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The purpose of this paper is to prove that the technology that customers accept is sometimes not the most advanced, but backward, and to explain why different technologies could coexist under certain market situations and government regulations.

A general model was developed to analyze choice of technology regime under evolution of market demand and government regulation led by evolutionary economics.

Market demands and government regulations can affect the change of technology regime deeply, regardless of the level of certain technology. With the change of environment factors which affect China's mobile phones technological evolution, this paper testifies to the rationality and inevitability of PHS's market success and indicates that government regulations would impact the technological choice and lead to some technology market success, but it would lead to low efficiency of resources allocation.

The paper provides an instrument for analyzing the co‐evolution of market demand, government regulation and technology regime.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution of Chinese technology policy, assess its technological and economic performance from the visual angle of “market in exchange for technology” strategy.

A quantified method based on policy contents from policy power, policy goals and policy means was developed to build a policy database, and analyze the evolutionary tendency of Chinese technology policy. In addition, econometric models were built to assess the performance of technology policy.

The critical goals of Chinese technology policy are introducing technology directly or indirectly by introducing foreign investment and innovation, but the critical linkage between introduction and innovation‐technology absorption was absent – almost all policy means aim at the introduction of foreign investment and innovation but not technology absorption. More unfortunately, the econometric results show that introduction of foreign investment contributes little, while technology absorption contributes much more. Institutional path‐dependence and the competition for benefits among different departments have aggravated an already unbalanced emphasis on technology policies during the reform.

During the quantification of technology policy, one perhaps loses some information about policy, and it can only be used to analyze the technology policy system, not special technology policy.

Analyses of the evolution of Chinese technology policy and econometric results show the blunder of “market in exchange for technology” strategy from policy formulation and execution. Also, it leads to the optimization of technology policy from policy targets, implements based on national technology and innovation strategy.

The paper develops the method of technology policy quantification and builds econometric models to assess the contribution of technology policy to technology progress and economy development.

Taking China as a research context, the purpose of this paper is to delineate how social and business tensions manifest in Chinese nascent social enterprises and to disentangle the strategies that they adopt to manage the business-social dual goals to achieve organizational viability.

A qualitative multiple-case study is used to collect and analyze data. Empirical data are drawn from in-depth semi-structured interviews with Chinese social entrepreneurs, ethnographic observation of social enterprises as well as secondary sources.

Depending on personal motivations and resource availability, social entrepreneurs’ perceptions toward pursuit of dual goals range from integration to differentiation in the short term, despite consensus on the concurrent development in the long term. The leverage of resources, image management, continuous innovation and need-based services are viable approaches that Chinese social enterprises adopt to manage the dual goals in order to create both social and economic value.

This paper reveals understanding of the concrete tensions experienced among Chinese nascent social enterprises in pursuing business and social goals and how they manage to integrate the synergistic aspects of social and business goals to achieve survival and growth. Based primarily on qualitative case study method, the research findings are context specific and may not be ideal for generalization.

The authors reveal strategies by which synergistic benefits between dual goals may be achieved. Innovation (e.g. in resource utilization, in service format and content) and differentiation (e.g. in organization positioning) would be beneficial in enhancing the competitiveness of social enterprises. To enhance organizations’ credibility, quality of products and service should be monitored and organizational transparency needs to be enhanced.

It is suggested that the government specifies legal forms and legitimates interests of social enterprises, formulates preferential policies to stimulate the development of social enterprises, and develops a set of qualification authentication system to regulate this emerging sector.

The study examines the manifestation of business and social tensions and presents dual-goal management strategies from a non-western perspective. As an original contribution to the field of social entrepreneurship, the study responds to calls for in-depth analysis of conflicting objectives and tension management in social enterprises.

This study aims to compare the different effects of the 2008 economic crisis on companies’ corporate social performance (CSP) in coordinated market economies (CMEs) and liberal market economies (LMEs).

This paper mobilizes a pluralistic theoretical framework that borrows from neo-institutional and corporate governance theories to compare the impacts of the 2008 economic crisis on long-term CSP in an international context. Based on the longitudinal database of Vigeo Eiris (2004–2015), the panel was decomposed between two models of capitalism (LME and CME). For each model, this paper conducted a series of regressions, taking into account the longitudinal nature of the data using estimates based on generalized estimating equations (Liang and Zeger, 1986).

The paper shows that the economic crisis prompted companies operating in LMEs and CMEs to reorient their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in quite different ways during the four-year period that the crisis lasted, as well as the succeeding four-year post-crisis period. While CSR was perceived in LMEs as a threat during the crisis period because of the additional costs it generated, it offered CME companies a way of redefining how they relate to the rest of society, with their goal becoming the creation of greater shared value.

The results are dependent from the data, and specifically from the Vigeo Eiris database. It would be interesting to extrapol this kind of research with the use of other CSP/environmental, social and governance (ESG) databases as Morgan Stanley Capital International, Sustainalytics or RepRisk, to compare and conclude more globally on tendencies. Another limitation relates to the binary nature of Hall and Soskice’s (2001) typology, with its neo-institutionalist inspiration, that puts Continental European and social-democratic models of capitalism on the same plane.

This study teaches managers, analysts and policymakers that CSR can be a powerful strategic lever capable of remedying the harmful effects that economic crises have in both LMEs and CMEs, notwithstanding the cultural, socio-economic and political differences between these models of capitalism. Economic and social crises must help companies to rethink and revisit their business models and CSR practices to subsequently implement sustainability strategies more in sync with the values forced upon them by the economic systems to which they belonged but also by all their stakeholders.

From a managerial standpoint, this study allows practitioners to consider CSR as an opportunity to rethink their strategy and business models in a period of crisis, and no more a threat that could reduce the economic performance in increasing the costs, and thus, the cost of financing.

After reading the literature on the topic, this paper clearly thinks about the high degree of contribution of the paper, as the topic is not so developed and that the study implies several contributions. First, from a theoretical level, the study differs from previous research studies insofar as it compares the impacts of the economic crisis on companies’ CSP in CMEs and LMEs using a theoretical framework that operationalizes both contractual and neo-institutional theories. Second, from a methodological standpoint, the approach using an ESG data provider known worldwide (Vigeo Eiris) has not been down yet. Third, on a managerial level, the present study teaches managers, analysts and policymakers that CSR can be a powerful strategic lever capable of remedying the harmful effects that economic crises have in both LMEs and CMEs, notwithstanding the cultural, socio-economic and political differences between these models of capitalism.