As supply chain risks refer to the risks transmitted among supply chain members and supply chain management (SCM) is concerned with close collaboration among chain members to enhance the chain׳s ...overall performance, we argue that we need to use an SCM perspective in supply chain risk management (SCRM). We identify risk information sharing and risk sharing mechanism as two important joint SCRM practices. Drawing on the literature on agency theory and collaborative relationships, we argue that the effectiveness of these two joint practices in improving financial performance can be strengthened by collaborative relationship characteristics including relationship length, supplier trust, and shared SCRM understanding. We empirically test our conceptual model using the data collected from 350 manufacturing firms in China. The results suggest that both risk information sharing and risk sharing mechanism improve financial performance, and the effectiveness of the former is strengthened by relationship length and supplier trust, while that of the latter is strengthened by shared SCRM understanding. We contribute to research and practice by identifying two useful joint SCRM practices and ascertaining the conditions under which each of the practices is particularly effectively.
In the “internet plus” era, online healthcare platforms provide an effective way of easing the demand for hospitals, and their popularity among patients has been increasing sharply in recent years. ...Such platforms' effectiveness depends on whether there are adequate interactions between patients and doctors through multiple online consultations. Nonetheless, compared with face-to-face consultations, online patients' trust to the doctors and switching costs are often lower. Thus, many of them (in particular, those with chronic diseases) may terminate their cases after the very first consultation, jeopardizing the effectiveness of the online platforms. We adopt a trust development perspective to examine how doctors' online consultation behaviours can reduce patients' switching of doctors and how they enhance patient satisfaction, thereby offering insights to make such healthcare platforms more efficient and effective. By analyzing 77,248 patients' behaviours on an online healthcare platform covering the period 2014–2015, we find that the response time, the depth of interaction, and service content during the first consultation influence the patients' subsequent consultation behaviours significantly. Also, the effects of doctor response time, service content, and depth of interaction on patient satisfaction are different in different periods. Our findings offer managerial insights on managing patients' continuous consultation behaviours and enhancing their satisfaction by considering the time scope and service type. Also, they offer important insights into how online medical care can be delivered more effectively, so relieving the demand for traditional healthcare system capacity.
Industry 4.0, a collection of emerging intelligent and digital technologies, has been the main interest of both researchers and practitioners in operations management (OM) in recent years. Despite ...its proclaimed effectiveness in supply chain (SC) management, empirical studies examining the effects of Industry 4.0 adoption on SC resilience have been underrepresented in the current OM literature. In our study, we explore the effects of 16 Industry 4.0 technologies and IT advancement concerning SC resilience through the mediating roles of SC capabilities with respect to SC collaboration and SC visibility. Following the dynamic resource-based view (RBV), we regard Industry 4.0 adoption and IT advancement as two important IT resources with heterogeneity, SC collaboration and SC visibility as essential SC dynamic capabilities, and SC resilience as competitive advantages. We suggest the combination and evolution of IT resources and dynamic SC capabilities helps firms obtain the competitive advantage regarding SC resilience. Using data from a survey of 408 Chinese manufacturing firms, we reveal Industry 4.0 adoption is positively related to IT advancement and that Industry 4.0 has a nonsignificant impact on SC capabilities, whereas IT advancement has a positive impact on SC capabilities. Additionally, both SC collaboration and visibility positively influence SC resilience and significantly mediate the impacts of Industry 4.0 and IT advancement on SC resilience. Our study offers an enhanced understanding of the specific flows between Industry 4.0 and SC resilience and provides nuanced insights for both literature and practice.
The lab-on-chip (LOC) platform has presented a powerful opportunity to improve functionalization, parallelization, and miniaturization on planar or multilevel geometries that has not been possible ...with fiber optic technology. A migration of such LOC devices into the optical fiber platform would therefore open the revolutionary prospect of creating novel lab-in-fiber (LIF) systems on the basis of an efficient optical transport highway for multifunctional sensing. For the LIF, the core optical waveguide inherently offers a facile means to interconnect numerous types of sensing elements along the optical fiber, presenting a radical opportunity for optimizing the packaging and densification of diverse components in convenient geometries beyond that available with conventional LOCs. In this paper, three-dimensional patterning inside the optical fiber by femtosecond laser writing, together with selective chemical etching, is presented as a powerful tool to form refractive index structures such as optical waveguides and gratings as well as to open buried microfluidic channels and optical resonators inside the flexible and robust glass fiber. In this approach, optically smooth surfaces (~12 nm rms) are introduced for the first time inside the fiber cladding that precisely conform to planar nanograting structures when formed by aberration-free focusing with an oil-immersion lens across the cylindrical fiber wall. This process has enabled optofluidic components to be precisely embedded within the fiber to be probed by either the single-mode fiber core waveguide or the laser-formed optical circuits. We establish cladding waveguides, X-couplers, fiber Bragg gratings, microholes, mirrors, optofluidic resonators, and microfluidic reservoirs that define the building blocks for facile interconnection of inline core-waveguide devices with cladding optofluidics. With these components, more advanced, integrated, and multiplexed fiber microsystems are presented demonstrating fluorescence detection, Fabry-Perot interferometric refractometry, and simultaneous sensing of refractive index, temperature, and bending strain. The flexible writing technique and multiplexed sensors described here open powerful prospects to migrate the benefits of LOCs into a more flexible and miniature LIF platform for highly functional and distributed sensing capabilities. The waveguide backbone of the LIF inherently provides an efficient exchange of information, combining sensing data that are attractive in telecom networks, smart catheters for medical procedures, compact sensors for security and defense, shape sensors, and low-cost health care products.
Femtosecond laser writing followed by chemical etching enabled integrated optofluidic devices to form inside and connect to optical fiber waveguides, underlying a new "lab-in-fiber" platform.
Chinese manufacturing has recently been plagued by a raft of product safety problems such as melamine-tainted milk, lead-tainted toys, toxic toothpaste, defective tyres, and fake medicines. A ...probable cause of these incidents is a lack of business ethics in the suppliers concerned. In the literature much has been suggested on the use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to improve firms’ ethical behaviors and on the use of supplier development (SD) to improve suppliers’ capabilities. This research integrates the literature on CSR and SD to develop a new approach, called socially responsible supplier development (SRSD), to address suppliers’ ethical problems. SRSD suggests leveraging a buying firm's concerted supplier development efforts to improve its important suppliers’ capabilities in CSR implementation. We develop and validate scales for measuring SRSD practices. In addition, we provide empirical evidence on the validity of existing CSR scales for Chinese manufacturing firms. Our results are based on analysis of the data of 160 pairs of buyer–supplier relationships in four manufacturing industries in China. The results indicate that all the scale items possess adequate reliability and validity to reflect SRSD and CSR. We also discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice.
As an important source of competitive advantage, new service development (NSD) is widely used by service firms for new developments. Since creative ideas are crucial to NSD and service firms commonly ...involve frontline employees in the process of NSD, we argue that frontline employees’ creativity can enhance NSD performance. In addition, since the implementation of continuous improvement practices necessitates frontline employees to make changes and solve problems consistently, we argue that frontline employees’ operational improvement competence (OIC) (i.e., skills in implementing continuous improvement practices) can enhance their creativity. Furthermore, we draw on the contingency theory and argue that the relationships between OIC, employee creativity, and NSD performance are contingent on six relevant contextual factors. Based on the data collected from 146 frontline teams in the banking sector of China, we test our theory-driven model and the posited hypotheses. Our findings serve to advance the knowledge of multiple disciplines by showing the linkages among their core concepts (i.e., OIC, employee creativity, and NSD performance) and also ascertain the factors (i.e., OIC and employee creativity) that enhance NSD performance and the circumstances under which these factors are particularly effective.
Smart and sustainable buildings save energy and material resources and provide a comfortable environment that enhances their occupants' well-being and productivity. It is therefore crucial to ...understand how building professionals, including designers, engineers, and contractors, view smart and sustainable buildings and what drives them towards smart and sustainable building technologies. This study identifies salient smart and sustainable building features from building professionals' perspective and explores what determines building professionals' intention to use such building technologies. Responses from 543 Hong Kong's building professionals identify that intelligent security, intelligent and responsive fresh air supply, and intelligent and responsive thermal control are among the most important features of smart and sustainable buildings. Results of structural equation modeling grounded on an extended technology acceptance model indicate that facilitating condition and job relevance are related to perceived ease of use while subjective norm pertaining to image and perceived ease of use are predictors of perceived usefulness. Facilitating condition, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness jointly influence building professionals' intention to use smart and sustainable building technologies.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a popular and important strategy for businesses to improve ethical behaviours in order to achieve economic sustainable development. Indeed, many social or ...environmental incidents that occur in one supply chain member could bring huge risks or disruptions for the entire supply chain. Yet the existent CSR studies rarely take buyers and suppliers into consideration in the examination. On the other hand, the existent literature of CSR is primarily concerned with larger organizations and pays very limited attention to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Thus, this study, viewed from transaction cost economics theory (TCE) and stakeholder theory, examines how buyers' CSR adoption influences suppliers' CSR adoption (i.e. with or without buyers’ proactive efforts) and whether CSR adoption in matched buyers and suppliers can achieve a win-win outcome for both firms in terms of enhancement in financial performance. The posited hypotheses are tested by 154 matched small and medium-sized buyers and suppliers from the Chinese manufacturing sectors. The majority of the hypotheses are supported by our analysis results. This study fills the gap that there is a lack of exploration in the actual value of CSR for firms in a buyer-supplier relationship. Our findings enrich the literature of CSR and operations management by offering empirical insights from a buyer-supplier and SME perspective, and provide managerial guidelines for enterprises, governments and NGOs to promote CSR and related practices to buyers and suppliers in supply chains.
A live-attenuated malaria vaccine, Plasmodium falciparum sporozoite vaccine (PfSPZ Vaccine), confers sterile protection against controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) with Plasmodium falciparum ...(Pf) parasites homologous to the vaccine strain up to 14 mo after final vaccination. No injectable malaria vaccine has demonstrated long-term protection against CHMI using Pf parasites heterologous to the vaccine strain. Here, we conducted an open-label trial with PfSPZ Vaccine at a dose of 9.0 × 10⁵ PfSPZ administered i.v. three times at 8-wk intervals to 15 malaria-naive adults. After CHMI with homologous Pf parasites 19 wk after final immunization, nine (64%) of 14 (95% CI, 35–87%) vaccinated volunteers remained without parasitemia compared with none of six nonvaccinated controls (P = 0.012). Of the nine nonparasitemic subjects, six underwent repeat CHMI with heterologous Pf7G8 parasites 33 wk after final immunization. Five (83%) of six (95% CI, 36–99%) remained without parasitemia compared with none of six nonvaccinated controls. PfSPZ-specific T-cell and antibody responses were detected in all vaccine recipients. Cytokine production by T cells from vaccinated subjects after in vitro stimulation with homologous (NF54) or heterologous (7G8) PfSPZ were highly correlated. Interestingly, PfSPZspecific T-cell responses in the blood peaked after the first immunization and were not enhanced by subsequent immunizations. Collectively, these data suggest durable protection against homologous and heterologous Pf parasites can be achieved with PfSPZ Vaccine. Ongoing studies will determine whether protective efficacy can be enhanced by additional alterations in the vaccine dose and number of immunizations.
mHealth, i.e., using mobile computing and communication technologies in health care, has played an increasingly important role in the provision of medical care and undertaking self-health monitoring ...and management in the past two decades. Specifically, it becomes critically important for health care delivery when governments have been forced to impose quarantines and lockdowns during the spikes in COVID-19 cases. Therefore, this research focuses on academic publications including journal articles, reviews, and conference papers on the use of mHealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a keyword search on "mHealth" (or "mobile health") and "COVID-19" on 7 January 2023 in Scopus, it was found that 1125 documents were officially published between 2020 and 2022. Among these 1125 documents, 1042 documents were journal articles, reviews, and conference papers. Researchers in the US produced 335 articles, followed by UK researchers with 119 articles, and Chinese researchers with 79 articles. Researchers affiliated with Harvard Medical School published the largest number of articles (31), followed by researchers of University College London with 21 articles and Massachusetts General Hospital with 20 articles. Co-occurrence of keywords analysis revealed four clusters, namely "COVID-19, mHealth, mobile applications, and public health", "adult, adolescent, mental health, and major clinical study", "human, pandemic, and epidemiology", and "telemedicine, telehealth, and health care delivery". Implications of this study are given.
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