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Manufacturers recognize that trusting, long‐term relationships with suppliers can contribute to improving the quality of their products. However, developing these relationships has proved quite challenging. This study uses the theory of co‐operation and competition to specify the nature of these relationships and how they can be established. Results of structural equation analyses suggest that manufacturers and suppliers who build co‐operative rather than competitive or independent goals, are able to discuss quality issues open‐mindedly. This open‐mindedness, in turn, strengthens trust and a long‐term orientation which results in quality‐enhancing relationships with suppliers. Deutsch’s theory of co‐operation and competition, although developed largely through North American research, seems useful for understanding and developing quality supply chain partnerships in East Asia.

Sociology of sport in China has evolved from being an “exotic” subject to a localized subject over the past 35 years. It is closely associated with social changes, sports policy and athletic achievement of China. As a discipline of humanitarian and social sciences of sport, it is taught in virtually all universities with sports majors. There are about 500 scholars specializing in sport sociology in the country. Textbooks written by Chinese and foreign scholars are published. Academic papers on sport sociology are often published in the 15 accredited core sports journals. The most productive authors are from universities and the developed provinces and municipalities. The established research areas of sport sociology are extensive. These include national identity, athlete mobility, Olympic legacy, sport for all, sports industry issues, feminist studies, community sport, sport for the aged and disabled, etc. However, there are few studies with critical analysis and only a few in the areas of sport and religion, sport and race, and deviance in sport in China. Various kinds of financial support at different levels are available in the country. Empirical research is common with literature review, questionnaire, case study, and interview being the most frequently used methods. However, sport sociology is not considered as a major topic but as a research direction and it is not accepted widely by mainstream sociology. The future of sport sociology is promising, but not without challenges.

This study aims to investigate the relationships between radical innovation, market forces and political/business relationships in China by combining social capital theory and contingent theory. The paper focuses on how two types of managerial ties (i.e. business and political ties) impact firms’ capacity for radical innovation. It also examines the different moderating effects of market forces (i.e. demand uncertainty, technological turbulence and competitive intensity) on the linkage of managerial ties with radical innovation in the Chinese transitional context.

A systematic literature review on managerial ties, radical innovation and market forces in emerging markets provides the theoretical foundation of our conceptual model and hypothesis. Using a survey sample of 119 Chinese firms, the authors conduct a regression analysis on the theoretical model and hypotheses.

The results show that business ties have an inverted U-shape effect on radical innovation, while political ties have a positive impact on radical innovation. Furthermore, the market forces in transitional economies (i.e. demand uncertainty, technological turbulence and competitive intensity) have different moderating effects on the relationships between two types of managerial ties and Chinese firms’ radical innovation.

This study adopts its data set from the Chinese context. It would be necessary to replicate this research in other transitional economies because of specific differences between China and other transitional economies.

Findings from our study indicate that firms which wish to succeed in radical innovation may need to adapt their tie-based strategies according to different market settings.

The paper is original in its comparative investigation of the effect of business ties and political ties on radical innovation in contingent transitional market environments using a combination of social capital and contingent theories.

Sex appeal has been widely used in most countries. However, little is known about consumers' responses to sex appeal advertising in different cultures. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of sex appeal on ad and brand evaluation among Australian, Chinese and US consumers.

The paper adopted a three (Australia, China and the USA) × two (male or female model) × two (low or high level of sex appeal) between‐group factorial design.

Australian, Chinese and US consumers have significantly different attitudes when exposed to the same ad. However, consumer buying intentions towards the advertised brand are not significantly different. Despite the general assumption that Chinese consumers might react least favourably to sex appeal ads, this paper finds that they hold similar attitudes towards sex appeal ads as US consumers and even more favourable attitudes than Australian consumers. Product involvement is found to be a significant covariate.

The sample includes young consumers, who may be more tolerant to sex appeal advertising than older generations in China. A similar situation may exist in Australia and the USA.

Understanding how consumers in different cultures respond to different advertising appeal strategies is important for international advertisers.

This is the first reported empirical study that compares Chinese consumers' responses to sex appeal advertising with those in Western countries. Findings add to the understanding of the standardisation‐localisation debate.

After identifying two kinds of internal knowledge transfer strategies, the purpose of this paper is to examine their effectiveness and whether they induce knowledge spillovers among firms.

This study collected data in China and 219 questionnaires were achieved. Then, structure equation model by LISREL was used for hypotheses testing.

The empirical results suggest that both codification and rich‐media strategies have positive effects on internal knowledge transfer. Moreover, codification strategy has a negative effect on knowledge spillovers while rich‐media strategy does not influence knowledge spillovers significantly. Thus, codification and rich‐media strategies are not double‐edged swords.

This study provides firms with two strategies, codification and rich‐media, to promote internal knowledge transfer. Moreover, these strategies do not accelerate knowledge spillovers, and codification strategy even reduces knowledge spillovers. Firms can use these strategies to construct and sustain competitive advantages.

While many knowledge creation, storage and protection strategies are studied, little is known about internal knowledge transfer strategies. This study suggests two internal knowledge transfer strategies and confirms their effectiveness. Moreover, because the relationship between internal knowledge transfer strategies and knowledge spillovers has been puzzling for a long time, this study clarifies the relationship and finds that these strategies do not accelerate knowledge spillovers and some even restrain knowledge spillovers.

The purpose of this paper is to achieve effective governance of online rumors through the proposed rumor propagation model and immunization strategy.

The paper leverages the agent-based modeling (ABM) method to model individuals from two aspects, behavior and attitude. Based on the analysis and research of online data, we propose a rumor propagation model, namely the Untouched view transmit removed-Susceptible hesitate agree disagree (Unite-Shad), and devise an immunization strategy, namely the Gravity Immunization Strategy (GIS). A graph-based framework, namely Pregel, is used to carry out the rumor propagation simulation experiments. Through the experiments, the rationality of the Unite-Shad and the effectiveness of the GIS are verified.

The study discovers that the inconsistency between human behaviors and attitudes in rumor propagation can be explained by the Unite-shad model. Besides, the GIS, which shows better performance in small-world networks than in scale-free networks, can effectively suppress rumor propagation in the early stage.

This paper provides an effective immunization strategy for rumor governance. Specifically, the Unite-Shad model reveals the mechanism of rumor propagation, and the GIS provides an effective governance method for selecting immune nodes.

The inconsistency of human behaviors and attitudes in real scenes is modeled in the Unite-Shad model. Combined with the model, the definition of diffusion domain is proposed and a novel immunization strategy, namely GIS, is designed, which is significant for the social governance of rumor propagation.

Small firms in China anticipate entrepreneurial opportunities for continual growth. However, they may fail to recognize opportunities because of their inefficiency in managing their knowledge.

In this explorative paper, the authors assess the opportunity recognition efficiency of 168 small Chinese firms using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Supplementary Tobit regressions were conducted for further exploring the factors that influence the firms’ efficiency in opportunity recognition.

Results from the DEA suggest that most respondents recognize significantly fewer opportunities than those with equivalent knowledge stock. Moreover, many firms have low levels of pure technical efficiency but high levels of scale efficiency, indicating insufficient use of knowledge as a major reason for inefficiency in opportunity recognition. The Tobit regressions show that sales and research and development intensity are relevant to a firm’s opportunity recognition efficiency.

This study calls for the investigation of efficiency issues in opportunity recognition and suggests that managers guard against unwarranted loss of opportunities owing to inefficient use of existing knowledge elements.

First, the authors introduce the concept of opportunity recognition efficiency within the entrepreneurial process. Second, they manifest the role of knowledge management in opportunity recognition. Third, they introduce DEA to investigate the relationship between knowledge stock and opportunity recognition. Fourth, this study reveals that inefficient use of knowledge is a disadvantage of small Chinese firms in terms of opportunity recognition.

Although the value of trusting, long‐term relationships for supply chain management is increasingly recognized, how conflict might contribute to quality supply chain partnerships is not well understood. This study uses research on cooperative and competitive conflict to identify when conflict can help develop productive relationships. Results of structural equation analyses suggest that manufacturers and suppliers who feel interdependent rely upon cooperative approaches to conflict, not competitive or avoiding approaches. Cooperative conflict in turn strengthens trust and a long‐term orientation which result in quality enhancing relationships with suppliers. These results challenge the value of conflict avoidance in East Asia. The theory of cooperative and competitive conflict, although developed largely in North America, seems useful for understanding and building quality supply chain partnerships in East Asia.

Based on the online brand community, this study focuses on how online brand community experience affects customer voice and discusses the relationship between community engagement and community commitment. Specifically, we examine the mediation effect of community engagement between community experience and customer voice and also the moderation role of community commitment.

The survey data is collected through the online survey of people who participate in the online mobile phone brand community. In total, 369 members of online community users (Huawei and Apple communities) were collected as the research samples. Then the structural equation model analysis was tested through the SPSS 25 and Mplus 7 in a two-stage analysis program.

The results show that (1) customer online brand community experience has a positive impact on customer voice; (2) community engagement mediates the positive relationship between online brand community experience and customer voice; and (3) community commitment plays a moderating role between customer experience and customer voice. Compared with low level customer's community commitment, when customer's community commitment is high, the level of community engagement has a greater mediation effect on the positive relationship between community experience and customer voice.

On the one hand, the model of customer community experience to customer voice built in this paper has not been fully validated. Whether the model can get more robust results needs to be extended to more different community scenarios. On the other hand, this paper is actually cross-sectional data, which cannot strictly reveal the causal relationship. The authors recommend that future research may use other research methods to further reveal its internal mechanism.

This paper shows that customer's community experience has an important impact on customer voice behavior. Among them, information experience and sociability remain as the important factor affecting customer voice behavior, which is quiet important for maintaining brand community and product or service improvement. Brand community managers need to consistently create multiple forms of information presentation and interaction channels to enhance the information and social experience of community members.

First, this paper puts forward a new perspective on customer comments or feedback-customer voice, which provides a solid foundation and reference value for future scholars to explore such important phenomena. Second, the relationship between community experience and customer voice behavior was examined, which enriched the research on community experience and also discovered another positive significance of community experience in community construction. Finally, the authors examine the mediation effect of community engagement on customer voice behavior. Community engagement is one of the important indicators that reflexing community performance, which is of great significance to the brand community.