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Social procurement (SP) is a complicated and risky innovation, the adoption of which needs to be accompanied by complementary process and organizational change. To date, however, there has been little empirical evidence explaining whether and how different sorts of external pressures affect the level of SP adoption in the construction sector. Drawing on institutional theory, this study aims to analyze how three types of isomorphic pressures (i.e. coercive, mimetic and normative pressures) influence the adoption of SP in the construction sector.

The impacts of these pressures are empirically tested with survey data collected from 134 construction firms in the Chinese construction industry.

The findings show that both coercive and mimetic pressures have a considerable impact on the adoption of SP. However, there is little evidence in this study that normative demands had a major impact on SP.

This research is a useful instrument for promoting a favorable social attitude regarding construction procurement. Through socioeconomic regeneration and development, procurement can be considered as a significant route for social transformation, economic development and poverty reduction.

This study addresses the paucity of research into SP in the construction industry by establishing the institutional drivers to procuring services and products from a social enterprise perspective. Findings from this study extend the frontiers of existing knowledge on SP in the construction industry.

In recent years, environmental issues and resource depletion have posed significant challenges to firms and society. To address these environmental challenges, firms seek to build strategic alliances of green supply chain management (GSCM) with their supply chain partner. As the largest developing country in the Asia–Pacific region, China needs to take more responsibility for environmental protection, which requires more Chinese firms to participate in GSCM. Therefore, focusing on the issue of GSCM and innovation persistence in the context of an increasingly harsh ecological environment is essential.

To test the hypothesis, the authors perform an empirical analysis on a sample of 124 listed firms in China from 2014 to 2019. The results are robust to a battery of robustness analyses the authors performed to take care of endogeneity.

Empirical results indicate that GSCM can promote innovation persistence and both market environment turbulence and technology environment turbulence have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between the two. Mechanism tests show that GSCM can improve innovation efficiency, ensure innovation quality and alleviate financing constraints, thus promoting the innovation persistence of firms.

This study can provide a theoretical basis for the country to promote GSCM orientation, raise firms' awareness of the value of GSCM, convey the significance of GSCM to investors, influence firms' investment decisions and give experience to other developing countries.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore whether the nature of innovation is accumulative or radical and to what extent past year accumulation of technology stock can predict future innovation. More importantly, the authors are concerned with whether a change of policy regime or a variance in the quality of technology will moderate the nature of innovation.

The authors examined a dataset of 3.6 million Chinese patents during 1985–2015 and constructed more than 5 million citation pairs across 8 sections and 128 classes to track knowledge spillover across technology fields. The authors used this citation dataset to calculate the technology innovation network. The authors constructed a measure of upstream invention, interacting the pre-existing technology innovation network with historical patent growth in each technology field, and estimated measure's impact on future innovation since 2005. The authors also constructed three sets of metrics – technology dependence, centrality and scientific value – to identify innovation quality and a policy dummy to consider the impact of policy on innovation.

Innovation growth is built upon past year accumulation and technology spillover. Innovation grows faster for technologies that are more central and grows more slowly for more valuable technologies. A pro-innovation and pro-intellectual property right (IPR) policy plays a positive and significant role in driving technical progress. The authors also found that for technologies that have faster access to new information or larger power to control knowledge flow, the upstream and downstream innovation linkage is stronger. However, this linkage is weaker for technologies that are more novel or general. On most occasions, the nature of innovation was less responsive to policy shock.

This paper contributes to the debate on the nature of innovation by determining whether upstream innovation has strong predictive power on future innovation. The authors develop the assumption used in the technology spillover literature by considering a time-variant, directional and asymmetric matrix to model technology diffusion. For the first time, the authors answer how the nature of innovation will vary depending on the technology network configurations and policy environment. In addition to contributing to the academic debate, the authors' study has important implications for economic growth and industrial or innovation management policies.

President Trump's tenure was accompanied by a series of protectionist measures that intended to reinvigorate US-based production and make manufacturing supply chains more “local”. Amidst these increasing institutional pressures to localise, and the business uncertainty that ensued, this study investigates the extent to which manufacturers reconfigured their supply bases.

Bloomberg's Supply Chain Function (SPLC) is used to manually extract data about the direct suppliers of 30 of the largest American manufacturers in terms of market capitalisation. Overall, the raw data comprise 20,100 quantified buyer–supplier relationships that span seven years (2014–2020). The supply base dimensions of spatial complexity, spend concentration and buyer dependence are operationalised by applying appropriate aggregation functions on the raw data. The final dataset is a firm-year panel that is analysed using a random effect (RE) modelling approach and the conditional means of the three dimensions are plotted over time.

Over the studied timeframe, American manufacturers progressively reduced the spatial complexity of their supply bases and concentrated their purchase spend to fewer suppliers. Contrary to the aims of governmental policies, American manufacturers increased their dependence on foreign suppliers and reduced their dependence on local ones.

The research provides insights into the dynamics of manufacturing supply chains as they adapt to shifting institutional demands.

This paper aims to study the economic effects of Cloud Computing for a sample of Israeli firms. The authors propose a framework that considers how this technology affects firm performance also introducing the indirect economic effects that take place through cloud-complementary technologies such as Big Data and Machine Learning.

The model is estimated through structural equation modeling. The data set consists of the microdata of the survey of information and communication technologies uses and cyber protection in business conducted in Israel by the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The results point to Cloud Computing as a crucial technology to increase firm performance, presenting significant direct and indirect effects as the use of complementary technologies maximizes its impact. Firms that enjoy most direct economic gains from Cloud Computing appear to be the smaller ones, although larger enterprises seem more capable to assimilate complementary technologies, such as Big Data and Machine Learning. The total effects of cloud on firm performance are quite similar among manufacturing and service firms, although the composition of the different effects involved is different.

This paper is one of the very few analyses estimating the impact of Cloud Computing on firm performance based on country microdata and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first one that contemplates the indirect economic effects that take place through cloud-complementary technologies such as Big Data and Machine Learning.

The present study is performed to identify the propagation mechanism of the ripple effect as well as examine the simultaneous impact of risks on supply chain (SC) performance.

A theoretical framework with many hypotheses regarding the relationships between SC risk types and performance is established. The data are collected from a large-scale survey supported by a project of the Japanese government to promote sustainable socioeconomic development for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, with the participation of 207 firms. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the hypotheses of the theoretical framework.

It is indicated that human-made risk causes operational risk, while natural risk causes both supply risk and operational risk. Furthermore, the impacts of human-made risk and natural risk on performance are amplified through operational risk.

This study is one of the first attempts that identifies the propagation mechanism of the ripple effect and examines the simultaneous impact of risks on performance in construction SCs.

Although many studies on risk management in construction SCs have been carried out, they mainly focus on risk identification or quantification of risk impact. It is observed that research on the ripple effect of disruptions has been very scarce.

This study aims to investigate the influence of CEO’s only-child status on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It seeks to extend the understanding of upper echelon theory by examining unexplored CEO characteristics and their impact on CSR decisions.

The paper uses manually collected CEO family information and Chinese Stock and Market Accounting Research data as a basis to examine the influence of CEOs’ early-life experiences on their engagement in CSR activities. The study applies attachment security theory from developmental psychology and uses upper echelon theory, particularly focusing on CEOs’ only-child status. A comparative analysis of philanthropic donations between CEOs who are only children and those who have siblings is conducted. The study also examines the moderating effects of corporate slack resources and CEO shareholdings.

Preliminary findings suggest that CEOs who are only children are more likely to engage in CSR compared to their counterparts with siblings. However, the difference in donation amounts between the two groups tends to attenuate with decreased slack resources and increased CEO shareholdings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research represents the first attempt to investigate being the only child in one’s family and the CSR-related decision of CEOs, which extends the upper echelon theory by introducing the family science theory into the management domain.

This study presents the results of an assessment of the barriers that can hinder the deployment of robotics and automation systems in developing countries through the lens of the Nigerian construction industry.

A scoping literature review was conducted through which barriers to the adoption of robotics and automation systems were identified, which helped in the formulation of a questionnaire survey. Data were obtained from construction professionals including architects, builders, engineers and quantity surveyors. Retrieved data were analyzed using percentages, frequencies, mean item scores and exploratory factor analysis.

Based on the mean scores, the top five barriers were the fragmented nature of the construction process, resistance by workers and unions, hesitation to adopt innovation, lack of capacity and expertise and lack of support from top-level managers. Through factor analysis, the barriers identified were categorized into four principal clusters namely, industry, human, economic and technical-related barriers.

This study provided a good theoretical and empirical foundation that can be useful to construction industry stakeholders, decision-makers, policymakers and the government in mapping out strategies to promote the incorporation and deployment of automation and robotics into the construction industry to attain the safety benefits they offer.

By identifying and evaluating the challenges that hinder the implementation of robotics and automation systems in the Nigerian construction industry, this study makes a significant contribution to knowledge in an area where limited studies exist.

This study aims to merge the world’s proven ways of housing finance, including musharakah mutanaqisah, housing cooperatives and real estate crowdfunding, to present an alternative housing unaffordability solution based on the Islamic finance principle. It is intended to reduce the burden of funding for both sides (consumers and developers) and create win–win chances for all stakeholders, including intermediaries. By moving away from debt financing and merging the features of crowdfunding and cooperative, it is hopeful that the burden of home ownership will no longer be the case.

This paper presents the opinions of potential Chinese homebuyers (minority Muslims and most non-Muslims) and a few industry experts toward the proposed model via a mixed research method.

According to the findings, the majority of respondents agreed with the proposed paradigm. Just concerned that China’s lack of community culture and trust could pose a major threat to implementation. However, this paper argues that Chinese local governments may perform pilot testing in places where Islamic culture is prevalent. Their unique community culture and fundamental understanding of Shariah law may affect the viability of the proposed model.

The proposed model would increase the applicability of Islamic finance as a way of protecting the social order of communities in the spirit of upholding justice and fairness. A new type of housing loan based on musharakah mutanaqisah may squeeze out the real estate bubble and provide stakeholders with a multidimensional investment channel. In particular, the study identifies the impact of Chinese Islamic financing on government and cultural needs. It presents possible challenges for implementing the proposed model in reality and helps bridge the gap between theory and practice.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the impact of the carbon intensity constraint policy (CICP) on green innovation.

This study takes the implementation of the CICP as a quasi-natural experiment and uses a quasi–difference-in-difference method to investigate the impact of the CICP on firm green innovation from a microeconomic perspective.

The CICP significantly limits the quality of firms’ green innovation. Among the range of green patents, the CICP distorts only patents related to CO₂ emissions. The inhibitory effect is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises and heavily polluting firms. R&D investment and green investor are identified as the main mechanism.

These findings provide evidence for the influence of the CICP on firm green innovation, which can guide policymakers in China and other emerging economies that prioritize carbon intensity constraint targets and the improvement of relevant auxiliary measures.

Governments and firms should have a comprehensive understanding of environmental policies and corporate behavior and need to mitigate the negative impact through a combination of measures.

This study contributes to the literature by providing additional empirical evidence regarding the two opposing sides of the ongoing debate on the positive or negative effects of CICP. It also provides new evidence on the policy effect of the CICP on firm green innovation, together with its mechanisms and heterogeneous influences.