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Based on the density dependence theory, this paper attempts to explore how two types of interdependence among firms located in the same national high-tech zones (NHTZs) – mutualism and competition – affect entrepreneurship in the NHTZs. The authors suggest that increasing firm density can help enhance legitimacy and form mutual networks. However, as the competition becomes fierce, the above positive relationship will weaken when the firm density exceeds a certain level. In addition, the authors are interested in whether the age of NHTZs would affect their sensitivity to legitimacy and competition and whether firm density affects entrepreneurship.

This article formulates two hypotheses from the theoretical deduction. The hypotheses are examined using the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with a unique, unbalanced panel dataset of Chinese NHTZs spanning from 2014 to 2021. Considering potential endogeneity risk among the variables, the authors attempt to lag variables and ultimately find the results are still robust.

Drawing upon the density dependence theory, the empirical results show firm density is conducive to promoting entrepreneurship, while the positive relationship between community density and NHTZs' entrepreneurship gradually weakens as the firm density surpasses a certain level. The dynamics between mutualism and competition have different impacts on NHTZs' entrepreneurship. In addition, the results demonstrate that the linkage between firm interdependence and entrepreneurship is stronger for younger NHTZs. Firm density has an impact on entrepreneurship through legitimacy and excessive competition effects.

On the one hand, the research period of this paper is 2014–2021, as the China Torch Statistical Yearbook only started to publish operating revenues in 2014, so the data period of this paper is relatively short. More research can be done in the future when more data is disclosed. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis cannot be conducted because of the limited data and materials. In future research, the qualitative analysis of entrepreneurial activities in NHTZs, such as questionnaires or case studies, needs to be supplemented, which will be an interesting direction.

Most existing research has not distinguished the differences between NHTZs (Wang et al., 2019), especially the differences in legitimacy and access to resources caused by the age of NHTZs. This article considers the heterogeneity between NHTZs, which helps to provide theoretical and practical evidence for a transition economy like China to make trade-off decisions on balancing absorbing new entrants with promoting the efficient allocation of resources based on the density and age of NHTZs.

Drawing upon density dependency theory, this paper enriches the literature on agglomeration and entrepreneurship with a new perspective and extends the study to NHTZs.

First, this paper provides new evidence on how agglomeration affects entrepreneurship from an ecological perspective with the help of mutualism and competition interdependence. Most studies have explored the role of agglomeration in entrepreneurship, focussing on social networks, knowledge spillovers or resource endowments (Acs et al., 2013; Capozza et al., 2018; Yu, 2020). Drawing upon density dependency theory, this paper enriches the literature on agglomeration and entrepreneurship with a new perspective and extends the study to NHTZs. Second, the emphasis of science parks has been primarily on qualitative or case studies (Salvador et al., 2013; Guo and Verdini, 2015; Xie et al., 2018). We have diversified the quantitative research between agglomeration and entrepreneurship by using panel data from Chinese NHTZs from 2014 to 2021. Third, most existing research has not distinguished the differences between NHTZs (Wang et al., 2019), especially the differences in legitimacy and access to resources caused by the age of NHTZs. This article considers the heterogeneity between NHTZs, which helps to provide theoretical and practical evidence for a transition economy like China to make trade-off decisions on balancing absorbing new entrants with promoting the efficient allocation of resources based on the density and age of NHTZs. Finally, this paper meticulously investigates the profound influence and underlying mechanisms of firm density within NHTZs on entrepreneurship. It discerns two distinct mechanisms at play: the legitimacy effect and the impact of excessive competition resulting from firm density. This comprehensive analysis significantly contributes to our comprehension of the intricate interplay between firm density and entrepreneurship, shedding light on the dynamics of competition and mutual benefits.

For decades, consumer identification and motivation, either alone or jointly, have been essential constructs for behavioral researchers. The resultant output is significant in terms of both quality and quantity. However, at a deeper level, a lack of conceptual clarity in the relationship between these constructs has led to theoretical and practical irregularities, which this study aims to address.

An online questionnaire was distributed to sport consumers aged over 18 participating in an online panel, prompted 293 completed responses. Structural equations modeling was used to examine the data.

Findings show that identification mediates the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on sport supporters’ loyalty and explain 90% of the variance in that construct. In addition, identification mediates the adverse effects of extrinsic motivation on loyalty and strengthens loyalty when levels of satisfaction decline.

This study extends previous work by providing a theoretical perspective that clarifies the relationship between motivation and consumer identification; deepens theory by empirically observing the relationship at different levels of consumer satisfaction; and presents a parsimonious, valid and reliable method that managers can leverage to strengthen sport supporters’ loyalty.

Brand storytelling is an effective marketing tool. However, when choosing whether to tell more or tell less, it remains unclear which of these two narrative styles is most effective. This study aims to examine whether blank-leaving(less) leads to favourable brand attitudes and compares its effects on consumers’ story immersion, to non-blank-leaving(more).

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, a single-factorial design was used with 252 participants assigned at random to one of two narrative conditions: blank-leaving or non-blank-leaving. Study 2 replicated Study 1 and investigated the moderating role of implicit mindsets.

The results show that a blank-leaving narrative style increases favourable brand attitudes. Consumers present deeper immersion in the brand story that uses blank-leaving, as compared to non-blank-leaving, leading to a more favourable brand attitude. Furthermore, this effect is stronger for individuals with growth mindsets.

Telling the brand story using a blank-leaving narrative style is more effective in catching consumers’ attention than non-blank-leaving. In particular, a blank-leaving narrative is a good approach for targeting consumers who have a growth mindset.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to investigate and compare the effects of blank-leaving and non-blank-leaving narrative styles on brand attitudes in the context of storytelling marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of humble leadership on project success. In addition, we examine the mediating effect of organisational learning on the relationship between humble leadership and the success of international development projects.

This study adopted a quantitative research methodology based on questionnaire data collected from 80 international development project managers from different sectors in Senegal (West Africa). The variance-based structural equation method, following the partial least squares approach, was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results showed that humble leadership is positively related to project success. Furthermore, organizational learning mediates the relationship between humble leadership and project success.

This research has several limitations. The authors did not examine the role of organizational culture as a moderating variable. However, the authors believe that the cultural variable can have an impact on project success and team building, and future studies should consider this aspect as well. In the African context, each country has its own culture, which may affect the behaviour of the project manager. Also, the authors admit that the sample size is relatively small, which greatly reduces the generalizability of the results.

These findings have important implications. First, because a project leader’s humility enhances project success, it is critical for development projects to select leaders who demonstrate modest conduct in the workplace. The perfect selection of a humble leader depends heavily on judgements about the characteristics of a humble leader from new project manager candidates.

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study found that humble leadership is important for project success, thus extending the utility of the concept of humble leadership to the project literature.

Managing the growing word-of-mouth (WOM) of brand fans has become a new challenge for companies in the fan economy era. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of language intensity of brand fan WOM on customers' willingness to adopt WOM based on psychological resistance theory and to reveal the underlying mechanism of this process.

A research model was developed to test the proposed hypotheses. Two experiments were conducted on an online platform using data from 708 participants. The independent samples t-test and analysis of variance were used to analyze the data.

The results show that, in the context of WOM among brand fans, high-intensity language leads to a lower willingness to adopt than low-intensity language and threats to freedom mediate this effect. Moreover, the restoration postscript moderates the effect of language intensity on threats to freedom and customers' willingness to adopt WOM.

Unlike previous studies that focused on electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) language content, this paper focuses on language intensity to reveal the psychological process of customers' willingness to adopt brand fan WOM. The findings not only enrich the research related to the language effect in eWOM, but also deepen the understanding of the influence effect on brand fan WOM, providing effective guidance for brands to manage fan WOM.

The damping accumulated discrete MGM(1, m) power model is proposed for the problem of forecasting the share of agricultural output value and the share of employment in China.

In this study, the damping accumulated discrete MGM(1, m) power model was developed based on the idea of discrete modelling by introducing a damping accumulated generating operator and power index. The new model can better identify the non-linear characteristics existing between different factors in the multivariate system and can accurately describe and forecast the trend of changes between data series and each of them.

The validity and rationality of the new model are verified through numerical experiment. It is forecasted that in 2023, the share of agricultural output value in China will be 7.14% and the share of agricultural employment will be 21.98%, with an overall decreasing trend.

The simultaneous decline in the share of agricultural output value and the share of employment is a common feature of countries that have achieved agricultural modernisation. Accurate forecasts of the share of agricultural output value and the share of employment can provide an important scientific basis for formulating appropriate agricultural development targets and policies in China.

The new model proposed in this study fully considers the importance of new information and has higher stability. The differential evolutionary algorithm was used to optimise the model parameters.

Executive isolation, also known as workplace loneliness, its factors and impact are major issues for organizational development, future of work for leadership and learning culture. The purpose of this study is to examine the Executive isolation phenomenon where relationships between power distance, organizational culture and executive isolation of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are analysed on how it is considered by their teams. The same is contextualized through the inputs received through interviews conducted with CEOs and employee surveys.

The qualitative in-depth interviews of five CEOs, and survey across 34 of the 50 employees, were undertaken over the course of two phases of this study. The investigation focused on identifying executive isolation of CEOs and perspectives of employees that can impact the leadership and learning progress of organizations based on work culture, power distance and decision-making; awareness and experience of executive isolation; workplace friendliness and rejection; and management development initiatives to minimize the impact of executive isolation. Qualitative data analysis was conducted using MAXQDA 2022 (Verbi Software, Berlin, Germany), which is a qualitative data analysis software.

The findings highlight and expose the significant gap between understanding and analysing of the factors due to which the CEOs undergo executive isolation. It also extends to providing details related to the lack of awareness of the teams’ actions contributing to the CEOs’ isolation. It further highlights the fact that the difference of perspectives between the CEOs and teams leads to the organization slowing in its learning activities due to the leaders’ own challenges of executive isolation The findings also provide immense need of developing knowledge assets and management development initiatives for learning interventions, to help understand, analyse and mitigate executive isolation, in the interest of the organizational learning and development.

Earlier research work have contextualized the executive isolation impact on CEOs ability to be a leader. This study extends it to include the implications of leadership and learning culture on the teams that are affected by organization culture, power distance, decision-making and analysing the gap between the understandings about executive isolation of the CEOs. Eventually, it interprets how CEOs courting the executive isolation impacts the overall developmental culture of the organization. This will help in asserting the serious need of new learning frameworks needed to minimize the impact of CEO-level executive isolation.

This paper aims to refine the mechanisms affecting the two-way technology spillover and carbon transfer interactions between supply chain enterprises, and to guide their reduction of carbon emissions.

This study formulates a supplier-led Stackelberg game model to explore the effects of the interactions between two-way technology spillover effects and carbon transfers in decentralized and centralized decision-making scenarios. The optimized Shapley value is introduced to coordinate across the supply chain and determine the overall profits lost in the decentralized scenario.

Emission reductions by the low-carbon manufacturer are negatively correlated with the carbon transfers. Vertical technology spillovers promote carbon reduction, whereas horizontal technology spillovers inhibit it. The vertical technology spillovers amplify the negative effects of the carbon transfers, whereas the horizontal technology spillovers alleviate these negative effects. When the vertical technology spillover effect is strong or the horizontal technology spillover effect is weak in the centralized scenario, the carbon reduction is negatively correlated with the carbon transfers. Conversely, when the vertical technology spillover effect is weak or the horizontal technology spillover effect is strong, the enterprise’s carbon reduction is positively correlated with the carbon transfers. An optimized Shapley value can coordinate the supply chain.

This study examines the effects of carbon transfers on enterprises from a micro-perspective and distinguishes between vertical and horizontal technology spillovers to explore how carbon transfers and different types of technology spillovers affect enterprises’ decisions to reduce carbon emissions.

Evolved from Toyota’s shop floor in Japan, lean bundles are universally accepted for boosting manufacturing performance. However, extant literature shows mixed findings on the effectiveness of lean bundles in non-Japanese settings. This meta-analysis is aimed at understanding the influence of national culture (NC) differences on the lean bundles-performance relationships.

A total of 224 effects from 12,569 observations across 48 empirical studies from 14 countries are meta-analyzed. Also, weighted least squares (WLS) meta-regression using NC scores from the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study are conducted to test the moderating effect of NC dimensions.

The meta-analysis reveals a positive association between the lean bundles and firm performance; though, the strength of the association varies across the individual lean bundles. The meta-regression results show that lean practices are more effective in countries that value high future orientation, high collectivism, low-performance orientation and high assertiveness.

The results contribute to the literature on the role of local cultural influence on strategies and decisions related to the implementation of continuous improvement (CI) programs in cross-cultural settings.

In developing countries like Tanzania, gems and jewellery industry mainly consists of disintegrated and unstable micro and small workshops which operate in a way that misalign value addition processes. This study is aimed to bridge gap by focussing on exploitation of industrial clusters in social normalisation and economic resilience to developing countries. The world economic shocks has been not only individually experienced but also globally shared while disrupted lives across all countries and communities and negatively affected global socio-economic growth.

Furthermore, the explorative design was adopted in this study in order to explore needs of respondents, and with the aim to direct the study towards a descriptive design. The sample frame consists of participants in gems and jewellery activities in Tanzania whereby sample was drawn from Dar es Salaam and Arusha. Semi-structured interview was used to collect quantitative data to establish evidence of Tanzanians’ SSJs linked to global value chains (GVCs).

Results revealed the benefits of exploitation of artisanal industrial clusters to Tanzanians’ SSJs when linked to global value chains (GVCs). Findings of the study demonstrate the importance of artisanal industrial clusters in facilitating Tanzanians’ SSJs to access GVCs. Further, insufficient education, trust and social protection directly affects inclusive GVCs, inferring that the impact of artisanal industrial clusters on inclusive GVCs in social normalisation and economic resilience.

Study findings reveals shortcomings in existing regulatory framework of linking Tanzanians’ SSJs to artisanal industrial clusters, for improvements to better support the inclusiveness in GVCs. Findings of this research invite interventions on institutional capabilities and entrepreneurial competencies to enhance the capabilities of small-scale jewellers (SSJs). Like other studies, this study involved cross-sectional data, limit targeted study population as representative of SSJs in industrial clusters and GVCs in economic crises at limited time.

The study findings makes important practical contributions to the Tanzania’s SSJs by examining mediating role of artisanal industrial clusters hence informing policymakers of mining sector how to improve accessibility on GVCs by focus on offering great institutional capabilities and entrepreneurial competencies. These findings will help SSJs and policy makers to get better understanding of the relationships in exploitation of artisanal industrial clusters when accessing GVCs. Therefore, they can make better decisions on implementing artisanal industrial clusters as well as management accessing GVCs, so that SSJs will attain the best possible performance.

This emphasises the importance of community empowerment in the GVCs process through artisanal industrial clusters. Study findings indicate the influence of industrial relations to social dynamics which are previously inadequately addressed and scantly researched. In actual fact study propose initiatives that ensure local communities benefit socially from the integration of SSJs into GVCs through artisanal industrial clusters. Findings suggest local communities that take into account inter-sectionality of artisanal industrial clusters and inclusive GVCs, by considering how factors like education, trust and social protection status intersect to influence the social inclusiveness of SSJs.

There is limited evidence of linking Tanzanians’ SSJs to GVCs in social normalisation and economic resilience and few researchers have explored this topic. This article leverages exploitation of industrial clusters in normalisation and economic resilience to developing countries such as Tanzania as way of improving shared prosperity, sustainability, inclusive growth, cohesion, value chain upgrading and financial inclusion to SSJs.