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This study aims to examine the impact of digital transformation on firms’ value and explore the mediating impact of ESG performance and moderating impact of information interaction.

Data was collected from companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchange between 2012 and 2020 with 21,488 observational samples, featuring a selection of 3,348 companies. Panel data regression techniques were used to test the mediating role of ESG performance and the moderating role of information interaction.

The study found that digital transformation can improve firms’ ESG performance, which in turn positively affects their value. The firms that engage in more interaction with outsiders benefit more from digital transformation and have a higher value.

This study provides new theoretical insight into improving firms’ value through digital transformation and ESG performance. It is the first to discuss and study the moderating role of information interaction in the relationship between digital transformation and firms’ value.

Student engagement has become increasingly significant in sustainability education for engineers because it enables future engineers to develop competencies, knowledge and values relevant to acting for sustainability. Therefore, this paper aims to examine characteristics of student engineer engagement with sustainability and to discuss the meanings of this concept.

To build a more holistic picture of student engineer engagement with sustainability, this study followed a literature review approach to search, screen and appraise relevant journal articles on this topic. As a result of this research, 30 articles were identified as eligible.

Based on the theoretical framework for student engagement with sustainability, newly synthesized here, and the content analysis of the 30 papers included in this study, four patterns of engagement were identified: intrapersonal engagement, inter-relational engagement, engagement as connection and disconnection and situated engagement.

This review provides practical recommendations about how to support the engagement of student engineers with sustainability at the levels of the individual, staff, educational programmes and associated curricula. Future research directions are also discussed.

This study contributes a theoretical framework synthesizing student engagement theory with sustainability education. It also describes current characteristics of student engineers’ engagement with sustainability.

Energy affects all areas of daily life. Especially with the industrial revolution, the fact that manufacturing has become the engine of economic growth has led to a rise in energy consumption. In this process, the countries of the world have increased their economic growth with traditional energy consumption, and this has increased carbon emissions. However, to fulfill the sustainable development goals, both the continuation of economic growth and the reduction of carbon emissions are required. In this context, the substitution of renewable energy consumption in place of traditional energy sources has started to be discussed. The aim of this study is to research the relationships among CO₂ emissions, manufacturing growth, and renewable energy consumption. For this aim, the relationship among carbon emissions, manufacturing growth, and renewable energy consumption is analyzed for the period 1997–2019 in 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. With respect to the findings of autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) test results, manufacturing growth enhances CO₂ emissions both in the short and long terms. As the proportion of renewable energy consumption in total energy consumption rises, CO₂ emissions decrease both in the short and long terms. On the other hand, according to the Dumitrescu–Hurlin causality test results, there is a one-way causality relationship from carbon emissions to manufacturing growth and from renewable energy consumption to carbon emissions. When the findings are evaluated together, it is understood that renewable energy consumption is a substantial factor in tackling the deadlock of lessening the carbon emissions without adversely impacting manufacturing growth. Therefore, policymakers need to encourage renewable energy consumption.

This paper aims to introduce a custom-designed integrated nucleic acid detection polymerase chain reaction (PCR) instrument for clinical detection applications.

The PCR instrument can make rapid, sensitive, low-cost and quantitative molecular diagnosis compared with the current routine test flow from the pipette, series reagent to RT-PCR by manual manipulation. By integrating the multichannel automatic pipetting module, heat amplification module and real-time fluorescence detection module for the first time, the custom-designed integrated nucleic acid detection PCR instrument can achieve sample collection, subpackage, mixing, extracting, measuring and result presentation.

The multichannel automatic pipetting module was assembled with an accuracy of 0.4% (2 microliters) for accuracy measurement. Besides, the accuracy and sensitivity of nucleic acid using integrated low-cost nucleic acid detection PCR instruments were checked with COV-2019 virus (staining method) and African swine fever virus (probe method) under different concentrations.

Because of its high cost, complex system and bulky laboratory settings, including sample subpackage, mixing, extracting, measuring and finally result in presentation, the current nucleic acid detection system is not suitable for field operation and disease diagnosis in remote areas. The group independently designed and assembled an integrated low-cost multichannel nucleic acid detection PCR instrument, including a multichannel automatic pipetting module, a heat amplification module and a real-time fluorescence detection module.

The above equipment showed better reliability compared with commercial qPCR. These results can lay the foundation for functional, fast and low-cost PCR equipment for trace measurements.

The integration of ESD is a complex problem. It calls for an innovative, student-centred curriculum, as well as professional learning and agency, by which university teachers feel empowered to change their practice and direct their peers and institutions towards ESD. This study aims to explore what university teachers consider to be the most important attitudes in supporting their agency to deliver Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) via a Problem Based Learning (PBL) programme.

This study presents a theoretical framework for professional agency comprising three domains: intrapersonal, action and environmental. A Q methodology is adopted to explore university teachers’ perceptions of the most important environmental factors in supporting their ability to deliver ESD via a problem-based learning (PBL) programme. Twenty-eight participants from six Southeast Asian universities took part in a PBL-based professional development programme designed to improve teachers’ ESD- and PBL-based skills and competencies.

The results indicate that the participants were confident in their ability to implement PBL and saw PBL as an approach suitable for addressing current educational, professional and societal challenges. This study offers a series of recommendations to help university teachers develop their ESD and PBL practices.

Although the literature on human agency is extensive, research surrounding teachers’ professional agency in the context of ESD and PBL in higher education is lacking. The present study addresses this gap by capturing individual teachers’ beliefs, perceptions and views and by using Q methodology to examine the subjectivity of study participants.

The increasing awareness and adoption of technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), reshapes industries and daily life, fostering a proactive approach to risk management and leveraging advanced analytics, which may affect the stock price crash risk (SPCR). The main objective of the current study is to explore how AI adoption influences SPCR.

This study employs an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) fixed-effect regression model to explore the impact of AI on SPCR in Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020. Further, number of robustness analysis (2SLS, PSM and Sys-GMM) and channel analysis are used to validate the findings.

The primary findings emphasize that AI adoption significantly reduces SPCR likelihood. Further, channel analysis indicates that AI adoption enhances internal control quality, contributing to a reduction in firm SPCR. Additionally, the observed relationship is notably more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) compared to state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Similarly, this distinction is heightened in nonforeign enterprises (non-FEs) as opposed to foreign enterprises (FEs). The study finding also supports the notion that financial analysts enhance transparency, reducing the SPCR. Moreover, the study results consistently align across different statistical methodologies, including 2SLS, PSM and Sys-GMM, employed to effectively address endogeneity concerns.

Our study stands out for its distinctive focus on the financial implications of AI adoption, particularly how it influences firm-level SPCR, an area that has been overlooked in previous research. Through the lens of information asymmetry theory, agency theory, and the economic implications of integrating AI into financial markets, our study makes a substantial contribution in mitigating SPCR.

This study underscores the pivotal role of AI adoption in influencing stock markets for enterprises in China. Embracing digital strategies, fostering transparency and prioritizing talent development are key for reaping substantial benefits. The study recommends regulatory bodies and service providers to promote AI adoption in strengthening financial supervision and ensure market stability, emphasizing the importance of investing in technologies and advancing talent development.

This study aims to investigate the use of voluntary disclosure on mainstream social media platforms to examine strategic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the influential factors and institutional pressures organisations faced when making disclosures on social media during the pandemic.

A two-stage qualitative approach was adopted. Stage one used content analysis to examine voluntary disclosures made by international organisations on social media during the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stage two comprised semi-structured interviews with individuals who were involved in the decision-making process around the social media disclosures.

This study’s findings reveal significant changes in disclosure practices due to COVID-19-related pressures. In addition to the utilisation of social media for signalling conformance with new pandemic-related norms and connecting with stakeholders, the evidence also reveals how organisations made use of strategic responses to COVID-19-related institutional pressures.

The findings reveal how social media was used as a means of timely voluntary disclosure during the examined crisis. The findings can inform the development of organisational guidelines and policies for the use of social media as a disclosure medium.

This study reveals how organisations used voluntary disclosure on social media as a strategic response to institutional pressures and the COVID-19 pandemic; this context is under-researched. The study also extends the application of the strategic response framework regarding voluntary disclosure via social media.

Digital transformation misalignment refers to disparities in digital transformation levels between suppliers and buyers across the production and operation process. It has negatively affected supply chain stability. However, the existing research concerning the economic consequences has not been adequately addressed. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate whether such digital transformation misalignment increases supplier financial risk and to identify the factors influencing this relationship.

This paper examines binary combinations of suppliers and buyers listed on China’s A-share market between 2011 and 2021. This group constitutes a sample to empirically test the influence of digital transformation misalignment on the supplier’s financial risk, as well as the moderating effect of the geographical and organizational distances.

The paper’s findings demonstrate that digital transformation misalignment has indeed a significant increase in the supplier’s financial risk. Moreover, the impact is more intense when the geographical or organizational distance between the supplier and the buyer is relatively large.

The existing literature rarely explores the potential risks arising from digital transformation misalignment between supply chain partners. Therefore, this paper fills a notable gap as it is the first to study the impact of digital transformation misalignment on the supplier’s financial risk and the specific applied mechanisms. The contribution significantly improves the field of corporate digital transformation, particularly, within the context of supply chain management.

This paper investigates the overall system risk for a foodgrains supply chain capturing the interrelationship among the risk factors and the effect of risk mitigation strategies.

This paper first calculates the weight of risk factors using an integrated approach of failure mode, effects analysis and fuzzy VIKOR technique. Next, the weights are utilized as input for the weighted fuzzy Petri-net (WFPN) approach to calculate the system risk.

Two different WFPN models are developed based on the relationships among the risk factors, and both models demonstrate a higher risk value for the overall system.

The proposed methodology will help practitioners or managers understand the complexity involved in the system by capturing the interrelationship behaviour. This study also considers the concurrent effect of risk mitigation strategies for calculating the overall system risk, which helps to improve the system’s performance.

This study aims to reveal the mechanism of CEO overconfidence in the digital transformation of specialized, refined, distinctive and innovative (SRDI) enterprises, thereby enriching research related to upper echelons theory and corporate digital transformation.

This study uses listed SRDI companies in China from 2017 to 2022 as a sample and adopts a fixed-effects regression model to analyze the direct, mediating, and moderating effects of CEO overconfidence on corporate digital transformation.

First, CEO overconfidence significantly promotes SRDI enterprises' digital transformation. Second, according to the “cognition-behavior-outcome” model, we found that entrepreneurial orientation plays a mediating role. Third, based on the principle of procedural rationality and the interaction perspective between the CEO and the executive team, we introduce the heterogeneity of the executive team as a moderating variable. Our findings indicate that age heterogeneity within the executive team has a negative moderating effect, whereas educational and occupational heterogeneities have positive moderating effects.

This study expands on earlier research that focuses primarily on CEO demographic characteristics. It enriches the analytical perspective of upper echelons theory on corporate digital transformation by analyzing the psychological characteristics of CEOs, that is, overconfidence and its mediating pathways. Moreover, this study goes beyond the previous literature that does not differentiate between CEOs and executive teams by introducing the concept of CEOs' interactions with the executive team and including the heterogeneity of the executive team as a moderating variable in the literature. Thus, continuing to deepen the application of upper echelons theory to corporate digital transformation. Additionally, this study contributes to the literature on the positive consequences of overconfidence.