PurposeThis study aimed to investigate the impact of e-commerce capabilities on agricultural firms’ performance gains through organizational agility.Design/methodology/approachA survey was used to collect data from 280 managers of agricultural firms. The proposed model was tested via structural equation modeling.FindingsThe empirical results indicated that organizational agility plays a mediating role in conveying the positive influences of e-commerce capabilities on agricultural firms’ performance gains. Specifically, managerial, talent and technical capabilities have different effects on market capitalization and operational adjustment agility, with talent capability performing the most important role. Market capitalization and operational adjustment agility have positive impacts on financial and nonfinancial performance gains, respectively.Originality/valueThis study provides a new framework to understand the relationships between e-commerce capabilities, organizational agility and agricultural firms’ performance gains.
Chlorinated phenols are a kind of environmental priority pollutant that attract much attention. Nanosized Fe and Fe/Ni materials are considered as promising options for chlorinated phenol removal. The effect of Ni morphology on the removal of pentachlorophenol (PCP) with Fe/Ni nanomaterials was investigated in this study. Iron nanoparticles and nickel nanomaterials with different shapes were synthesized using a chemical reduction method and wet chemical techniques, respectively. The concentrations of PCP and chloride in solutions were measured with and without Ni present. The intermediates of PCP were also analyzed. The results showed that the dechlorination of PCP was promoted by Ni nanomaterials, among which the tubular porous Ni nanomaterials expressed the most promotion, then those with net shape and nanochains. However, the tubular porous Ni nanomaterials inhibited the removal of PCP, and the other two expressed a certain promotion. In the Fe/Ni system, Fe nanoparticles transformed into magnetite (Fe3O4) and/or maghemite (Fe2O3), and Ni nanomaterials were still pure Ni after reaction. The introduction of Ni nanomaterials would improve dechlorination of PCP, but the removal of PCP might be inhibited or improved as the morphology of Ni changed.
At present, blockchain technology is more and more widely used in the field of food traceability, and good results have been achieved. However, many of the current blockchain technologies and algorithms are not developed for the specific situation of food traceability, resulting in resource waste and low computational efficiency. In view of these problems, this paper analyzes and summarizes the classic distributed consensus mechanism in blockchain technology, focusing on the PBFT (practical Byzantine fault tolerance) consensus mechanism and the existing problems related to the improvement scheme. In order to solve the problem of low efficiency of a consensus algorithm in a food traceability scenario, this paper proposes a blockchain consensus algorithm suitable for the food traceability scenario based on clustering and food credit. In addition, the differences between the improved algorithm and the classical Byzantine consensus algorithm in consensus algorithm time and communication times are analyzed through experiments and simulations. The consensus efficiency of the improved algorithm in this paper is significantly improved, which can greatly reduce the application difficulty of blockchain in food traceability.
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