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This study investigates the relationships among digital transformation, technological innovation, industry–university–research collaborations and labor income share in manufacturing firms.

The relationships are tested using an empirical method, constructing regression models, by collecting 1,240 manufacturing firms and 9,029 items listed on the A-share market in China from 2013 to 2020.

The results indicate that digital transformation has a positive effect on manufacturing companies’ labor income share. Technological innovation can mediate the effect of digital transformation on labor income share. Industry–university–research cooperation can positively moderate the promotion effect of digital transformation on labor income share but cannot moderate the mediating effect of technological innovation. Heterogeneity analysis also found that firms without service-based transformation and nonstate-owned firms are better able to increase their labor income share through digital transformation.

This study provides a new path to increase the labor income share of enterprises to achieve common prosperity, which is important for manufacturing enterprises to better transform and upgrade to achieve high-quality development.

Wage employees enter self-employment either directly or in a staged manner and may subsequently undertake multiple stints at self-employment. Extant research on the relationship between entry modes and the persistence and outcomes of self-employment is inconclusive. This study investigates the relationship between wage employees’ initial mode of entry into self-employment and the duration of the subsequent first two stints of self-employment.

This study used a matched longitudinal sample of 9,550 employees who became majority owners of incorporated firms from 2005 to 2016.

The findings demonstrate that the initial mode of entry into self-employment matters for the first two stints at self-employment. Staged entry into self-employment was associated with a shorter first stint and became insignificant for the second stint. Staged entry into self-employment was positively related to the odds of becoming self-employed for the second time in the same firm.

Using a comprehensive and reliable dataset, the paper shifts focus from the aggregated onward journey of novice entrepreneurs (survival as the outcome) to the duration of their self-employment stints. By doing so, the paper offers insights into the process of becoming self-employed and the patterns associated with success/failure in entrepreneurship associated with self-employment duration.

Employees facing challenges in their careers – i.e. female, migrant, elderly and lower-educated employees – might expect job searches to have a low likelihood of success and might therefore more often stay in unsatisfactory positions. The goal of this study is to discover inequalities in job mobility for these employees.

We rely on a large sample of Dutch public sector employees (N = 30,709) and study whether employees with challenges in their careers are hampered in translating job dissatisfaction into job searches. Additionally, we assess whether this is due to their perceptions of labor market alternatives.

Findings show that non-Western migrant, elderly and lower-educated employees are less likely to act on job dissatisfaction than their advantaged counterparts, whereas women are more likely than men to do so. Additionally, we find that although they perceive labor market opportunities as limited, this does not affect their propensity to search for different jobs.

This paper is novel in discovering inequalities in job mobility by analyzing whether employees facing challenges in their careers are less likely to act on job dissatisfaction and therefore more likely to remain in unsatisfactory positions.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the effects of gender composition in the workplace on employee job satisfaction and commitment.

The data were collected on both the organizational and employee levels at three different points in time in organizations with more than 70 employees. Multi-level mixed-effects ordered logistics regressions were used to account for the multi-level nature of the data and the ordered nature of the dependent variables.

Employees in gender-balanced workplaces show higher levels of job satisfaction and commitment than those in female-dominated or male-dominated workplaces. The relationship is also based on the gender of the individual, as men show a significantly lower level of both job satisfaction and commitment when working in male-dominated workplaces than others, while for women, the effect is only significant for commitment.

Aiming for a balance in the gender composition of the workplace may improve employee attitudes, especially for men. The results also indicate that further research is warranted into why job satisfaction and commitment are significantly lower among men in male-dominated workplaces.

The relationship between gender and job satisfaction and commitment is well established, but less is known about the effects of gender composition on job satisfaction and commitment. Previous papers have focused on job satisfaction. This paper extends prior studies by estimating the effects of gender composition on both job satisfaction and commitment using multi-level regressions on a rich dataset.

This study aims to examine the potentially important effects of academic embeddedness on college of business student retention and performance as well as the mediating effects of self-efficacy on the academic embeddedness student outcomes relationships. Improvements in student retention and performance reduce costs for students and universities and lead to higher incomes for graduates.

Data were gathered from students in an entry-level business course at a public university in a rural western state. Approximately 45% of the students were female, and the average age of participants was 20 years old. A survey was administered midsemester to gather data on academic embeddedness and self-efficacy. Retention was indicated by a student enrolling in a business course in a subsequent semester. Performance was measured using end-of-semester course grades. Logistic and linear regression as well as mediation analysis were used to test the hypotheses.

Academic embeddedness was found to positively predict both retention and performance, while self-efficacy was found to positively mediate the academic embeddedness retention relationship. The direct effect of embeddedness on performance was not found when controlling for self-efficacy.

Student retention and performance are important to both students and academic administrators. The findings of this study suggest that retention and performance can both be improved by focusing on factors that more strongly embed students to their colleges.

Embeddedness has been found to have high predictive validity in the employment context. This is one of the first studies to consider the effects of embeddedness in the academic context.

Little research is devoted to how salary allocation processes interfere with gender inequality in talent development in universities. Administrative data from a university indicated a substantial salary gap between men and women academics, which partially could be explained by the unequal distribution of men and women in the academic job levels after acquiring a PhD, from lecturer to full professor, with men being overrepresented in the higher job levels, as well as in the more senior positions within each job level. We demonstrated how a lack of transparency, consistency and accountability can disqualify apparent fair, merit-based salary decisions and result in biased gender differences in job and salary levels. This chapter reflects on how salary decisions matter for the recognition of talent and should be an integral part of talent management.

A debate on whether new ventures should be supported with public funding is taking place. Adopting a position on this discussion requires rigorous assessments of implemented programs. However, the few existing efforts have mostly focused on regional cases in developed countries. To fill this gap, this paper aims to measure the effects of a regional acceleration program in a developing country (Medellin, Colombia).

The economic notion of capabilities is used to frame the analysis of firm characteristics and productivity, which are hypothesized to be heterogeneous within the program. To test these relationships, propensity score matching is used in a sample of 60 treatment and 16,994 control firms.

This paper finds that treated firms had higher revenue than propensity score-matched controls on average, confirming a positive impact on growth measures. However, such financial growth is mostly observed in service firms rather than other economic sectors.

Further evaluations, with a longer period and using more outcome variables, are suggested in the context of similar publicly funded programs in developing countries.

These findings tip the balance in favor of the literature suggesting supportive programs for high-growth firms as opposed to everyday entrepreneurship. This is an insight, especially under the context of an emerging economy, which has scarce funding to support entrepreneurship.

Research on online user privacy shows that empirical evidence on how privacy literacy relates to users' information privacy empowerment is missing. To fill this gap, this paper investigated the respective influence of two primary dimensions of online privacy literacy – namely declarative and procedural knowledge – on online users' information privacy empowerment.

An empirical analysis is conducted using a dataset collected in Europe. This survey was conducted in 2019 among 27,524 representative respondents of the European population.

The main results show that users' procedural knowledge is positively linked to users' privacy empowerment. The relationship between users' declarative knowledge and users' privacy empowerment is partially supported. While greater awareness about firms and organizations practices in terms of data collections and further uses conditions was found to be significantly associated with increased users' privacy empowerment, unpredictably, results revealed that the awareness about the GDPR and user’s privacy empowerment are negatively associated. The empirical findings reveal also that greater online privacy literacy is associated with heightened users' information privacy empowerment.

While few advanced studies made systematic efforts to measure changes occurred on websites since the GDPR enforcement, it remains unclear, however, how individuals perceive, understand and apply the GDPR rights/guarantees and their likelihood to strengthen users' information privacy control. Therefore, this paper contributes empirically to understanding how online users' privacy literacy shaped by both users' declarative and procedural knowledge is likely to affect users' information privacy empowerment. The study empirically investigates the effectiveness of the GDPR in raising users' information privacy empowerment from user-based perspective. Results stress the importance of greater transparency of data tracking and processing decisions made by online businesses and services to strengthen users' control over information privacy. Study findings also put emphasis on the crucial need for more educational efforts to raise users' awareness about the GDPR rights/guarantees related to data protection. Empirical findings also show that users who are more likely to adopt self-protective approaches to reinforce personal data privacy are more likely to perceive greater control over personal data. A broad implication of this finding for practitioners and E-businesses stresses the need for empowering users with adequate privacy protection tools to ensure more confidential transactions.

This study aims to investigate why and how shared service centres (SSCs) are implemented as well as how they affect audit firm practice and audit quality.

In this qualitative study guided by the theoretical framework of institutional theory, the authors conducted 25 semi-structured interviews in seven European countries, including 16 interviews with audit partners from Big 4 firms, 6 with audit team members, 2 with interviewees from second-tier audit firms and 1 with a member of an oversight body.

The authors show that the central rationale for audit firms to implement SSCs is economic rather than external legitimacy. The authors find that SSC implementation has substantial effects on audit practices, particularly those related to standardisation, coordination and monitoring activities. The authors also highlight the potential impacts on audit quality.

By exploring the motivation for and effects of SSC implementation amongst audit firms, the authors offer insights into the best practices related to subsequent change processes and audit quality.

The study aims to estimate the short- and long-run effects of monetary policy on residential property prices in South Africa. Over the past decades, there has been a monetary policy shift, from targeting money supply and exchange rate to inflation. The shifts have affected residential property market dynamics.

The Johansen cointegration approach was used to estimate the effects of changes in monetary policy proxies on residential property prices using quarterly data from 1980 to 2022.

Mortgage finance and economic growth have a significant positive long-run effect on residential property prices. The consumer price index, the inflation targeting framework, interest rates and exchange rates have a significant negative long-run effect on residential property prices. The Granger causality test has depicted that exchange rate significantly influences residential property prices in the short run, and interest rates, inflation targeting framework, gross domestic product, money supply consumer price index and exchange rate can quickly return to equilibrium when they are in disequilibrium.

There are limited arguments whether the inflation targeting monetary policy framework in South Africa has prevented residential property market boom and bust scenarios. The study has found that the implementation of inflation targeting framework has successfully reduced booms in residential property prices in South Africa.