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Firms may suffer differently from the patent thickets in a particular technology field. This paper explores how patent thickets affect the financial performance of firms with different patent propensities and technological leadership.

From the perspective of patent strategy, the authors study how patent propensity, the possibility that a firm applies for patents, affects the patent thickets and financial performance. Additionally, this paper uses patent stock to measure technological leadership, the degree to which a firm can develop, maintain and enhance technology and product innovation, to study the impact of patent propensity on firms. A three-way interaction model is used to explore the relationship among patent thickets, patent propensity, technological leadership and financial performance based on an unbalanced panel of 69 Chinese telecommunication equipment firms from 2008 to 2019.

The authors find that patent propensity positively moderates patent thickets and financial performance. Notably, technological leadership negatively moderates the moderating effect of patent propensity.

This paper enriches the heterogeneous literature of patent thickets and financial performance. It sheds light on the fact that firms with different technological leadership may use different patent strategies to cut through patent thickets.

Integrating transaction costs economics and task-technology fit theory, this study distinguishes two categories of social media–enabled interactions, namely task-related interactions and tie-related interactions, and explores the match between these two and firms' use of contracts in achieving safeguarding and coordinating purposes in interfirm governance.

Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, this study collaborated with a professional market research firm and collected responses from Chinese manufacturing firms in a survey. In Study 2, this study designed a scenario-based experiment and collected 239 participants from the Credamo platform.

This study categorized social media–enabled interactions into task-related interactions and tie-related interactions and conducted two studies to reveal that the safeguarding purpose of contract specificity is amplified by tie-related interactions, whereas the coordinating purpose of contract specificity is strengthened by task-related interactions.

This study assumes that firms permit and encourage the use of social media. However, some firms might prohibit the use of social media due to risk issues, or their partners may be prohibited from using social media.

Given that social media–enabled interactions have joint effects with contracts in achieving safeguarding and coordinating purposes, a firm's employees should match their goals with an appropriate type of social media–enabled interactions.

This study enriches the interfirm governance literature by uncovering the roles of these two types of interactions in matching contract specificity to achieve safeguarding and coordinating purposes, which provides actionable insights for managers in governing interfirm relationships.

This research explores the antecedents of tourist satisfaction and revisit intention, especially in light of the post-pandemic environment that pushed tourism to the lowest level in the present decade. A comprehensive conceptual model based on the brand equity theory (BET) is developed, and interrelationships between brand heritage, community support and benefits, hedonism, culture, tourist satisfaction and revisit intention.

The data were collected from 670 tourists visiting one of the heritage destinations in southern India (Kanchipuram). After checking the psychometric properties of the survey instrument, the hypotheses were tested using path analysis and Hayes's PROCESS macros.

The results indicate that heritage brand of destination sites is positively associated with (1) tourist satisfaction and (2) tourist revisit intention. The findings also support the positive effect of attractiveness of products is positively related to tourist satisfaction, which in turn, is a significant predictor of tourist revisit intention. The findings also support that community support benefits moderating the relationship between heritage brand and attractiveness of products in heritage destinations tourist satisfaction.

This study has several implications for practicing managers engaged in maintaining heritage destinations. As this research highlights the importance of heritage brands of destinations in influencing tourist satisfaction, local communities and policymakers need to provide the necessary infrastructure and facilities at these destinations. Further, local entrepreneurs are motivated to invest in delivering products that attract tourists.

The conceptual model developed in this study, is first of its kind, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, that investigates the effect of hedonism (second moderator) moderating the relationship between tourist satisfaction and culture (first moderator) in influencing tourists to revisit their intention. In addition to direct relationships, the moderating role of community support and benefits, culture and hedonism makes a unique contribution to the bourgeoning literature on tourism especially in Indian context.

Many studies have explored the relationship between green human resource management practices (GHRM) and employees’ green creative behavior (EGCB) within the hospitality industry. However, most prior studies have relied primarily on mono-method approaches, thereby limiting the depth of understanding about the underlying mechanism through which GHRM impacts employee behavior. The authors, in this paper, aim to argue that the connection between GHRM cannot be universal, and some individual factors will act as boundary conditions between these relationships. The authors employ a mixed-methods research design to address this gap to identify potential boundary conditions.

The authors adopted a two-phase approach, integrating qualitative (study 1) and quantitative (study 2) methodologies. Through qualitative research, the authors uncover valuable insights and construct a framework that is subsequently tested in the quantitative phase.

The findings suggest that the strength of the GHRM-EGCB relationship is contingent on the level of Environmental Specific Psychological Empowerment (ESPE) among employees. Employees with a higher degree of ESPE exhibit a stronger connection between GHRM perceptions and EGCB. Furthermore, the authors identify employees’ altruistic values (EAV) as an important moderator, indicating that the intervening effect of ESPE on the GHRM-EGCB relationship is particularly pronounced among employees with high levels of altruism.

By unmasking the complexity through a mixed-methods design, this study contributes to the existing literature by providing a more nuanced understanding of the mechanism between GHRM and green creative behavior.

This paper aims to examine how and why consumers respond to chief executive officer (CEO) activism on social media. The authors developed a conceptual model that proposes impression management as a mechanism for consumer response to CEO activism.

In Study 1a, the authors examined 83,259 tweets from 90 CEOs and compared consumer responses between controversial and noncontroversial tweets. In Study 1b, the authors replicated the analysis, using a machine-learning topic modeling approach. In Studies 2 and 3, the authors used experimental designs to test the theoretical mechanism.

On average, consumers tend to respond more to CEO posts dealing with noncontroversial issues. Consumers’ relative reluctance to like and share controversial posts is motivated by fear of rejection. However, CEO fame reverses this effect. Consumers are more likely to engage in controversial activist threads by popular CEOs. This effect holds for consumers high (vs low) in public self-consciousness. CEO fame serves as a “shield” behind which consumers protect their online image.

The study focused on Twitter (aka “X”) in the USA. Future research may replicate the study in other social media platforms and countries. The authors introduce “shielding” – liking and sharing content authored by a recognizable source – as a tactic for impression management on social media.

Famous CEOs should speak up about controversial issues on social media because their voice helps consumers engage more in such conversations.

This paper offers a theoretical framework to understand consumer reactions to CEO activism.

This study aims to learn how a three-way interaction moderation model is used to analyse the role of country-specific characteristics, in the form of the implementation of Sharia law and legal origin in a particular country, in the choice of sukuk type.

The firm profitability and firm leverages of sukuk issuer are used as the firm characteristics that can influence the choice of sukuk type between Mudharaba sukuk, Ijara sukuk and Murabaha sukuk. The research sample of 545 global sukuk issuances, obtained from the IIFS database, includes the issuance of Mudharaba sukuk, Ijara sukuk and Murabaha sukuk from ten sukuk issuer countries all over the world.

The research results show that the probability of choosing Mudharaba and Ijara sukuk is found in issuers sukuk with a high firm leverage, while the probability of choosing Murabaha sukuk is found in issuers sukuk with a high firm profitability. A three-way interaction moderation model is used in this research to explain that sukuk issuers in countries that implement Sharia law and adopt a legal origin common law system will have a higher choice of Mudharabah and Ijarah sukuk types if the firm’s leverage is high. If the firms’ profitability is high, then the sukuk issuer prefers Murabaha sukuk.

The use of firm’s characteristic variables is based solely on trade-off theory and pecking order theory. Also, limitations on the implementation of Sharia law in countries that do not provide opportunities for countries that apply a mixed law system.

The role of Sharia law and common law legal origin is proven, through a three-way interaction model, to strengthen the interaction of the firm leverage and choice of Mudharaba sukuk.

Legal certainty for Islamic financial institutions is created in the context of ease of investing in sukuk. Flexibility in the structure is also one of the factors that encourage the development of market acceptance of sukuk. The right structure of the sukuk can be used for specific target markets.

There has been no study carried out on a three-way interaction moderation model used to analyse the role of country-specific characteristics. The role of Sharia law and common law legal origin is proven, through a three-way interaction model, to strengthen the interaction of the firm leverage and choice of Mudharaba sukuk.

The present study aims to investigate the relationship between institutional influence and performance, mediated through transformational leadership (TL) and moderated by barriers, situational factors, communication and implementation.

Using a structured survey instrument, data were collected from 370 faculty members from 31 higher educational institutions in southern India. After checking the psychometric properties of the instrument, the authors used Hayes’s PROCESS to test the direct hypotheses and three-way interactions.

The results revealed that TL mediated the relationship between institutional influence and performance. Further, the findings supported the three-way interactions between (1) institutional influence, barriers and communication positively affecting TL; and (2) TL, situational factors and implementation affecting the performance of faculty members.

This study underscores the importance of TL for the smooth functioning of higher educational institutions and achieving superior performance, especially in the new normal context after the global pandemic.

This study makes several significant recommendations to administrators in higher educational institutions, in addition to contributing to the vast literature on TL. The study suggests that administrators must invest resources in developing TL skills so that employees reach their fullest potential and contribute to achieving organizational goals. In addition, leaders in organizations need to exercise a transformational style to combat the new normal post-pandemic academic environment.

This study provides new insights into the importance of TL style and institutional influence to enhance performance. To the best of our knowledge, the conceptual model developed and tested the first of its kind in India, significantly contributing to theory and practice.

This paper examines the moderated-moderation model of reciprocity belief and fear of negative evaluation between supervisors' abusive reactions and subordinates' distress.

The authors obtained 412 valid responses from Egyptian hotel employees and analyzed them using PROCESS model 3.

The three-way interaction findings proved that when employees have high reciprocity beliefs and low fear of negative evaluations, the abusive supervision-psychological distress relationship is dampened.

Organizations have the opportunity to implement human resource development (HRD) strategies focused on cultivating reduced apprehension toward negative evaluation and fostering a robust sense of positive reciprocity. To achieve this, HRD and HRM initiatives can encompass elements such as bolstering organizational and coworker support, promoting cultural assimilation and redefining work practices.

This paper adopts a comprehensive approach that recognizes the intricate interrelationships within the workplace by identifying subtle dynamics of abusive supervision and its impacts. It also explores the complex nature of such relationships rather than taking a purely causal perspective.

Given the popularity of online health communities (OHCs) and medical question-and-answer (Q&A) services, it is increasingly important to understand what constitutes useful answers and user-adopted standards in healthcare domain. However, few studies provide insights into how health information characteristics, provider characteristics and recipient characteristics jointly influence user information adoption decisions. To fill this research gap, this study examines the combined effects of physicians' certainty tone as information characteristics, seniority as provider characteristics and disease severity as recipient characteristics on patients' health information adoption.

Drawing on dual-process theory and information adoption model, an extended information adoption model is established in this study to examine the effect of attitude certainty on patients' health information adoption, and the moderating effects of online seniority and offline seniority, as well as patient motivation level—disease severity. Utilizing logit regression models, the authors empirically tested the hypotheses based on 4,224 Q&A records from a popular Chinese OHC.

The results show that (1) attitude certainty has a significant positive impact on patients' health information adoption, (2) the relationship between attitude certainty and information adoption is negatively moderated by physicians' online seniority, but is positively moderated by offline seniority; (3) there is a negative three-way interaction effect of attitude certainty, online seniority and disease severity on patients' health information adoption.

This study extends the information adoption model to examine the two-way interaction between argument quality and source reliability, as well as the three-way interaction with user motivation level, especially for health information adoption in the healthcare field. These findings also provide direct practical applications for knowledge contributors and OHCs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of three different audit characteristics in loan pricing—the most significant credit term for borrowers. Three characteristics include audit reputation, audit tenure and audit specialization.

To examine audit characteristics simultaneously to measure their effect on loan pricing, this study uses a full-rank, three-way interaction model and conducts slope difference tests. It also includes the joint effects of these variables to estimate any incremental benefits of possessing multiple qualifications.

When studying the three qualifications together, none of them alone is strong enough to affect the loan interest. But, a Big 4 auditor with tenure can benefit the client by reducing the interest by about 1.98%. The more expertise the auditor has, the better value it brings to borrowers. A highly qualified auditor with additional expertise can significantly reduce loan pricing further by about 2.96 percent.

Examining the costs and benefits of hiring certified auditors is crucial for borrowers. While the variables are not exhaustive, an understanding of the added value of hiring high-quality auditors with more than one or two qualifications to their potential premium fees helps borrowers in managers' audit selection decisions. At the same time, the results shed some light on which of the auditor's qualifications lenders might prioritize when pricing a borrower's loan.