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Online business can be an attractive career choice but bears gendered implications under China’s market economy. This study aims to examine how highly educated young women negotiate their career choice of online business, given their enhanced career ambitions and the persisting conservative views of their parents. It is to be examined how these factors interact in shaping women’s strategies and commitment to their nonconventional careers.

The study draws on 23 interviews with 18 women involved in online business. The interviews were coded by themes about how women perceive and make career choices to enter online business, the influence of various motivations (e.g., economic security, decency, autonomy and earning potential) and women’s interactions with their parents under gendered social expectations. The study analyzes and categorizes women’s varied strategies and levels of commitment in taking up online business, an attractive but suspicious career for highly educated young women.

The study finds that some women chose to conduct online business as a secondary job behind their stable and formal primary job; their compromise under parents’ preferences and social expectations as “compliant daughters,” willingly or forced, coexisted with their persisting interest in online entrepreneurship. Other women, or “self-determined daughters,” embraced online business as their primary job; some benefited from parents’ tolerant views, but others needed to handle the pressure of parental disapproval by hiding or proving their nonconventional career choices worthwhile.

This study speaks to the gendered opportunity-necessity framework of entrepreneurship by illustrating women’s multiple motivations in China’s market reforms and the rising online entrepreneurship dynamics. The findings contextualize women’s career choices in different family dynamics and suggest how social expectations and gender norms are imposed and transformed, with a focus on the shifting gendered concerns of opportunity, security and decency in an era of digital economy.

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.

This study aims to examine whether skilled female migrants can overcome gender constraints and social stigma attached to women’s service work in host societies.

Based on interviews with 40 women who moved from mainland China and entered Hong Kong’s cross-border insurance business, the study examines how highly educated young women negotiate gender expectations and mobilize social networks in doing business.

This study finds different strategies women used in mobilizing social networks and constructing gender identities: some relied heavily on the warm market – networks of their family, relatives and friends – in doing business and developed careers by performing dutiful daughters, considerate “nieces” and caring “sisters”; some women also relied on the warm market but their jobs were regarded as nonconventional, and they had to deal with suspicions of inappropriate and instrumental womanhood and tried to prove themselves and gain support in the warm market; some women relied mainly on the cold market – connections with strangers – and performed feminine affinity to expand client networks away from judgments of families and friends; and some other women chose to expand the cold market by cultivating a professional image among strangers.

The findings speak to previous research about women’s subordinate roles in migrant networks and their devalued femininity in service work by illustrating women’s diverse forms of agency in negotiating gender identities in the stratified service sectors.

Career plateau and employee silence are negative employee management phenomena that should be overcome but are challenging. However, relatively speaking, when employees reach a particular career stage, it is inevitable that the hierarchical plateau in the career plateau will occur, while the phenomena of employee silence have the chance to improve. This paper aims to study the influence mechanism of the career plateau on employee silence in an uncertain environment and then provides theoretical support for enhancing the organizational phenomenon of employee silence.

After considering the effects of career plateau and social desirability of employee silence, this paper obtained 313 samples based on the pilot survey, which were collected anonymously online and offline. Based on passing the data quality test, this experiment uses hierarchical regression, Bootstrap method, interaction graph and slope test to test the mediating variable

The results show a significant positive correlation between career plateau and employees' silent behavior. Affective commitment plays a partial mediating role between career plateau and employees' silent behavior. Organizational justice not only negatively moderated the relationship between career plateau and affective commitment but also negatively moderated the indirect effect of career plateau on silent behavior through affective commitment.

First, based on the theory of uncertainty management and social exchange theory, this paper develops a behavioral response to the organizational environment based on the principle of fair exchange when employees perceive an uncertain environment. This study innovatively applied the two theories together in one study, establishing a link between the two theories. Second, this study explores the influence of career plateau on employee silence and empirically tests the silent behavior based on the previous division of three dimensions of career plateau. The third study explores affective commitment, the black box of the relationship between career plateau and employee silence. This research also enriches the related research on affective commitment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence older adults' intention to use virtual fitting room technology during the COVID-19 pandemic based on the extended technology acceptance model (TAM).

An online survey was conducted with a sample of older adults from 60 to 90 years old (n = 819). A structural equation modeling was conducted to test a proposed research model.

The results revealed that older adults' behavioral intentions were positively influenced by perceived usefulness and ease of use, and fear of infection during the pandemic was significantly related to the perceived usefulness. Fit concern was not significantly related to perceived usefulness of virtual fitting room technology.

This research extends the TAM by adding antecedents to perceived usefulness in explaining older adults' adoption of virtual fitting technology.

This study aims to investigate the coupling reaction of epoxide and CO₂ catalysed by alkali metal salts in the presence of ß-cyclodextrin (ß-CD) derivatives to generate cyclic carbonates at various conditions.

The coupling reaction was catalysed by alkali metal salts. The effects of the co-catalysts were investigated by using the conversion rate of raw materials. The affecting factors, such as reaction temperature, amount of the co-catalyst and reaction time, were explored. The possible mechanism of the coupling reaction was discussed.

Results showed that the structure of ß-CD is an important factor influencing the catalytic activity for the coupling reaction of epoxide with CO₂. The catalytic system of 2,3,6-trimethyl-ß-CD with potassium iodide (KI) showed a high catalytic activity. The protocol was expanded to various epoxides, which provided the corresponding cyclic carbonates in excellent yields. The apparent decrease in the yields was not detected after four recycling times. Moreover, the mechanism for the synergetic effect of the catalyst was proposed.

The coupling reactions were achieved in the presence of different structure of ß-CD as co-catalysts. The affecting of substituent of ß-CD were investigated.

This paper seeks to propose that practical wisdom originating within the Chinese classical traditions has been instrumental in China's ascendance to the world stage. Its purpose is to analyze biographical data across 200 Chinese business leaders in order to gauge the relative influence of two competing ideologies – Maoism and Confucianism.

This paper is based on a two‐step design process. First, modern day leadership archetypes characterizing Maoist and Confucian ideology were developed from the literature. Second, these archetypes were applied in the content analysis of biographical data on Chinese business leaders.

There was evidence of both Maoism and Confucianism in the practices of Chinese business leaders. An unintended, third cohort of leaders emerged, representative of the younger end of the biographical distribution, who appear to embrace paradox in their ideological orientation.

There were three practical implications for management and leadership development: the importance of integrating the concept of paradox into management and leadership development curricula; the provision of illustrative alternatives to western world leadership exemplars; and increased emphasis on global leadership as an emergent phenomenon with particular attention to the burgeoning internationalization of Chinese enterprise and its associated ideologies.

The current leadership literature is dominated by western world exemplars. This paper offers an alternative view; one rich with the wisdom and classical traditions of the Chinese culture.

The purpose of this paper is to create a new research direction within the domain of firms’ strategic orientations.

Based on data from Swedish multinational corporations (MNCs), this paper identifies types, i.e. configurations, of strategic orientations involving the components of entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation, and examines relationships with performance in foreign markets. Cluster analysis identifies types, and linear regression analysis examines relationships with performance in foreign markets.

Four types of orientations were found: conservative; entrepreneurial; maximizing; and irresolute. Furthermore, it was found that the relationship with performance in foreign markets is most positive for the maximizing followed by the conservative and irresolute.

First, it is established that entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation do not operate in isolation but are mutually supportive. Second, by establishing that type of orientations makes a difference for performance, this paper goes beyond the predominant view saying that just degrees matter. Third, the findings contribute to resource-advantage theory by establishing that competitive advantage results from resources being complementary in nature.

Instead of solely relying only on entrepreneurial orientation, or market orientation, corporations are advised to carefully evaluate their configuration of orientations. The evaluation is decisive because it cites implications for performance.

The study contributes to the literature on strategic orientation in a unique way as it captures performance implications stemming from types of strategic orientations.

Grey modeling technique is an important element of grey system theory, and academic articles applied to agricultural science research have been published since 1985, proving the broad applicability and effectiveness of the technique from different aspects and providing a new means to solve agricultural science problems. The analysis of the connotation and trend of the application of grey modeling technique in agricultural science research contributes to the enrichment of grey technique and the development of agricultural science in multiple dimensions.

Based on the relevant literature selected from China National Knowledge Infrastructure, the Web of Science, SpiScholar and other databases in the past 37 years (1985–2021), this paper firstly applied the bibliometric method to quantitatively visualize and systematically analyze the trend of publication, productive author, productive institution, and highly cited literature. Then, the literature is combed by the application of different grey modeling techniques in agricultural science research, and the literature research progress is systematically analyzed.

The results show that grey model technology has broad prospects in the field of agricultural science research. Agricultural universities and research institutes are the main research forces in the application of grey model technology in agricultural science research, and have certain inheritance. The application of grey model technology in agricultural science research has wide applicability and precise practicability.

By analyzing and summarizing the application trend of grey model technology in agricultural science research, the research hotspot, research frontier and valuable research directions of grey model technology in agricultural science research can be more clearly grasped.