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Although previous research has investigated how performance feedback may affect firms’ strategic actions, their findings has been inconsistent. The relationship between performance feedback and firms’ strategic activities thus appears complex. Moreover, the authors contend that it may vary with the measurement strategies employed (i.e. social or historical feedback, operationalizations of strategic actions or accounting- and market-based performance indicators) and the national contexts.

Therefore, the current article presents a comprehensive meta-analysis of prior research, including 1,637,817 sample observations from 101 studies that span more than 18 countries.

The results indicate that (1) performance that are below or above aspirational levels generally has a positive relationship with firms’ strategic actions; (2) these relationships are contingent on the implementation forms taken by the key variables, such as performance feedback, strategic actions and performance indicators; and (3) the relationships are much stronger in countries where managerial discretion is greater.

The findings contribute to the clarification of long-standing theoretical and empirical debates regarding the relationship between performance feedback and strategic actions, as well as some pertinent directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how nonprofit service providers can better engage their customers through online communication. It identifies two communication styles and three communication functions, and examines their impact on customer commenting, customer liking and customer sharing.

Similar to Python for Facebook, a software package for the automatic retrieval of web page content was developed specifically for this study to extract data from the microblog Sina Weibo. Following the successful retrieval of 1,500 randomly selected messages from 34 universities in China, a two-level regression was performed using Mplus 7 to examine the association between the proposed relationships.

The findings reveal that messages with a friendly communication style increase both the number of comments and their positive tone; an authoritative style has no effect on customer engagement. The functions associated with message content (spreading information, building community or promoting action) influence customer liking and sharing. Building community tends to engage more customers than spreading information; promoting action often generates the least customer engagement in social media settings.

The study fills an important research gap in the service marketing literature as it pertains to nonprofit service organizations (i.e. universities) by identifying two types of online identities based on the communication style and the messages posted on social media. This study is the first to investigate the relationship between identity type and audience engagement, and to analyze the moderating factors of this relationship.

Drawing on the branded service encounters perspective, the purpose of this study is to investigate how frontline service employees’ environmentally irresponsible behaviors affect customers’ brand evaluations.

The research conducted two experiments. The first experiment explored the effect of frontline service employees’ environmentally irresponsible behaviors on customers’ brand evaluations via corporate hypocrisy. The second experiment explored the moderation effect of employees’ prototypicality and the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) among customers.

Experiment 1 indicates that for firms with a green brand image, frontline employees’ environmentally irresponsible behaviors result in customers’ perception that the firm is hypocritical, thus reducing their brand evaluations. Experiment 2 shows that employee prototypicality and CSR importance to the customer enhance the negative impact of frontline employees’ environmentally irresponsible behaviors on customers’ brand evaluations through customers’ perception of corporate hypocrisy.

This study is one of the first efforts to explore how frontline service employees’ environmentally irresponsible behaviors affect customers’ responses. It helps understand the impact of frontline employees’ counter-productive sustainable behaviors on customers’ brand perception, as well as the relationship between CSR and employees.

This study suggests that firms’ green brand image does not always lead to positive customer response. When frontline employees’ behaviors are inconsistent with firms’ green brand image, it can trigger customers’ perceptions of corporate hypocrisy and thus influence their brand evaluations. Therefore, firms should train frontline service employees to make their behaviors align with the firms’ green brand image.

This study is one of the first efforts to explore how frontline service employees’ environmentally irresponsible behaviors affect customers’ responses. It helps understand the impact of frontline employees’ counter-productive sustainable behaviors on customers’ brand perception, as well as the relationship between CSR and employee.

This paper aims to demonstrate that corporate philanthropy can be driven from the bottom to the top. In particular, the authors investigate whether employees’ donations influence corporate philanthropy and under what conditions this effect occurs.

The sample consists of Chinese listed firms that disclosed the amount employees donated in response to the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. The Heckman two-stage selection model is applied to examine the effect of employees’ donations on corporate philanthropy and the conditions under which this effect occurs.

The results show that employees’ donations are positively associated with corporate philanthropy. Furthermore, a higher percentage of females in top management teams can significantly strengthen the effect of employees’ donations on corporate philanthropy. When the average age of the top management team members is high, the influence of employees’ donations on corporate philanthropy is stronger.

This is an empirical study that helps to predict corporate philanthropy. Another practical implication is that employees should be recognized as an important element of corporate social responsibility.

The results encourage employees to become drivers of corporate social responsibility.

This study contributes to the corporate social responsibility literature by demonstrating that corporate philanthropy can be driven from the bottom to the top. Moreover, this study integrates signaling theory into the study of corporate social responsibility. Finally, this study identifies two important contingent factors that strengthen the effect of employees on top managers’ decisions about corporate social responsibility.

From an institutional perspective, this study empirically examines whether institutional pressures, such as industry pressures and public attention, significantly influence corporate philanthropic disaster responses (CPDRs). Furthermore, this paper aims to examine the moderating role of a company’s prior history of philanthropic donation.

This paper uses secondhand data from 217 Chinese listed companies that responded philanthropically to the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

This paper finds that both industry pressure and public attention are positively associated with companies’ donations; their prior history of philanthropic donations significantly moderates these relationships such that these relationships become stronger and for companies that have prior histories of small philanthropic donations.

First, this paper contributes to the philanthropy literature by identifying two kinds of institutional pressures (i.e. industry pressure and public attention) that exert great influences on CPDR contributions. Second, by studying the moderating role of firms’ prior philanthropic history, this study contributes to the understanding of companies’ different reactions to institutional pressures. In addition to the theoretical contribution, this paper encourages companies to proactively establish a sustainable philanthropic giving plan rather than being passively driven by external stakeholders.

Although the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and financial performance has become a hot topic of the Western management community after several decades of arguments, there is still little empirical literature about the relationship between Chinese companies' CSR and financial performance. According to the investigation of Chinese companies, this paper aims to use stakeholder theory to answer this question.

A theoretical framework is proposed based on the stakeholder theory by defining nine kinds of stakeholders and viewing the companies taking CSR as giving responses to the interest requirement of these stakeholders. Some agent variables are also set to depict CFP. Subsequently, this paper uses the data collected in 2007 and 2008 from Chinese firms to explore the relationship between CSR and corporate financial performance (CFP) empirically.

The results show that companies' social responsibility activity can improve their financial performances of the current year, have significant effects on their financial performances of the next year, and vice versa. The variation of CSR and financial performance can also significantly influence each other.

This research integrates the factors of time delay and cause‐effect with the relationship of CSR and CFP, and then provides theory support for companies taking CSR.

With the rapid development of Internet technology, cybersecurity threats such as security loopholes, data leaks, network fraud, and ransomware have become increasingly prominent, and organized and purposeful cyberattacks have increased, posing more challenges to cybersecurity protection. Therefore, reliable network risk assessment methods and effective network security protection schemes are urgently needed.

Based on the dynamic behavior patterns of attackers and defenders, a Bayesian network attack graph is constructed, and a multitarget risk dynamic assessment model is proposed based on network availability, network utilization impact and vulnerability attack possibility. Then, the self-organizing multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on grey wolf optimization is proposed. And the authors use this algorithm to solve the multiobjective risk assessment model, and a variety of different attack strategies are obtained.

The experimental results demonstrate that the method yields 29 distinct attack strategies, and then attacker's preferences can be obtained according to these attack strategies. Furthermore, the method efficiently addresses the security assessment problem involving multiple decision variables, thereby providing constructive guidance for the construction of security network, security reinforcement and active defense.

A method for network risk assessment methods is given. And this study proposed a multiobjective risk dynamic assessment model based on network availability, network utilization impact and the possibility of vulnerability attacks. The example demonstrates the effectiveness of the method in addressing network security risks.

This paper aims to define the concept, composition, connotation, functional technology and development path of autonomous transportation systems (ATS) and provide theoretical basis and support for the construction and development of ATS.

The research analyzes the concept and connotation of ATS, studies the composition and structure of ATS, sorts out pillar function technology system including perception, digitization, interoperability, computing and integration in ATS hierarchically, and looks forward to the future development path of ATS from human participation and systems intelligence.

This paper puts forward the concept, composition, connotation and structure of ATS, proposes the pillar functional technology system of ATS and proposes four development stages of ATS.

The research can provide a theoretical and scientific basis for the high-quality, efficient, orderly construction and development of ATS.