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The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically how managers establish ethical guanxi (interpersonal relationships) with their business partners to prevent potential ethical incidences in Chinese and Western business contexts.

The present study is guided by a qualitative, abductive approach and draws on in-depth interviews with ten senior managers in five urban New Zealand organisations.

The results point out that guanxi (interpersonal relationships) purely working through renqing (reciprocity) is not sustainable, because it perpetuates a never-ending cycle of favours, once exchanging favours stopped or disappeared, then business relationships dwindled. To establish an ethical guanxi model, the authors found that xinyong (trust) is the foundation, and its enlargement stimulates lijie (empathy) that transfers pure business relationships to a genuine friendship which enhances ethical decision-making. They also posit that once managers are embodied with lijie, then they will have the virtue of ren to behave like junzi (ideal Confucian ethical person) whose business actions tend to be intrinsically guided by a sense of obligation to do something right that will work for diverse stakeholders’ interests, for the prosperity of organisations and society.

This study suggests that managers should take Confucian virtues of xinyong (trust) and lijie (empathy), because they will trigger ren (humanity) as an intrinsic value. In this way, it is more likely for them to become junzi (ideal Confucian ethical person) whose business actions are intrinsically guided by a sense of obligation to do something right that benefits various stakeholders, organisations and society.

This study contributes to the extant literature on preventing ethical incidents of guanxi (interpersonal relationships) by drawing a framework of ethical guanxi, which is built on Confucian virtues of xinyong (trust), lijie (empathy) and ren (humanity). Further, this paper strongly suggests that companies should educate their staff to become more humane to make moral decisions in daily management practice.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on university students during the Movement Control Order (MCO) and Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO). MCO was introduced in March 2020, and the learning process switched from face-to-face to online learning in schools and universities. Subsequently, with the reduced number of daily cases and active cases of COVID-19, the Malaysian Government implemented RMCO from 10th June to 31st December 2020, which had more relaxation of restrictions. This study particularly focuses on students studying in higher education institutions by analysing the impacts of the community of inquiry on students learning performance. The construct of the community of inquiry includes social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence.

This paper provides quantitative analysis, independent sample t-tests and multiple linear regression on the students’ learning performance using the framework of community of inquiry. This paper presents the analysis of the online learning preference of 282 university students during MCO and 456 students during RMCO.

The results showed that there is a significant difference in students learning process during MCO and RMCO. The findings also indicated that the social presence is the most important factor in affecting learning performance during the MCO period and it changed to teaching presence during RMCO. Students lost motivation and could not perform well using online learning methods during the MCO period but the situation improved during RMCO.

This research helps to identify the impact of the pandemic on higher education and provides insights into reshaping the future of higher education system.

Students are isolated from their peers in the learning process and struggle to adapt to the new normal in online learning. The teaching faculties are picking up new skills to deliver online courses and manage the risk as best as they can. This study presented the impact of the pandemic on students learning performance and explored the space for universities as business organizations to provide better infrastructures and platforms for online learning while battling with cash flow and debt level during this challenging time.

Students need peer support and guidance from the faculty team in their learning journey. The study provides a better understanding of how we shall promote a better higher education environment, either blended or online learning.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the impact of the community of inquiry on students learning performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students suffered during the MCO period and the learning experience got better when they were able to adapt to the changes. The higher education system needs a reform and the agency theory in corporate governance plays an important role in the transformation.

This study aims to examine the experiences of UK higher education students and the impact that emergency-imposed changes had on their learning, teaching and assessment (LTA) during the lockdown. It reflects on the views of students on how these changes impacted their education and personal circumstances. It makes suggestions, based on student observations, on how educators might support students’ LTA learning experiences more effectively.

The study uses an anonymous online questionnaire, imposed by lockdown and closure of universities, to gather the views of HE students across the UK on how COVID-19 and lockdown affected their education and personal circumstances. Using a cross-sectional study, participants were asked to complete several questions, providing quantitative and qualitative data which is analysed for the study. A total of 349 participants took part in the questionnaire and data were analysed descriptively.

Key findings suggest that the use of online virtual classrooms as a substitute for traditional face-to-face LTA has its positives and its negatives. The most significant positives are the “flexible assessments” and “digital content” and, in contrast, one of the significant drawbacks is the lack of interactions, this being true for both male and female students. However, as compared to females, males found to be missing “the campus life” more during the lockdown. Finally, the majority of student felt that there was a lack of support from the university and teaching staff during the lockdown. Universities’ governance must take control of how this issue is driven forward and learn from the experience of students.

The study makes three contributions: firstly, using students’ views to open a fresh debate on LTA approaches during the pandemic; secondly, examining the impact on student experiences due to the changes introduced because of lockdown; and finally, suggesting strategies to be implemented by HE management based on the opinions of participating students.

By adopting learning theory and a guanxi perspective, this study aims to investigate the effects of interpersonal guanxi (interpersonal networks or connections) and relationship learning on companies’ business performance when operating in a large emerging market.

Using a sample of 294 sales managers and salespeople in the Chinese hotel sector, the authors empirically test the authors' arguments through a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach.

The authors' findings indicate that strong interpersonal guanxi tends to generate more positive business performance. Furthermore, the authors find that relationship learning plays a mediating role in the association between interpersonal guanxi and hotel companies’ business performance in a Chinese context. Finally, the authors empirically explore the moderating effect of inter-firm dependence on the contribution of interpersonal guanxi to relationship learning. Findings demonstrate that this effect varies significantly based on inter-firm dependence, with interpersonal guanxi exhibiting a greater positive impact if such dependence is high.

This study enriches our understanding of interpersonal guanxi and of how companies can enhance the companies' business performance in an emerging market context.

This study aims to investigate the influence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure on asymmetric information and return on investment (RoI) in Indonesia. The research specifically assesses the effects of CSR disclosure along with other independent variables such as total assets, return on equity, capital expenditures, net profit margin and sales growth on asymmetric information and RoI.

The study applied a panel econometric regression model to examine and test the effects of CSR disclosure and financial indicators on asymmetric information and RoI. A total of 275 samples were garnered from private and state-owned publicly listed companies selected in the SRI-Kehati index as sustainable firms in Indonesia from 2009 to 2019. Those listed companies in the SRI-Kehati index have market recognition and are able to maintain sustainability practices in their business doings. Asymmetric information was calculated by measuring the spread of market share prices. CSR disclosure was measured with global reporting initiative standards. Other variables did not require calculation.

This study discerns the significant influence of CSR disclosure on asymmetric information and RoI on the listed firms of the SRI-Kehati Index in Indonesia. To articulate, the more transparent CSR disclosure is, the asymmetric information should be lower. Besides that, more comprehensive CSR disclosure is associated with a better corporate return of investment. In scrutinizing the control variables, this research validates the significant influence of corporate assets and sales revenue on both dependent variables.

This research has some limitations that require further research. First, the research was conducted in Indonesia. However, other Southeast Asian markets may have their own uniqueness. Therefore, further research is needed in other specific Southeast Asian countries. Second, the sampling bounds on the corporation which gained sustainable recognition in SRI-Kehati Index. Future studies can extend more observation by comparing SRI-Kehati index to firms, which are not listed in the index.

This study recommends better capital market monitoring and evaluation to improve the quality of the firms’ reports in both business and social aspects. By investing more in philanthropic and social activities, firms can signal the market credibility to their various external stakeholders on their market adjustment to changing external business environment.

As for society, robust CSR disclosures will facilitate investors’ understanding of the conditions before making an investment in public listed companies. At the same time, companies issuing the disclosures are expected by society to perform responsibly, as illuminated in the report. As a result, the CSR disclosures will create a virtuous cycle of sustainability between the company and the society.

First, this research reinforces the global corporate governance concern to urge more corporate disclosures on firm performance in an Indonesian context. Second, this study fills the research gap on the association of CSR disclosure to asymmetric information in Indonesian literature. Third, the findings underpin the integration of social responsibility on the firms’ core business decision-makings to warrant business credibility to all firms’ stakeholders in Indonesia.

This study aims to analyse trust and distrust as specific board processes between the board chair and chief executive officer (CEO) aimed at reducing corporate governance (CG) risk partially mitigated by regnant CG mechanisms. This study incorporates the nascent literature that posits trust and distrust as two separate constructs that co-exist simultaneously to recasts them in the CG domain.

This paper analysed data from 20 in-depth interviews conducted with board representatives at four financial services firms in The Netherlands, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

This paper found that the foundational bases of the chair–CEO relationship determine how trust and distrust are apportioned between them, which impacts board dynamics. This paper also confirmed that the constructs of trust and distrust are separate thus do not sit at opposite ends of a single continuum. Finally, this paper found that high levels of task-based distrust (as opposed to mistrust) are necessary during periods of organisational distress and more effective if there are also high levels of relational trust between the parties.

This paper empirically examines the relationship between trust and distrust in CEO–chair dyadic relationships in multiple companies across multiple countries. This paper also introduces the concept of tempered trust, which is defined as interpersonal trust tempered by task-based distrust, recasting the traditional characterisation of trust and distrust in the CG domain, thereby making a useful contribution to the literature on board dynamics.

This paper aims to discuss the effect of frontline employees' emotional labor (surface acting vs. deep acting) on customer satisfaction and the moderating role of responsibility attributions in the situation of robot service failure.

The scenario-based experimental method was designed to perform hypothesis testing and SPSS was used to analyze the data from the 363 questionnaires collected.

The results indicate that (1) employees' emotional labor recovery has a double-edged sword effect. Deep acting improves customer satisfaction, while surface acting undermines the effectiveness of service recovery and leaves customer satisfaction below previous levels. (2) Customers' responsibility attributions for service failure moderate the effect of service recovery.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to focus on the role of frontline employees' emotional labor in robot service failure contexts, which not only enriches and expands the relevant literature in this domain, but also deepens the understanding of how emotional labor and responsibility attribution effect the customer satisfaction.