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The purposes of this paper are to analyze whether digital finance can contribute to enterprises' innovation performance and to determine the mediating effect of government subsidies.

This paper empirically examines the impacts of digital finance on enterprises' innovation performance by looking at Chinese companies listed on the SME and GEM boards from 2011 to 2018 to build an econometric model to test our hypotheses. The mediating effect of government subsidies, the moderating effect of financial constraints are examined, as well as shareholding of the largest shareholders in each selected company and the asset-liability ratio.

The results show that digital finance has a significant promotional effect on firms' innovation performance and that government subsidies play a partial mediating role in digital finance's contribution to firms' innovation performance. In addition, financial constraints and the shareholding of the largest shareholders in each selected company have a negative moderating effect on the relationship between government subsidies and firms' innovation performance. On the contrary, the asset-liability ratio is found to positively affect the relationship.

There has been limited research to date on the relationship between digital finance and firms' innovation performance, particularly with regard to the extent to which digital finance can influence innovation performance and the mechanisms for doing so. Therefore, it is of great significance to examine the relationship between digital finance and enterprises' innovation performance, which can also provide guidance for both the Chinese government and enterprises.

1. Explore the important role of sole actual controller in the innovation decision of the firm and the different effects of the ownership of sole actual controller on innovation; 2. Explore whether the role played by sole actual controllers varies in different types of firms; 3. Explore the important role of cooperative culture in the internal governance of firms and whether sole actual controller firms feel a rejection effect on cooperative culture.

The authors collect data on Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2021 to analyze the role of the sole actual controller on innovation investment, as well as the moderating effect of cooperative culture in corporate annual reports using natural language processing.

The authors find that sole actual controllers promote corporate innovation investment and that concentrated equity inhibits corporate innovation investment, while dispersed equity concentration promotes it. In addition, cooperative culture has a nonlinear moderating effect on the relationship between SACs and innovation.

On the one hand, this study focuses chiefly on the decision-making behavior of top managers, such as the SACs and shareholders, and does not account for the role of bottom-level employees or professional R&D teams in innovation. On the other hand, although this study discusses the moderating role of corporate cooperative culture, it is limited to internal cooperative culture; cooperative culture should also consider external cooperation, such as cooperation between companies or between companies and universities.

First, companies should actively implement the SAC model and scientifically select a truly compassionate and visionary SAC as the dominant person in the company. Second, the Chinese government needs to standardize the identification of actual controllers, who should not be a shareholder of the company. Third, policymakers should promote the reform of the mixed system of enterprises, optimize the shareholding structure of firms, make executives an important part of corporate governance. Fourth, cooperation culture is a good start, though firms should avoid letting it become a “double-edged sword” of the management mode of the SAC.

First, existing studies do not address the impact of SACs on innovation from the perspective of SACs, who have most influence the firm's decision-making. Focusing on the SAC's decision-making style has sufficient practical implications for future corporate innovation planning. This study used the natural language processing (NLP) module in ChatGPT to analyze the culture of cooperation in corporate annual reports. Currently, corporate culture is an obstacle to the study of corporate governance because of its obscurity and difficulty of quantification. The authors adopted a PSM (propensity score matching) approach to eliminate the endogeneity of the data, which makes the results more scientific.

In the pursuit of co-exploration, the strength and brokerage dimensions of dyadic ties create a novelty–action trade-off: tie strength facilitates coordination but constraints novelty, while tie brokerage expands knowledge diversity but aggravates coordination difficulty. This study contributes towards a better understanding of this tension by comparing two dimensions of relational ties and examining their contingent values given different environmental factors and exchange characteristics.

The authors used survey data from 194 matched buyer–supplier dyads in China's high-tech industries and employed hierarchical moderated regression analysis to test the proposed hypotheses.

The authors find that compared with tie strength, tie brokerage has a stronger positive effect on co-exploration. Moreover, guanxi importance amplifies the effect of tie strength while decreasing the value of tie brokerage. As market uncertainty increases, the role of tie brokerage becomes more salient. Additionally, tie strength becomes less effective when buyer centralization is high, whereas tie brokerage exerts a stronger impact on co-exploration when an exchange is highly formalized.

This study contributes to the supply chain literature by adopting a relational perspective to integrate relational ties into the study of buyer–supplier co-exploration and by elaborating on the different implications of tie strength and tie brokerage in resolving the novelty–action trade-off. Furthermore, it provides a more nuanced understanding of when distinct dimensions of relational ties are effective, by clarifying boundary conditions in terms of environmental factors and exchange characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to study the mechanochemical effect and self-growth mechanism of double-network (DN) gel and to provide a quasiperiodic model for rubber elasticity.

The chemical reaction kinetics is used to identify the mechanochemical transition probability of host brittle network and to explore the mechanical behavior of endosymbiont ductile network. A quasiperiodic model is proposed to characterize the cooperative coupling of host–endosymbiont networks using the Penrose tiling of a 2 × 2 matrix. Moreover, a free-energy model is formulated to explore the constitutive stress–strain relationship for the DN gel based on the rubber elasticity theory and Gent model.

In this study, a quasiperiodic graph model has been developed to describe the cooperative interaction between brittle and ductile networks, which undergo the mechanochemical coupling and mechanical stretching behaviors, respectively. The quasiperiodic Penrose tiling determines the mechanochemistry and self-growth effect of DNs.

It is expected to formulate a quasiperiodic graph model of host–guest interaction between two networks to explore the working principle of mechanical and self-growing behavior in DN hydrogels, undergoing complex mechanochemical effect. The effectiveness of the proposed model is verified using both finite element analysis and experimental results of DN gels reported in literature.

This research aims at examining how authentic leadership impacts social workers' withdrawal behaviors through two intermediate mechanisms: sense of calling and job satisfaction.

A cross-sectional survey was distributed among social workers from 26 social work organizations in the cities of Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen in China (N = 667). SPSS was used to conduct preliminary analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses developed.

This study found that authentic leadership has a negative direct effect on social workers' turnover intention. In addition, social workers' sense of calling and job satisfaction mediate the relationship between their perceptions of authentic leader behaviors and turnover intention.

Based on this study's findings, the authors suggest social work organizations to invest in authentic leadership development to promote employees' psychological capacities and prevent employee turnover. Social work organizations need to foster employees' sense of calling to the field which improves the workplace outcomes.

This study is among those few empirical studies which help to validate the role of authentic leadership within social service organizations in China and shed light on understanding the underlying mechanisms through which authentic leaders affect organizational outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of laser peening (LP) on mechanical and wear properties of 304 stainless steel sheet.

Three-dimensional morphology, micro-hardness and micro-structure of shocked samples were tested. The wear amount, wear track morphology and wear mechanism were also characterized under dry sliding wear using Al₂O₃ ceramics ball.

The LP treatment generates deformation twins that contribute to the grain refinement and hardness increase. The wear test displays that the wear mechanism of samples is mainly abrasive wear and oxidation wear at 10 N load. While at 30 N, the delamination and adhesion areas of treated sample are reduced visibly compared to untreated ones.

This study specifically investigates the mechanical and wear properties of 304 stainless steel after the direct action of LP on its surface, which shows an effective improvement on the wear resistance. For example, the wear loss of processed sample is reduced by 19% at 30 N, the friction coefficient decreases from 0.4714 to 0.4308 and the groove depth is reduced from 78.1 to 74.4 µm under same condition.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-01-2024-0007/

Asset specificity is a focal feature of buyer–supplier exchanges; however, whether unilateral asset specificity encourages opportunistic value expropriation or promotes trust-based value creation remains controversial. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how institutional forces shape the controversial roles of buyer asset specificity in supply chain relationships.

With a survey of 217 matched manufacturer–supplier dyads in China, the study adopts ordinary least squares regression analyses to test hypotheses.

The results show that two key institutional forces, guanxi importance and government intervention, play different roles in shaping the value expropriation and value creation roles of buyer asset specificity. As an informal institutional force, guanxi importance weakens the impact of buyer asset specificity on opportunistic value expropriation and facilitates trust-based value creation. Moreover, as a formal institutional force, government intervention amplifies the effect of buyer asset specificity on opportunism but strengthens its connection with trust.

By incorporating an institutional view to investigate how institutional forces affect this “valuable but vulnerable” dilemma of asset specificity, this study reconciles the controversy concerning value expropriation vs value creation and enriches understanding of the critical roles of institutional parameters in supply chain management.

This study aims to interrogate and expand on the flexible citizenship framework by illuminating students' emergent identities and imagined future mobilities in China's expanding international school sector.

In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with international school students and their parents in Shenzhen, covering their motivations for overseas higher education, experience with international schooling, self-perceived identities and imagined futures.

The participants aspired to overseas higher education for both symbolic capital attainment and embodied cultural cultivation to thrive in a globalised world. They expressed confidence that international schooling experiences prepared students for mobility to Western higher education and cultivated globally-oriented identities while not undermining their Chinese roots. They imagined their futures in terms of considerable flexibility, with a rising China viewed as an attractive and feasible option for career development.

This research provides an enriched understanding of a new generation of globally mobile Chinese students. The participants held distinctively different outlooks, aspirations and attitudes than depicted in the flexible citizenship framework, which emphasised a one-dimensional and instrumentalist portrayal of Chinese international students. This study discusses cross-generational changes in the desire for overseas education and a global-national outlook among young people in the context of significant social transformations in urban China.

The originality of this study is in expanding the flexible citizenship framework with reference to the emergent identities and pathways of students in the international schooling sector in China.

The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize the factors that can positively influence the implementation of a blockchain-based supply chain via an integrated framework. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no previous study has focused on prioritizing these factors.

First, this study conducts a multivocal literature review, and a total of 48 success factors (SFs) are identified and mapped into 11 categories. Second, the identified success factors and their categories are further validated by industry practitioners using a questionnaire survey approach. Finally, this study applies an analytical hierarchy process to prioritize the identified SFs and their categories and to assess their importance for successful blockchain implementation in the supply chain management process.

The “Accessibility” category has the highest importance, and the “Overall efficiency” category has the second highest rank. As far as the success factors are concerned, “Trackability” and “Traceability” are considered to be the prime success factors of a blockchain-based supply chain. The taxonomy of the categories and their success factors provide an outline for supply chain organizations to establish a strategy to implement blockchain technology.

This technology can be practically applied in a sustainable supply chain. Another vital application of this blockchain technology is in banking and finance because of the blockchain's immutable data recording property.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no previous study focused on building a taxonomic model that allows supply chain organizations to compare this paper's model with existing models and outline the necessary actions to improve supply chain activities. The questionnaire-based survey developed to validate the success factors in real-world practices and the factors' prioritization can help academic researchers and industrial practitioners to set their strategic goals accordingly.

What distinguishes digital transformation from other traditional IT transformations is its involvement of the entire organization, rather than merely the IT department. Thus, instead of taking a perspective that is confined to the IT department, this paper studies the ambidextrous nature of digital transformation (DT) from the standpoint of the whole firm. The authors define DT ambidexterity as the capability to utilize digital technology to simultaneously improve the efficiency of existing businesses (DT exploitation) and to promote business growth (DT exploration).

Using annual reports of Chinese firms as a mining material, this paper deploys text mining and word frequency analysis to develop a data set of digital transformation to construct DT exploitation, DT exploration and DT ambidexterity, so that the authors can examine and compare their impact on business performance.

This study's statistics show that observations in this research sample mainly manifest DT ambidexterity and DT exploitation, while DT exploration makes up the smallest proportion. The authors find that DT exploitation, DT exploration, and DT ambidexterity have positive, yet heterogeneous effects on business performance.

This study expands the existing literature of IT-related ambidexterity by examining the ambidextrous nature of DT from the angle of company-wide strategy instead of the perspective from IT-department and expands the extant literature of digital transformation by examining the heterogeneous effects of its different components on business performance. The authors also add to the digital strategizing literature by showing that different business strategy goals can be attained through different stages of DT.

This study expands the existing literature of IT-related ambidexterity by examining the ambidexterity nature of DT from the angle of company-wide strategy instead of the perspective from IT department and expands the extant literature of digital transformation by examining the heterogeneous effects of its different components on business performance. The authors also add to the digital strategizing literature by showing that different business strategy goals can be attained through different stages of DT.