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This study examines the impact of China’s mixed-ownership reform on the innovation of non-state-owned acquirers, with a particular focus on the impact on firms with high financing constraints, low-quality accounting information or less tangible assets.

We use a proprietary dataset of firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges to investigate the impact of mixed ownership reform on non-state-owned enterprise (non-SOE) innovation. We employ regression analysis to examine the association between mixed ownership reform and firm innovation.

The study finds that non-state-owned firms can improve innovation by acquiring equity in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) under the reform. Eased financing constraints, lowered financing costs, better access to tax incentives or government subsidies, lowered agency costs, better accounting information quality and more credit loans are underlying the impact. Additionally, cross-ownership connections amongst non-SOE executives and government intervention strengthen the impact, whilst regional marketisation weakens it.

This study adds to the literature on the association between mixed ownership reform and firm innovation by focussing on the conditions under which this impact is stronger. It also sheds light on the policy implications for SOE reforms in emerging economies.

The collapse of a structure resulting from the instability of steel frames due to fire is the worst failure mode to consider in fire-structural engineering, and should be avoided. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new method for estimating the minimum possible duration of a fire event that could result in the instability of an unbraced steel frame.

The proposed method is in the form of a constrained minimization problem that determines the worst case fire scenario that can cause instability of a structure, and is solved using nonlinear constrained mathematical programming algorithms. The formulation is demonstrated via a numerical example.

For frames subjected to fire events modelled with monotonically increasing fire curves, the worst case fire causing instability of a frame is always one where all of the compartments catch fire at the same time. For frames subjected to fire events where fire curves decay, the minimization problem must be solved rigorously. The results are significantly affected by the fire curves and amount of insulation applied to each member.

The proposed method is an extension of a method previously established by Xu et al. (2018) to assess the stability of unbraced steel frames subjected to elevated member temperatures. The previous method does not consider fire duration and heat transfer mechanics, which are included in the proposed method. The proposed method is potentially useful for designers in conducting fire scenario analysis in the performance-based design of structures.

This paper aims to provide a longitudinal analysis of influences on China’s financial sector’s sustainability reporting practices, examines “green finance” disclosures and undertakes subsector comparisons. The state’s impact on the quantity and quality of reporting practices is analyzed.

Content analysis is used to examine the volumes, frequency and content of sustainability disclosures by China’s financial institutions. Survival analysis is used to identify factors significant in firms’ initiation of these disclosures. In total, 308 firm-year observations on disclosures are examined for 2007–2016.

China’s financial sector’s sustainability reporting pieces of evidence an “emerging stage” (2007–2009), “developing stage” (2010) and “greening stage” (2011–2016). The roles of institutional theory and regulatory pressure in explaining Chinese financial firms’ reporting behaviours are supported.

This study has several limitations. Firstly, given data restrictions, use of a relatively small sample size. Secondly, it examines different categories of disclosures made by financial firms, not more detailed content. Thirdly, is the potential overlap in disclosure themes under the classification scheme.

China’s financial sector’s adoption of sustainability reporting has been institutionalized, mainly in its banking subsector, consistent with general regulatory pressures.

“Greening the finance system” is examined in China’s context, as the country transforms from a resource and pollution-intensive to a green economy.

The financial sector is normally excluded from in-depth qualitative research. This study examines China’s financial sector’s responses to recent governmental pressures on green finance disclosures.

Based on institutional theory, this paper aims to examine whether, and if so which, institutional forces influence the quality of China’s listed financial institutions’ (FIs) sustainability disclosures.

Using univariate statistical and multiple regression analyses, this study quantitatively examines the impacts of coercive pressure from the government and stock exchanges, imitation within subsectors and normative pressure from industry associations and regulators on the quality of China’s listed FIs’ sustainability disclosures. Assessment of the robustness of regression results uses panel random-effects and generalized methods of moments estimation.

Financial sector corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure quality did not increase dramatically following issue of the “Guiding Opinions on Establishing a Green Finance System.” However, a convergence in quality is found over time. State ownership concentration and state links to dominant shareholders negatively impact the quality of financial sector sustainability disclosures, whereas stock exchange index listing requirements and industry association reporting guidance have positive influences.

First, data availability limits the sample to listed financial firms with RKS quality scores. Thus, results may not be generalizable to the broader listed and unlisted financial sector. Second, this study only examines the influence of external forces based on institutional theory. However, internal institutional forces, such as corporate governance, may require examination. This study’s results indicate that coercive pressure, as represented by issue of the “Green Finance” policy, has not yet prompted the financial sector to improve reporting quality; however, normative pressure has had significant influence in influencing FIs’ CSR practices, with China’s banks potentially taking a leading role.

The financial sector has a lower direct environmental impact than traditional polluting industries and different operating and reporting structures, features often used to argue for its exclusion in prior studies. However, its indirect environmental impact via lending and investing activities is significant, suggesting evidence on the determinants of sustainability disclosure quality is required. This study uses evidence from China’s financial sector to reduce this gap in the literature.

To meet the emerging demand for fine-grained annotation and semantic enrichment of cultural heritage images, this paper proposes a new approach that can transcend the boundary of information organization theory and Panofsky's iconography theory.

After a systematic review of semantic data models for organizing cultural heritage images and a comparative analysis of the concept and characteristics of deep semantic annotation (DSA) and indexing, an integrated DSA framework for cultural heritage images as well as its principles and process was designed. Two experiments were conducted on two mural images from the Mogao Caves to evaluate the DSA framework's validity based on four criteria: depth, breadth, granularity and relation.

Results showed the proposed DSA framework included not only image metadata but also represented the storyline contained in the images by integrating domain terminology, ontology, thesaurus, taxonomy and natural language description into a multilevel structure.

DSA can reveal the aboutness, ofness and isness information contained within images, which can thus meet the demand for semantic enrichment and retrieval of cultural heritage images at a fine-grained level. This method can also help contribute to building a novel infrastructure for the increasing scholarship of digital humanities.

The authors enrich and extend the existing institutional anomie theory (IAT) in the hope of sharpening the understanding of the joint effects of selected cultural values and social institutional changes on women's pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts. The authors theorize that women are culturally discouraged to pursue pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts or wealth accumulation in a specific culture. This discouragement creates an anomic strain that motivates women to deviate from cultural prescriptions by engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts at a faster speed. Building on this premise, the authors hypothesize that changes in social institutions facilitate the means of achievement for women due to the potential opportunities inherent in such institutional changes.

Using a randomly selected sample of 1,431 registered active individual users with a minimum of 10,000 followers on a leading entertainment live-streaming platform in the People's Republic of China, the authors examined a unique mix of cultural and institutional changes and their effects on the speed of women's engagement in live-streaming platform activity.

The authors find support for the impact of the interaction between changes in social institution conditions and cultural values. Unexpectedly, the authors also find a negative impact of cultural values on women's speed of engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts.

The authors add institutional change to the IAT framework and provide a novel account for the variation in the pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts by women on the platform.

The purpose of this paper is to explore mechanisms of cultural distance in the base of Chinese Service Multi-National Enterprise (MNE) settings. When attempting to enter overseas markets, many service MNEs face challenges caused by the cultural distance between the home and host countries. Culture distance attracts much attention in academia and industry. However, there are few empirical works to examine how cultural distance affects customer orientation strategies in a global supply chain. This paper aims to answer the following research question: How is the effect of cultural distance on customer acquisition and customer retention strategies, and the effect of customer orientation strategies on the performance of service-oriented MNEs controlled by Chinese capital along the Belt and Road Initiative?

This paper examines the effect of cultural distance on the customer acquisition strategy and customer retention strategy, and the effect of customer orientation strategies on the performance of Chinese Service MNEs. A large-scale empirical study of Chinese Service MNEs operating in overseas markets is performed and questionnaires were distributed and collected. This paper uses Hofstede's method (Hofstede, 2010), Schwartz's method (Schwartz, 2003) and House et al.'s method (House et al., 2004) to calculate cultural distance. By using each kind of method, this study calculates the absolute culture distance and relative culture distance respectively.

The results suggest that cultural distance negatively affects customer orientation strategy, customer acquisition strategy positively affects performance and the interaction of customer acquisition and customer retention positively affects performance.

This study aims to contribute to the existing literature with a more fine-grained understanding of the inclusion of customer orientation strategy of Chinese Service MNEs in global supply chains.

The findings outline several important implications that Chinese Service MNEs seeking to expand to overseas markets.

This paper contributes a novel, combined perspective of culture distance and customer orientation strategy.

Scholars and practitioners have recognized the significance of integrating environmental practices into project context. This paper focuses on project environmental practices (PEP) and identifies PEP from the life cycle perspective, which includes green design, green procurement, green construction and investment recovery. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship among the four aspects of PEP and their effects on environmental performance and organizational performance.

A theoretical model was established and several hypotheses were developed. This study applied a survey method to test the hypothesized relationships. Based on a sample of 159 respondents, partial least squares structural equation modeling analyses were conducted.

The results show that green design has a positive impact on green procurement, green construction and investment recovery. Green procurement is also confirmed to positively influence green construction. Further, green construction and investment recovery have a direct and positive impact on environmental and organizational performance, whereas green design and green procurement influence environmental and organizational performance indirectly through green construction. Environmental performance has a significant impact on organizational performance.

This study enhances the understanding on PEP by revealing the inter-relationships among its four aspects and establishes the links between PEP and performance outcomes. The findings will contribute to the literature on the integration of environmental principles and project context.

The purpose of the paper is to assess the state of the business development services (BDS) market in Chengdu, with a view to identifying demand and/or supply side deficiencies, which public policy might help to address.

The data are drawn from two surveys undertaken in Chengdu between November 2005 and January 2006.

The research shows there are small firms that are active users of BDS, reflecting the emergence of non‐state owned enterprises in the city. The survey also shows evidence of unfulfilled latent demand, with a particular reference to sales and marketing advice and helping firms to access sources of finance. In addition, the survey of BDS providers shows that some are sensitive to the needs of small firms, although the latter are typically under‐represented in their client base.

The findings suggest that the BDS market in Chengdu is underdeveloped from a small business perspective, which can be illustrated by pointing to both demand‐ and supply‐side deficiencies. It can be argued that this is an important policy issue, if small enterprises are to fulfil their potential contribution to local economic development, particularly in relation to the development of non‐local sales.

This research adopts an “evidence‐based” approach to inform policy development.