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Web-based course assessment is a new thing at China's Open University – China Radio and Television Universities (China RTVUs). This article reports an innovative pilot study in this research area. The experimental course for integrated web-based assessment in this study is Advanced English Writing, which is a compulsory course in the B.A. English programme at China Central Radio and Television University (CCRTVU). The study started in March 2005 and it is still in progress at the moment. This article first describes the webbased assessment design of the course and the implementation procedures. Then it moves on to report some initial feedback from the student participants on the pilot study. The article ends with a tentative plan for further actions based on the current study.

Organizational culture comprises a firm's climate that informally and tacitly defines how the firm develops and uses knowledge, thus it has a significant effect on knowledge creation capability. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of organizational culture on knowledge creation capability.

The data of 212 Chinese firms collected through face‐to‐face interview is used to empirically test the hypotheses.

This study finds that organizational culture plays a critical role in knowledge creation capability. Specially, collectivism has a positive impact on knowledge creation capability, while power distance and uncertainty avoidance have negative effects.

This study not only contributes to knowledge management research by identifying a key antecedent of knowledge creation capability – organizational culture – but also is of importance to organizational culture literature by demonstrating the proper organizational culture for knowledge creation capability.

This paper aims to study the joint decision making of advance selling and service cancelation for service provides with limited capacity when consumers are overconfident.

For the case in which consumers encounter uncertainties about product valuation and consumption states in the advance period and are overconfident about the probability of a good state, we study how the service provider chooses the optimal sales strategy among the non-advance selling strategy, the advance selling and disallowing cancelation strategy, and the advance selling and allowing cancelation strategy. We also discuss how overconfidence influences the service provider’s decision making.

The results show that when service capacity is sufficient, the service provider should adopt advance selling and disallow cancelation; when service capacity is insufficient, the service provider should still implement advance selling but allow cancelation; and when service capacity is extremely insufficient, the service provider should offer spot sales. Moreover, overconfidence weakens the necessity to allow cancelation under sufficient service capacity and enhances it under insufficient service capacity but is always advantageous to advance selling.

The obtained results provide managerial insights for service providers to make advance selling decisions.

This paper is among the first to explore the effect of consumers’ overconfidence on the joint decision of advance selling and service cancelation under capacity constraints.

While the relationship between non-family CEOs and corporate innovation in China has been widely studied, the results remain inconclusive. This study explores the relationship between non-family CEOs and corporate innovation in the context of intergenerational succession. It considers the background and background characteristics of non-family CEOs in an attempt to provide a theoretical foundation for human resource management and innovative strategic management that can be applied in the transformation of family companies.

The authors develop, then test, a series of hypotheses using an econometric analysis of a large sample of Chinese listed family firms. To control for endogeneity problems, such as missing variables in the model and the selectivity bias of the sample, propensity score matching (PSM) model is applied to analyze the panel data of 452 listed family firms from 2009–2019.

This study first validates the mechanism by which non-family CEO background characteristics affect innovation performance in family firms. It then reveals the varying moderating effects of two stages of intergenerational succession (i.e. later-generation participation in management and later-generation take-over management) that influence the relationship between non-family CEOs and corporate innovation.

The study's findings based on upper echelon and imprinting theory complement and extend existing research by revealing the impact of non-family CEOs from different backgrounds, and also identifying the role of intergenerational succession in the relationship between non-family CEO background characteristics and innovation performance.

The research on corporate governance has different perspectives on the relationship between ownership concentration and executive compensation, and the empirical findings on this linkage are also inconclusive. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of ownership concentration on executive compensation in emerging economies.

By connecting different perspectives with the characteristics of emerging economies together, this research explores the impact of ownership concentration on executive compensation, and then empirically tests the hypotheses based on the archival data of publicly held firms in China.

The paper finds that there is no significant relationship between ownership concentration and executive compensation in state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), while there is a U‐shaped relationship in non‐SOEs.

This study not only offers an empirical test of the effect of ownership concentration on executive compensation, but also provides some insights into the debates on the relationship between ownership concentration and executive compensation in emerging economies.

The paper aims to propose a clustering model for panel data. More specifically, the paper aims to construct a gray incidence model for panel data to solve the classification with multi-factors and multi-attributes.

The paper opted for a clustering theory study using gray incidence theory based on dynamic weighted function. The paper presents an example to verify the rationality of the new model, which suggests that the new model can reflect the incidence degree of panel data.

The paper provides a new gray incidence model based on a dynamic weighted function that can amplify the characteristics of the sample to some extent. The properties of the new incidence model, such as normalization, symmetry and nearness, are all satisfied. The paper also shows that the new incidence model performs very well on cluster discrimination.

The new model in this paper has supplemented and improved the gray incidence analysis theory for panel data.

Strategic change is critical for firms suffering greater environmental uncertainty, but how can firms change their strategies quickly? The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on the speed of strategic change (SSC) together with the moderating effect of strategic flexibility (composed of resource flexibility (RF) and coordination flexibility (CF)).

A survey instrument of 351 Chinese firms obtained through the face‐to‐face interview method is used to empirically test the hypotheses.

This study finds that EO has a positive impact on the SSC. In addition, the moderating effect of RF on the relationship between EO and the SSC is inverse U‐shaped, while that of CF is positive. The findings indicate that both EO and strategic flexibility are important antecedents of the SSC.

This study adds an in‐depth understanding on the roles of EO and strategic flexibility as the antecedents of the SSC.

This study aims to explore the impact of ecosystem-related digital decoupling capability (DDC) and digital integrative capability (DIC) on manufacturing firms’ radical service innovation (RSI) and the moderating effect of strategic flexibility, specifically resource flexibility (RF) and culture flexibility (CF).

This study employed empirical survey data collected from 238 Chinese manufacturing firms to test all hypotheses through hierarchical multiple regression analyses.

DDC and DIC have positive effects on RSI, with DDC exerting a stronger impact. RF and CF strengthen the positive effect of DIC on RSI, whereas CF diminishes DDC’s positive effect on RSI, and RF does not moderate this effect.

Manufacturing firms should prioritize developing ecosystem-related DDC and DIC to drive RSI, especially DDC. Managers should improve firms’ RF and CF when leveraging DIC to drive RSI. However, they should minimize the negative impact of CF when leveraging DDC to drive RSI.

This study shifts the service innovation capabilities from the firm to the ecosystem level, opening a new perspective for exploring RSI’s driving mechanism. With RF and CF as the moderators, the findings reveal the contingent impact mechanism of ecosystem-related digital capabilities on RSI, which provides profound insights into the complex role of strategic flexibility in the new contexts.

The paper seeks to investigate the effects of psychological contract on control mechanisms in outsourced ISD projects, based on control theories and psychological contract theories.

The paper is a multiple case study involving five outsourced projects completed by one of the largest and most successful telecommunication vendors in China. The company was the client in three of the projects and the vendor in the other two.

Based on first‐hand observations by the first author over a two‐year period and follow‐up interviews, four scenarios of match and mismatch of psychological contract between the client and vendor are identified, labeled as mutual transaction, client vulnerable, vendor vulnerable, and mutual loyalty. Moreover, the effect of psychological contract in shaping organizational control and outsourcing outcomes in the four different scenarios is revealed. For example, mutual transaction was associated with an emphasis on outcome control by the client. In contrast, mutual loyalty was associated with more informal control (self‐control and clan control). Furthermore, in the cases of mismatch between the client's and vendor's psychological relationship, the client implemented more behavior control and encouraged self‐control by its partner.

This research is, to the best of the author's knowledge, one of the first attempts to bring together psychological contract theory and organizational control theory in the domain of IT offshore outsourcing research. It reveals the effect of psychological contract in shaping organizational control in the four different scenarios labeled as mutual transaction, client vulnerable, vendor vulnerable, and mutual loyalty.

This study aims to provide a systematic review about the Internet of Things (IoT) and its impacts on happiness. It intends to serve as a platform for further research as it is sparse in in-depth analysis.

This systematic review initially observed 2,501 literary articles through the ScienceDirect and WorldCat search engines before narrowing it down to 72 articles based on subject matter relevance in the abstract and keywords. Accounting for duplicates between search engines, the count was reduced to 66 articles. To finally narrow down all the literature used in this systematic review, 66 articles were given a critical readthrough. The count was finally reduced to 53 total articles used in this systematic review.

This paper necessitates the claim that IoT will likely impact many aspects of our everyday lives. Through the literature observed, it was found that IoT will have some significant and positive impacts on people's welfare and lives. The unprecedented nature of IoTs impacts on society should warrant further research moving forward.

While the literature presented in this systematic review shows that IoT can positively impact the perceived or explicit happiness of people, the amount of literature found to supplement this argument is still on the lower end. They also necessitate the need for both greater depth and variety in this field of research.

Since technology is already a pervasive element of most people’s contemporary lives, it stands to reason that the most important factors to consider will be in how we might benefit from IoT or, more notably, how IoT can enhance our levels of happiness. A significant implication is its ability to reduce the gap in happiness levels between urban and rural areas.

Currently, the literature directly tackling the quantification of IoTs perceived influence on happiness has yet to be truly discussed broadly. This systematic review serves as a starting point for further discussion in the subject matter. In addition, this paper may lead to a better understanding of the IoT technology and how we can best advance and adapt it to the benefits of the society.