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A significant number of studies suggest that both international cooperation (IC) and English proficiency (EP) greatly assist internationalization of higher education (IHE). Yet, more evidence is required to confirm their relationship. Hence, this paper intends to investigate whether any association prevails between IC and EP, and if so, how both domains facilitate IHE.

This study employed a qualitative approach to examine how IC and EP potentially influence each other, as well as the way they shape IHE.

The main key finding reported in this study is that IC plays a significant role in internationalization efforts, with English serving as a critical medium.

The findings suggest that although IC can positively influence EP and the overall level of IHE, the newly built undergraduate institutions (NBUIs) in China should be careful not to fall into the dual traps of number-crunching and income-generation instruments. NBUIs in China may consider changing their IC strategies and seek to join some authoritative or high-reputation networks in other developing countries to expand their horizons.

This study contributes to the literature on IHE by exploring the connections between IC and EP and how they affect IHE, thus providing insights into advancing institutional internationalization. It is achieved through expanding institutions' IC or joining international networks while overcoming linguistic barriers.

This study aims to obtain governance strategies for managing the complexity of megaprojects by analyzing the impact of individual factors and their configurations using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method and to provide references for project managers.

With the continuous development of the economy, society and construction industry, the number and scale of megaprojects are increasing, and the complexity is becoming serious. Based on the relevant literature, the factors affecting the complexity of megaprojects are determined through case analysis, and the paths of factors affecting the complexity are constructed for megaprojects. Then, the fsQCA method is used to analyze the factors affecting the complexity of megaprojects through 245 valid questionnaires from project engineers in this study.

The results support the correlation between the complexity factors of megaprojects, with six histological paths leading to high complexity and seven histological paths leading to low complexity.

It breaks the limitations of the traditional project complexity field through a “configuration perspective” and concludes that megaproject complexity is a synergistic effect of multiple factors. The study is important for enriching the theory of megaproject complexity and providing complexity governance strategies for managers in megaproject decision-making.

This study aims to explore the interaction among individual factors (enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self-efficacy), organizational factors (top management support and organizational rewards) and the use of information and communication technology factors as enablers of knowledge-sharing (KS) processes (knowledge donating and knowledge collecting) and firm innovation capability (IC) in a telecommunications company in an emerging market economy, namely, Bahrain.

The study used a mixed-methods case study approach. It used answers from 77 employees’ questionnaires and applied the partial least squares structural equation modeling method to test the research model. Several in-depth semidirective interviews were conducted with managers from different levels, functions and educational qualifications to address additional social, cultural, structural and strategic issues related to KS and IC.

The results indicated that enjoyment of helping others correlates with knowledge collection. Top management support had a substantial connection with knowledge donation, which had a robust positive relationship with firm IC. The interviews showed that moving toward a customer-centric strategy, policies, procedures and KS culture in a big organization with many business silos required tremendous effort and pain. People’s ability, willingness and readiness to share knowledge heavily depend on the corporate culture. Employee resistance to change posed a significant challenge.

Researchers have rarely used a case study or a mixed-methods case study approach to explore KS and IC. This study aims to fill this gap using a mixed-methods approach to examine KS enablers, processes and IC in a developing country’s social and cultural context, Bahrain. The work brings together new ways of looking at things and figuring out what they mean to understand knowledge transfer and IC in a telecommunications company. The company must incur changes and additions to its KS mechanisms to inspire innovation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the drivers of business-to-business (B2B) sales success and the role of digitalization, in a selling and sales management landscape being disrupted by COVID-19.

The methodology follows a discovery-oriented grounded theory approach, which consists of a two-stage qualitative study with sales professionals in Chile, and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

This research shows that interfunctional coordination, agility in the selling process and business customer engagement are critical determinants of B2B sales success, whereas digitalization moderates these relationships.

This research responds to a call for more research on the impact of digitalization on business relationships in different contexts and perspectives. The authors study the Chilean context, through a two-stage qualitative study, and a fsQCA analysis, which constitutes a novel combination in this stream of research.

This paper investigated the relationship between intellectual capital (IC)/its components, and the business performance of Vietnamese small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The panel data set was obtained from the Vietnam SME database. Using the value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) approach for IC measurement, this paper employs various panel data estimation approaches, including fixed effects (FE) and the generalized method of moments (GMM), to examine the relationship between IC and the financial performance of SMEs in Vietnam.

The result suggests that the value creation activities of SMEs in Vietnam mainly occur on the basis of physical and financial capital. In other words, the findings indicate that Vietnamese SMEs mainly depend on physical and financial capital to profit: they have not fully utilized their human capital and structural capital, two main components of IC for value creation.

The results underline the urgency of effective management of tangible and IC to boost the utilization of human and structural capital to increase the profitability of Vietnamese SMEs. The results lead to suggesting a series of policy recommendations to achieve the objective.

This paper is the first to examine the relationship between IC and the financial performance of SMEs in Vietnam, contributing to the literature on IC in emerging countries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the dynamic relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and its components on financial performance of banks within the selected eight countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The study utilizes the balanced panel data of 37 publicly listed banks from eight leading ASEAN economies for the period of 2017–2021. In this sense, the authors applied the Ante Pulic's typology, i.e. value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC™) to evaluate the efficiency of intangible and tangible assets. While, investigating the dynamic nature of relationship, the authors employed the generalized system method of moments because of its power to account for the problem of endogeneity and heteroscedasticity.

The results of the study demonstrate that banks in ASEAN countries shed a varied degree of a spotlight on VAIC™ and its components to create value. The findings revealed that structural capital efficiency is significantly associated with earning per share (EPS), return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE), compared to human capital efficiency (HCE) and capital employed efficiency of ASEAN banks. These results endorse the importance of resource- and knowledge-based views of organizations to leverage the financial performance of banks. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, this study found no positive relationship between HCE with ROA and ROE. Whereas, the relationship of VAIC™ is positive and significant with EPS and ROE but it remains statistically very marginal.

There are some inherent limitations in this study that could be opportunities for future research. The current study uses the VAIC™ typology, but future researchers can use the modified value-added intellectual coefficient (MVAIC) or triangulation approach to enhance the validity and reliability of the study. Additionally, future research can investigate the similarities and differences among countries in terms of their cultural backgrounds and regulatory frameworks regarding the disclosure of intangibles. Furthermore, future research can increase the length and sample size of the study to enhance its generalizability.

The robust empirical findings extend the academic debate on IC by unveiling the dynamic nature of relationship between IC and financial performance in context of ASEAN banking sector. The findings provide plausible recommendations for policy makers (managers, regulators and stakeholders) to understand how to increase the IC efficiently, especially human capital as a source to evaluate the firms’ ability in determining value-added and financial performance. Further, findings of this study also suggest that how can policy makers get the benefit by investing more on structural capital as a valuable strategic source to guarantee the optimal performance returns.

Prior studies on IC have been country- and firm-specific, utilizing cross-sectional research designs. However, this research contributes to the limited literature by investigating the dynamic nature of the relationship between IC and financial performance of banks in the context of ASEAN countries using micro-panel data.

Based on the intellectual capital (IC) theory and the resource-based view (RBV), the paper seeks to elucidate the direct and indirect relationships between IC and competitive advantage in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Therewithal, besides examining the mediating role of innovation capabilities in the IC-competitiveness link, it scrutinizes the moderating effect of entrepreneurial orientation in causing IC to boost competitiveness in SMEs through flourishing innovation capabilities.

Data were collected from 206 participants working in SMEs operating in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the help of a structured questionnaire distributed through LinkedIn. Partial least square (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM) using SmartPLS 4.0 has been performed to calibrate the auxiliary and structural models.

Based on the empirical analysis, IC significantly and directly enhances the competitive advantages of SMEs. Additionally, innovative capability has been found to be a complementary partial mediating condition in enabling IC to foster competitiveness in SMEs. Furthermore, the moderated mediation analysis reveals that innovation capabilities strongly mediate the association between IC and competitiveness in SMEs, characterizing higher entrepreneurial orientation.

The study provides significant insights to academicians and practitioners seeking to comprehend or configure interactions among IC, innovation capabilities, and entrepreneurial orientation in maturing competitiveness among SMEs, especially in emerging economies. Furthermore, the study provides a valuable integrative perspective on SMEs’ competitiveness by involving three voguish constituents of contemporary scholarly discourse grounded into the leading underpinning theoretical perspectives, such as IC theory, RBV, and entrepreneurship theory.

The uniqueness of this model lies in its rich theory-laden conceptualization and explanation that could extend theoretical debate and managerial action to the next levels.

This paper aims to explain the causal complexity between ecosystems of doing business and living standards based on the theoretical model of the ecosystem of doing business proposed by Li (2019) and Du et al. (2020). By integrating ecological theory, transaction cost theory and institutional logics theory, this study explored effective ecosystems of doing business that achieve high living standards and explained the interpretive mechanisms behind different ecosystems of doing business. Moreover, this study also analyzed whether there were any necessary elements that lead to high living standards and discussed how the interactions between these elements influence carrying capacity and transaction costs from government logic and market logic, thus affecting living standards.

In this study, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and necessary condition analysis (NCA) were combined to analyze the data from the 2020 China City Statistical Yearbook, covering the main socioeconomic statistical data of cities at all levels in 2019.

This study found that no individual factor of the ecosystems of doing business was necessary to achieve high living standards, but the high level of human capital, innovation capacity, financial access and market demand play a significant role in achieving high living standards. Furthermore, two effective types of ecosystems of doing business lead to high living standards, namely, market dominance (government’s “invisible hand” or “nudging hand”) and government–market logic mutualism/symbiosis (government’s “helping hand”).

First, this work found that individual elements were not a necessary condition for high living standards, not only in kind but also in degree, complementing fsQCA with NCA, which indicates that environmental elements can be substituted by others. Second, this study considered the complex effects and explained the mechanisms behind different ecosystems of doing business, drawing on ecological theory, transaction cost theory and institutional logics theory from a configurational perspective. This study deepened the theories’ applications in the field of living standards and further discussed the elements interactions. Third, this study introduced configurational perspective and QCA into living standards research and adopted a mixed method that combines fsQCA and NCA to analyze the causal complexity between ecosystems of doing business and people’s living standards.

This study, based on motivated information processing theory and theories of leadership (contingency and functional), investigates how servant leadership (SL) could be an effective leadership style for employee creative deviance engagement (CDE) to foster radical (RC) and incremental creativity (IC) in two different goal-oriented organizations: learning (LGO) and performance (PGO) goal-oriented organizations.

This study employed descriptive and comparative approaches and surveyed two sources (leaders and team members). Using multi-source data involving 486 LGO-based and 498 PGO-based employee–supervisor dyads from 104 LGO-based and 104 PGO-based high-tech firms in China, the authors distinguish comparative support for assumed hypotheses by using the Monte Carlo simulation technique for the indirect effects and Mplus for multilevel path analysis.

The study outcomes found that SL transmits the effects of employee CDE directly and nurtures RC and IC indirectly. It identified that an organization's LGO strengthens the direct and indirect relationships between SL and creativity via employee's CDE when the organization's LGO is high. However, an organization's PGO strengthens the direct relationship when it's low and strengthens the indirect link between SL and IC when it's high. In addition, the organization's PGO demonstrated an insignificant effect on the indirect relationship between SL and RC.

This study is the first to verify SL as the specific leadership style for responding employee's CDE and identify its distinctive effects on RC and IC. Additionally, there has been no effort to associate SL with employee's CDE for nurturing distinctive types of creativity under the different organizational dispositions (LGO and PGO).

Financial reports are the basis of economic decisions that affect organizational interests and shareholders. However, there is a severe research gap concerning the factors affecting the quality of financial information (such as audit report readability and tone). Therefore, considering the importance of presenting high-quality financial information, this study aims to investigate the impact of intellectual capital (IC) and its components on the audit report's readability and tone.

The multivariate regression model tests research hypotheses. Then, hypotheses are tested via a sample of 824 observations of the listed companies on the Tehran Stock Exchange (103 companies) from 2014 to 2021, using the multivariate regression model based on pooled data and fixed effects.

Results determine that customer capital (CC) and structural capital (SC) are likely to influence the audit report tone positively. In general, the IC and human capital (HC) negatively impact auditors' tone. More analyses also document that IC and its CC, HC and SC components positively and significantly affect audit report readability based on two readability indices, including FOG and text length. Finally, findings pertaining to the third readability index (Flesch index) reveal that only HC and SC are robust based on this measurement, whereas the IC and CC have a negative and significant impact on the readability of auditors’ reports.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to address this issue in emerging markets, and it provides helpful insights for users, analysts and legal institutions regarding IC, which significantly affects audit report readability and tone.