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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 goal is to explore the role of international education in a developing country's nation building in a mostly indigenous process.

This study reviews China's history of international education set in the larger context of different nation building tasks in the past two centuries.

The unique case of China with dramatic ups and downs in national fortunes in the past two hundred years serves to show that an open attitude to and an active engagement in international education are contributing factors for national prosperity. The case of China also serves to show that a self-determined agenda is of paramount importance in international education as a tool for nation building.

Few studies so far have paid attention to the specific relationship between the internationalization of higher education and nation building, so the topic of the paper is an important one and a necessary addition to the existing literature. What has been the role of international education in China's national transformation? What contributions has international education made to China's achievement of nation building goals at different stages of this transformation process? What implications can other developing nations draw from China's case with regard to the role of international education in nation building? These are the questions the researchers hope to answer in this study.

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.

There has been a widespread proliferation of digital technologies in the last few decades with worldwide usage increasing to 4.66 billion active internet users in 2021. This amounts to 59.5% or half of the overall population and is significant. On the one hand, the changing digital state of affairs means that there are greater opportunities for businesses, economies and societies to flourish since 92.6% (4.32 billion) access the internet through mobile devices (Statista, 2021). On the other hand, this digital revolution has not percolated equally, with women having less access to resources and capabilities to utilise digital tools. This phenomenon is known as the ‘digital gender divide’ (OECD, 2018). Correspondingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has not had favourable outcomes for women, with many losing jobs, downscaling their careers or leaving the workforce. Generally, it has disadvantaged women both economically and socially to the extent of slowing their progress towards gender equality and empowerment. With the new normal, following the COVID-19 pandemic and the acceleration of the digitalisation process, possessing digital skills and know-how will be an essential must-have. Digital working offers possibilities for women to become business owners, work flexibly and remotely, be connected to the rest of the world, and have easy access to information and education. For this to happen, the digital gender divide must be resolved by quick, concerted and inclusive pragmatic global policy-level actions to empower women to play a significant part in the digital landscape that would lead to economic prosperity and resilience, equal societies and a much better world.

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.

Blockchain is a technical solution integrating multiple technologies, with the potential to overcome the drawbacks of organizational governance. Given the emergence and prevalence of blockchain, its importance for organizational governance has progressively increased. Therefore, this study aims to analyze how blockchain restructure organizational governance.

This study presents a structured systematic literature review of blockchain-enabled applications across diverse organizational governance models and several case studies to illustrate them. Based on the above analysis, governance mechanisms, transaction upgrading and challenges are proposed.

Based on the literature review and typical applications, the authors summarize the advances in the research on the theoretical and practical applications of blockchain in organizational governance. We also identify the influence mechanisms of organizational governance and investigate transaction upgrading based on blockchain. Finally, the authors discuss three types of challenges (i.e. administrative, technical and environmental) to the relationship between blockchain and organizational governance. Along with the development of blockchain applications, the impact of blockchain on organizational governance has progressed in both theory and practice. Therefore, these findings will have significant implications for both academics and practitioners.

This paper makes three key theoretical contributions: we review the literature on the impact of blockchain on organizational governance and present typical cases to illustrate it; propose four governance mechanisms for the application of blockchain in organizational governance; and propose an innovating-and-matching-oriented model of transaction upgrading based on blockchain.