Search results

Although digital transformation (DT) has emerged as an important phenomenon for both research and practices, the influences remain inconclusive and inadequate. The emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies further complicate the understanding and practices of DT while understudied yet. To address these concerns, this study takes a process perspective to empirically investigate when and how digital-intelligence transformation can improve firm performance, aiming to enrich the literature on digital-intelligence transformation and strategic information systems (IS) field.

Drawing on the dynamic capability view and business agility, we took a process perspective to conceptualize and empirically examine the influence of digital-intelligence transformation and the process characteristics. Taking a continuous panel dataset of listed Chinese firms covering 2007 to 2020, we investigated digital-intelligence transformation’s effect on firm performance and the moderating roles of three strategic aspects: pace, scope and rhythm.

This study found that digital-intelligence transformation positively affects firm performance and is moderated by the characteristics of transformation processes (i.e. pace, scope and rhythm). Specifically, the high-paced and rhythmic transformation processes facilitate the positive relationship, while the large scope undermines the benefits of transformation. These relationships hold across various endogeneity and heterogeneity analyses.

Our findings provide valuable implications for digital-intelligence transformation and strategic IS field. First, this study enriches existing literature on digital-intelligence transformation by empirically investigating the influence from a process perspective. Moreover, this study provides insights into a comprehensive understanding of the complexity of digital-intelligence transformation and the influences of AI. Finally, this study provides practical implications on how to make digital-intelligence transformation to benefit firm performance.

Hedonic social applications have been increasingly popular among health information consumers. However, it remains unclear what motivates consumers to adopt health information in hedonic applications when they have alternative choices of more formal health information sources. Building on the self-determination theory and the affordances lens, this study aims to investigate how different affordances on hedonic social applications affect consumers' basic psychological needs and further influence their intention to adopt health information on such applications.

As TikTok demonstrated great potential in disseminating health information, we developed a model that we analyze using the PLS-SEM technique with data collected from a valid research sample of 384 respondents with health information seeking or encountering experience in TikTok.

The results suggested that health information adoption in hedonic social applications is significantly predicted by the satisfaction of consumers' basic psychological needs, namely autonomy, relatedness and competence. Moreover, the satisfaction of basic psychological needs is positively affected by affordances provided by the hedonic social applications. The hedonic affordances positively influence autonomy satisfaction, while the connective affordances positively affect relatedness satisfaction, and the utilitarian affordances positively support competence satisfaction.

The study indicates that hedonic social applications such as TikTok could be an important channel for consumers to access and adopt health information. The study contributes to the literature by proposing a theoretical model that explains consumers' health information adoption and yields practical implications for designers and service providers of hedonic social applications.

While anonymous online interactions could be helpful and less risky, they are usually not enough for LGBTQ+ people to satisfy the need of expressing their marginalized identity to networks of known ties (i.e. on identified social media like Facebook, WeChat, and TikTok). However, identified social media bring LGBTQ+ people both sources and challenges like “context collapse” that flattens diverse networks or audiences that are originally separated. Previous studies focus on LGBTQ+ people's disclosure and responses to context collapse, few studies investigate how their perceptions of context collapse are shaped and their privacy management beyond regulating disclosure on social media. Drawing on identity theory and communication privacy management (CPM), this study aims to investigate how the need of LGBTQ+ people for self-identity affects their perceived context collapse and results in privacy management on identified social media.

Given the target population is LGBTQ+ people, The authors recruited participants through active LGBTQ+ online communities, influential LGBTQ+ activists, and the snowballing sampling. The authors empirically examined the proposed model using the PLS-SEM technique with a valid sample of 232 respondents concerning their identity practices and privacy management on WeChat, a typical and popular identified social media in China.

The results suggested that the need for expressing the self and the need for maintaining continuity of self-identity have significant influences on perceived context collapse, but vary in directions. The perceived context collapse will motivate LGBTQ+ individuals to engage in privacy management to readjust rules on ownership, access, and extension. However, only ownership management helps them regain the perceived privacy control on social media.

This study incorporated and highlighted the influence of LGBTQ+ identity in shaping context collapse and online privacy management. This study contributes to the literature on privacy and information communication and yields practical implications, especially on improving privacy-related interactive design for identified social media services.

Although leveraging social media to access healthcare information is nothing new, a boom in short video apps offers new potential for disseminating health-related information. However, it is still unclear how short video apps might facilitate and benefit users’ consumption of health information. Furthermore, the technology features of short video apps complicate attempts to conduct research about them; as a consequence, they have been understudied. For addressing these concerns, this study adopts an affordance perspective to investigate the relationship between affordances and user experience and to examine factors that contribute to users’ intention to continue using short video apps to obtain health information.

Drawing upon affordance theory, we constructed a research model that integrates four types of affordances (livestreaming, searching, meta-voicing and recommending), three types of user experience (immersion, social presence and credibility perception), and user’s intention to continue use. We employed an online survey and obtained a sample of 372 valid responses from TikTok (DouYin) users in China. The partial least squares (PLS) method was used to analyze the data.

The study found that the user experience, in terms of social presence, immersion and credibility perception, can significantly predict users’ intention to continue using short video apps to obtain health information. Furthermore, the user experience was positively associated with the different affordances provided by the short video apps.

The findings of this study have several implications. First, the study contributes to the health information behavior literature by incorporating the aspect of user experience. Moreover, the study extends the application of affordance theory to users’ health information acquisition, and it carries some practical implications on how to leverage the great potential of short video apps to serve public health communication better.

This paper intends to provide a thematic literature review of the scholarly research articles orbiting the Sino–African education cooperation and exchange, published between 2005 and 2022.

The methodology used in this paper is qualitative in nature with a thematic approach. The author used content analysis techniques to spotlight the major themes of the topic studied. The author selected the papers and theses, based on their heuristic capacity, from two major databases for the English and Chinese literature: Web of Science and CNKI. The selection process resulted in 60 high-quality peer-reviewed articles and theses. Another 30 research articles and theses were used as supplementary resources.

The literature concentrates on six points: the historical development, the nature of the exchange, the frameworks of the cooperation, vocational training and knowledge transfer, African students in China and their experiences, and education cooperation and soft power. However, research tends to be somewhat polemical rather than an academic debate between Chinese researchers and their western peers. Therefore, empirical studies beyond the geopolitical preoccupations and the “YEA” or “NAY” to the Sino–African education exchange are critically needed.

The implications of this study go beyond the east/west or developed/developing world rhetoric and focus more on sustainable educational development on a global scale. Understanding how the literature on the Sino–African education engagement is shaping, provides valuable insights into international education in the global south. It can also be implied to approach educational engagement with other destinations such as India, Türkiye and Brazil.

This thematic literature review concentrates on the educational aspect of Sino–African relations. It compares English and Chinese peer-reviewed scholarly articles and theses on China–Africa educational engagement and has heuristic implications for sustainable educational development globally.

In recent years, additive manufacturing (AM) has started to be used for manufacturing real functional parts and assemblies for critical applications in aerospace, automotive, and machinery industries. Most complex or assembled parts require internal features (IF) such as holes, channels, slots, or guides for locational and mating requirements. Therefore, it is critical to understand and compare the structural and mechanical properties of additively manufactured and conventionally machined IFs.

In this study, mechanical and microstructural properties of Inconel 718 (Inc718) alloy internal features, manufactured either as-built with AM or machining of additively manufactured (AMed) part thereafter were investigated.

The results showed that the average ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of additively manufactured center internal feature (AM-IF) is almost analogous to the machined internal feature (M-IF). However, the yield strength of M-IF is greater than that of AM-IF due the greater surface roughness of the internal feature in AM-IF, which is deemed to surpass the effect of microstructure on the mechanical performance. The results of digital image correlation (DIC) analysis suggest that AM-IF and M-IF conditions have similar strain values under the same stress levels but the specimens with as built IF have a more locally ductile region around their IF, which is confirmed by hardness test results. But this does not change global elongation behavior. The microstructural evolution starting from as-built (AB) and heat-treated (HT) samples to specimens with IF are examined. The microstructure of HT specimens has bimodal grain structure with d phase while the AB specimens display a very fine dendritic microstructure with the presence of carbides. Although they both have close values, machined specimens have a higher frequency of finer grains based on SEM images.

It was shown that the concurrent creation of the IF during AM can provide a final part with a preserved ultimate tensile strength and elongation but a decreased yield strength. The variation in UTS of AM-IF increases due to the surface roughness near the internal feature as compared to smooth internal surfaces in M-IF. Hence, the outcomes of this study are believed to be valuable for the industry in terms of determining the appropriate production strategy of parts with IF using AM and postprocessing processes.