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This study examines how the impact of product modularity on the mass customization capability is moderated by several contextual factors, such as the firms' information system capacity (ISC), teamwork (TW), multifunctional employees (MFE), and organizational structure (flat or hierarchical) (OSF). Data from 238 firms located in multiple countries across three different industry groups were analyzed to test the moderated regression models and the hypotheses. The results showed that the product modularity strongly impacts the mass customization capability (MCC). Compared to ISC, the social contextual variables, such as TW, MFE, and OSF, have stronger moderating effects on the impact of the product modularity on the mass customization capability. In addition, ISC helps MCC solely for firms with flat organizational structures. Overall, our study suggests that manufacturers who desire to become mass customizers should create flat, nimble organizations with employees who are trained in several different tasks and are adept at teamwork.

The booming of Internet economics brings new opportunities for small-and medium-sized product and service providers in e-platforms. Usually, the Internet platform (thereafter "platform") and Internet providers (thereafter "providers") operate under a consignment revenue sharing production model. Another production model is profit sharing, under which the platform undertakes part of the providers' operational costs. Intuitively, common sense conjectures that the platform prefers the revenue sharing model while the providers may prefer the profit sharing scheme. However, this is not the case. In this paper, we compare these two forms of emerging production models with a theoretical framework and investigate both market participants' performance under different schemes. Starting from the single provider case, we find that the provider has less incentive to operate under the revenue sharing contract when compared with the profit sharing contract. Counter intuitively, we identify the threshold of the cutting ratio above which it is more beneficial for the platform to choose the profit sharing mode. Our results are proved to be robust when the number of the providers increases. A numerical study is provided to illustrate this effect.

Based on the information processing theory, this study proposes that organizational flatness is an antecedence to the mass customization capability and the supply chain planning and corporation coordination mediates the relationship between organizational flatness and mass customization capability. Data from plants located in multiple countries across three different industry groups is analyzed to test the research hypotheses. The results show that the effect of organizational flatness on MCC is mediated by the coordination practices. It is the supply chain planning and corporate coordination that directly improve the MCC. Our results emphasize the importance of centralized management of value chain decisions and sharing of knowledge for MCC.

Sharing charging stations are an effective solution for daily usage of electric vehicles charging, however, the area with high demand cannot provide enough stations while there are plenty of stations left idle in remote areas with less demand. The core of the problem is the imbalance of demand and supply. In other word, we need to allocate the charging station to the appropriate locations to balance demand and supply. This study aims to solve the problem of locating charging stations for public electric vehicles (PUEVs), to improve the sharing charging level. We take into consideration the factors affecting charging station locations including mileage, PUEV distribution and passenger distribution. A Non-deterministic Polynomial (NP) model aiming to minimize the total vehicle service distance is developed. We use an agent-based model to simulate the optimized charging station location based on Anylogic. Through a case study of Beijing, we test the model in five situations. This paper concludes that priority, mileage, PUEV distribution and passenger distribution are the key factors affecting the location of PUEV charging stations, with exogenous variables such as the type of circuit and the voltage drawn as constants. The results of one situation show that the existing layout of the charging stations is unreasonable when charging frequency is sharply variant; this paper optimizes the existing location by improving the constraint for the smallest number of charging stations; the proposed model can be used for EV charging stations' location in densely populated metropolis.INDEX TERMS Agent, charging frequency, sharing charging, electric vehicles, location.

Production coordination is a common phenomenon in supply chains. Unlike the existing literature, we examine the production coordination problem from the perspective of asymmetric information: how a manufacturer (leading firm) coordinates the relationships with its subsidiary firm(s) and, subsequently, how market returns influence the leading firm's expected utilities, agency cost and the subsidiary firm's expected incomes. We develop an incentive contract model with asymmetric information based on principal-agent theory. Comparative analysis and simulations are conducted to test the model. Results show that the leading firm's expected utilities and agency cost and the subsidiary firm's expected incomes are significantly affected by the subsidiary firm's capability, cost coefficient, absolute risk aversion factor and output variance (common factors); sharp differences among the leading firm's expected utilities and agency cost and the subsidiary firm's expected incomes were found due to different market returns. Thus, the proposed approach (incentive contract model) can help leading firms apply incentives to optimize production modes to obtain production coordination while considering common factors; market returns differences are included in the new model, in contrast to previous approaches.