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The purpose of this paper is to assess the combined impact of the Industry 4.0 blockchain and industrial internet of things technology (IIoT) technologies on the development of supply chain linkages associated with power, benefits and risk reduction and the ultimate impact of the linkages on supply chain performance.

A structural model with blockchain and IIoT as antecedents to the supply chain power, benefits and risk reduction linkages and the linkages as antecedent to supply chain performance is theorized. Data collected from 303 US manufacturing managers are analyzed using a covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB/SEM) methodology.

The CB/SEM results indicate that blockchain technology does not directly impact implementation of the linkages. Rather, implementation of blockchain technology supports implementation of IIoT technology, which strengthens supply chain linkages, thereby improving supply chain performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to provide empirical evidence that Industry 4.0 technologies such as blockchain and IIoT strengthen linkages among supply chain partners related to power, benefits and risk reduction and that those stronger linkages lead to improved supply chain performance. It should be noted that this study is based on data from managers representing only one sector (manufacturing) and one country (USA). Replication based on data from other sectors and countries is needed to support generalization of the results.

Practitioners are provided with empirical evidence that the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies such as blockchain and IIoT support supply chain management. These technologies facilitate data and information sharing among supply chain partners, enabling the integration and coordination of business processes throughout the entire supply chain.

The ultimate customers of supply chains benefit when supply chain partners work together efficiently and effectively. The implementation of blockchain and IIoT digital technologies lead to improve linkages among supply chain partners driving improvements in both efficiency and effectiveness, thus benefiting customers and society.

Industry 4.0 technologies are relatively new with the promise of improved supply chain performance. The efficacy of Industry 4.0 technologies as mechanisms to enhance information sharing is demonstrated based on the results of this study.

The construction sector (CNS) occupies a very unique position in any economy depending on whether developed or developing economy. The size and linkages of the CNS are expected to be high to help push or pull the economy from developing to developed economy through elaborate forward and backward linkages, a cardinal aim of developing economies. This paper aims to investigate the forward and backward linkages of the CNS in the Nigerian economy.

In contrast to the traditional input–output analysis to assess sectoral economic performance and production interdependence, this paper used econometric techniques, including unit root test, cointegration test and Granger causality test to analyze the data. Time-series data (TSD) for the study were extracted from United Nations Statistical Department database.

The result indicated that the CNS has low forward linkages but high backward linkages to virtually all the sectors of the Nigerian economy. Thus, the outputs of construction mainly satisfy the manufacturing and other activities.

The paper gives an insight into the construction on backward linkages but less extensive forward linkages. The paper recommends a massive local content development of sector to deepen backward and forward linkages and thus helps pull or push weak sectors out of stagnation.

This paper aims to conduct a systematic literature review on the fintech services and financial inclusion of the developing nations that particularly focuses on lower middle-income group nations (LMIGN) and upper middle-income group nations (UMIGN) to highlight the research areas that have not received attention and present opportunities for future research.

This paper adopts a systematic approach to examine 65 research articles published from 2016 to 2021, adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines.

The study identifies research gaps in two key themes: backward and outward linkages. In backward linkages, the literature on UMIGN should pay attention to the behavioural patterns associated with lending, investment and market provision-related fintech services. Further research is needed to understand the relationship between fintech services on the usage and quality dimension of financial inclusion in both LMIGN and UMIGN. For outward linkages, future research work should explore the role of fintech and financial inclusion in the development of LMIGN. This study provides valuable insights and guides future research directions by comprehensively mapping the existing studies.

This study does not use quantitative tools, such as meta and bibliometric analysis, to validate the findings.

This research paper offers new perspectives that introduce a novel framework for analysing literature on fintech, financial inclusion and its impact on the overall development of UMIGN and LMIGN.

With the advent of Internet technologies, shorter product life cycles and increasing competition, organisations have started looking for innovation sources outside the organisational boundaries. The external community of crowds can be used as a valuable source of co-creation in a company's innovation process to generate value. Despite its growing popularity, organisations often face difficulty capturing value from crowdsourcing due to the lack of proper mechanisms behind crowdsourcing-based value co-creation between a crowd and an organisation and their impact on organisational learning and innovation performance. The present study seeks to understand the crowdsourcing-based co-creation mechanism that influences knowledge transfer effectiveness and the organisation's absorptive capacity, resulting in improved innovation performance.

The model was empirically tested using online survey data received from 300 managers of IT firms. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to test the model.

The empirical results reveal that crowdsourcing-based value co-creation causes structural, cognitive and relational linkages between a crowd and a firm, among which crowdsourcing-based cognitive linkage contributes more to organisational value capture. Further, an organisation's effective knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity play an important role in influencing the crowdsourcing-based-co-creation organisational learning-innovation performance framework.

This is the first and foremost study that has developed an integrated model using social capital dimensions to understand the entire mechanism behind crowdsourcing-based value co-creation between a crowd and an organisation and their impact on organisational learning and innovation performance. The study provides organisations with theoretical and practical implications of using crowdsourcing as a value co-creation tool and its effects on enhancing organisational learning and value capture.

This paper aims to explore whether increasing Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) is associated with rising contributions of local industry in African countries connected to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The existence of cooperative industry linkages between Chinese investments and local businesses is a necessary condition for achieving the mutual benefits asserted by the BRI.

Under growing FDI, the authors framed increasing local industry contribution as indicative of existing industry linkages. Using principal component analysis and multiple regression on collated country-level data, the authors examined relationships between key industry output variables and several independent variables representing Chinese investment and economic activity in a contiguous three-country region, over two investment periods.

Increasing Chinese FDI was associated with positive economic outcomes including decreasing unemployment; however, it did not appear to support local industry participation. The authors identified a “China effect” that hampered industry contribution to gross domestic product. The authors found that attempting to counterbalance this effect through direct exports to China was not strategically sound. Similarly, export-focused clusters in special zones may not foster industry linkages if they result in isolationism. Rather, host countries have an opportunity to enhance local industry contribution through leveraging interconnectivity factors under increasing FDI.

Small sample size of the study has implications for the predictive power of the model and for the complete explanation all the emerging findings. However, the authors presented compelling arguments for selecting the specific three countries. By conducting robustness checks on a separate region, findings of this study were substantially corroborated.

Instead of exporting directly to China as a way to mitigate local industry contraction, host countries need to thoughtfully pursue opportunities that present the greatest value-added export advantages. Proposed Chinese-funded infrastructure projects must be negotiated with a goal to strategically reduce interconnectivity barriers and achieve broader logistics improvements in the host countries.

The study provides a tool for proponents of local industry growth to present clearer frameworks in their advocacy. The social tensions around Chinese dominance in the host countries can be reduced by understanding and pursuing levers that enhance industry contribution in those contexts.

This study takes a different approach to examining the professed win-win proposition of the BRI in Africa. It uncovers important effects of increasing Chinese FDI and addresses viable host country responses, including a clear pathway for forging the cooperative industry linkages needed for inclusive growth and sustainable development.

Owing to dual constraints including liability of foreignness and liability of origin when emerging multinationals internationalize, they inevitably face the challenge of overseas legitimation. However, few studies have explored how latecomers cross the threshold of legitimacy in the dynamic context of transnational operation. The purpose of this paper is to unravel the evolution process, triggers and specific strategies of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing of emerging multinationals.

Through the longitudinal case study of Haier Group and Goldwind Sci & Tech Co., Ltd, this study investigates the periodical characteristics of overseas legitimacy threshold crossings and the co-evolution among critical factors influencing the legitimation process in the host country.

First, it summarizes that the legitimacy threshold in the host country experiences a sequential process from pragmatic legitimacy to normative legitimacy, and finally cognitive legitimacy. It is an inevitable choice for emerging multinational enterprises to realize and sustain legitimation from passive adaptation to active creation. Second, it reveals that the triggers for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy include periodically dynamic factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration, as well as cross-stage spiral interaction effects. Third, it determines the specific strategies for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy, namely, replacement, upgrading and reconstruction of organizational identity, and reveals the important role of insisting on the country-of-origin Facebook in promoting the legitimation.

This study enriches the legitimacy threshold crossing literature from an evolutional perspective, especially the traditional static legitimacy research. This study also reveals the key impacting factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration – and their evolution process interacted with the legitimation process.

The emerging multinationals should break the stereotypes from developed markets in that only creating new cognitive patterns through active legitimate strategies can they truly cross the legitimacy threshold in the host country. The emerging multinationals also need to retain their own home country legitimacy traits – Facebook and balance the relation between the image of the home country and the image of host country.

This paper investigates the process of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing for emerging multinationals in a dynamic context of transnational operation, particularly with respect to the evolutionary role played by international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration.

This paper aims to examine how the linkages between organizational commitment (OC) and five leadership styles, namely, authentic leadership, benevolent leadership, ethical leadership, moral leadership and spiritual leadership, have been investigated in the literature.

This systematic literature review applies a matrix method to examine the significant literature in leadership and OC, specifically considering themes of self-development, self-awareness, self-regulation, self-discipline and self-motivation necessary for individuals and organizations. The papers from Australian Business Deans Council, Scopus and Web of Science listed journals were reviewed. Forty-three peer-reviewed English publications from 20 journals were selected and analysed.

The synthesis of these empirical studies revealed that the relationship between OC and these leadership styles had primarily been mostly quantitatively investigated in many countries and sectors. Additionally, ethical leadership remains the most commonly researched style. Furthermore, there are mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions in the relationship between these styles and OC.

The literature search in this study was mainly focused on English articles only; therefore, some papers in other languages may not have been included. Additional qualitative studies based on these linkage themes need to be conducted in human resource development (HRD) contexts.

This review offers an overall picture of the existing knowledge of OC and leadership that will be fruitful for HRD practitioners to understand and replicate these concepts.

There are few systematic literature reviews on the relationship between OC and leadership styles. This paper is among the first systematic reviews to analyse how leadership has been associated with OC and provides potential research directions. HRD practitioners and academia should find the results of this study helpful.

This study aims to contribute to the body of knowledge through focusing on the moderating effect of risk-taking propensity in the relationship between network linkage and business performance.

Exploratory factor analysis was conducted so as to verify the items. Furthermore, the direct and moderation tests were conducted through the PROCESS macro.

The findings revealed the propensity for risk-taking is a significant moderator of the relationship between network linkage and business performance.

Women entrepreneurs are urged to increase their level of involvement in the networks so as to obtain external resources. Also, women entrepreneurs are encouraged to improve their risk-taking behaviour through training.

Little is known about the moderating role of risk-taking proclivity in the relationship between network linkage and business performance, particularly for women-owned businesses.

This chapter aims to discuss the challenges facing these countries building productive capacity for development. This chapter makes use of data published by international organizations as indicators for measuring the state of development in the Arab region. Several indicators are presented to compare Arab countries with other world regions. The use of data identifies some of the gaps that countries in the Arab region need to close to strengthen capacity building for development and fostering economic growth. The findings from the data presented reveal that the productive structure in most Arab countries remains weak to generate production linkages and provide incentives for investment in nonenergy sectors. The failure of the export-led growth model to diversify output and promote development in energy producing countries has increased the dependence of these countries on global trade. Fluctuations in commodity prices and uncertainty about global demand for energy have influenced the ability of the state to construct strategies for rapid transformation. Except for the energy sector, the productivity of nonoil sectors remains low reflecting inadequate incentives and ineffective entrepreneurial capabilities. The study examines the challenges for building productive capacity in the Arab world. It illustrates the failure of the led-export model and its inability to prompted economic diversification, especially in the Gulf countries. The study contributes to the literature on capacity building in the Arab world so that to encourage researchers and students of development conducting studies concerning the main development challenges facing these countries.

Drawing on the relational view and contingency theories, this study explores supply chain relationship conditions' roles in interrelationships between environmental, social and supply chain performance (SCP), i.e. triple bottom line (TBL).

The data from industries and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to validate the proposed model. Interviews with industry experts were conducted to further understand the findings.

The authors find that relationship conditions, such as inventory information sharing, dependency, opportunistic behavior and conflicts, moderate TBL linkages. Interestingly, power asymmetry does not moderate the linkages. Social performance mediates between environmental and SCP. This indirect effect is stronger than the effect of environmental performance on SCP.

This research is perhaps the first to bring a much-needed nuanced view on the importance of relationship conditions for TBL performance linkages. The research further underlines the importance of social performance in an emerging economy.