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This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business network that thrived in pre-1949 China, are analyzed.

The Critical Historical Research Method (CHRM) undergirds a study of Shangbangs’ historicity (i.e. their socio-historically embedded multiplicity, including organizational forms, activities and connotations.

As informal regional, professional, project-based, special-product-based or mixed marketing networks, Shangbangs relied on “flexible specialization” and coupled multiple business needs to market goods and services, business organizations, specific social values and, when necessary, to debrand business rivals.

This analysis extends theories about marketing networks by probing their subtypes, diverse marketing activities, multipronged channels and relationship building with social entities (including underground societies, business associations and guilds) in response to pre-1949 China’s market uncertainties. Substantiating an alternative approach to “flexible specialization” and marketing innovations within the pre-1949 Chinese economy shows how a parallel theoretical framework can complement western-based marketing theories.

This first comprehensive analysis of Shangbangs, an innovative historical Chinese marketing network outside the conventional market-corporate dichotomy, can inform theory building for marketing strategy-making and management conditioned by social contexts.

This paper aims to analyse residents’ perceptions of tourism growth in Porto prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to determine the most appropriate strategies to mitigate negative tourism impacts. Studies on resident perceptions of tourism impacts are still scarce, particularly the ones addressing the topic in the context of Portuguese urban tourism areas.

Data was collected through an online survey, focusing on three categories of impacts: (i) economic, (ii) sociocultural (iii) and spatial-environmental, and the respective mitigation strategies, analysed from the perspective of Porto’s residents. Descriptive and bivariate statistics – T-test and Eta correlation – were used to analyse the collected data.

Respondents who live in the city centre experience specific tourism impacts more negatively, when compared to those living outside the inner-city area. Furthermore, no strong correlation is found between the said impacts and the respective mitigation strategies. However, creating awareness among tourists about acceptable behaviour in shared spaces is the strategy that stands out, as it has a medium correlation with all three impact categories. Most impact-strategy associations are weak, meaning that the defined strategies are not the most case-appropriate, which is something that policymakers should address.

To the best of the author’s/authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to adopt this approach in tackling the negative impacts of rapid tourism growth in Porto.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical historical analysis of the business (mis)behaviors and influencing factors that discourage enduring cooperation between principals and agents, to introduce strategies that embrace the social values, economic motivation and institutional designs historically adopted to curtail dishonest acts in international business and to inform an improved principal–agent theory that reflects principal–agent reciprocity as shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, strategic and ideological forces

The critical historical research method is used to analyze Chinese compradors and the foreign companies they served in pre-1949 China.

Business practitioners can extend orthodox principal–agent theory by scrutinizing the complex interactions between local agents and foreign companies. Instead of agents pursuing their economic interests exclusively, as posited by principal–agent theory, they also may pursue principal-shared interests (as suggested by stewardship theory) because of social norms and cultural values that can affect business-related choices and the social bonds built between principals and agents.

The behaviors of compradors and foreign companies in pre-1949 China suggest international business practices for shaping social bonds between principals and agents and foreign principals’ creative efforts to enhance shared interests with local agents.

Understanding principal–agent theory’s limitations can help international management scholars and practitioners mitigate transaction partners’ dishonest acts.

A critical historical analysis of intermediary businesspeople’s (mis)behavior in pre-1949 (1840–1949) China can inform the generalizability of principal–agent theory and contemporary business strategies for minimizing agents’ dishonest acts.

Learning from safety accidents and sharing safety knowledge has become an important part of accident prevention and improving construction safety management. Considering the difficulty of reusing unstructured data in the construction industry, the knowledge in it is difficult to be used directly for safety analysis. The purpose of this paper is to explore the construction of construction safety knowledge representation model and safety accident graph through deep learning methods, extract construction safety knowledge entities through BERT-BiLSTM-CRF model and propose a data management model of data–knowledge–services.

The ontology model of knowledge representation of construction safety accidents is constructed by integrating entity relation and logic evolution. Then, the database of safety incidents in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is established based on the collected construction safety incident reports and related dispute cases. The construction method of construction safety accident knowledge graph is studied, and the precision of BERT-BiLSTM-CRF algorithm in information extraction is verified through comparative experiments. Finally, a safety accident report is used as an example to construct the AEC domain construction safety accident knowledge graph (AEC-KG), which provides visual query knowledge service and verifies the operability of knowledge management.

The experimental results show that the combined BERT-BiLSTM-CRF algorithm has a precision of 84.52%, a recall of 92.35%, and an F1 value of 88.26% in named entity recognition from the AEC domain database. The construction safety knowledge representation model and safety incident knowledge graph realize knowledge visualization.

The proposed framework provides a new knowledge management approach to improve the safety management of practitioners and also enriches the application scenarios of knowledge graph. On the one hand, it innovatively proposes a data application method and knowledge management method of safety accident report that integrates entity relationship and matter evolution logic. On the other hand, the legal adjudication dimension is innovatively added to the knowledge graph in the construction safety field as the basis for the postincident disposal measures of safety accidents, which provides reference for safety managers' decision-making in all aspects.

People's socializing behavior in social networking services (SNS) presents dramatically different features, forming differentiated online social interaction patterns (DOSIP) in SNS. This study aims to explore the relationships between users' multidimensional psychological needs and multiple social interaction patterns in SNS.

Based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs and use and gratifications (U&G) theory, the authors develop the research model to examine the effects of psychological needs on DOSIP. A survey is used to collect the data of SNS users' social interaction. The authors adopt structural equation modeling–neural network (SEM-NN) integrated method to examine the research model.

Need to belong, need for self-esteem, need for social contact, need for emotional expression, need for cognition, and need for external-esteem have significant influences on both active and passive social interactions respectively.

Based on the categorization of DOSIP into six types in terms of the level of activity and disclosure of social interaction, the authors construct an integrated research model of multidimensional psychological needs to multiple social interaction patterns, and validate the antecedents of DOSIP from the perspective of psychological needs.

The elderly service industry is emerging in China. The Chinese government introduced a series of policies to guide elderly service enterprises to improve their service quality. This study explores novel differentiated subsidy strategies that not only promote the improvement of service quality in elderly service enterprises but also alleviate the financial burden on the government.

Evolutionary game and Hotelling models are employed to investigate this issue. First, a Hotelling model that considers consumer word-of-mouth preferences is established. Subsequently, an evolutionary game model between local governments and enterprises is constructed, and the evolutionary stable strategies of both parties are analyzed. Finally, simulation experiments are conducted.

The findings indicate that local government decisions have a significant influence on the behavior of elderly service enterprises. Increasing the proportion of local governments opting for subsidy strategies helps incentivize elderly service enterprises to improve their service quality. Furthermore, providing differentiated subsidies based on the preferences of the customer base of elderly service enterprises can encourage service quality improvement while reducing government expenditure. The findings offer valuable insights into the design of government subsidy policies.

Compared with previous research, this study examines the role of consumer preferences in a differentiated subsidy policy. This enriches the authors’ understanding of the field by incorporating neglected aspects of consumer preferences in the context of the emerging elderly service industry.

Considering rapid digitalization development, this study examines the impacts of digital technology innovation on social responsibility in platform enterprises.

The study applies the event study method and cross-sectional regression analysis, taking 168 digital technology innovations for social responsibility issued by 88 listed platform enterprises from 2011 to 2022 to study the impact of digital technology innovations for social responsibility announcements of different announcement content and platform attributes on the stock market value of platform enterprises.

The results show that, first, the positive stock market reaction is produced on the same day as the digital technology innovation announcement. Second, the announcement of the platform’s public social responsibility and the announcement of co-innovation and radical innovation bring more positive stock market reactions. In addition, the announcements mentioned above issued by trading platforms bring more positive stock market reactions. Finally, the social responsibility attribution characteristics of the announcement did not have a significant differentiated impact on the stock market reaction.

Most scholars have studied digital technology innovation for social responsibility through modeling rather than second-hand data to empirically examine. This study uses second-hand data with the instrumental stakeholder theory to provide a new research perspective on platform social responsibility. In addition, in order to explore the different impacts of digital technology innovation on social responsibility, this study has classified digital technology innovation for social responsibility according to its social responsibility and digital technology innovation characteristics.

Consumers nowadays are no longer bystanders in the process of production but are proactive collaborators with the power to co-create value with brands. This study aims to explore the impact of social commerce on the co-creation process of brand value in a social commerce setting.

A questionnaire survey was conducted online to gather 300 eligible responses. The data were empirically validated using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) method.

The results indicated that brand engagement (BEN) is vital to brand co-creation (BCC) in social commerce, which could be driven by social-hedonic value (SHV) and social information sharing (SIS).

This study stresses the influence of consumer autonomy in the process of BCC by probing the role of SIS. Moreover, by considering the prevailing trend in social media, this study offers a nuanced perspective on the values of social commerce from the viewpoint of SHV.

This study may serve as a useful guide for practitioners to improve their digital outreach strategy on social commerce to forge stronger relationships, encourage further engagements and promote value co-creation within their brand community.

This examines the effect of relationship quality (RQU) and BEN on BCC through a relational viewpoint.

This paper delves into the critical role of women in the domains of architecture, engineering, construction and urban planning, particularly within the context of the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the imperative of achieving gender parity. Concentrating on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, this paper explores the profound importance of women as essential contributors to urbanisation and sustainable development. It scrutinizes the existing gender disparities within the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries; evaluates prevailing women empowerment indices in diverse sectors; and presents a strategic framework for harnessing women’s engagement to cultivate inclusive and sustainable urban cultures in the GCC. This conceptual paper introduces an actionable framework that can serve as a guiding agenda for empowering women in the AEC sectors by incorporating their socio-cultural, economic and ecological contributions towards creating sustainable cities.

Centring its focus on Gulf Cities, this paper employs a comprehensive approach to examine the current gender disparities within the architecture, engineering and construction sectors. It probes potential barriers and advocates for leveraging women’s participation to foster inclusive and sustainable urban development in the GCC. The study introduces the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) for the Gulf AEC industry elucidating how these measures are translated into a tailored framework.

The paper presents a practical framework that provides actionable guidance for engaging various stakeholders, including governments, academia and industry players, to empower women within the AEC industries. An “Agenda for equitable AEC industries for sustainable urban development: Our Common Gulf Cities” is culminated in a Women Empowerment Index for the AEC Industry (WEI-AEC) designed to serve as a guidance tool to monitor progress within industry, governments and academia.

Future research endeavours could advance the framework by conducting institutional support analyses, multi-stakeholder collaboration studies and practical testing of the framework within real-world scenarios.

The findings of this study can guide and influence a diverse range of initiatives, including policy development, educational strategies, corporate endeavours, awareness campaigns, capacity-building programs, skill enhancement initiatives and knowledge exchange among the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

This conceptual paper introduces a practical framework that can serve as a roadmap for implementing the study’s potential to shape policies, educational programs and corporate initiatives aimed at advancing both gender equality and the development of sustainable cities.

First, this study assesses the link between research and development (R&D) expenses and firm efficiency. Second, this study explores how family control moderates the link between the two.

This study uses two measures of time-based firm efficiency, namely, a window slacks-based measure (WSBM) and a window epsilon-based measure (WEBM) of data envelopment analysis (DEA). Then, 216 firm-year observations are analyzed in the Taiwanese cultural and creative industries from 2005 to 2017.

This study finds that R&D expenses significantly worsen firm efficiency, and that family control positively moderates this effect. A further test separating the sample into family-controlled and nonfamily-controlled firms indicates that R&D expenses negatively affect the efficiency of nonfamily-controlled firms but positively affect that of family-controlled firms.

The existing literature has examined the link between R&D expenses and corporate performance. However, the process by which R&D expenses affect corporate performance from a production perspective remains unknown.

Overall, this study provides insights for policymakers to scrutinize resource management and R&D expenses from the production and resource-based perspectives.