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The tech giants Alibaba and Tencent compete on many fronts. This case focuses on three areas where they have competed very hard: new retailing, mobile payment, and ride-hailing. At the beginning of 2018, Alibaba and Tencent were gathering retail investments in bids to battle each other for shoppers' digital wallets. Key to the battle is China's mobile payment market, worth more than 200 trillion RMB, where Alibaba and Tencent are going head to head. The giants are not only directly competing in the payment platform area but also extensively fighting in other areas, such as ride-hailing, where they invested in and supported Didi and Kuaidi, respectively. To enhance understanding, this case also briefly goes through the history of the two giants. The purposes, methods, and consequences of their platform competition deserve an in-depth discussion

The influx of mainland capital to different media sectors in Hong Kong has been commonly seen throughout the last decade (Leung, 2019). While the changes in ownership have been shaping the ecology of Hong Kong’s media industry, the rapid development of digital technology such as the internet and social media has also been important in the industry’s transformation. This study aims to investigate how and to what extent technology has shaped the Hong Kong media work culture.

Alibaba, the powerful e-commerce conglomerate, has sought to advance its development in the media industry and leverage its technological expertise by acquiring the century-old Hong Kong English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in 2016. This essay, by using the SCMP as a case study, focuses on the workers and their use of technologies in their daily work practices, which offers an alternative lens to investigate the influence of a Chinese tech ownership in transforming a Hong Kong media outlet’s culture.

This case study illustrates how the implementation of Alibaba work culture at the SCMP through technological application remained minimal over the four years following this Chinese tech giant’s acquisition, whereas a Silicon Valley-style start-up culture and techno-organisational gaze were profoundly found at this workplace and received both acceptance and resistance by the employees.

This study results in a revealing unique type of techno-organisational culture change that deviates from the previous Chinese organisational studies within and outside the Chinese contexts.

Chinese firms are winning market share from foreign multinational enterprises in domestic markets. The international business literature suggests that this is happening because these firms are developing non-traditional firm-specific advantages (FSAs). Strategic factor market (SFM) theory provides a good basis for explaining how this is happening. However, it is underdeveloped in terms of analysing unique resources and unique access to those resources by Chinese firms in their domestic markets. This paper aims to develop a framework to understand how Chinese firms have developed non-traditional FSAs.

The case study method is adopted to explore how Chinese firms develop non-traditional FSAs. Specifically, the authors compare paired case studies of a Chinese firm and a foreign multinational in each of two industries.

The authors find that Chinese firms have developed non-traditional FSAs because of more relevant experience, better adapted strategies and privileged relationships. This has enabled Chinese firms to develop non-traditional FSAs.

The authors propose a framework that conceptualises non-traditional FSA development in Chinese firms as a product of superior access to unique and valuable resources in their domestic SFMs.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between big data and supply chain platform in China’s retail industry. With the emergence of big data resources and technologies, the business pattern of new retail advocates the combination of online and offline channels. Supply chain platform plays a key role in the implementation of retail activities, which has gradually become a research hotspot in the cross field of operations management and information system.

Through the method of literature review and case study, this study empirically explores how big data shapes supply chain platform to support new forms of online retail by grounded theory.

The model framework is validated by reliability test and coding method to process survey materials. The results identify the overall antecedents of supply chain platform and reveal positive effects between big data and new retail. The findings help firm managers build a big data-driven supply chain to support new retail.

There are insufficient studies on theoretical frameworks and interaction relationships among big data, supply chain platform and new retail.

Social information is crucial to credit ratings and can improve the accuracy of the traditional credit assessment model. Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) and social capital theory (SCT), this research explores the relationships between corporate social activities, network centrality and corporate credit behavior.

The authors used social network analysis (SNA) and regression analysis to analyze the data collected from 14,544 enterprises on the Alibaba platform.

The results indicate that among the four types of social activities, the number of corporate questions and posts shows a positive relationship with credit behavior; while the number of corporate comments has negative relationship with credit behavior. Further, degree and betweenness centralities mediate the relationship between the number of corporate questions, posts and comments with credit behavior.

This study contributes to the literature on non-financial factors (soft information) by exploring the social behavioral factors related to corporate credit. In addition, this study offers a new theoretical lens and reasonable explanations for investigating the relationship between corporate social activities, network centrality and credit behavior from the perspective of the resource-based view, while most studies are predictive and methodological. Moreover, this study provides new insights for platforms to evaluate enterprise credit and for managers to improve credit behavior.

To contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, this study aims to explore how to encourage innovative green behaviors among college students and the mechanisms behind the formation of green innovation behavior. Specifically, this study examines the influences of schools, mentors and college students themselves.

A multilevel, multisource study involving 261 students from 51 groups generally supported this study’s predictions.

Proenvironmental and responsible mentors significantly predicted innovative green behavior among college students. In addition, creative motivation mediated the logical chain among green intellectual capital, emotional intelligence and green innovation behavior.

The study findings offer new insights into the conditions required for college students to engage in green innovation. In addition, they provide practical implications for cultivating green innovation among college students.

The authors proposed and tested a multilevel theory based on the ability–motivation–opportunity framework. In this model, proenvironmental and responsible mentors, green intellectual capital and emotional intelligence triggered innovative green behavior among college students through creative motivation.

As the operational entity of China Yiwu Commodity Market, Yiwugou is designed to integrate online and offline business to upgrade the physical market by relying on and serving the physical market. It aims to highlight Yiwu Market where every physical shop is related to an online shop, thus protecting honest trade. The strong support from more than 70,000 physical shops owned by Yiwugou ensures the first-hand supply that poses a problem for most e-commerce merchants, and equips Yiwugou with competitive advantage. In terms of marketing, Yiwugou is now aiming at commodity markets across the country through the “Center Plan”, and advertising in public space such as airports. Relying on physical market, Yiwugou Hall distributes commodities with Yiwu's features and superior sources of goods to other places, and connects local market players to Yiwu market, establishing an unobstructed supply channel.

Digital innovation requires organizations to reconfigure their information technology infrastructure (ITI) to cultivate creativity and implement fast experimentation. This research inquiries into ITI generativity, an emerging concept demoting a critical ITI capability for organizational digital innovation. More specifically, it conceptualizes ITI generativity across two dimensions—namely, systems and applications infrastructure (SAI) generativity and data analytics infrastructure (DAI) generativity—and examines their respective social and technical antecedents and their impact on digital innovation.

This research formulates a theoretical model to investigate the social and technical antecedents along with innovation outcomes of ITI generativity. To test this model and its associated hypotheses, a survey was administered to IT professionals possessing knowledge of their organization's IT architecture and digital innovation performance. The dataset, comprising responses from 140 organizations, was analyzed using the partial least squares technique.

Results reveal that both dimensions of ITI generativity contribute to digital innovation performance, with the effect of DAI generativity being more pronounced. In addition, SAI and DAI generativities are driven by social and technical factors within an organization. More specifically, SAI generativity is positively associated with the usage of a digital application services platform and IT human resources, whereas DAI generativity is positively linked to the usage of a data analytics services platform, data analytics services usability and data analytics human resources.

This research contributes to the literature on digital innovation by introducing ITI generativity as a crucial ITI capability and deciphering its role in digital innovation. It also offers useful insights and guidance for practitioners on how to build ITIs to achieve better digital innovation performance.

This paper aims to analyze Hangzhou Urban Brain in responding to COVID-19, including systematically sorting out the development mode, capabilities, composition and application of Urban Brain and exploring its role and effect. This paper tries to provide a reference for other cities' digital infrastructure construction through case analysis.

The authors took Hangzhou Urban Brain as a typical case in urban digital infrastructure construction, and they conducted thorough research on its practice in facing COVID-19. The authors analyzed the key elements of Urban Brain, the application and the evaluation of Urban Brain through literature review, field investigation, questionnaire and interviews.

Hangzhou Urban Brain has been deeply applied in urban management and has a good foundation. Therefore, when the COVID-19 occurred, the Urban Brain played an important role. The detailed practices facing COVID-19 are mainly in five aspects: information collection and analysis, ensuring material supply by government–enterprise collaboration, using AI and Big Data to “Visualize” COVID-19, etc. Moreover, Urban Brain has won high evaluation. However, Hangzhou Urban Brain still has problems like data privacy and security, technical issues, etc.

This case study shows that Hangzhou's experience in Urban Brain construction is worthy of reference and promotion. Firstly, it can strengthen the understanding of digital infrastructure in responding to public health emergencies. Furthermore, it provides a reference for other urban governance worldwide by excavating the role and effect of digital infrastructure in preventing and controlling COVID-19. Thirdly, it explores how to improve the digital infrastructure construction to support public health challenges, which will help the cities grasp the actual value of data and make progress in this field. By this, it can provide references for cities in the world, especially in Asia to achieve sustainable city development.