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Extensively public concern on “Huge Executive Compensation” makes it urgent to investigate the reasonability of high executive compensation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of compensation contracting based on the specific responsibility of executives. More specifically, this paper is to examine whether high compensation is helpful to mitigate agency problems.

Considering that board secretaries of listed companies are responsible for information disclosure in China, this paper examines the effect of board secretaries’ excess compensation on firms’ disclosure quality using listed company data from 2007 to 2015. The first measure of disclosure quality is based on the disclosure violation behavior of firms, and the second is KV value that represents the extent to which the investors relay on the stock trading volume. To provide additional confidence that the findings are robust, this paper further conducts two indirect tests based on rumors and cost of equity capital.

The results show that board secretaries’ excess compensation is negatively associated with the probability of information disclosure violation and also negatively associated with firms’ KV value, suggesting firms that pay high compensation to their information providers are more likely to provide high-quality disclosures. Besides, this paper further finds that board secretaries’ excess compensation is negatively related to the incidence of rumors, the number of rumors incurred or the cost of equity capital.

Overall, the findings provide support to the efficient contracting of executive compensation, which implies that highly paid board secretaries would be better information providers than those poorly paid.

This paper provides empirical evidence that firms’ disclosure quality can be improved by modifying the compensation contract of information providers. This may indicate a new way to improve the quality of disclosures, so as to mitigate the agency problem.

In spite of the public criticism on executive excess compensation, the high compensation is not always a signal of manipulation, collusion and self-interest. It also can be a signal of individual talents and great efforts. Board secretaries are worth to be highly paid if they can improve firms’ disclosures, thereby reducing the incidence of rumors and reducing the cost of equity capital.

This paper is the first research to examine the effectiveness of compensation contracting based on information providers’ disclosure responsibility in the Chinese context. It documents a positive relation between board secretaries’ excess compensation and corporate disclosure quality.

The high specific strength makes magnesium alloys have a wide range of applications in aerospace, military, automotive, marine and construction industries. However, its poor corrosion resistance and weldability have limited its development and application. Friction stir welding (FSW) can effectively avoid the defects of fusion welding. However, the microstructure, mechanical properties and corrosion behavior of FSW joints in magnesium alloys vary among different regions. The purpose of this paper is to review the corrosion of magnesium alloy FSW joints, and to summarize the protection technology of welded joints.

The corrosion of magnesium alloy FSW joints includes electrochemical corrosion and stress corrosion. This paper summarizes corrosion protection techniques for magnesium alloys FSW joints, focusing on composition, microstructure changes and surface treatment methods.

Currently, this research is mainly focused on enhancing the corrosion resistance of magnesium alloy FSW joints by changing compositions, structural modifications and surface coating technologies. Refinement of the grains can be achieved by adjusting welding process parameters, which in turn minimizes the effects of the second phase on the alloy’s corrosion resistance.

This paper presents a comprehensive review on the corrosion and protection of magnesium alloys FSW joints, covering the latest research advancements and practical applications. It aims to equip researchers with a better insight into the field and inspire new studies on this topic.

This study aims to examine why women transition from wage work to self-employed entrepreneurship, the seemingly insecure and unruly economic sector compared with the stable iron rice bowl and the fancy spring rice jobs.

Based on in-depth interviews in Zhejiang, the entrepreneurial hotbed in coastal China, this study examines the experiences of self-employed female entrepreneurs who used to work in the iron rice bowl and the spring rice jobs and explores their nonconventional career transition and its gendered implications.

This study finds that these women quit their previous jobs to escape from gendered suppression in wage work where their femininity was stereotyped, devalued or disciplined. By working for themselves, these women embrace a rubber rice bowl that allows them to improvise different forms of femininity that are better rewarded and recognized.

The study contributes to studies on gender and work by framing femininity as a fluid rather than a fixed set of qualities and fills the research gap by illustrating women’s agency in reacting to gender expectations in certain workplaces. The study develops a new concept of rubber rice bowl to describe how entrepreneurship, a seemingly women-unfriendly sphere, attracts women by allowing them to comply with, resist, or improvise normative gender expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate three issues: how does an innovative search (local search and boundary-spanning search) impact firm innovation performance of latecomers; how does capability reconfiguration (capability evolution and capability substitution) mediates the relationship between innovative search and firm innovation performance; and how does the technological leapfrogging process (initial stage, following stage, synchronization stage and leading stage) moderate the relationship between capability reconfiguration and firm innovation performance.

A “resource-capability-performance” theoretical framework was developed to explore the relationships between local/boundary-spanning search, capability reconfiguration and firm innovation performance. The data were collected by sending out surveys to managers and employees in various industries in mainland China. These hypotheses were tested using structural equation models and hierarchical regressions.

The results showed that: innovative search has a direct causal relationship to capability reconfiguration; local search and boundary-spanning search are conducive to improve the innovation performance of latecomers; the impact of local search and boundary-spanning search on innovation performance is realized through the completion of mediating role of capability reconfiguration; there are differences in the path of local search and boundary-spanning search affecting the capability reconfiguration of enterprise innovation performance; and the relationship between innovative search, capability reconfiguration and enterprise innovation performance evolves with the enterprise in different stages of technological leapfrogging.

This study explores the relationship and the path of innovative search to firm innovation performance and analyzes the path difference between local search and boundary-spinning search, which enriches the research of organizational search and enterprise innovation. This paper reveals the whole path of innovative search affecting innovation performance, discusses the important role of capability reconfiguration and makes incremental contributions to dynamic capability theory. It studies the evolution of innovative search on innovation performance under the background of technological leapfrogging, which provides a new perspective for the study of organizational search and capability-based theory.

This study aims to investigate the influence of CEO’s only-child status on corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It seeks to extend the understanding of upper echelon theory by examining unexplored CEO characteristics and their impact on CSR decisions.

The paper uses manually collected CEO family information and Chinese Stock and Market Accounting Research data as a basis to examine the influence of CEOs’ early-life experiences on their engagement in CSR activities. The study applies attachment security theory from developmental psychology and uses upper echelon theory, particularly focusing on CEOs’ only-child status. A comparative analysis of philanthropic donations between CEOs who are only children and those who have siblings is conducted. The study also examines the moderating effects of corporate slack resources and CEO shareholdings.

Preliminary findings suggest that CEOs who are only children are more likely to engage in CSR compared to their counterparts with siblings. However, the difference in donation amounts between the two groups tends to attenuate with decreased slack resources and increased CEO shareholdings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research represents the first attempt to investigate being the only child in one’s family and the CSR-related decision of CEOs, which extends the upper echelon theory by introducing the family science theory into the management domain.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework for extracting the sequential patterns of maintenance activities and related spare parts information from historical records of maintenance data with pre-defined support or threshold values.

A data mining approach has been adopted for predicting the maintenance activity along with spare parts. It starts with a collection of spare parts and maintenance data, and then the development of sequential patterns followed by formation of frequent spare part groups, and finally, integration of sequential maintenance activities with the associated spare parts.

This study suggests a framework for extracting the sequential patterns of maintenance activities from historical records of maintenance data with pre-defined support or threshold values. A rule-based approach is proposed in this paper to predict the occurrence of next maintenance activity along with the information of spare parts consumption for that maintenance activity.

Presented model can be extended for analyzing the failure maintenance activities and performing root cause analysis that can give more valuable suggestion to maintenance managers to take corrective actions prior to next occurrence of failures. In addition, the timestamp information can be utilized to prioritize the maintenance activity that is ignored in this study.

The proposed model has a high potential for industrial applications and is validated through a case study. The study suggests that the model gives a better approach for selecting spare parts based on their similarity or correlation, considering their actual occurrence during maintenance activities. Apart from this, the clustering of spare parts also trains maintenance manager to learn about the dependency among the spares for group stocking and maintaining the parts availability during maintenance activities.

This study has used the technique of data mining to find dependent spare parts itemset from the database of the company and developed the model for associated spare parts requirement for subsequent maintenance activity.

In response to the 2008 financial crisis, the performance of the Chinese construction industry seems to be more successful, especially in total factor productivity growth (TFPG) and its contribution (TFPGC). Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate and reveal the potential successful lessons in this regard.

This study is conducted innovatively based on a special comparative analysis of TFPG and TFPGC between pre- and post-2008 financial crisis. Solow Residual Approach is used to measure TFPG and TFPGC for the period 2002–2016. Given that the crisis hit China at the end of 2008, the pre-2008 financial crisis period is from 2002 to 2008, and the post-2008 financial crisis period is limited to 2009–2016.

The results indicate that the industry indeed has better performance in promoting TFPG and TFPGC, TFP thus achieved significant accumulative growth before and after the crisis. However, from an evolutionary perspective, both TFPG and TFPGC presented an overall downward trend from before the crisis to after the crisis. Further, the game between the centrally planned economy and the market-oriented economy was identified and revealed as the essential reason behind the evolution of TFPG and TFPGC.

Some valuable lessons for policies and practices in promoting TFPG and TFPGC were summarized and learned from the Chinese experience, such as reducing administrative intervention and making the construction market play a decisive role.

This study provides some new empirical evidence to enrich the overall body of knowledge on growth theory, especially in promoting TFPG and TFPGC.

This paper presents a meta-analysis of the electronic banking (e-banking) customer loyalty literature in the last 10 years. The study investigated the moderating role of national culture in the relationship between e-banking customer loyalty and its antecedents.

Using a meta-analysis of customer loyalty in 19 countries, the authors incorporated national culture scores based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions to explore how the relative importance of e-banking customer loyalty antecedents varies across cultures.

The study revealed that national culture moderates the relationship between e-banking customer loyalty and its seven antecedents for four cultural dimensions, yet there was no significant moderation for satisfaction.

This study reviewed the relationships in the literature on customer loyalty in e-banking contexts, extending and enriching the current knowledge. However, some specific limitations, such as the non-use of qualitative studies and the clipping of adverse concepts, exist in the secondary data and should be considered.

The results show that the seven antecedents affect e-banking customer loyalty to different degrees. Managers should incorporate cultural factors in e-banking customer management.

Only a few studies have assessed cultural differences in relation to e-banking customer loyalty. The authors address this need by offering deeper insights into how cultural dimensions moderate the relationships between e-banking customer loyalty and its antecedents through a meta-analytical review. The study findings offer managers a new perspective of leveraging the benefits of cultural differences, enhancing their decision-making in international business.

United Kingdom and China face both similar and dissimilar challenges in managing eldercare. These challenges are centred around demographic change, caregiving roles and care facilities, work–family conflict and work flexibilities, employment rights, culture norms in caring for the elders and the welfare state. This chapter demonstrates the status quo of each of these challenges in managing eldercare, from both the East and West perspectives. Aside from the challenges, opportunities also emerge. More support services are needed for elders with activities of daily living (ADL) or instrumental activities of daily living. Institutional care is in great demand in China, despite the traditional value of caring for elders at home. Caring for elders with cognitive disabilities has also won attention. In the United Kingdom, elder caregiving issues are focused on older workforce, grandparent caregivers and long-term consequences of combining employment and care in the workplace. Compared to Hong Kong and United Kingdom, mainland China has more space to improve on adapting flexible work hours and promoting employment rights of workers. ‘Sandwich’ carers and women caregivers were given special attention in our discussion. At the end of the chapter, results from a survey studying older employees who are also caregivers were also presented.