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Conflict between work and family is a significant issue for entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of entrepreneurial failure on both family–work conflict (FWC) and work–family conflict (WFC) and the moderating role of perceived control of time and organizational slack based on conservation of resources (COR) theory.

This study used a questionnaire to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial failure, FWC/WFC, perceived control of time and organizational slack. Data were collected from the Chinese context in 2018 and as a result received 318 valid questionnaires, obtaining a response rate of 63.6 per cent.

The study finds that entrepreneurial failure has a significant relationship with FWC but a nonsignificant relationship with WFC and that perceived control of time and organizational slack moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial failure and FWC/WFC.

This study aligns the field of family–work (work–family) conflict and entrepreneurial failure. It addresses a research gap in the conflict literature by introducing one form of resource loss: entrepreneurial failure as a source of conflict between work and family based on COR theory and the work–home resources model. The study also enriches the literature on the social cost of entrepreneurial failure by exploring the crossover effect of entrepreneurial failure on conflicts in the family domain. Furthermore, the study advances the understanding of managing conflict between work and family after entrepreneurial failure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of localizing online communities (OCs) and examines how OC members form impressions of organizations that use OCs in their communication activities. A conceptual framework and measurement scale are developed that consist of complex latent constructs.

A sequential multi-method approach is adopted with both qualitative and quantitative investigations. Using Structural equation modeling, the research refines and validates the measurement scales of impression formation in OCs.

Findings reveal that comprehensive messages have a direct effect on the impressions that an OC member forms. In particular, social context cues are an important predictor of online community corporate impression (OCCIP). Source credibility, affiliation, characteristics and interpersonal communication are all critical to OCCIP, which in turn, influence members’ attitudes toward the company and the intention to use it again. Surprisingly, relevance, timeliness, accuracy and perceived similarity did not have any significant effect on the corporate impression.

Three contributions are offered: First, the study provides reliable scales for measuring OCCIP. Second, support is given to the conceptual model that links OCCIP to a set of consequences, namely, attitudes toward the company, intention to use the company, and word-of-mouth. Finally, the study is conducted across two different and unique types of OC contexts, stipulating further insights into the localization of OCs.

Due to their very different contexts, the responses made by property hosts to online reviews can differ from those posted by hotel managers. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of the responding behavior of hosts on peer-to-peer property rental platforms.

This study applied a comprehensive framework based on the theory of planned behavior. Empirical models are constructed based on 89,967 guest reviews with their associated responses to reveal the responding pattern of property hosts.

Unlike hotel managers, property hosts are more likely to reply to positive than to negative reviews; moreover, when they do choose to respond to negative reviews, they are likely to do so negatively, in a “tit-for-tat” way. This study also finds that one reason for the difference of responding patterns between property hosts and hotel managers is the hosts’ lack of experience of consumer relationship management and service recovery.

This study provides a good start point for future theoretical development regarding effective responding strategy on peer-to-peer property rental platforms, as well as some useful implications for practitioners.

This study is an early attempt to analyze the impact of the particularity of emerging platforms on the responding behavior of service providers based on a comprehensive conceptual framework and empirical model thus provides a good starting point for the further investigation of effective response strategies on these emerging platforms.

Companies are increasingly designing pro-environmental games to motivate users to implement pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). However, how different types of virtual interactions affect PEBs in pro-environmental games is not clear. Thus, the authors propose that two types of virtual interaction, interactions with game objects and interactions with other users, can induce platform intimacy and love for nature and that platform intimacy has a direct effect on love for nature. Simultaneously, the authors examine the moderating effect of network externality on the relationship between the two types of virtual interaction and platform intimacy.

The authors, respectively, employed data from 92 students and 574 Chinese mobile users to empirically investigate the research framework.

The findings indicate that participants in interactions with game objects and interactions with other users reported stronger feelings regarding platform intimacy and love for nature, which, in turn, positively influences PEBs. Consumers with stronger perceptions of network externalities were more likely to be affected by the initiation effect of the interaction with game objects.

The authors introduce the notion of love for nature to the pro-environmental behaviors field and discuss the priming effect of two types of interactions on platform intimacy and love for nature. In addition, the authors focus on the important effect of network externality on users' emotions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether two different participation strategies (i.e. deep participation and broad participation) in a supplier’s product development process will result in different levels of customer-perceived value. In addition, this paper examines the moderating effects of customer risk-aversion and technology turbulence on the relationship between customer participation depth/breadth and customer-perceived value.

A theory-based model is developed and tested using data collected from 196 business-to-business firms. A multiple-regression approach was used to test the hypotheses.

Drawing on the transaction cost theory, the results reveal that while deep participation is likely to result in increased customer-perceived value, broad participation may hurt the relationship performance by reducing customer-perceived value. Moreover, the findings suggest that these effects are contingent on at least two contextual factors: how risk-averse the customer is and how turbulent the technological environment is.

This study is among the first to disaggregate the customer participation process into two different strategies, namely, deep participation and broad participation. It also extends the current literature by providing more insights about the dynamics involved in the customer participation process.

For entrepreneurs operating in an Internet-of-Things (IoT) environment, it is essential to monitor more systematically, both the interaction with the consumers and the sharing of information among the consumers. The purpose of this paper is to identify the antecedents of word-of-mouth (WOM) in the online SME’s context in terms of consumers “citing the site” to peers in personal communications. A research model integrates the determinants of retail website-specific positive WOM communication, and proposes that WOM about a particular website is influenced by: site-level variables, that is, website quality and interactivity; and consumer-level variables, these being the site user’s satisfaction with and commitment to the website. The research advances the study of IoT entrepreneurship.

Data were collected from graduate and undergraduate students with business and entrepreneurship majors from a reputed school in the Northeast region of the USA, using an online survey. The hypotheses were then tested with SEM using AMOS 18.0.

Findings suggest that in an IoT context, WOM is influenced by a variety of factors of which the e-satisfaction and attitude toward website constructs play important roles. The study highlights the importance of the e-satisfaction construct and its metrics. E-satisfaction is not only a critical outcome metric, but also a primary predictor of customer e-loyalty, measured in terms of the customer’s positive attitude, stickiness and propensity to spread positive WOM.

The paper contributes to the entrepreneurship and IoT literature with a comprehensive framework of information sharing, interactivity and WOM, showing that specific antecedents drive consumers to cite and advocate for a website to fellow customers. The framework helps retail SME entrepreneurs in the IoT context to design appropriate strategies to influence website visitors’ endorsement of the site to fellow customers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why users are willing to diffuse healthcare knowledge in social media by drawing on the communicative ecology theory (CET) and prior research on interpersonal communication.

This paper conducts a large-scale scenario-based online survey in WeChat (the most popular social media platform in China) to test the proposed research model and hypotheses. The final data set consists of 1,039 useful responses from WeChat users.

The results indicate that interestingness, emotionality and institution-based trust are the strongest antecedents in predicting healthcare knowledge-diffusing likelihood, followed by usefulness, source credibility and positivity. Further, the relationship between institution-based trust and healthcare knowledge-diffusing likelihood is partially mediated by source credibility.

Healthcare practitioners who seek to motivate individuals to disseminate healthcare knowledge need to phrase or frame healthcare knowledge in a way that draws greater interest, evokes stronger emotion, increases perceived usefulness or reflects positively on themselves. Healthcare organizations should also pay attention to strengthening users’ trust in the platform and source-related information that can indicate source authority.

This study is one of the first to investigate the dissemination of healthcare knowledge in the context of social media (WeChat in particular). Compared with other types of information, healthcare knowledge is more scientific and professional to the extent that most laypersons do not have relevant expertise to directly evaluate whether the content is credible and of high quality. Rather, their sharing likelihood is dependent more on other factors than perceived information quality and credibility; those factors include platform-related factors that may play an important role but has been overlooked in prior literature on interpersonal communication. By combining CET with interpersonal communication-related research and including institution-based trust as an important determinant of healthcare knowledge dissemination, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of healthcare knowledge diffusion process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of capability and alliance arising from the internet of things (IoT), specifically in the relationships between strategic orientations (entrepreneurial and market foci) with product and process innovations. In addition, it investigates the direct relationship between IoT capability and alliance. Improving these relationships assist in ensuring that new knowledge from the IoT can be translated into tangible business innovations that contribute to economic development.

Data from 207 new high-technology IoT ventures in China were obtained after three-wave mailing (i.e. two reminders). Following a rigorous process to purify and validate the measurement scale items, the study used structural equation modeling to test the conceptual model.

Findings demonstrate that an IoT capability only enhances product innovation, however, with the addition and support from IoT alliance, both product and process innovation can be achieved in new high-tech IoT ventures. This nuanced insight suggests that new high-tech IoT ventures should focus on building their IoT capability, and at the same time, develop IoT alliances with value chain partners in order to fully take advantage of IoT and gain a better position to formulate more novel offerings.

The study is first to contribute with a much needed framework of IoT and entrepreneurship by examining the role of IoT capability further in the relationships between: entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation with product and process innovations arising from IoT; and the role of IoT alliance (interfirm relations, partnerships, etc.) on the relationship above.

This study aims to investigate the predictive role of team personality composition in facilitating shared leadership through team member exchange (TMX), while also to examine the moderating effect of organizational culture.

The authors conducted a two-stage online survey and selected the customer service teams, claims teams and financial teams of 26 Chinese insurance companies as the research samples. The authors finally obtained validated questionnaires from 107 teams with 457 members. The hypothesized relationships were tested using SPSS 25.0 and Mplus.

The results indicate that both team relationship-oriented and task-oriented personality composition have significant positive effects on shared leadership with team-member exchange serving as a full mediator for both paths. As a boundary condition, organizational culture (i.e. including internal integration values and external adaptation values) has a moderating effect on the influence of TMX on shared leadership.

The study investigates the predictive role of team personality composition on shared leadership, which complements the empirical studies of shared leadership antecedents in the literature. Drawing on social exchange perspective, the authors find out that TMX serves as a mediator between team personality composition and shared leadership. The authors also identify the moderating effect of organizational culture on the emergence of shared leadership. The research emphasizes the contextual boundary condition in this process.