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In December 2019, a novel coronavirus broke out in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, and, as the center of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, the economy and production throughout Hubei Province suffered huge temporary impacts. Based on the input–output and industrial pollution emissions data of 33 industrial industries in Hubei from 2010 to 2019, this article uses the non-parametric frontier analysis method to calculate the potential production losses and compliance costs caused by environmental regulations in Hubei's industrial sector by year and industry. Research has found that the environmental technology efficiency of the industrial sector in Hubei is showing a trend of increasing year-on-year, but the overall efficiency level is still not high, and there is great room for improvement. The calculation results with and without environmental regulatory constraints indicate that, generally, production losses and compliance costs may be encountered in the industrial sector in Hubei, and there are significant differences by industry. The potential production losses and compliance costs in pollution-intensive industries are higher than those in clean production industries. On this basis, we propose relevant policy recommendations to improve the technological efficiency of Hubei's industrial environment, in order to promote the high-quality development of Hubei's industry in the post-epidemic era.
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The article describes the world's experience in developing the solar industry. It discusses the mechanisms of state support for developing renewable energy sources in the cases of five countries that are the most successful in this area—China, the United States, Japan, India, and Germany. Furthermore, it contains a brief review of state policy in producing electricity by renewable energy facilities in Kazakhstan. This paper uses statistical information from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the International Energy Agency (IEA), British Petroleum (BP), and the Renewable Energy Network (REN21), and peer-reviewed sources. The research methodology includes analytical research and evaluation methods to examine the current state of solar energy policy, its motivators and incentives, as well as the prospects for its development in Kazakhstan and in the world. Research shows that solar energy has a huge development potential worldwide and is sure to take its place in gross electricity production. This paper focuses on the selected economic policies of the top five countries and Kazakhstan, in what may be considered a specific research limitation. Future research suggestions for the expansion of Renewable Energy (RE) in Kazakhstan could include analysing the impact of introducing dedicated policies and incentives for solar systems and exploring the benefits and challenges of implementing large RE zones with government–business collaboration.
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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the impact of government support policies and research and development (R&D) activities on product innovation under market uncertainty.Design/methodology/approachThis study applies logistic regression analysis to a sample of 4,000 South Korean manufacturing firms in order to investigate the impact of government policies and R&D activities of the firm on firm innovation performance, with particular interest in the moderating role of the firm's perceived market uncertainty (PMU).FindingsPolicies supporting industry/university/institute/local collaboration are found to have greater benefit under high PMU. Surprisingly, support for a consortium among different-sized firms has a negative effect on product innovation, although this negative effect disappears under high PMU. Both support for the protection of intellectual property (IP) and support for the resolution of manpower shortages have strong positive effects on the propensity to innovate products, but in both cases the moderating effects of uncertainty are negative. Finally, all types of R&D activities have positive effects on the propensity to innovate, more so for new product innovation than for improved product innovation.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine analytically the moderating effect of PMU in the effectiveness of government policies promoting innovation in the manufacturing sector. The study is potentially useful both for policymakers in deciding which policies to implement under prevailing market conditions;and for entrepreneurs choosing between different forms of government support, particularly given the abnormal levels of market uncertainty prevailing in the Covid-19 era.
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The ocean holds abundant resources, but the utilization of those resources for the marine economy presents a complex and dynamic industrial situation. Exploring sustainable development in this industry is of practical value, as it involves the rational use of marine resources while protecting the environment. This study provides an innovative review of the current application status of Digital Twins Technology (DTT) in various sectors of the marine industry, including the ship-building industry (SBI), Offshore Oil and Gas Industry, marine fishery, and marine energy industry. The findings reveal that DTT offers robust support for full life cycle management (LCM) in SBI, including digital design, intelligent processing, operation, and error management. Furthermore, this work delves into the challenges and prospects of DTT application in the marine industry, aiming to provide reference and direction for intelligent systems in the industry and guide the rational development and utilization of marine resources in the future.
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After the COVID-19 pandemic, the bio-industry is becoming increasingly important. Therefore, it is necessary to respond to the changed environment after COVID-19 by analyzing the bio-industry situation before the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, Korean bio-industry is a very important industry for Korea's economic growth, so huge investments are being made in the development of bio-companies. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the effect of innovation capabilities on the performance of the Korean bio-industry. Korea's bio-industry has been developing under the leadership of the government. Thus, Korea's bio-companies need various forms of innovation to achieve sustainability through competitive advantage on their own. The objective of this research is to find the competitive advantage factors that improve the innovation ability of the Korean bio-industry. Therefore, the elements that increase a company's innovation capability were studied in order to uncover competitive advantage factors that improve the Korean bio-industry's innovation capability, and the effect on corporate performance was analyzed. Using samples from the ‘Korean Bio-industry Survey', the current state of the Korean bio-industry was examined through a review of all bio-industry enterprises. In addition, each of the eight bio-industries was examined using Korea's industrial classification system. As an analysis method, multiple regression analysis of SPSS 25 was performed to analyze how the six input factors have a complex effect on the output factor. This study discovered that R&D intensity, machine investment, and human resource characteristics all had an impact on the business performance of Korean biotech enterprises. In eight bio-sectors, elements affecting company success were defined differently. Therefore, through this study, Korean bio-companies must understand their own industrial characteristics, and develop factors that affect business performance through strategic operational management. In addition, based on the results of this study, companies should strengthen the innovation capabilities of the bio-industry to survive post-COVID-19, analyze changes in innovation capabilities, and promote sustainable growth by strengthening key innovation factors.
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Mobile broadband (MBB) penetration has deepened globally over the last twenty years. This is largely due to the adoption of smart devices, improved mobile communications network coverage, and the perpetual drive to develop ever faster mobile and wireless communication technologies. However, information on the quality of service (QoS) delivered by MBB operators to the end users remains an issue of concern. This has driven independent researchers and mobile communication industry regulators to develop methodologies for independent and unbiased evaluation of the QoS offered by MBB networks. This paper provides a detailed review of MBB adoption and penetration across several regions of the world. It also includes the existing methodologies for evaluating the performance of MBB systems as experienced by the end user. Specifically, methodologies such as the drive and walk tests, crowd-sourced mobile device-based methods and the software applications they employ, and the dedicated measurement testbeds are reviewed. Based on this, the challenges of adopting each of the methods are discussed in order to make a case for the development of more robust, partially autonomous and scalable MBB measurement platforms for the future.
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The pandemic has raised an issue of survival for most of the micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) because of their vulnerability in terms of size, limited financial resources, and inefficiency to deal with unpredicted situations. Therefore, the present study has adopted the contingency theory in times of change and uncertainties caused by COVID-19 on MSMEs and found out the ways to enhance its resilience and sustained the growth of this sector. This study has applied descriptive statistics and probit regression analysis to estimate the resilience and sustained growth of the firms through a change in the variables like turnover, labour employed, investment, and age of the firm. Based on the survey of 225 firms, the study observed that around 90 percent of surveyed firms realized a decline in their turnover with a 25 percent reduction in employment that mostly occur in the informal category. Interestingly, there was some increase in formal employment in around 50 percent of firms because of the business commitment of firms, shortage of informal workers, and availability of workers at lower wages. Smaller and younger firms in terms of employment and investment have a higher possibility to be affected by the external shocks indicating that the firm agility increases with firm age and size. Support measures by the government during the pandemic were found to be insufficient and have limited relevance to the MSME sector in its revival. For enhancing the resilience and sustainability of MSMEs, the study suggests small firms should be encouraged to financial planning against business uncertainties and proposes financial security measures viz. Uncertainty Corpus Fund for Small Businesses and Small Business Insurance.
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Keywords: Character isolation Character recognition Container codes recognition Histogram of oriented gradients Support vector machine Due to the sweeping waves of global industry development, the number of containers passing through terminal ports increases every day. [...]it is essential to automate the identification process for the container codes to replace the manual identification for more efficient logistics and safer workplace. [...]this requires high labor costs and leads to human errors due to fatigue from repetitive work. [...]the repeated manual identification process at terminal ports has hindered us from moving forward to a more efficient logistics system. [...]SVMs are deployed to determine isolated characters.
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Sustainable development integrates business, environmental, and social objectives into a unified effort to achieve a common goal. Sustainable customer relationship management (CRM) combines company strategy, customer-focused business processes, and computer technologies. From the consumer's perspective, it lowers psychological, energy, time, and other costs;from the company's perspective, it offers a means of engaging with customers to build lasting and reliable relationships. The sustainable CRM program provides advantages to businesses in various industries, particularly online commerce. It alludes to a comprehensive strategy that promotes solid interactions between buyers and sellers of goods and services. Since current customer retention is less costly than new customer attraction in competitive markets, especially online shopping, identifying the factors affecting relationship management with stable customers is essential. This investigation intends to evaluate the effect of the use of management information systems (MIS), as well as insights on employee behavior and knowledge, and customer behavior (satisfaction and loyalty), on the effectiveness of sustainable CRM in online shopping. The model is validated using the PLS–SEM technique, and study sample of 293 employees and managers from private organizations. According to the results, the MIS, employee behavior and knowledge, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty influence the effectiveness of sustainable CRM in online shopping. Furthermore, employee behavior and knowledge positively moderate the relationship between customer loyalty and the effectiveness of sustainable CRM. However, the moderating role of employee behavior and knowledge on customer satisfaction and the effectiveness of sustainable CRM is not confirmed. Overall, taking these characteristics into account might help organizations to take significant steps toward increasing the efficacy of sustainable CRM.
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PurposeThis paper discloses the risk management response strategies and the perceived effectiveness of the strategies employed by companies operating within manufacturing clusters in Puerto Rico from 2016 until 2020, the second year of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe research design consists of questionnaire-based survey responses from companies belonging to manufacturing clusters, followed by semi-structured interviews and secondary sources of information.FindingsThe results reveal the risk responses used to manage specific risk types. Albeit respondents' dependency on an assortment of company-centric and cluster-bound risk response strategies, the perception is that the former is more effective when adequate local sources are available and the latter when the cluster has strong interconnectedness among the cluster's members.Research limitations/implicationsFurthermore, there is a generalized belief that long-term cluster-bound strategies are required to complement individual companies' overall risk management strategies.Originality/valueThis paper demonstrated that due to the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) nature of the Caribbean region, mixed risk management might result in better and more favorable long-term performance.
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With the development of computer and information technology, mobile teaching has enjoyed pride of place among teaching mediums in the past two decades. To visually explore the mobile learning hotspots and trends present in international journals, this study adopted two science mapping tools (CiteSpace and VOSviewer) to first detect and then visualise emerging trends (i.e., hotspots) in the mobile learning literature. A total of 528 mobile learning articles published between 2003 and 2021 that appeared in 21 international educational technology journals indexed in the SSCI database were retrieved for bibliometric analysis. The results show (1) there was a remarkable increase in academic output in this field starting in 2008 that topped out in 2021;(2) co-authorship with academics from diverse countries/regions and institutions was evident;(3) three trending foci in the literature include defining mobile learning, designing learning systems, and exploring mobile learning effectiveness;and (4) the high-frequency co-cited publications focus on the effectiveness of mobile devices via different research methods. This study provides scholars with an accessible summary of the current trends in mobile learning, identifies the active researchers in this field, and reports on which outlets are most relevant for research produced on this topic. In addition, the findings have direct implications for the education and private sectors. Mobile devices are not widely adopted in classroom settings and are often considered a learning tool more suited for out-of-class assignments or practice. Therefore, it is necessary for information technology educators to invest in actively initiating the integration of mobile technology into the classroom. Those in the technology industry should aim to develop mobile devices and relevant educational applications/software that can be utilised not only within the confines of the classroom but also to bridge in-class and out-of-class learning.
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This article discusses China's industrial and labour policy for the automotive industry facing the transition to the era of new energy vehicles. A conceptual framework on the regimes of production is employed to analyse the present transformation of industry structures in production models and labour markets. The growth of private-capitalist regimes of high-performance, low wages, and high profit incentives for workers is identified, which can be described as the 'Foxconnisation' of the industry, and it is at the expense of the corporate-bureaucratic regimes prevalent among the leading Sino-foreign joint ventures. As production networks become vertically disintegrated, some non-traditional industrial players are highlighted in the discussion of some recent developments in the industry during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The profound transformation in the regimes of production brought about social contradictions related to the production process, and new challenges and implications for workplace policies. The empirical study of this article confirms the necessity of trade union strategies inside China from an international perspective in order to ensure social standards and a more sustainable green transformation of the industry.
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Technology and innovation have promoted industry convergence and brought new opportunities for industrial development, and a degree of convergence exists in the emergency logistics industry. The purpose of this study is to explore the convergence of the emergency logistics industry and the change in convergence degree among related industries, so as to find a solution to the lack of robustness of the emergency logistics system. This study measures the technical relationship between industries and analyzes the overall trend of emergency logistics industry convergence using the consistency between patent co-classification analysis and patent categories and technical fields. The dominance index and relative strength index are used to assess the strength of industry nodes and the convergence of the emergency logistics industry. Social network analysis is used to investigate the industries and technical fields that are important in the convergence industry. The findings indicate that there is significant convergence between the technical fields of the emergency logistics industry. Twelve industries are actively involved in the emergency logistics industry convergence, and nine industry pairs have strong convergence relationships between them. The information industry is critical to the convergence of the emergency logistics industry. Industry convergence is assisting in the coordinated growth of the emergency logistics sector, lowering informational barriers between sectors, and boosting the system's resilience. This study contributes theoretical significance to the development of the emergency logistics industry and enriches the emergency logistics industry's research system.
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The tourism industry has become a major contributor to the economic growth. However, because of the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the year 2020 became an extremely difficult year for the global tourism industry. Since the development of the tourism industry depends largely on changes in travel sentiment, it is important to analyze these changes in light of the pandemic. To determine the development trends of travel sentiment, a hybrid grey prediction model was used to predict travel sentiment globally and in the top 10 destination countries considering the shock effect of COVID-19 and vaccination. The results showed that the grey prediction models integrated with residual modification model contributed to improving the prediction accuracy. In addition, COVID-19 and vaccination were found to have opposite effects on travel sentiment. Based on the predictions, governments should strengthen pandemic prevention and control and administer vaccines to restore travel sentiment and promote tourism recovery.
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[Background] Porcine delta coronavirus（PDCoV）, swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus（SADS-CoV）, and Seneca virus A（SVA） are new pathogens which seriously endanger the development of pig industry. The clinical symptoms of pigs infected with the three pathogens are difficult to distinguish. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a multiplex RT-PCR detection method for rapid diagnosis of suspected pigs and reduce economic losses. [Objective] To establish a triplex RT-PCR method for simultaneous detection of single or mixed infection of PDCoV, SADS-CoV, and SVA. [Methods] Three pairs of specific primers were designed according to the conserved regions of the N genes of PDCoV and SADS-CoV and the L/P1 genes of SVA registered in GenBank, and the optimal annealing temperature（Tm） was determined by temperature gradient PCR method. The primer concentration was optimized by array method. The recombinant plasmids PMD-PDCoV, PMD-SADS-CoV,and PMD-SVA were constructed as standards to determine the limits of detection（LOD）. The specificity of the triplex RT-PCR method was determined with the nucleic acid samples of 6 common pig viruses including porcine transmissible gastroenteritis virus, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus. The repeatability of the established method was verified by inter-batch and intra-batch tests. Finally, we employed the triplex RT-PCR method to detect the clinical samples suspected of infection and compared the results with those obtained with the reported detection methods, thus evaluating the clinical application performance of the method. [Results] The optimal Tm was 58.3 ℃, and the optimal primer concentrations were 0.5 μmol/L, 0.25 μmol/L, and 0.25 μmol/L,respectively. The established method had high sensitivity, with the LODs of 1 copy/μL, 1 copy/μL, and 10 copies/μL for PMD-PDCoV, PMD-SADS-CoV, and PMD-SVA, respectively. It had strong specificity, with specific bands only for PDCoV, SADS-CoV, and SVA and no bands for other viruses.Moreover, the method had good repeatability as the test results were consistent between and within batches. The positive rates of PDCoV, SADS-CoV, and SVA in the clinical samples detected by the established method were 65.85%, 30.49%, and 57.32%, respectively, which were consistent with the results obtained with the reported detection methods. Finally, 5 samples were randomly selected from 13 positive samples of PDCoV, SADS-CoV, and SVA for sequencing, and the phylogenetic tree indicated that the PCR amplification sequences of the five positive samples had high homology（above 96%） between each other and also with the reference sequences. [Conclusion] The triplex RT-PCR method established in this study is accurate and reliable for the simultaneous detection of PDCoV,SADS-CoV, and SVA in clinical samples.
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Has the COVID pandemic just been another crisis that had hit the Japanese automobile industry over the past three decades or has it been a watershed moment with respect to the shift to electric cars (EVs)? After presenting data regarding the development of Japanese industry and the evolution of policies for ecological friendly cars, the paper argues that, given that all major automobile markets and most foreign competitors are shifting towards battery electric vehicles (BEVs), the Japanese automobile producers have no choice other than abandoning conventional combustion engines including hybrid technologies and changing their strategies as well to BEVs. They do so, not because of government carbon neutral policies or out of conviction of the ecological superiority of BEVs, but just out of pure pragmatism in order to maintain their international competitiveness regarding products and production. COVID did not trigger but accelerated these developments.
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This study aims to determine the growth factors, strategies, and performance of SMART. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound in the form of an effective process for determining and achieving business goals. The research design is a mix of methods to collect, process, and analyze data systematically and directly so that research can be carried out properly. Our findings reveal that the actual condition of the recovery of tourism industry, especially in Bangkalan, Sumenep, and Pamekasan regencies is getting better. The main challenge for the post-pandemic tourism industry is to promote local tourism on the international stage. It can be concluded that the SMART tourism framework can provide opportunities for businesses to determine their goals in facing the challenges of the tourism industry. Also, these findings reveal a lack of critical literature examining the assumptions of smart tourism and questioning its feasibility and positive experiential, economic and social impacts on local communities. This study proposes a research agenda that is far from comprehensive by understanding SMART's tourism potential and possible shortcomings and becomes a recommendation for government policies in the context of restoring the tourism industry in Indonesia.
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Improving the supply chain resilience of the mineral resources industry is crucial for ensuring national economic security in China. Based on the supply and demand data of China's mineral resources industry from 2002 to 2018, this study adopts system dynamics model to simulate the supply chain resilience of the mineral resources industry, the mining industry, and the smelting and processing industry under the scenario of steady economic development and the scenario of supply chain crisis. From the simulation results, the reserves of the mineral resources industry and the smelting and processing industry under the two scenarios are nearly the same, indicating that they are weakly affected by the foreign market, and both have strong resilience. The mining industry has a high dependence on imports and a lack of supply chain resilience. Under the condition of steady economic development, the output of the mining industry needs to develop at a low speed to reduce production capacity. More attention should be paid to the high level of import dependence and insufficient supply chain resilience of the mining industry. In the stable international trade situation, reserves of important minerals should be increased to alleviate the resource shortage during the supply chain crisis.
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Based on the secondary data taken from Population Census, and the Employment-Unemployment Surveys and Periodic Labour Force Survey of the National Sample Survey, it is found that Indian economy is passing through a critical phase of economic development in which it is likely to lose its demographic advantage. Because, in India while about 4.5 million people were leaving agriculture every year prior to the Covid-19 pandemic years, the non-farm sectors job was not growing adequately to accommodate the persons leaving agriculture, and the newly educated non-farm job seekers. As a result there was an upsurge in educated youth unemployment (18% and about 24 million) rate, and hence the discouraged youth labour force. On the other hand, an increase in the share (from 8.0 to 10.2%) and growth (3.0-5.1%) of elderly population put a question on the process of harnessing demographic dividend in India. Based on these findings it is argued that an integrated approach of development is necessary to boost the labour force participation of youth and overall population to boost the growth of per capita national state domestic product (NSDP) in Indian states. This could be achieved through the promotion of micro and small enterprises along with infrastructure development along with a systematic emigration and remittances policy.
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With the promotion of carbon-peak and carbon-neutral strategies and the increase in green awareness, green development is gradually gaining attention, and the green supply chain management (GSCM) derived from traditional supply chain management is gradually becoming a path to promote green development. At the same time, enterprise, as an important source of pollution, how to consider social responsibility, such as environmental protection, in the process of ensuring efficiency improvement has become an important issue. To study the impact of GSCM on enterprise value and its path of action, this paper examines the impact of GSCM on enterprise value, explores the moderating effect of the risk-taking level, and further analyzes the dual moderating effect played by technological innovation capability and supply chain concentration. Based on the micro data of 131 Chinese listed enterprises from 2014 to 2021, a panel-regression model is used to illustrate how GSCM affects enterprise value, and the results show that: (1) GSCM can promote enterprise value;(2) the level of risk-taking strengthens the promoting effect of GSCM on enterprise value enhancement;and (3) the technological innovation capability negatively regulates the moderating effect of risk-taking, while the supply chain concentration positively regulates the moderating effect of risk-taking. The research results of this paper enrich the path of the effect of implementing of GSCM on enterprise value enhancement, i.e. the process of GSCM to enhance enterprise value is regulated by the level of enterprise risk-taking, while technological innovation capability and supply chain concentration will also regulate the level of enterprise risk-taking and thus promote enterprise value enhancement. This research not only extends the research perspective and enriches the existing research, but also provides a theoretical basis for enterprises to implement GSCM to promote value enhancement and improve the level of GSCM implementation and the green development of enterprises.