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The purpose of this paper is to characterize a commutative ring R with identity which is not an integral domain such that ZT(R), the total zero-divisor graph of R is connected and to determine the diameter and radius of ZT(R) whenever ZT(R) is connected. Also, the purpose is to generalize some of the known results proved by Duric et al. on the total zero-divisor graph of R.

We use the methods from commutative ring theory on primary decomposition and strong primary decomposition of ideals in commutative rings. The structure of ideals, the primary ideals, the prime ideals, the set of zero-divisors of the finite direct product of commutative rings is used in this paper. The notion of maximal Nagata prime of the zero-ideal of a commutative ring is also used in our discussion.

For a commutative ring R with identity, ZT(R) is the intersection of the zero-divisor graph of R and the total graph of R induced by the set of all non-zero zero-divisors of R. The zero-divisor graph of R and the total graph of R induced by the set of all non-zero zero-divisors of R are well studied. Hence, we determine necessary and sufficient condition so that ZT(R) agrees with the zero-divisor graph of R (respectively, agrees with the total graph induced by the set of non-zero zero-divisors of R). If Z(R) is an ideal of R, then it is noted that ZT(R) agrees with the zero-divisor graph of R. Hence, we focus on rings R such that Z(R) is not an ideal of R. We are able to characterize R such that ZT(R) is connected under the assumptions that the zero ideal of R admits a strong primary decomposition and Z(R) is not an ideal of R. With the above assumptions, we are able to determine the domination number of ZT(R).

Duric et al. characterized Artinian rings R such that ZT(R) is connected. In this paper, we extend their result to rings R such that the zero ideal of R admits a strong primary decomposition and Z(R) is not an ideal of R. As an Artinian ring is isomorphic to the direct product of a finite number of Artinian local rings, we try to characterize R such that ZT(R) is connected under the assumption that R is ta finite direct product of rings R1, R2, … Rn with Z(Ri) is an ideal of Ri for each i between 1 to n. Their result on domination number of ZT(R) is also generalized in this paper. We provide several examples to illustrate our results proved.

The implication of this paper is that the existing result of Duric et al. is applicable to large class of commutative rings thereby yielding more examples. Moreover, the results proved in this paper make us to understand the structure of commutative rings better. It also helps us to learn the interplay between the ring-theoretic properties and the graph-theoretic properties of the graph associated with it.

The results proved in this paper are original and they provide more insight into the structure of total zero-divisor graph of a commutative ring. This paper provides several examples. Not much work done in the area of total zero-divisor graph of a commutative ring. This paper is a contribution to the area of graphs and rings and may inspire other researchers to study the total zero-divisor graph in further detail.

Online games are popular applications of Internet technology, with over 2.8 billion users worldwide. Many players engage in team gameplay, indicating that online games are suitable media through which players connect with their friends. However, past studies have not examined the ability of games to assist players in connecting with their friends, indicating a gap. To fill this gap, the authors propose a new concept, the friend-connecting affordance, which is the ability of an online game to enable players to contact friends within the game.

The authors built a model to explain how games' friend-connecting affordances influence game loyalty. The authors gathered responses from 1,347 online players and used structural equation modeling to test the model.

The authors found that friend-connecting affordances and team participation influence game loyalty. Gaming intensity and gaming history can moderate the impact of friend-connecting affordances.

This new affordance can be realized through various game elements, offering unique and actionable insights to game makers. The authors also compared the friend-connecting affordances among a number of popular online games, providing insights specific to each game and increasing the practical value of the findings.

This paper examines the influence of different types of political connections and political uncertainty on earnings credibility in Pakistan. Based on discernible differences, connected firms are grouped into civil connected and military connected firms.

The authors provide evidence concerning the earnings credibility incentives of groups of political connected firms and report that their incentives are significantly different. The findings remain robust to alternate methods of earnings credibility.

The findings evidence that civil (military) connected firms report less (more) credible earnings than the control group. High political uncertainty reduces the credibility of earnings. Results for the interaction of political connections and political uncertainty variables are not significant.

The paper investigates just one aspect of Pakistan's political economy, i.e. credibility of earnings; thus, it requires to be cautious on part of readers and policymakers. To reach a clearer conclusion, earnings credibility should be ex amined in the larger context, i.e. in conjunction with rent extractions, etc. A possible extension of the paper can be to investigate the channels of rent extractions used by the two types of connected firms.

The paper has contribution for policymakers as well as users of general purpose financial reports. The findings indicate that the users of general purpose financial reports should be more careful in the use of financial information during political uncertain periods and also of politically connected firms. Furthermore, policymakers should keep the larger context at the forefront while attempting to strengthen the enforcemnet regime.

This paper adds to extant political connections literature by identifying two types of politically connected firms and report that both groups have divergent financial reporting incentives. Furthermore, political uncertainty reduces the credibility of earnings.

This paper aims to reveal the green governance role played by stock connect in transition economies from the perspective of corporates’ environmental violations and provides implications for the coordination and optimization of subsequent stock market liberalization and green transformation policies in pursuit of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.

With the data of Chinese listed enterprises, this paper takes the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect or Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect in China as a quasi-natural experiment and applies the multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) model to identify the impact of stock market liberalization on the corporates’ environmental violations.

The findings reveal that the stock market liberalization significantly restrains the corporates’ environmental violations. These findings are robust to a series of sensitivity tests, including excluding two-way effects, adjusting the year of policy implementation, replacing the core variables, introducing the regional fixed effects and excluding the interference effect of other relevant policies during the sample period. Furthermore, the stock market liberalization is beneficial for upgrading information disclosure quality, improving internal governance capability, strengthening environmental protection incentives, and thus restrains corporates’ environmental violations. Meanwhile, heterogeneity tests show that the inhibitory effects are more significant in those grouped samples which is large scale, state-owned nature, located in eastern region, with poor evaluation performances and heavy tax burden.

We make two marginal contributions to the current literature. First, this paper enriches the literature on the factors influencing corporate environmental violations by focusing on how the macro-level financial policy influences the micro-level corporate environmental violations. One the one hand, prior studies mainly focused on the consequences of corporate environmental violations; however, there is still a puzzle that the effect of stock market liberalization cannot be fully justified to influence corporate environmental violations. The findings help explain this puzzle by examining that stock market liberalization can restrain corporate environmental violations. Moreover, prior studies mainly focused on corporate share price (Yunsen Chen et al., 2022), market liquidity (Han Kim and Singal, 2000), information disclosure (Liang, Lin, and Chin 2012), corporate governance (Bae and Goyal, 2010) and corporate violations (Lingyun Xiong et al., 2021), but not on corporate environmental violations. We assume that the suppression effect of stock market liberalization on corporate environmental violations can help reduce corporate environmental violations, improve corporates’ awareness of environmental compliance. Second, this paper contributes to a better understanding of the literature on stock market liberalization by investigating the restraining effect of Stock Connect on corporate environmental violations from the perspective of information channel, corporate governance channel and motivation channel, which is of practical significance. Moreover, we investigate the differences in the inhibitory effects of stock market liberalization on different enterprises' environmental violations, from firm size, property rights, enterprise assessment results, tax burden to geographical location, which is conducive to the construction of a green financial system and the promotion of sustainable economic development. Our results show that firms which are large scale, state-owned nature, located in eastern region, with poor evaluation performances and heavy tax burden tend to compliance with environmental laws. These findings emphasize the importance and benefits of Stock Connect.

Connected machines are the automation of several types of machines connected towards beneficial growth of sustainable construction especially in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This chapter gave an insight into the emergence of digitalisation in the construction sector and the importance of connected machines in sustainable construction. It further elucidated its mode of operations, devices applicable, drivers and challenges for its full application in construction and benefits on construction projects. It finally gave a conclusion on its urgent need for full incorporation due to its technological benefits for present and future construction works.

Studies have shown that within-domain compensatory consumption can successfully repair the damaged self, but other research indicates that it can undermine self-control because such consumption causes self-threat rumination that impairs self-regulatory resources. This paper aims to identify a boundary condition that reconciles and explains these contradictory findings.

The authors conducted three experiments to show that within-domain compensatory consumption undermines self-control, but only in some situations. They test a boundary condition (i.e. type of connections between within-domain products and self-threat domain) for the effects of such consumption on self-threat rumination and self-control.

This paper demonstrates that within-domain (but not across-domain) compensatory consumption induces rumination and reduces subsequent self-control, but only when the product’s connection to the self-threat domain is made explicit through brand names or slogans. When the connection is merely implicit, rumination and self-control deficits are not observed.

Consumers may seek certain products to bolster threatened aspects of their self-concept. Marketing tactics that explicitly highlight connections to such self-aspects can lower a consumer’s self-control resulting in stronger purchase intent, while at the same time hindering the possibility of self-concept repair. Managers need to be wary of ethical concerns.

This research qualifies the existing findings by presenting “type of product connection” as a key determinant of within-domain compensatory consumption’s impact on self-control. Researchers need to be conscious of the type of products (explicitly vs implicitly connected to the self-threat domain) they use in compensatory consumption studies, because this may influence their findings.

This paper investigates the influence of political connections on sustainability disclosure in the context of China's Regulation 18.

The study employs a quasi-experimental approach, utilizing difference-in-difference (DiD) analysis, dynamic DiD and propensity score matching to analyze the effects of politically connected independent directors on sustainability disclosure following the implementation of Regulation 18.

Companies with politically connected independent directors show an improvement in sustainability disclosures after Regulation 18. This effect is stronger for firms facing high political pressure or lacking alternative political power. Additionally, the increase in value from sustainability disclosures compensates for the loss of politically connected independent directors, indicating a positive value impact of sustainability disclosures.

This study provides novel insights into the corporate disclosure policy in China by investigating the impact of politically connected directors on sustainability disclosure. Additionally, it sheds light on the limitations of political power and its substitution effects within companies.

This paper examines the relationship between heterogeneous political connections and corporate overinvestment.

Based on a comprehensive Malaysian dataset of 834 publicly listed companies from 2000 to 2022, the authors employed multivariate ordinary least squares regression to test the relationship.

Despite different types of political connections, the findings demonstrate a positive relationship between political connections and corporate overinvestment. In particular, the association is more profound in government-linked companies (GLCs) but weaker in firms that developed political ties through family members of ruling elites. Further analysis reveals that the “helping hand” effect is only observed in GLCs and firms with politically connected directors and businessmen, whereas the “grabbing hand” effect is observed among firms connected through board, businessmen, and family ties. Moreover, the relationship is more persistent among firms with politically connected directors and businessmen around the regime change.

Regardless of the types of political connections, the findings show that politically connected firms tend to engage in rent-seeking through political patronage networks and high levels of government interference in resource allocation. Therefore, a more sophisticated monitoring system should be developed within the political patronage networks to reduce the likelihood of different types of political-business collusion. In terms of research limitations, the research design does not consider the influence of financial constraints and management efficiency. Future research could explore these facets to comprehensively understand the dynamics between political connections and corporate investment decisions.

The evidence informs market participants about the relationship between heterogeneous political connections and corporate overinvestment, reinforcing previous findings that crony capitalism, political patronage, agency problems, and weak governance are well-entrenched in Malaysia’s emerging economy. The government should acknowledge these concerns by enacting anti-corruption campaigns and promoting a fair business environment. In the meantime, policymakers might redesign regulations and revise corporate governance frameworks to substantially reduce the value of political connections, thereby diminishing the bargaining power of politicians.

As corporate investment efficiency has a considerable impact on firm value, investment decisions that enhance firm value will increase share price and maximise shareholder value. Conversely, firms may damage shareholder value if they overinvest or undertake projects that do not yield sufficient. Hence, the findings of this study may assist investors in making more informed judgements, particularly by understanding different types of business-government relations, as political connections are one of the determinants of corporate overinvestment.

This study reveals that the degree to which overinvestment issues manifest within firms is influenced by the nature of the political connections those firms possess. This indicates that politically connected firms should not be regarded as a homogenous group of firms.

In today’s interconnected world, social capital has emerged as a crucial business competence, drawing significant attention in recent literature. Using social network analysis, this study aims to investigate the impact of network centrality, established by a firm through its board members (i.e. boardroom networks), on corporate cash holdings.

This study uses extensive panel data comprising 36,963 firm-year observations of firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, spanning a 22-year period (2001–2022). The study uses firm fixed-effect regression along with several alternative specifications and an instrumental variable approach to ensure the robustness of the results. Boardroom network centrality is quantified by five measures that capture different perspectives on networks as viable conduits for resource exchange and information flow: degree, two-step reach, closeness, eigenvector and betweenness.

The authors find evidence for the benefits of board networks. Firms with well-connected boards (central firms) are more likely to have smaller cash holdings. The findings also reveal distinct effects stemming from local and global properties of centrality, with local network measures playing a more pronounced role in shaping cash-holding decisions. Overall, the evidence reflects the ability of connected directors to enhance governance by limiting managerial discretion over cash reserves, thus reducing agency conflicts associated with cash holdings.

This study offers important insights for regulators, investors and practitioners, highlighting the potential for connected directors to effectively curtail managerial autonomy in deploying corporate cash holdings.

This study contributes to the ongoing discussion about the advantages and drawbacks of board networks, which constitute a vibrant and burgeoning area of research in the finance literature. It also complements scanty network-based studies on firm cash holdings. Importantly, this study extends prior work by providing robust evidence and a comprehensive analysis of the nuanced roles that board networks play in affecting the level of cash reserves.

The main objective of the study is to address the lack of sustainability assessments of smart connected health systems in the academic literature by presenting an assessment model to determine the alignment of these systems with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed in the 2030 Agenda.

An evaluation model based on decision analysis is proposed that includes three phases: alignment framework, information gathering and assessment. This model measures the alignment of the connected health system with each of the 17 SDGs, identifying the goals and criteria associated with each SDG that the system achieves to satisfy.

The analysis reveals that the system has achieved more than 24% of the targets among the 17 SDGs. In addition, it identifies four sustainability challenges that the system potentially addresses in relation to the SDGs, providing valuable guidance for researchers and practitioners interested in sustainable health technology development.

The study's results have significant implications for policymakers and stakeholders in the health and technology sectors.

The originality of this study lies in its comprehensive approach to assessing the sustainability of connected health systems in the context of the SDGs, filling an important gap in the existing literature.