While previous study has confirmed significant correlation between infrastructure construction and air quality, little is known about the nature of the relationship. In this paper, we intend to fill this gap by using the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model to discuss the nonlinear relationship between transportation infrastructure construction and air quality. The panel data includes 280 cities in China for the period 2000-2017. We find that the transportation infrastructure investment is positively correlated to the air quality when the GDP per capita is below RMB 7151 or the number of motor vehicle population per capita is below 37 (vehicles per 10,000 persons) where the model is in the lower regime, and that the transportation infrastructure investment is negatively correlated to the air quality when the GDP per capita is greater than RMB 7151 or the number of motor vehicle population per capita is larger than 37 (vehicles per 10,000 persons) where the model is in the upper regime. The empirical results of the three sub-samples, including eastern, western and central regions, are similar to that of the national level. Furthermore, increasing transportation infrastructure investment is conducive to improving air quality. Urban bus services, green area, population density, wind speed and rainfall are also conducive to reducing air pollution, but the role of environmental regulation is not significant. After adding the instrumental variable (urban built-up area), the conclusions are further supported. Finally, relevant policy recommendations for reducing air pollution are proposed based on the empirical results.

In emerging countries such as China where the government is gradually withdrawing from involvement in social affairs, firms face dilemmas around relational risks of partnering with different forms of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Affiliated NGOs (those with close relationships with government) are more likely to sabotage the social partnership through misconduct, and are also capable of higher standards of collaborative social performance compared with independent NGOs (those with few such relationships). This study proposes that firms’ political embeddedness helps mitigate relational risks in cross-sector partner selection, and finds that politically connected firms are more likely to partner with affiliated NGOs than with independent NGOs in China. This effect is more pronounced for private firms that are less socially oriented or are located in regions with less-developed formal institutions and social trust. Our findings highlight relational risks relevant to cross-sector partner selection literature and offer important insights into how relational risks can be reduced in cross-sector partner selection in emerging countries.

The quality and experience of healthcare systems affect the economy and prosperity of cities all over the world. Governments of several countries are struggling to improve the efficiency of their healthcare systems and decrease healthcare spending costs. In this paper, we discuss one of the most critical and busy processes among healthcare topics: ambulatory care center (ACC) appointment scheduling systems. We investigate the appointment-scheduling issue using a robust optimization framework to minimize operational costs while ensuring the improvement of healthcare service quality. Our findings and insights provide healthcare practitioners with tools to improve operational efficiency and service quality.

The supplier selection problem has been largely explored in the extant literature and attracted considerable attention of academics and purchasing managers. Practical supplier selection problem is usually revolved around multicriteria and a committee of experts. However, even using the exact values of the input data, certain experts may generate uncertain evaluation results on a supplier, because the exact weights with respect to each criterion are extremely difficult to reach a group consensus. In this article, first the interval data to describe all experts’ evaluation on all suppliers are formulated and then a stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA-2) is applied to provide a full rank of all candidate suppliers. SMAA-2 method is considered as an effective instrument to deal with stochastic decision-making problems. The rank acceptability indices and holistic rank indices are obtained to support the supplier selection. A numerical example drawn from the previous paper is recalculated to show the effectiveness of our approach.

The impact of workplace gossip on employees has become a hot topic among researchers and practitioners. The research integrates both positive and negative dimensions, and more comprehensively explores the influence of workplace gossip on employees' work enthusiasm to make theoretical contributions to workplace gossip research. Based on the valid sample of 201 employees from various types of enterprises in Xi’an, the study uses SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 24.0 software to conduct data analysis and test the research hypothesis. The empirical results show that positive gossip in the workplace has a significant positive impact on employees' work enthusiasm, and negative workplace gossip has a significant negative impact on employees' work enthusiasm. Finally, according to the research results, this article puts forward corresponding management improvement strategies and suggestions.