The portability, sophistication and connectivity prompt users to revolve around multiple applications on the phones at all times. Teenagers are of particular concern because they are usually overoptimistic about their online activity management but underestimate the negative impacts. This study aims to address individual and parental factors related to teenagers’ (mainly aged 13 to 18) smartphone addiction tendency (SAT) with a representative sample of parent-child dyads around Taiwan. We try to draw a holistic view of how Taiwan youngsters use their smartphones and how their parents mediate that use by surveying all possible factors related to that use. According to the analytical results, we ascertained that smartphone ownership and dissimilar purposes for surfing the Internet are associated with students’ SAT. Online games and trade are related to younger students’ SAT, while SNSs is associated with older students’ SAT. Additionally, teenagers’ cybersecurity knowledge regarding smartphones is negatively related to their SAT. Lastly, we found parent-reported mediation strategies are barely effective, and parents are even unaware of older students’ smartphone use. The implications for suitable interventions in family and school contexts are discussed followed by the analyses.

Introduction

Because of the well-deployed telecommunication infrastructure and the user-friendly designs of smartphones, the smartphone has become one of the information communication technologies in widespread use (Cho, 2015). Research has shown that spending substantial amounts of time using smartphones is problematic for some individuals (Haug et al., 2015; Mok et al., 2014). The excessive use of smartphones may be associated with certain negative outcomes, including academic failure, ill health and life imbalance (Chung et al., 2018; Hawi & Samaha, 2016; Kee, Byun, Jung, & Choi, 2016; Samaha & Hawi, 2016). Teenagers are of particular concern in regard to the influence of smartphone overuse; they are often overoptimistic about their online activity management but underestimate the negative impacts. For example, teenagers use smartphones for a longer time than adults expect (Kwon, Kim, Cho, & Yang, 2014), and they have low risk perceptions when using the Internet (Lareki, Martínez de Morentin, Altuna, & Amenabar, 2017). Smartphone addiction was found to be significant in adolescents with lower levels of self-control (Kim, Min, Min, Lee, & Yoo, 2018), and highrisk smartphone-addicted adolescents showed severer levels of behavioral and emotional problems (Lee, Lee, & Lee, 2016). Although the precise definition of smartphone addiction was not yet determined by academics, some research has already focused on its correlates and possible causes. The common driving factor in smartphone addiction is domesticity. Some factors, such as feeling stressed for not meeting expectations (Chiu, 2014) or bearing specific psychosocial traits molded by the family (Bian & Leung, 2014; Mok et al., 2014), are inherent to individuals.

Five full-scale reinforced concrete wall specimens with openings typical of the first story backside exterior walls of row houses in Taiwan were tested using lateral cyclic loading to study their seismic behavior. The effects of location and size of the window opening were studied. Test results showed that the wall with the window opening on the side of the wall web showed a higher average lateral strength than that with the opening placed around the center of the wall web. The increase of the opening length reduced more the lateral strength than the increase of the opening height. A critical wall segment tended to show a lower lateral strength when the edge of the segment is bordered by a door than by a boundary column. To estimate the lateral strength of the wall specimens, a detailed and three simplified models are proposed. Comparison with the test results shows that ignoring variation in the axial force among the wall segments and columns does not change the average prediction but increases the scatter of prediction. Simply summing the lateral strengths of all the wall segments and columns together further increases the scatter and greatly reduces the degree of conservatism. Summing the lateral strengths of all the web segments requires the least computational effort but greatly increases the degree of conservatism.

Introduction

Low-rise reinforced concrete (RC) row houses (Fig. 1) are a common building type in Taiwan. During the Chi-Chi Earthquake in 1999, many row houses collapsed due to a weak first story along the street direction (Fig. 2). Today, row houses are built stronger than before with higher material strengths, better reinforcement detailing and larger member dimensions. However, the weak-story problem still exists. This is because walls with openings are usually used for row houses along the street direction (Fig. 1). However, the strengths of such walls are typically ignored in design because the behavior of such walls is not wellunderstood. Moreover, ignoring the strengths of such walls seems to be on the safe side in design. However, this makes the weak-story check unable to identify the weak story caused by abrupt change of such walls between adjacent stories. Previous experiment studies on squat walls with openings have shown that when the opening area is small, the behavior of the wall may not be significantly affected [1,2]. When the opening area is large, the initial stiffness and strength of the wall can be significantly reduced [1,2]. However, the ductility may be increased [2]. The reduction in capacity of squat walls depends on the size, shape and location of the opening [3,4]. For example, walls with openings close to the edge or boundary of a wall tend to have lower stiffness and strength than those with openings farther away from the edge or boundary [5]. Slender walls with openings have also been studied [6,7].

1- Introduction

2- Context and theoretical background

3- Methodology

4- Overview findings and discussion

5- Conclusions and next steps

References

Abstract

This study examines the impact of cultural differences on the creation of social capital in technology transfer processes. The aim is to understand the influence of culture on relationships, particularly the structural, relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital created in relationships associated with university-industry links, specifically technology transfer (TT). The research builds on a culture-moderated social capital perspective; observing that the characteristics and usefulness of social capital are determined by cultural practices prevailing in social structures. The influence of culture on social capital in case studies of six American and ten Asian technology transfer offices and organizations involved in technology transfer has been investigated. Using university research technology transfer and commercialization as the centerpiece of the empirical work, we examine basic Hofstede’s cultural characteristics and the way they influence TT practices in two different culture types. Our findings suggest cultures can influence creation and utilization of social capital in university-industry links. Culture can influence not only relationships with external stakeholders in technology transfer (industry, governmental bodies) but also internal relationships and management styles in TT offices (influences on organizational culture). We propose that the awareness of cultural characteristics and influences is important not only in cross-cultural technology transfer but also domestic operations. Using this awareness to build trust lies at the heart of interactions with internal and external stakeholders. The research results should be useful for entrepreneurs, universities and technology transfer officers in order to better understand the nature, and role, of culture-moderated social capital in technology transfer and to support effective processes for scientific research commercialization.

Introduction

A very competitive environment and dynamic changes in the global economy have led private and public sector institutions to unite their efforts to foster the diffusion of knowledge within innovation systems. Scholarly interest in university–industry relationships for technology development and commercialization arose from a belief that collaborative research by academia with industry can be a powerful source of innovation (Mansfield, 1998). Some researchers have argued that the importance of linkages between universities and industry bodies helps ensure the survival of both parties in the competitive marketplace and that it acts as an engine of economic growth (Siegel et al., 2004). Morlacchi and Martin (2009) argue that the innovative capacity of a nation is dependant not only on individual actors of the innovation system (companies, universities, government), but more importantly on the links between such players. Carlsson and Fridh (2002) argue that technology transfer from universities to industry needs to be understood in its broader context. The success in disseminating research results for the public good depends not only on the nature of the interface between the university and the business community, but also on the receptivity in the surrounding community as well as the culture, organization, and incentives within the universities themselves. Particularly the national culture system can be more, or less, contributory to the development of social capital (Lin, 2007; Nakhaie, 2005; Sanders and Nee, 1996) and culture variations may affect the characteristics of social capital (Portes, 1998). For example norms, are considered as one of major sources of social capital (Coleman, 1988; Portes, 1998). Norms are culturally constructed (Hofstede, 1980). Also networks have been perceived as ‘primarily cultural phenomena’ (Curran et al., 1993: 77). This study supports a culture-moderated social capital perspective, i.e. that the characteristics and usefulness of social capital are determined by cultural practice prevailing in social structures (Lin, 2007). We investigate social capital in a cultural context via two extreme cultural types. On the basis of Hofstede’s (1997) cultural dimensions model, Griffith et al. (2000) identified two extreme cultural types: Type I (individualistic, low uncertainty avoidance, and low long-term orientation) and Type II (collectivistic, strong uncertainty avoidance, and high long-term orientation).

Human resources are increasingly crucial to the growing economies of East Asia, which are striving to diversify economically toward higher value-added productmarkets to continue their growth. Human resource management (HRM) in Taiwan, based on Confucianism and influenced by Western management research and practice, has been experiencing a major paradigm shift of sorts in recent years. With Taiwan’s rapid economic growth followed by its industrial and institutional transformation, HRM in the region has been developing to cope with the increasingly competitive and fast-changing business world. As such, this study reviews HRM’s development in Taiwan over the recent decades. The reviewed studies were gathered from work published from 1990 to 2016 appearing in the Social Sciences Citation Index or Taiwan Social Sciences Citation Index Chinese journals. A detailed discussion of HRM development in Taiwan is made, along with a summarizing scheme and some comparison to HRM in other select economies in East Asia, including those of Mainland China and Hong Kong which share the same cultural lineage and values.

Human resource management (HRM) is recognized as very important to the success of firms and the economies in which they reside (Ahlstrom, 2014; Bloom & Van Reenen, 2010; Pfeffer, 2007; Pfeffer & Veiga, 1999). This is increasingly true in emerging economies where HRM is generally in an early stage of development and deployment, in terms of both research and practice (Ahlstrom, Bruton, & Chan, 2001; Bruton, Ahlstrom, & Chan, 2000; Cooke, 2014; Cooke, Saini, & Wang, 2014; Schuler & Jackson, 2014). The time has passed when Asian firms simply established personnel departments and gave little thought to the active management of their human resources (Chen & Ahlstrom, 2017). Taiwanese enterprises, particularly those in the electronics-related industries, are well recognized globally for their technical and productive capabilities (Steinfeld, 2005; Young, Ahlstrom, Bruton, & Chan, 2001). For example, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) is the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor firm. Taiwanese subsidiaries of foreign companies (e.g., Bayer, 3M, and Coca Cola) also occupy an prominent strategic position in global competition (Steinfeld, 2005). Nonetheless, with a population of about 23 million on a main island of moderate size (along with several smaller outlying islands), Taiwan’s land and natural resources are relatively scarce. HR is a key resource for Taiwanese firms and is emerging as a major contributor to their performance (Chen & Ahlstrom, 2017; Pfeffer, 2007). HRM did not get much attention in Taiwan in its early economic takeoff years of the 1980s and 1990s (Lin, 1997). However, management practices in Taiwan in general started to attract more attention from researchers and HR practitioners as Taiwan’s economy developed (Liu, Ahlstrom, & Yeh, 2006). Being one of the fast growing BAsian Tigers,^ together with Hong Kong and Mainland China, Taiwan has kept pace and continued its solid growth and development of the past few decades, as shown in Fig. 1 (Chen & Ahlstrom, 2017; Lau, 2012). With Taiwan’s economic growth, HRM has started to gather in attention in the form of research and an increased emphasis on practice and the professionalization of the HR discipline there (Chen & Ahlstrom, 2017; Uen, Ahlstrom, Chen, & Liu, 2015; Uen, Ahlstrom, Chen, & Tseng, 2012). In addition, HRM development in Taiwan has been influenced by Confucianism values (Chen, 2008), which is one of the core philosophies in ethnic Chinese societies (Chen, 2001). Following the influence of local cultural values and economic development, the focus (and context) of HRM in Taiwan and associated East Asian economies has undergone a major shift in the past few decades based on the increasingly competitive business environment, economic growth, and institutional change there (Ahlstrom, Young, Nair, & Law, 2003; Peng, Sun, & Markóczy, 2015). Firms that saw HRM as a purely administrative function have started to appreciate the competitive advantage conferred by a strong HR system (Chen & Ahlstrom, 2017; Pfeffer, 1998, 2007; Uen et al., 2012).

Milman (2001) indicated theme parks are the favorite modes of mass entertainment in mature markets worldwide and are star players in the tourism industry (Cheng et al., 2014). However, they must continue to change because business environment changes rapidly (Fotiadis and Vassiliadis, 2016). In the few past decades, researchers have conducted in-depth studies on the use of creativity in various industries; managers, especially those in the tourism industry, have strived to encourage employees to increase their creativity at the workplace (Hon et al., 2013). Previous researchers paid more attention to discussing visitors’ behavior in theme park industry (e.g., Fotiadis and Vassiliadis, 2016). For example, Cheng et al. (2014) indicated that there are seven factors influencing visitor brand-switching behavior. Frontline employees are important to ensure customer satisfaction (Bitner et al., 1990). Creativity is the key to enhance the competitive edge for an organization as it is regarded as the first step toward innovation (Shalley at al., 2004). Therefore, how to promote the confidence of employees in contributing new or novel ideas is crucial for innovation in an organization. However, there is research that explores how to increase employees’ creativity capabilities in the theme park industry. The study investigated how knowledge and leadership stimulate the generation of creativity, thereby promoting TI and building their competitive advantage. To explore this issue, this study adopted theory of social exchange, knowledge management (KM), and social learning. Our research variables based on related literature, built the relationships among those variables, and then proposed a theoretical framework (Figure 1) based on those relationships. Knowledge is considered to generate, enhance, and facilitate creativity (e.g., Amabile, 1988; Williams and Foti, 2011). The empirical study by Tsai et al. (2015) indicated that KS could improve students’ creative performance, especially for tourism and hospitality management. Most studies have explored KS and creativity at team, organization, or staff level (e.g., Zhang et al., 2011; Carmeli and Paulus, 2014), though few studies have explored KS from a multi-level perspective (Liu et al., 2011). Furthermore, it remains unknown whether the relationship between KS and EC differs with differing levels of KS. We try to link this space, which is its first contribution. Our second contribution is to explore how KS enhances EC. Although KS can enhance EC, the path toward creativity is uncertain, which reduces employees’ confidence in contributing new ideas or processes, even when the employees have sufficient work-related knowledge and experience. To increase the confidence of employees in exhibiting high creativity, organizational or team factors might be more crucial than individual factors. For example, empirical evidence has revealed that organizations that support innovation also encourage EC (Erne et al., 2013; Hon and Lui, 2016). Studies have also revealed that high-quality LMX in a team or organization encourages employees to attempt risk-related tasks or to promote their work performance and attitude (e.g., Graen and Cashman, 1975; Janssen and Van Yperen, 2004; Wang, 2016). LMX stresses that supervisors should establish a unique social exchange relationship with each of their employees, and the relationships should be based on mutual respect and trust (Gerstner and Day, 1997). However, high quality-LMX is not always observed in teams and organization; thus, determining what benefits the LMX relationship is necessary.

Undoubtedly the advancement of automobiles (thereinafter auto) during these decades has directly influenced society in many ways and radically changed the way people live all over the world (Shatouri et al. 2012). It provides jobs for millions of people, generates billions of dollars in worldwide revenues, and provides the basis for a multitude of related service and support industries. The auto has enabled people to travel and transport goods farther and faster, and has opened wider market areas for business and commerce (Sirajudeen et al. 2012). Therefore, the auto now has become the most popular conveyance in people’s daily living, such as shopping, traveling, and working. Importantly, it also shortens the distance between cities, thereby providing people more convenience. Moreover, no matter in a developing country or a developed country, the auto industry represents the level of a country’s industrial skill and is often seen as the chief industry which could push forward the development of related industries. ‘‘Respect perfect & Pursue excellence’’ is the belief of the auto industry. From strategic management perspective, an organization today needs to be equipped with responsiveness and adaptability. An organization of good performance mostly results from its responsiveness and adaptability to the environment while a competitive environment requires an organization to pursue more complex dimensions of performance, most notably quality and innovation (Bolwijn and Kumpe 1990). Based on the ESP (i.e., environment–strategy–performance) model, Prajogo and Sohal (2001, 2006a, b) highlight the vital role of TQM for creating an innovative environment while a successful implementation of TQM depends on the prevailing culture of the organization. Ooi et al. (2012) suggested that implementing TQM practices successfully can build competitive knowledge sharing (thereinafter KS) competencies. Capacity for innovation of employees can be considered an invaluable resource to organization. Most importantly, in an organizational culture (thereinafter OC) all values, beliefs, and norms guiding the human resources and financial and technological ones are intended to achieve the objectives set (Isac and Tomescu 2013). OC is a main element for promoting an innovative environment. The OC represents the process the way things are done (Joseph and Dai 2009, p. 243).

The research discovers customer benefit markets and marketing rules (association rules) via the Fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm and data mining technologies. However, the research objective is to discover fuzzy & crisp customer rules for enhancing marketing systems.  Data mining technologies are employed on discovering knowledge of consumers. The application will be a trend for marketing strategy. For a long-run retailer, their transaction records may have a large-scale database which contains customer shopping records. Hence, for understanding customer shopping intentions, in that respect, many international businesses discover customer knowledge from their POS (point of sales) systems with big data (customer-shopping records) by the data mining technologies. In data mining technologies, fuzzy theory and apriori algorithm can be used in analyzing various enterprises for business analytics. In the fuzzy clustering field, an observation can be assigned into two or many clusters (Manski, 1990). In contrast to the fuzzy clustering, the crisp clustering algorithm assigns an observation into a certain cluster for the purpose of market segmentation (Kotler et. al., 2016). Therefore, as mentioned above, an observation may be assigned into more than one cluster in fuzzy clustering (Russell and Lodwick, 1999, Chiang, 2011). This study employed the fuzzy clustering algorithm to obtain the solution of this problem. The research proposes a data mining approach to find association rules with fuzzy clustering. As to the research methods, this work uses a fuzzy clustering algorithm and market basket analysis to process the collected data. The approach of this study can be employed in e-business marketing systems or online CRM (customer relationship management) system. In coffee markets, the brewed coffee is one of the top 10 sales products around the world. BBC Travel (2014) pointed out that Taipei city is one of the top six coffee cities in the world. Hence, there were about 448 cups of brewed coffee purchased per person/year around the world in 2008. However, in Taiwan, there were about 80 cups of brewed coffee purchased in 2008. That is, the sales percentage of brewed coffee of Taiwan is approximately 17.865%  f the sales value of the world (Taiwan Coffee Association, 2008). However, according to the Ministry of Finance, Taiwan, ROC (2017), there were about 124 cups (person/year) of brewed coffee purchased in 2016. For the consumption of cups of brewed coffee in Taiwan, the growth rate was 55% from 2008 to 2016. As table 1.1 shows, the growth rates of all types of imported coffee beans in Taiwan were increasing from 2008 to 2011 and decreasing from 2012 to 2013. In 2014, the rate was increased. In accordance with mentioned above, the growth rates of the brewed coffee shoppers have grown up from 2013 to 2016 in Taiwan. In conclude, the industry of coffee shops is a very fast-growing industry in Taiwan. Nowadays, including convenience stores, there are more than ten thousand stores selling brewed coffee in Taiwan. Hence, it still can be enhanced toward a higher sales percentage. Thus, the industry of the coffee shop in Taiwan is the empirical case in this study.

Nowadays, many people express their opinions on the Internet, including opinions about political issues. Not only governments need to know about their citizens’ opinions, but also most election campaigns and candidates are eager to know the voice of voters before the election so they can adjust their election strategy promptly. Over the years, election–related organizations have conducted polls forecasting, and the election results are mostly consistent with the prediction. However, in the Taiwan local elections held on 29 November 2014, the election results of many cities showed significant deviation from predictions. For example, the pre-election polls of the mayoral candidate of the Taoyuan city, Chih-Yang Wu, were 57 percent favorable, and those of his opponent, Wen-tsan Cheng, were only 25% favorable. However, the polls’ laggard turned out to be the winner. Evidently, simply relying on the traditional polling method doesn’t seem enough to provide an adequate forecast. With the advent of social media, such as Facebook, Plurk and Twitter, users can express their opinions anytime and anywhere. In general, young people are the main users of the Internet. As shown in Table 1, 24% of the Internet access population in Taiwan are between the ages of 15 and 24, 29% of the Internet access population are between the ages of 25 and 34. Hence, using Web reviews for election estimation mainly reflects the opinions of young people. **Insert Table 1 here** There are many poll centers in Taiwan that generally collect data using traditional methods, such as via questionnaire and interview, which are expensive and time-consuming. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the use of data mining to translate massive amounts of social media data into useful information. The new method of using Web mining for polling is not only fast and cost-saving, but also can be used to investigate the opinions of populations that have not been reached before; it is therefore expected to replace or combine with traditional polling methods. In view of the problems faced by traditional polling, such as inadequate data for quota design and poor response rates for phone polls, this study utilized the opinions posted on social media to gauge the degree of support for two mayoral candidates of Taichung city. However, to effectively and quickly extract useful information from tons of Web data is an important issue. In particular, there are many problems in conducting opinion analysis on comments in Chinese. Hence, before performing election prediction based on Chinese social media sites, the opinion extraction rules of Chinese texts should be established first. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the development of social media mining in recent years with special focus on its application to election prediction. The problems of conducting semantic analysis on Chinese social media are also presented in this section. Section 3 depicts the framework of this study. The details of constructing opinion phrase extraction rules for identifying the opinion words associated with the attribute words are described. This section also introduces the six municipal governancerelated topics. Section 4 presents the results of the scores of the six topics of each candidate, based on which the election prediction is performed. Finally, Section 5 presents conclusions and future work.

The prevalence and importance of family firms, as well as their impact on local economies, are by now well recognized around the world. While there are many corporate governance and finance issues that have an important bearing on family owned firms, among the most critical of these is succession. Burkart et al. (2003) and Franks et al. (2012) found that the level legal protection for investors is an important influence on succession decisions. Moreover changes in laws and regulations will influence the quality of corporate governance. The impact of enhanced laws and regulations and improved corporate governance on family succession raises important questions, namely: 1) whether the probability of family succession decreases when laws and regulations, as well as the quality of corporate governance, improve over the succession period; and 2) whether stronger laws, regulations, and improved corporate governance reduce the risks of succession, or enhance stock performance over the succession period This paper takes a closer examination of these questions on succession in Taiwanese family firms. There are several reasons for this. First, as in many countries around the globe, family ownership and succession is highly prevalent in Taiwanese listed firms. Second, as in other countries in the wake of the Enron collapse, key amendments to laws and regulations introduced in 2002 and 2007 significantly improved the level of investor protection in Taiwan which in turn had a profound impact on the succession patterns of family firms. Third, as a succession event is generally associated with transferring control from a family controller to another related family member (i.e. an offspring or close relative) or to an unrelated outsider in the case of a resignation, Taiwan can provide a very detailed and rich source of family succession and corporate governance data.

Containing medical costs through prevention programs has become even more important as many countries’ health care expenditures are high and continually growing. Prevention programs include a range of services such as vaccination, public sanitation and public health programs, preventive and screening services, and disease awareness and education programs. The above preventive measures help reduce medical costs by means of promoting healthy lifestyles, reducing the odds of becoming sick, treating diseases at early stages, and preventing medical complications (Kenkel, 2000). Individuals invest in their own health by adopting good lifestyle and using preventive care services to achieve and maintain the proper health. It is therefore imperative to understand the determinants of preventive care utilization from a broader perspective. Economic variables as well as social factors affect the utilization of preventive care services. Among social factors, social capital plays a crucial role in health status, health care service utilization, and health behavior (Lochner, Kawachi, & Keenedy, 1999; Deri, 2005; Hawe & Shiell, 2000; Kim & Konrath, 2016). Researchers have defined and measured social capital in a variety of ways (Coleman, 1988; Macinko & Starfield, 2001; Putnam, 1993). Generally, social capital consists of certain features of social organizations, such as trust, norms, and networks. Some researchers focus on discussing community-level social capital, while others center on the exploration of individual-level social capital (Paldam, 2000). There is a variety of channels through which social capital impacts individual health, health care service utilization, and lifestyle choices (Kawachi, Kennedy, & Glass, 1999). First, social capital facilitates access to health care services and health care delivery. Second, individuals obtain information via formal or informal networks, which may enhance people’s ability to make healthy choices. Third, social capital improves individual health by enforcing or changing social norms. 1.1. Social capital and health Many prior studies have empirically explored the relationship between social capital indicators and health-related variables such as health status, medical service utilization, and health behavior. Most found that social capital indicators are important determinants of physical health and psychological health. Using aggregate level data, Kawachi, Kennedy, Lochner, and Prothrow-Stith (1997) noted that lower investment in social capital is associated with higher mortality rates. Kawachi et al. (1999) showed that people living in areas with lower social capital are more likely to have self-reported poor health after controlling for various socio-demographic variables. Rose (2000) used Russian data and presented that both social capital and human capital produce significant effects on physical health and emotional health. Using Taiwan data, Cheng and Chiang (2002) exhibited that a higher level of social capital is positively associated with health status and subjective happiness.

مقاله سال 2016

 مجله مدیریت خرید و تامین – Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management

As the globalization of business activities accelerated, today’s supply chains span the globe with unprecedented complexities and uncertainties. These complexities and uncertainties not only increase risk, but also reduce visibility that, in turn, makes supply chain operations more vulnerable to unforeseen disruptions. Re- flecting growing concerns over supply chain disruptions, supply chain risk management (SCRM) has become an emerging research topic (Altay and Ramirez, 2010; Ellis et al., 2011; Manuj and Mentzer, 2008a, 2008b; Revilla and Sáenz, 2014; Schoenherr et al., 2012; Son and Orchard, 2013; Tang, 2006a; Whitney et al., 2014; Zsidisin and Wagner, 2010). One of the central themes of past SCRM research includes the definition and categorization of supply chain risks and identification of their sources. For instance, borrowing from investment portfolio concepts, Rao and Goldsby (2009) defined supply chain risk in two ways: First, risk is considered the manifestation of uncontrollability that may result in either positive or negative outcome. Second, risk refers to a form of negative outcomes that adversely affect organizational performance. Altay and Ramirez (2010) investigated how natural disaster such as earthquake, windstorms, floods, and fires affected firms in different business sectors. They observed that firms did not take disaster disruption management seriously due to their perceived low probability of disaster occurrence, despite the fact that natural disaster actually affected firm performances.

Considering the potential connection between the firm’s perceived risk and risk mitigation actions, Ellis et al. (2011) identified individual, organizational, and environmental factors that affected the formation of risk perception and mitigation actions. Despite a variety of risk factors (sources) and their level of importance to mitigation actions, Revilla and Sáenz (2014) found the level of disruption management implementation to be universal all across the world. More recently, Ambulkar et al. (2015) identified three antecedents for enhancing the firm’s resilience to supply chain disruptions: (1) supply chain disruption orientation; (2) resource reconfiguration capabilities and (3) firm’s risk management infrastructure. They found that supply chain disruption affected the firm’s resilience level differently depending upon the firm’s resource configuration and risk management infrastructure. Focusing on the effectiveness of risk mitigation actions rather than the identification of risk sources, Whitney et al. (2014) noticed that multiple sourcing was often used as a temporary hedge to reduce supply chain disruption risks. However, they found that temporary multiple sourcing turned out to be ineffective in dealing with supply chain disruption, if product design and manufacturing methods for the disrupted items were complex. Supporting this finding, Bode and Wagner (2015) showed that horizontal, vertical, and spatial supply chain complexities increased the frequency of supply chain disruption and thus made a temporary hedge less efficient.

In the presence of various supply chain risks illustrated above, this paper aims to develop risk mitigation action plans that help firms better control such risks, while assessing the impact of supply chain security and safety stock practices on supply chain disruption occurrence based on the empirical study. In particular, drawing upon the contingency theory, this paper introduces firm’s risk taking propensity as an antecedent, which may reflect the firm’s risk management behavior, proposes security compliance and safety stock plans, and identifies various types of supply chain disruption occurrence.

مقاله سال 2016

In the past, it usually took weeks to send a letter or cargo to an overseas destination. If an accident occurred during the delivery process, the letter would fail to reach its designated recipient. Nowadays, however, the development of modern transportation technologies has shortened delivery time and reduced the risk of cargo loss. International trade has also increased due to the use of advanced transportation methods. The recent growth in international trade has also spurred increased globalization on a worldwide basis. In the wake of globalization, better efficiency and faster and less costly worldwide shipment have become the common goals of the international transportation industry.

Express services originated from letter delivery services. When customers pursuing faster speed, lower cost, better service, and higher quality found that traditional postal services failed to their expectations, express service providers e such as UPS, FedEx, and DHL e found a new market niche in international delivery services (Chao et al., 2013; Ding et al., 2005). To provide services beyond cargo transportation and to increase revenue and service volume, express service companies have enhanced their logistics systems and built warehouses near international airports for fast delivery service. These new actions have helped speed up cargo handling and consolidation processes and added value to air cargo transportation services, while also spurring the international express industry to design new solutions involving integrated logistics platforms and cargo distribution services. After third-party logistics providers (3PLs) reached full maturity, integrated fourth party logistics providers (4PLs) began shaping new forms of services.

The fact that the global economy has been swinging unpredictably between booms and recessions has caused air cargo transportation to face enormous financial risks and resulted in fierce competition. As a result, how to provide better service quality is perceived as a strategic issue as well as a tactical issue (Gronroos, € 2000). Shippers are the main customers in the international express service system. From a marketing perspective, the service quality provided by an international express service company is the main factor in maintaining customers’ loyalty (Chang, 2012), and providing the best service and quality, and reducing transportation time and cost, has therefore become the best competitive strategy. Apart from the core benefits provided by their services, a growing number of express enterprises have also begun putting more emphasis upon the re-purchase intention of their customers. These companies recognize that only by fully understanding customers’ needs, they can provide precisely-tailored services offering customers optimal benefit. Better customer service increases value for customers (Johansson et al., 1993), and better services also attract more new customers, and thus increase profit and revenue (Ramsey and Sohi, 1997). Kotler (2013) believed that customer value is the central concept of marketing theory, and the customer value concept has been applied in many service-related fields in order to provide a competitive advantage. One conclusion based on this concept is that companies should discover and provide satisfactory value for their customers.

مقاله سال 2016

Competition between airlines has recently become more severe with the service quality of airlines receiving more attention than ever before. High-quality service has become a de facto requirement for this industry (Park et al., 2004), as it helps companies gain and maintain customer loyalty, satisfaction, and retention (Hu et al., 2009). However, following the recent global economic downturn, most airlines are struggling to survive and are forced to reduce their costs and services as much as possible (Liou et al., 2015), making it imperative for airline managers to figure out how to improve service quality at a minimum cost. As a result, strong employee policies in air transport have become very crucial for delivering highquality service.

Our study regards that family-supportive organization perceptions (FSOP) might play a key role in understanding strain symptoms and high-quality service. Some research studies have talked about service quality in Asia’s airline industry, but they just concentrate on tangible antecedent variables such as physical environment and access quality (Wu and Cheng, 2013), or the outcomes of service quality such as loyalty (Chen and Hu, 2013) and passengers’ behavior intentions (Park et al., 2004). They seldom look into the psychological aspect to discuss how airlines’ policies affect psychological conditions and how employees’ psychological conditions influence high-quality service. Therefore, our study fills the gap to examine how FSOP, through the mechanism of strain symptoms, influence service quality. This study is timely in providing a greater understanding of the key antecedent factors for service quality by helping to plan future policies of the airline industry.

To improve our understanding of service quality in air transport, this paper takes the affective events theory (AET) as the theoretical foundation to support our framework. Moreover, we establish a model that simultaneously considers FSOP, psychological detachment, need for recovery, emotional exhaustion, and service quality, as Fig. 1 shows.