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Drawing on social feminist theory, this paper aims to close gaps between knowledge about gender-related barriers to information, communication and technology (ICT) adoption and the provision of entrepreneurship education and training (EET) programs.

Empirical findings are drawn from 21 semi-structured interviews (22 informants) possessing differing training expertise regarding digital technology among women entrepreneurs. An open-coding technique was adopted where descriptive codes were first assigned to meaningful statements. Interpretive and pattern codes were then assigned to indicate common themes and patterns, which were reduced to higher-order categories to inform the research questions.

The findings specify and validate further gender influences in the digital economy. Digital skills are identified, and strategies to close gender barriers to ICT adoption with EET are described. The findings are discussed in reference to a large-scale, Canadian ICT adoption program.

Perceptual data may be idiosyncratic to the sample. The work did not control for type of technology. Gender influences may differ by type of technology.

Findings can be used to construct gender-inclusive ICT supports and inform ICT adoption policies. This includes program eligibility and evaluation criteria to measure the socio-economic impacts.

The study is among the first to examine the intersection between knowledge about gender-related barriers to ICT adoption and EET. The findings can be adopted to ICT support programs targeted at small business owners and entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to study the tribological properties of Cu nanoparticles (NPs) as lubricant additives in three kinds of commercially available lubricants.

A four-ball machine is used to estimate the tribological properties of Cu NPs as lubricant additives in three kinds of commercially available lubricants. Three-dimensional optical profiler and electrical contact resistance are evaluated to investigate the morphology of the worn surfaces and the influence of Cu NPs on tribofilms.

Wear tests show that the addition of Cu NPs as lubricant additives could reduce wear and increase load-carrying capacity of commercially available lubricants remarkably, indicating that Cu NPs have a good compatibility with the existing lubricant additives in commercially available lubricants.

The tribological properties of Cu NPs as lubricant additives in three kinds of commercially available lubricants were investigated in this paper. These results are reliable and can be very helpful for application of Cu NPs as lubricant additives in industry.

The purpose of this paper is to compare how some firms from China and some from other emerging countries (EC) are using a variety of branding strategies to improve their global competitiveness. A total of 14 firms have been compared on criteria related to possible acquisition of foreign brands, development of local brands, personality of the leaders and in some cases use of ideological messages.

The paper is mostly based on case studies coming from literature, interviews from marketing executives of major enterprises from China or other EC. It is mainly exploratory in its approach.

The critical success factors for the competitiveness of emerging countries brands are either coming from the choice to create a local brand from scratch, to buy an existing famous brand, or to imitate successful foreign brands. Few strategic differences appear between Chinese firms and the ones from other EC. The factors explaining success or failure are linked to the type of industry and the way it relates to the country of origin effect, the level of marketing “maturity” as well as the personality and visibility of the entrepreneur.

The study does not aim at being statistically representative, the firms which are selected may not be a full representation of Chinese firms branding strategy or from emerging nations.

The definition of the brand strategy for emerging countries firms is a relatively new subject and this study is a contribution to helping enterprises in finding the best approach as well as giving examples for academic studies on Chinese firms marketing efficiency.

Customer satisfaction has become a key factor in the strategic work of many universities towards the increasing competition regarding student recruitment. This paper presents a systematic approach to the course development process where focus is put on student satisfaction and learning. The approach consists of a combined usage of several methods, such as quality function deployment and conjoint analysis, that together transform student needs into quantified course attributes. In the paper, a two‐semester graduate course has been developed where the combined usage of the applied methods has shown itself to be very powerful when designing services from student satisfaction and learning perspectives. The outcome of the study is a university course where pedagogical and learning aspects have been combined with contents and work approaches with substantial interest for the industry.

Economic interest groups such as seed, pesticide, feed, and food companies play an important role in supporting or preventing the production of genetically modified (GM) crops. The purpose of this paper is to examine firm managers’ attitudes toward GM technology, biotechnology R&D investment, and political lobbying activities.

Using data from surveys of 160 managers in the food, feed, chemical, and seed industries in 2013-2014, this paper employed three probit models to examine the determinants of managers’ attitudes, biotechnology R&D investment, and lobbying activities.

The results show that most Chinese agribusiness managers are concerned about GM foods and oppose its adoption. Nevertheless, one-third of the firms invest in biotechnology R&D and less than 15 percent of managers lobbied the government to change biotechnology policies. The econometric estimation results suggest that profit change expectation is the main factor affecting managers’ attitudes and biotechnology R&D investment decisions, whereas lobbying activities are significantly influenced by their attitudes and biotechnology R&D investment. In addition, managers’ attitudes toward GM foods also significantly influence firms’ decisions to invest in biotechnology R&D.

This paper has improved on previous research in two ways. First, it analyses the determinants of agribusiness firm managers’ attitudes toward GM technology, biotechnology R&D investment, and lobbying activities. Second, the methodology involves an analysis of agribusiness firm survey data in the food, feed, chemical, and seed industries, which is the first time to use such data to research on economic interest group in agricultural biotechnology field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of creative process engagement on employees’ in-role performance, and does so by considering the support that employees received from and given to their supervisors.

Using data from 540 questionnaires collected in China, this paper conducts a hierarchical regression analysis to test the proposed model.

Creative process engagement positively affects employees’ in-role performance. However, the moderating effect of receiving support on the above relationship is not significant. Instead, it is the interaction of receiving support from and giving it to supervisors that moderates the relationship between creative process engagement and in-role performance.

The study has some contributions to the conservation of resource (COR) theory. The authors find that acquiring new resources such as receiving support from supervisors is not always effective. The acquisition process of resources should be considered with the investment process of resources. According to the COR theory, people invest resources to gain resources and protect themselves from losing resources or to recover from resource loss (Halbesleben et al., 2014). The findings of the study show that employees investing resources is not just for gaining resources. Sometimes, they invest resources such as giving support to supervisors to remain a relatively balanced relationship.

Companies can encourage employees to place more attention on creative process engagement to improve in-role performance. In addition, when offering support to employees, managers should consider whether the employees are able to give it back in response to the received support, and distribute their support to employees accordingly.

This paper explored employee’s engagement at creative process in a more novel way and clarified the relative effect of creative process engagement on in-role performance. Also, this paper was the first to pay attention to the bidirectional nature of supervisor support.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of humble leadership on employee proactive behavior. The authors propose that such effect is mediated by psychological empowerment, and identification with leader moderates the intervening role of psychological empowerment in the humble leadership-employee proactive behavior relationship.

Data were collected from 286 subordinate-supervisor dyads from 4 industries in Northern China. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses were applied to test the research model.

Humble leadership has a significantly positive effect on employee proactive behavior, and this effect is mediated by psychological empowerment. Furthermore, the identification with leader moderates the mediated relationships between humble leadership and employee proactive behavior via psychological empowerment.

One limitation is that the data were collected cross-sectionally. Further research could conduct longitudinal research to retest the hypotheses. The present research has a number of implications. First, the authors extend humble leadership research. Second, the authors also contribute to humble leadership literature by addressing the lack of attention paid to the explanatory mechanism linking humble leader behavior to follower outcomes. Third, the authors provide a new insight into the boundary condition of humble leadership.

Managers should demonstrate more humble behaviors in their leading process to influence employees’ psychological empowerment and proactive behavior. In addition, managers should provide employees with sincere care in relation to work and life issues to produce employees’ identification with leader.

Humility is a modifiable trait that individuals can increase dramatically by practice. Humble behavior is more accessible and easier to cultivate, contrary to the stable trait of humility. Besides, our results confirmed the individuals with the virtue of humility are most likely to succeed. Thus, humble behaviors should be highly advocated and encouraged in our society.

This research extends humble leadership research by constructing and verifying the theoretical model of humble leader behavior and employee proactive behavior and by demonstrating the value of humble leader behavior in a non-Western context, and identifies the different roles of psychological empowerment and identification with leader on employee proactive behavior.

Building on the resource- and knowledge-based views, this paper aims to explore how coopetition affects radical innovation and the roles of knowledge structure and external knowledge integration in the relationship between coopetition and radical innovation.

This study proposes a research model to examine the mediating role of external knowledge integration on the coopetition-radical innovation link, where the mediation is moderated by the firm’s knowledge structure (including component knowledge and architectural knowledge). The authors use regression and bootstrapping to test the proposed model with survey data from 241 Chinese technology firms.

This study finds that coopetition positively affects radical innovation and the effect is fully mediated by external knowledge integration. Additionally, component knowledge negatively moderates the coopetition-external knowledge integration link and architectural knowledge positively moderates this relationship. Further, the mediating effect of external knowledge integration is also moderated by component knowledge and architectural knowledge.

Firms should engage in coopetition to promote radical innovation. Further, it is necessary for firms to appropriately manage coopetition according to their internal knowledge structure.

This study explains why scholars have different ideas about the relationship between coopetition and radical innovation by exploring the mediating role of external knowledge integration and the moderating effect of knowledge structure. Firms possess increased possibilities for knowledge leakage and partner opportunism with high levels of component knowledge, which will reduce the positive effect coopetition on external knowledge integration; thus, they are less likely to realize radical innovation. Instead, firms possess increased opportunities for resource sharing with high levels of architectural knowledge, thus improving the positive effect coopetition on external knowledge integration and they are more likely to achieve radical innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between financial literacy and entrepreneurial activities, and the moderating effects of industrial regulation in the relationship between financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

In this study, the role of financial literacy on entrepreneurial participation and performance is investigated through multi-sourced data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies with manually merged provincial and industrial data from 2014. Four hypotheses are tested based on Probit and Tobit models. Moreover, instrumental variable method and principal component analysis are applied to provide robustness checks.

The empirical results demonstrate that financial literacy has significantly positive effects on entrepreneurial participation, as well as on entrepreneurial performance. In addition, industrial regulation positively moderates the effects of financial literacy on entrepreneurial participation and performance, which indicates that financial literacy plays a more important role in promoting entrepreneurship in tightly regulated industries.

This study proposes and tests the effects of financial literacy on entrepreneurial activities, which fills an important gap in the literature. The results in this paper provide evidence that financial literacy has positive impacts in both the entry and operation stages of entrepreneurship. This evidence provides theoretical foundations for policy making in popularizing financial knowledge and supporting entrepreneurial activities. Moreover, this research further reveals the effects of industrial regulation in the context of China, suggesting that the government should be more effective in promoting administrative decentralization and reducing unnecessary interventions.