domain detection and edge position extraction.

This paper highlights the significance of high degree of self-similarity and separation, affine invariance and repetition invariance of the invariant moment for weld detection. An adaptive, effective and accurate method is proposed to detect the edge between the seam and the base metal based on invariant moments.

It is necessary to verify the applicability of the proposed method in variable welding conditions further. Further works will focus on the establishment of a real-time seam tracking system during the whole multi-layer/multi-pass welding process based on such adaptive visual features.

This paper includes the implications for development of an adaptive and real-time weld detection method, which is expected to be applied to online seam tracking in multi-layer welding.

This paper presents an accurate weld detection method in multi-layer welding, overcoming difficulties in effectiveness, adaptability and efficiency of existing weld detection methods.