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The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of online reviews on answer adoption in virtual Q&A communities, with an eye toward extending knowledge exchange and community management.

Online reviews contain rich cognitive and emotional information about community members regarding the provided answers. As feedback information on answers, it is crucial to explore how online reviews affect answer adoption. Based on signaling theory, a research model reflecting the influence of online reviews on answer adoption is established and empirically examined by using secondary data with 69,597 Q&A data and user data collected from Zhihu. Meanwhile, the moderating effects of the informational and emotional consistency of reviews and answers are examined.

The negative binomial regression results show that both answer-related signals (informational support and emotional support) and answerers-related signals (answerers’ reputations and expertise) positively impact answer adoption. The informational consistency of reviews and answers negatively moderates the relationships among information support, emotional support and answer adoption but positively moderates the effect of answerers’ expertise on answer adoption. Furthermore, the emotional consistency of reviews and answers positively moderates the effect of information support and answerers’ reputations on answer adoption.

Although previous studies have investigated the impacts of answer content, answer source credibility and personal characteristics of knowledge seekers on answer adoption in virtual Q&A communities, few have examined the impact of online reviews on answer adoption. This study explores the impacts of informational and emotional feedback in online reviews on answer adoption from a signaling theory perspective. The results not only provide unique ideas for community managers to optimize community design and operation but also inspire community users to provide or utilize knowledge, thereby reducing knowledge search costs and improving knowledge exchange efficiency.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the quality management of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) impacts their supply chain financing performance (SCFP). This study also investigates the mediating roles of organisational dependence between quality management and the SCFP of SMEs, as well as the moderating role of environmental dynamics.

Questionnaires were administered to 248 financial managers responsible for supply chain finance (SCF) in SMEs in China. Data analysis techniques used include necessary condition analysis and multiple regression analysis.

Research findings show that, in SCF, the quality management of SMEs positively predicts their SCFP through the mediation of the organisational dependence of the focal enterprises in the supply chain network. Environmental dynamics are also found to moderate the relationship between quality management and SCFP through the organisational dependence of capital providers.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the relationships between SMEs' quality management and their SCFP. Also, this study provides a new theoretical lens through which to study SCF by introducing signalling theory.

Based on signaling theory, this paper aims to explore the impact of supply chain transparency (SCT) on firms' bank loan (BL) and supply chain financing (SCF) in the context of voluntary disclosure of supplier and customer lists.

Based on panel data collected from Chinese-listed firms between 2012 and 2021, fixed-effect models and a series of robustness checks are used to test the predictions.

First, improving SCT by disclosing major suppliers and customers promotes BL but inhibits SCF. Specifically, customer transparency (CT) is more influential in SCF than supplier transparency (ST). Second, supplier concentration (SC) weakens SCT’s positive impact on BL while reducing its negative impact on SCF. Third, customer concentration (CC) strengthens the positive impact of SCT on BL but intensifies its negative impact on SCF. Last, these findings are basically more pronounced in highly competitive industries.

This study contributes to the SCT literature by investigating the under-explored practice of supply chain list disclosure and revealing its dual impact on firms' access to financing offerings (i.e. BL and SCF) based on signaling theory. Additionally, it expands the understanding of the boundary conditions affecting the relationship between SCT and firm financing, focusing on supply chain concentration. Moreover, it advances signaling theory by exploring how financing providers interpret the SCT signal and enriches the understanding of BL and SCF antecedents from a supply chain perspective.

This study addresses a central research question: Does employees' personal initiative, with a benevolent political will, lead to career growth prospects in a work environment replete with perceived organizational politics? Drawing upon self-determination, signalling, and social cognitive theories, the authors examine how perceptions of organizational politics operate to limit the influence of benevolent political will – induced personal initiative on career growth prospects.

This research adopts a quantitative research design. This multi-wave, multi-sample and multi-source investigation includes 730 subordinate-supervisor dyads from India's information technology, education and manufacturing companies. The sample comprises 236 full-time faculty members from higher educational institutions and 496 mid-level managers from technical and service departments of information technology and manufacturing companies.

The results indicate that benevolent political will is significantly related to career growth prospects. In addition, perceptions of organizational politics shows a crossover interaction effect. The findings reveal that the indirect relationship between benevolent political will and career growth prospects changed significantly from those with a low perception of organizational politics to significantly negative among those perceiving organizational politics as high.

This study provides several implications for practice regarding personal initiative, benevolent political will and perceptions of organizational politics.

The significant contributions of this study are to provide new insights into the relationship between benevolent political will and career growth prospects and to unravel the paradoxical nature of the personal initiative phenomenon.

Perceptions of employment histories are important insofar as they influence future job prospects. Critically, in light of the current pandemic, wherein many individuals are likely to have unanticipated employment gaps and/or temporary work experiences, this exploratory study aims to seek a better understanding of the signal associated with temporary employment histories, which is particularly germane to individuals' employment trajectories and a successful labour market recovery.

Drawing primarily on signalling theory and using a simulated hiring decision experiment, the authors examined the perceptions of temporary employment histories, as well as the period effect of COVID-19, a major exogenous event, on the attitudes of fictitious jobseekers with standard, temporary and unemployment histories.

The authors find that prior to COVID-19 unemployed and temporary-work candidates were perceived less favourably as compared to applicants employed in a permanent job. During the COVID-19 pandemic, assessments of jobseekers with temporary employment histories were less critical and the previously negative signal associated with job-hopping reversed. This study’s third wave of data, which were collected post-COVID, showed that such perceptions largely dissipated, with the exception for those with a history of temporary work with different employers.

The paper serves as a reminder to check, insofar as possible, preconceived biases of temporary employment histories to avoid potential attribution errors and miss otherwise capable candidates.

This paper makes a unique and timely contribution by focussing and examining the differential effect of economic climate, pivoted by the COVID-19 pandemic, on perceptions of temporary employment histories.

Leveraging signalling theory and institutional environment theory, this study aims to examine how the entrepreneurial orientation of emerging market firms impacts initial public offering (IPO) performance.

The authors conduct regression analysis based on archival data from 312 firms’ IPOs in India.

The results in the Indian context suggest it differs from IPO performance in developed markets. In an emerging market context, the findings suggest that only competitive aggressiveness is valued by investors in IPOs. The findings further show that proactiveness and autonomy negatively influence IPO underpricing.

The research propositions imply that, owing to institutional voids in emerging markets, investors’ risk propensity and, hence, rewarding a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation differ from those in developed markets.

Extant literature has given limited attention to the dynamics of entrepreneurial orientation and the effect of each dimension of entrepreneurial orientation on IPO performance in emerging markets.

This study aims to investigate the direct effect of organizational reputation (OR), employer brand (EB) and organizational attributes (OA) on the intention to apply for a job vacancy (IAJV); further, it examined the mediating effect of employer brand in the OA-IAJV relationship while taking into consideration the moderating effect of organizational reputation.

A mixed-method approach was employed, with ten in-depth interviews followed by a questionnaire with additional 356 job seekers in Cairo and Giza cities; the sample includes both fresh graduates and experienced job applicants in the job market. The qualitative analysis confirmed that some respondents use organizational reputation as a signal of its performance. The path analysis technique tests the research hypotheses using a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that the most influential variable in the intention to apply is organizational attributes, followed by organizational reputation and finally employer brand. There is a significant relationship between organizational attributes and intention to apply for a job vacancy via employer brand. In addition, the results indicate a noteworthy moderating impact of organizational reputation on the association between employer brand intentions to apply for a job and the relationship between organizational attributes and intention to apply for a job opening.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study contributes to the understanding of the direct and indirect effects of organizational reputation and organizational attributes on intention to apply through the mediating role of the employer brand. This research opens new avenues for recruitment research, considering the moderating effect of organizational reputation on strengthening the impact of the independent variables on the intention to apply and the interaction between the variables affecting the intention. Further, this study focuses on the needs of the job applicants when perceiving the organizational factors and identifies which signals can generate the intention to apply according to the signaling theory.

This study elucidates the interactive relationship of sustainability assurance (SA) quality with corporate environmental sustainability performance (CESP) and firm value and explores the moderating impact of CESP on the SA quality–firm value relationship.

The sample comprises 320 firm-year observations of 40 companies listed on the Cotation Assistée en Continu (CAC 40) from 2010 to 2019. The authors use the simultaneous equations model to capture the CESP and SA quality–firm value relationship and apply the three-stage regression and generalised method of moments approaches to address possible endogeneity.

The results show that CESP, as assessed by International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 14001 certification, has a significant positive effect on firm value, the relevance of which implies that in the case of good environmental performance, society's perception of a firm is much more favourable; consequently, the firm is likely to be rewarded with a premium value in capital markets. In addition, environmental performance has a stronger interaction with SA quality, acting as a moderator variable; thus, greater SA quality signals credibility owing to increased eco-efficiency. The authors interpret their findings within a multi-theoretical framework that draws insights from legitimacy, stakeholders and signalling theoretical perspectives.

This study contributes to the literature by re-examining the relationship between SA quality and firm value. It also provides new evidence of the moderating effect of CESP on the SA quality–firm value nexus. Specifically, this study explores the joint effects of credibility and eco-efficiency on market confidence in sustainability information. The authors use a simultaneous equation model to capture the reciprocal association between SA quality and firm value, whereas prior studies on SA quality and market performance have frequently used single-equation regression. The authors also find that CESP positively moderates the relationship between SA quality and firm value. Including CESP and exploring the moderating impact of eco-efficiency on the SA quality–firm value relationship is a novel approach.

This study aims to investigate the direct nexus between board characteristics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and the cost of equity capital (CEQ). This is done by using agency theory, stakeholder theory and signalling theory, followed by an investigation into the indirect mediation impact of CSR disclosure in the board characteristics-CEQ nexus. It intends to present new experimental evidence from Jordan’s developing economy.

The study’s target population was services companies registered on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) between 2012 and 2020. As a result, the population and sampling of this study are represented by all services companies for whom complete data are available over the period, with a total of 43 services companies yielding 387 company-year observations. Data for our study were obtained from their annual disclosures and the ASE’s database.

The main findings demonstrated that board size, board gender variety and the number of board sessions positively affect CSR disclosure significantly. In addition, three board characteristics (i.e. board size, board independence and board gender variety) significantly negatively affect CEQ. Besides, CSR disclosure significantly negatively affects CEQ and it fully mediates the relationship between two board characteristics (i.e. board size and board gender variety) and CEQ, whereas it partially mediates the nexus between board independence, CEO/Chairman duality and the number of board sessions of board characteristics and CEQ.

This study varies from earlier studies, in that it builds a new research model by looking at the mediating role of CSR disclosure in the nexus among board characteristics and the CEQ.

This study aims to understand the impact of underlying theme in the communication on social media on funding received by early-stage start-ups.

The study is based on empirical testing of data of 849 start-ups and more than 130K tweets. Machine learning (ML) model has been used for text classification of 130K+ tweets. Causal mediation analysis with bootstrapping is carried out for hypothesis testing.

Tweets addressing quality-related uncertainty are a predictor of amount of funds raised. Audience response acts as a mediator between tweets focusing on relational orientation and amount of funds raised.

The authors advance signaling theory by theorizing and investigating the importance of signal content. Endogenous signal of quality directly influences the start-ups outcomes, while exogenous signal helps disseminate information and influence the success.

Entrepreneurs should put in concerted effort to reduce uncertainty about the start-ups. Value creation is a central concept for start-ups; however, communicating value should be the dominant part of social media strategy.

Computer-based language processing techniques have amplified the research focused on content. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study that explores underlying themes of communication of start-ups and their impact on acquiring funds.