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Digital transformation is a confidence booster in intrapreneurship, but few have examined its impact on intrapreneurship. Further, quantitative analyses exploring the impact of Chinese enterprises' digital transformation on intrapreneurship at the micro-level are rare. Most enterprises do not have the dividend for digital transformation, and few enterprises have successfully achieved digital transformation through intrapreneurship, internal management re-engineering and technological innovation. This study investigates the effect of digital transformation on intrapreneurship in Chinese real economy enterprises.

The study develops and tests a theoretical model that digital transformation impacts intrapreneurship by promoting working capital turnover and furtherly influencing labor input. Panel data of 1,638 Chinese-listed companies between 2007 and 2020 were used to complete the empirical test.

Digital transformation impacted labor input, with an inverted-U shaped relationship between the two, and labor input significantly stimulated intrapreneurship. This effect promoted labor input's impact on working capital. Chinese real economy enterprises generally increase labor investment to promote intrapreneurship. Heterogeneity analysis revealed that enterprises' asset scale and ownership attributes uniformly affected labor input.

This study provided empirical evidence of the promotional effect of real economy enterprises' digital transformation on intrapreneurship. Further, it advanced the literature by examining this relationship at the micro-level. Moreover, the data sample was long-term and included most industries, thus providing representative results with practical implications.

This study employs firm-level data to evaluate how the knowledge economy impacts the financing constraints of businesses across 106 low- and middle-income nations, focusing on the influence of technological transformation on corporate financing choices.

The research centers on privately held, unlisted firms and examines the distinct effects of knowledge at both the within-country and between-country levels using a panel dataset. Rigorous sensitivity and endogeneity analyses are conducted to ensure the reliability of the findings.

The findings indicate that greater levels of the knowledge economy correlate with reduced financing constraints for firms. However, this effect varies depending on the location within a country and across different geographical regions. Firms situated in larger urban centers and more innovative regions reap the most significant benefits from the knowledge economy when seeking external funding. Conversely, firms in smaller cities, rural areas and regions characterized by structural and institutional inefficiencies in knowledge generation experience fewer advantages.

The impact of knowledge exhibits variability not only within and among countries but also between poor and affluent developing nations, as well as between larger and smaller countries. The knowledge effect on firms' access to external finance is influenced by factors such as financial openness and development, educational quality, technological absorption capabilities and agglomeration conditions within each country.

Microenterprises in emerging economies are known to operate in turbulent and resource-scarce environments. We test our hypothesis that a more comprehensive “Integrated Capital-Based Model” (ICBM) is needed when explaining the performance of microenterprises in such an environment. The model combines traditionally researched financial, human and social capital with more recently emphasized psychological and cognitive capital, providing greater explanatory power than models using only the traditional types of capital.

We use a pooled linear regression to analyze an existing survey of more than 900 independent business owners who were interviewed seven times between 2008 and 2012 in the Accra and Tema marketplaces in Ghana. We measure the performance of microenterprises using three dependent variables (revenue, profits, and productivity). We contrast the explanatory power of ICBM models against the more traditional models.

The ICBM has significantly higher levels of explanatory power over the traditional models in examining the performance of these microenterprises. These results highlight the importance of psychological and cognitive capital in emerging economies.

We advocate for a more comprehensive view of capital as shown in our ICBM. However, the data were gathered only in an urban setting, which limits the generalizability to rural parts of emerging economies.

These findings suggest the utility of government and appropriate agencies finding ways to enhance the level of psychological and cognitive capital of microenterprise owners.

This paper's originality stems from hypothesizing and empirically confirming the higher predictive efficacy of ICBM against more traditionally researched capital sources.

This study aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the relationship between auditors’ work stress and client participation with audit quality (AQ).

This study is a descriptive-survey type and the data were collected through a questionnaire distributed online. The statistical population consisted of auditors working in audit firms in Iran and the sample was selected using a random sampling method. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The findings of this study suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the negative relationship between auditors’ work stress and AQ. In addition, the results indicate that client participation in the audit process did not significantly impact AQ during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Given the global and widespread impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals’ lives and work settings, this study provides an opportunity to explore the challenges auditors face concerning health protocols and their well-being during the pandemic, specifically within the context of Iran. The unique circumstances of the pandemic have placed additional pressure on auditors to navigate and address the challenges arising from COVID-19 in their workplaces. Although research on the effects of the pandemic on accounting and auditing is ongoing, this study contributes to the literature by expanding our understanding of the specific implications and circumstances faced by auditors during the COVID-19 outbreak.

As an emerging socio-technical paradigm, high-speed railways profoundly change individuals' lifestyle and allow for the shift toward a green transportation. Digital technologies open an opportunity window for the development of enterprises. This study aims to clarify the impact of firm digitalization on the innovation efficiency of the Chinese high-speed rail industry. In addition, human capital is the important non-physical capital of enterprises. The authors also elucidate the moderating role of human capital on the above relationship.

Based on the data of Chinese high-speed railway listed companies from 2015 to 2021, this study explores the impact of digital transformation on the innovation efficiency, and further clarifies the boundary role of human capital with two-way fixed effect regression models.

The empirical results indicate that digital transformation has a positive impact on the innovation efficiency of the Chinese high-speed railway enterprises. Furthermore, human capital significantly enhances the above relationship. In addition, digital transformation fosters the innovation efficiency of small- and medium-sized enterprises and private-owned enterprises, but the correlation coefficients between digital transformation and the innovation efficiency of large enterprises and state-owned enterprises are not significant.

This is one of the earliest studies to explore how digital technologies shape R&D activities. From the perspective of relative efficiency, this study evaluates the effectiveness of digital transformation and provides empirical evidence for the formulation and implementation of corporate digital strategies. Moreover, this study links human capital with digital transformation and identifies condition factors that affect the effectiveness of digital transformation, thereby supplementing existing knowledge.

The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of imported inputs on firms' productivity in selected South Asian economies, namely Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Furthermore, this study explores the complementarity between firms' capabilities and imported inputs in an augmented productivity framework.

A dataset comprising 7117 manufacturing firms of selected South Asian economies was taken from the World Bank for 2013 and 2014. The empirical analysis was based on stochastic frontier models, the ordinary least square method and instrumental variable estimation techniques.

The empirical results show that imported inputs have positive and significant effects on the firms' productivity in the selected countries. Moreover, the study findings demonstrate that firms' capabilities play a complementary role in expanding the firms' production frontier.

The study outcomes suggest that reducing tariffs on imported inputs will enhance the firms' productivity in the selected emerging economies. However, the study further finds that the potential gain of imported inputs is conditional on the firm's capabilities. It implies that firms operating in these countries can improve their performance by allocating more resources to capabilities, such as workers’ training, management and internal R&D effort.

The existing literature on the subject is sceptical about the positive impact of imported inputs on firms' productivity in the case of developing countries. In this regard, the shortage of skilled labour and firms' capabilities are compelling rationales that need to be explored. Thus, the potential contribution of the study lies in explaining the moderating role of firm's capabilities operating in the selected emerging economies in the nexus of imported inputs and productivity.

As many businesses faced economic disruption due to the Covid-19 pandemic and sought financial relief, existing bank relationships became critical to getting a loan. This study examines factors associated with the development of personal relationships of rural small businesses with community bank representatives.

We applied a mixed-method approach. We employed descriptive statistics, principal factor analysis and logistic regression for data analysis. We distributed an online survey to rural small businesses in five states in the United States. Key informant interviews with community bank representatives supplemented the survey results.

A business owner’s trust in a banker was positively associated with the establishment of a business–bank relationship. However, an analysis of individual trust’s components revealed that the nature of trust is complex, and a failure of one or more components may lead to decreased trustworthiness in a banker. Small businesses that preferred personal communication with a bank were more inclined to relationship banking.

Due to the relatively small sample size and cross-sectional data, our results may not be conclusive but should be viewed as preliminary and as suggestions for future research. Bankers should be aware of the importance of trust for small business owners and of the actions that lead to increased trustworthiness.

The study extends the existing knowledge on the business–bank relationship by focusing mainly on social (instead of economic) factors associated with the establishment of the business–bank relationship in times of crisis and high uncertainty.

Although the role of returnees is critical to firm innovation, the literature offers inconsistent findings regarding returnees' effect on firms' innovation performance. To reconcile this issue, the authors argue that taking the types of innovation into account – i.e. technical innovation and commercial innovation – is necessary. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine how firms led by returnees affect the relationship between research and development (R&D) input and above two types of innovation output, as well as the contingent role of political connections (PCs) and venture capital funding (VC funding).

This study empirically tested the hypotheses using a dataset of 54,617 firm-year observations for 18,475 Chinese firms in Zhongguancun Science Park (ZSP) from 2009 to 2014.

The results show that the positive effect of R&D input on technical innovation performance (TIP) is reinforced when firms are led by returnees, while the positive effect of R&D input on commercial innovation performance (CIP) is weakened when firms are led by returnees compared with those firms led by the local counterparts. The findings further show that returnee firms' positive effect on the relationship between R&D input and technical innovation performance is more salient for firms with more PCs but weakened for those with more VC funding.

This study enriches the research on returnee firms' advantages and disadvantages in transforming R&D input into innovation performance, and the findings highlight that firms led by returnees can increase R&D efficiency of technical innovation, but reduce R&D efficiency of commercial innovation. Moreover, this study offers a contingent view of political and economic stakeholders' roles in returnee firms' innovation, by revealing PCs help returnee firms to enhance R&D efficiency in technological innovation, while venture capital can hamper such R&D efficiency.

On the basis of labor economics theories, this study examines how adjustment in human capital accounts for labor cost stickiness.

This study makes use of employee education level as a measure of the quality of human capital and relies on data from Chinese public firms to conduct the empirical test. This study focuses on two important components of labor cost changes: one corresponding to the adjustment in the number of employees (capacity adjustment) and another corresponding to the adjustment in the mix of employee education levels (quality adjustment).

This study reveals that labor cost changes driven by the adjustment of employee education level are sticky. This stickiness cannot be explained by the standard adjustment cost theory. This further shows that firms that actively adjust their employee quality during downturns experience improved future performance. The findings are robust to alternative measures and specifications.

This study provides new evidence for and insights into the cost behavior literature. Previous studies treat input resources in a homogenous way and focus on the effect of capacity adjustment. This study considers the heterogeneity of resources and examines three dimensions of salary cost adjustment: capacity, structure, and unit cost. In line with the economic theory of sticky costs proposed by Banker et al. (2013a), the study’s evidence sheds light on the additional underlying economic mechanisms driving cost stickiness behavior. Specifically, managers asymmetrically adjust both employee structure and average salaries, in addition to employee number. This study also adds to the existing knowledge of the consequences of managers' actions regarding cost behavior.

Digital transformation and innovation-driven development have become an international consensus. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of relationships, mechanisms and economic consequences between digital transformation and enterprise innovation quality in order to provide a benchmark for developing countries to implement digital transformation strategies and innovation-driven strategies and provide a major support for economic recovery in the post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) era.

Using microdata from A-share listed enterprises in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2021, this study examines the relationship between digital transformation and enterprise innovation quality and further reveals the internal logic and economic consequences of digital transformation to improve enterprise innovation quality through the mediating effect and moderating effect models.

The results demonstrate that digital transformation is beneficial for improving enterprise innovation quality. The heterogeneity test demonstrates that digital transformation has a larger effect on improving enterprise innovation quality in non-state-owned enterprises and eastern enterprises in China. The mechanism test demonstrates that digital transformation can improve enterprise innovation quality by improving internal control quality and analyst attention. Furthermore, with the increase in enterprise innovation inputs, digital transformation plays a significantly stronger role in improving enterprise innovation quality. The extended analysis demonstrates that digital transformation can significantly improve enterprise financial performance by improving innovation quality.

First, the construction of the core explanatory variable digital transformation index in this study is based on the Python data analysis software, which calculates the frequency of digital transformation in the text of the business situation analysis portion of the annual report of the listed companies and then obtains the degree of digital transformation of the company in this year. There may be some deviation from the degree of digital transformation in the actual production and operation of enterprises. Second, in addition to internal control quality and analyst attention, are there other mediating mechanisms for the impact of digital transformation on the quality of enterprise innovation? Third, whether the moderating effect of innovation input on digital transformation and innovation quality is related to human capital factors of the research and development (R&D) team, such as the technical background of R&D personnel, etc.

This study enriches the relevant theories of digital transformation and broadens the research boundaries of digital transformation and enterprise innovation. This study's result provides an empirical basis for enterprises to improve enterprise innovation quality and financial performance from the perspective of digital transformation at the micro level and points out specific practical directions, combining theory with practice.