Investment Evaluation and Partnership Selection Model in the Offshore Wind Power Underwater Foundations Industry

With a plan to achieve a target of 5.7 GW offshore wind power capacity in 2025, Taiwan anticipates building a 36-billion USD industry, which makes Taiwan a center of attention in the global marketplace of civil engineering construction. Aimed at Taiwan’s underwater foundations industries, this study is the first to develop an investment evaluation model (IEM) by applying FPR to obtain risk factor weights and calculate the overall investment risk value with a numerical scoring method. In a context where no precedent exists for reference, this study provides auxiliary and supportive tools to help builders to make the decision, based on objective indicators, whether to undertake an investment. To date, no research has been conducted to introduce a reasonable mathematical model that discusses the issue of partner selection in the field of offshore wind power. This study is the first paper to construct a SWARA-FTOPSIS partner selection model, which enables underwater foundations builders to take specific Taiwanese characteristics into account in their selection of the best partners to meet transportation, construction, and installation requirements. Finally, the study uses the case of the Taipower Offshore Wind Power Project (2nd phase) to verify the feasibility of this model.

Mentorship in librarianship: meeting the needs, addressing the challenges

Purpose Mentorship is crucial to the success and accomplishment of librarianship in the contemporary era. This paper aims to investigate the need for mentorship and challenges besetting mentorship in librarianship with specific focus on academic libraries. Design/methodology/approach Descriptive survey research design was used for the study. The population of the study was 1,214 librarians in 102 academic libraries in Southern Nigeria. Total enumeration sampling technique was adopted for the study. Findings It was reflected that mentorship, though beset by a number of challenges, is a necessity in librarianship. The hypotheses tested revealed that there is significant relationship between the need for mentorship and the types of mentorship adopted in academic libraries, and that there is no significant difference between the need for mentorship by male and female librarians. Practical implications This study affirmed that it is through mentorship that librarians can meet their job demands. Mentorship should therefore be stimulated to bolster the professional and intellectual development of the librarians. The mentees should be carried along in mentorship partnership selection process, and training should be organized for mentors and mentees on mentorship. Social implications The interaction of librarians in the course of mentoring can facilitate work cohesion and enhanced job performance. Originality/value The needs for and challenges besetting mentorship in librarianship have been explored by collecting data directly from the librarians. The cloistered nature of librarianship, given the changing nature of the profession owing to massive deployment of Information and Communication Technology in the performance of library operations, means that mentorship should be encouraged in the profession.

The differentiated and ambidextrous influence of network flexibility on exploratory and exploitative partnership formations

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide evidence on the impact of network flexibility and its ambidextrous influence on a firm's exploratory and exploitative partnership selection.Design/methodology/approachThe authors develop our hypotheses based on the literature of network flexibility and draw on a sample of publicly listed firms in Taiwan semiconductor and optoelectronics industries. The authors collect our data from survey questionnaires and archival sources and examine our hypotheses by using the generalized linear model (GLM) approach.FindingsThe authors’ empirical findings show that configuration flexibility has a greater influence on exploratory partnerships, while manufacturing flexibility has a greater impact on exploitative partnerships. In addition, when firms are ambidextrous (i.e. have both types of flexibility), they are able to simultaneously obtain both exploratory and exploitative partnerships. The authors’ findings indicate that balancing network flexibility is critical when firms execute ambidextrous alliance strategies.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors’ use of survey data to measure network flexibility may limit our observations related to network evolution. In addition, the authors’ use of public annual reports to capture firm partnerships may cause us to ignore informal relationships between partners.Practical implicationsThe authors’ empirical findings suggest that the types of partnerships firms develop depend on which types of flexibility they possess. The results further suggest that decision makers have to find a way to develop a balanced strategy between network configuration and manufacturing flexibility when they would like to develop an ambidextrous alliance strategy.Originality/valueThe authors’ study advances the understanding in the literature on supply chain flexibility and its ambidexterity by connecting network flexibility and ambidextrous alliance strategy. The authors offer a guide to supply chain managers in the area of network design.

Partnership Management, Supply Chain Collaboration, and Firm Innovation Performance: An Empirical Examination

Facing uncertain environments, firms have strived to achieve competitive advantage by partnership management and supply chain collaboration. The objective of the research is to uncover the nature of partnership management and explore its impact on supply chain collaboration and firm innovation performance. The research divides partnership management into three stages: partnership selection, partnership establishment, and partnership sustention. The research constructs the influence mechanism of partnership management on supply chain collaboration and innovation performance. By questionnaire of 133 manufacturing enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta of China, and using SPSS statistical analysis, the empirical results show that partnership selection, partnership establishment, and partnership sustention have significantly positive influence on supply chain collaboration and innovation performance; supply chain collaboration has a complete mediating effect between partnership election, partnership establishment, and innovation performance; and supply chain collaboration has a partial mediating effect between partnership sustention and innovation performance. The research reveals the construct mechanism of firms’ improving innovation performance through partnership management.

Partnership Selection Involving Mixed Types of Uncertain Preferences

Partnership selection is an important issue in management science. This study proposes a general model based on mixed integer programming and goal-programming analytic hierarchy process (GP-AHP) to solve partnership selection problems involving mixed types of uncertain or inconsistent preferences. The proposed approach is designed to deal with crisp, interval, step, fuzzy, or mixed comparison preferences, derive crisp priorities, and improve multiple solution problems. The degree of fulfillment of a decision maker’s preferences is also taken into account. The results show that the proposed approach keeps more solution ratios within the given preferred intervals and yields less deviation. In addition, the proposed approach can treat incomplete preference matrices with flexibility in reducing the number of pairwise comparisons required and can also be conveniently developed into a decision support system.