Purpose Conflicts among top management team (TMT) members have a significant impact on sustainable development of family enterprises in China. The complex attributes of different kinds of conflicts in a TMT have dual effects on firm performance and its stability. Thus, avoiding conflicts in a TMT through a systematic conflict management strategy is very important. This paper aims to therefore investigate how to maximize the performance and income level of the TMT in family enterprises through managing conflict systematically, while adopting the best conflict coping strategies. Design/methodology/approach In this study, the authors apply conflict coping strategies as a useful tool of conflict management and propose five kinds of dynamic conflict coping strategies among TMT members. Repeated game and multi-agent simulation by computer experiment are used to dynamically simulate the rules and evolution of individual conflict coping strategy choices. Findings It is found that with the passage of time, different conflict coping strategies have different effects on earnings of individuals and teams at different conflict levels. It is also revealed that conflict coping strategies affect not only the earnings of individuals and teams but also their distribution; it also reflects the conflict level in TMT of a family enterprise but in reverse. Originality/value This study contributes to the existing literature on conflict management in relevance to the choice and revolution of conflict coping strategies in a Chinese business culture context. It focuses on strengthening the unity and cooperation of TMT members. Controlling the conflict level of TMT members at a reasonable level, investigating the primary cause of conflict and identifying its nature lead to better performance of the TMT and the sustainable development of Chinese family enterprises. Based on these outcomes, different conflict coping strategies can be appropriately used to solve TMT conflicts.

Pakistan is one of those countries that are heavily dependent on hydrocarbon fuel for energy production. This results in severe CO2 emissions that lead to climate change. Although renewable energy resources such as wind are available in abundance, they have not been fully utilized and so energy crises in Pakistan increase every year. This study focuses on using wind energy as an alternative to thermal power sources as the main source of power generation in Pakistan. This research also helps in designing a project management tool to prioritize sources of power generation, including both renewables and nonrenewables, while also considering projects’ technical, environmental, social and economic criteria. An Analytical Hierarchy Process has been used to analyze the four main criteria and 12 subcriteria. The analysis revealed that wind energy is the best source among all options for power generation source, followed by solar. Oil, gas, and coal, the other three alternatives, were well below in a comparative analysis. Gas achieves overall better performance if only economic criteria are considered, but due to shortfalls in availability and diminishing reserves, this source is also not feasible. Relying on wind power as the only energy source will not be technically possible, but it can become a leading energy source inside Pakistan. This will reduce the burden on thermal energy sources and make the country more energy-secure, rather than relying heavily on imported oil and gas, as it currently does. Wind power generation capacity in Pakistan is increasing, so that the cumulative capacity is around 2118 MW installed and commissioned by the end of 2018.

In this paper, an improved evolutionary prisoner’s dilemma (PD) game model is proposed by considering the weighting effect. Taking into account individual’s perceived payoff (benefits), the evolutionary tendency of the cooperators and three equilibrium points of the proposed model are obtained. We then numerically investigate how different exterior and interior factors influence on individuals’ cooperative behavior and their payoff both in the ER random network and the BA scale-free network. Our results reveal that the heterogeneous network structure is conducive to cooperation. In addition, the existence of leader nodes is an important driving force for promoting individuals’ cooperation. By further analyzing the rationality coefficient which appears in the weighting function, we obtain that a greater of irrationality could lead more people to take cooperative strategies. Finally, two indicators which are used to measure the real average payoff and perceived average payoff are defined. The results show that the real average payoff and perceived average payoff are larger in the heterogeneity network than that in homogeneous network.

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