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This study aims to investigate the significant role of restaurant employees’ relational resources to promote thriving at work. The mediating effect of heedful relating was focused on as an underlying mechanism. This study also investigated the moderating effect of employees’ perceived COVID-19 impact on the hypothesized relationships.

The research model was tested with frontline restaurant employees working in full-service restaurants using the convenience sampling method. A self-administered questionnaire was used for an online survey. A total of 361 responses were analyzed with structural equation modeling, bootstrapping analysis and multi-group analysis.

The results showed the significant relationships not only between relational resources and thriving at work but also between relational resources and heedful relating. Heedful relating was significantly associated with thriving at work. The significant mediating effect of heedful relating was supported. The moderating effect of the perceived COVID-19 impact on the association between leader–member exchange and thriving was significant.

Employees’ relational resources at work leads to thriving at work both directly and indirectly through the impact of heedful relating. The findings contributed to the literature on human resource management and hospitality. Moreover, the study presented implications for the restaurant industry to promote employees’ self-adaptation and development in a post-pandemic era.

With the study findings, the importance of relational aspects to foster restaurant employees’ thriving at work could be highlighted which reflects the unique nature of the restaurant industry.

In response to the growing popularity of brands’ using social media as a customer service channel (webcare), this research examines how companies redirect consumers from the public social media feed to a private channel. The purpose of this paper is to understand how to redirect consumers using service failure apologies and to discuss personalization’s role in these service recoveries.

A text mining study reveals how companies use redirection on social media. Then, two experiments test the impact of redirection types and personalization on consumer perceptions and intentions.

Service representatives frequently require consumers to initiate the first message after redirecting them from the public social media feed (a consumer-responsible redirection). Personalizing webcare apologies increases repurchase intentions and relational advocacy regardless of the redirection strategy used. Consumers are more likely to publicly respond to companies that initiate the first message in a private channel (a company-responsible redirection).

Although most service providers require consumers to co-produce service recovery redirections (consumer-responsible redirection), this requirement may not be optimal. If a consumer-responsible redirection must be used, then personalization may improve consumers’ perceptions of webcare apology’s sincerity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to test different types of redirections in webcare. The authors extend the literature on personalization and webcare apologies by examining how these webcare components operate with redirections. The need to prevent public complaints’ spiraling out of control contributes to this research’s timely value.

This paper aims to examine the effects of global financial crisis (GFC) on chief executive officers’ (CEO) compensation and earnings management relationship. Specifically, the authors examine whether the recent financial crisis had moderated the relationship between CEO bonus and discretionary accruals.

The authors use panel data for 1,800 firm-year observations (over a period of six years from 2005 to 2010) and use univariate and multivariate tests to test their hypothesis. The authors divide the period into pre-crisis, during-crisis and post-crisis periods to examine how the different financial crisis periods affect the relationship between CEO compensation and earnings management. Various alternative tests including endogeneity test suggest that the results are robust.

The authors’ multivariate results indicate that the relationship between CEO’ compensation and earnings management changes because of the GFC.

The findings, therefore, justify more monitoring and scrutiny to limit the existence of opportunistic managerial behaviour and for the appropriate designing of CEO compensation packages during abnormal economic circumstances.

So far as the authors’ knowledge goes, this is the first study which examines the relationship between CEO compensation and earnings management during GFC.

Artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot technology is increasingly used to handle customer complaints in the service recovery process. Built on the justice theory, this paper aims to explore the optimal way to utilize chatbots in handling customer complaints for service failure recovery and the moderating role of humor.

Two scenario-based between-subjects experimental design studies were conducted to examine the two aspects of justice in service failure recovery: Study 1 focuses on procedural justice manifested as perceived control and Study 2 on interactional justice assessed as social presence. Furthermore, the moderating role of humor is investigated.

The results indicate that both perceived control and social presence can improve chatbots’ effectiveness in handling service failures to regain customer satisfaction and the consequent revisit intention. However, humor shows opposite effects in the two studies: chatbots using humorous language in complaint handling may attenuate the positive effect of perceived control but enhance the positive effect of social presence.

The findings provide practical guidelines to the service industry regarding the optimal service design and technology deployment in customer service, particularly for an effective service failure recovery process.

This research contributes to the service failure recovery literature by investigating how the new service technology of AI-powered chatbots can effectively handle customer complaints for service failure recovery. Furthermore, the research reveals the nuanced effects of humor in different complaint-handling situations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between board characteristics and real performance among state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Malaysia in a longitudinal period following the introduction of transformation policy.

The study deviates from prior research in utilising a real performance measure rather than traditional measures of performance. The authors adopt the quantile regression approach to examine the impact of board characteristics on real performance in a comparison using ordinary least squares.

The results of quantile regression reveal that the impact of board mechanisms on real performance was not as expected. Specifically, board size and duality had a bearing on real performance. Board independence also is considered as influential factor through the time. However, such effects were not homogenous across different quantiles. The dummy year variable to compare the period pre- and post-transformation policy reveals that the dummy year is not significant, indicating that performance post-transformation is indifferent compared to the pre-transformation policy period.

It is important for government to reconsider the policies embedded in the transformation policy. This study provides insights on the enhancement of board effectiveness and new developments regarding GLCs.

This is an early to attempt to measure real performance and its link to board characteristics in SOEs post-transformation policy.

This paper aims to focus on the role of financial analysts in corporate fraud in the Chinese stock market.

Data on the analyst coverage and all the types of corporate fraud were obtained for 16,284 company-year observations of Chinese companies. The sample was subsequently divided into those of state-owned enterprises, before and after financial crisis.

The overall results indicate that analyst coverage effectively deters the occurrence of fraud. The sub-sample results suggest that the impact of analysts on deterring fraud is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises, especially after the financial crisis. The path analyses show that analyst coverage can deter corporate frauds by affecting information transparency and investor attention. Furthermore, the results show that the deterrence role of financial analysts varies with fraud types: it is more pronounced in deterring disclosure fraud, but not as effective in illegal guarantees and illegal insider dealing. Moreover, analyst coverage can deter the occurrence of fictitious reporting, intentional postponement and material omission.

This paper not only examined the overall fraud probability but also taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the information availability and research focus of financial analysts and examined the analysts’ impact on the occurrence of difference types of fraud. Moreover, this paper explored why financial analysts can deter corporate frauds through path analyses.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the political connections of listed firms in China affect how the market reacts to cases of financial misrepresentation investigated by the regulatory authorities.

The authors use an event study method and the financial misrepresentation events in China stock markets as research setting and empirically test the association between market reactions to the announcement of financial misrepresentations and the presence of political connections.

The results show that on average, there is no significant market reaction to financial misrepresentation for politically connected firms. In contrast, however, there is a significantly negative market reaction for non-connected firms, which suggests that investors do not punish politically connected firms for financial misrepresentation. The authors argue that politically connected companies use the altered financial information to gain legitimacy and obtain benefits from the government. Consistent with the argument, the authors find that in the years after they disclose their financial misrepresentation, firms with political connections are more likely to increase their bank loans than firms without political connections.

The authors provide a new explanation for the low-earnings quality of politically connected firms.

The effect of the load on the tribological properties of Si₃N₄-hBN sliding against Si₃N₄ were investigated under dry and water lubrication condition.

Using a MMU-5G type pin-on-disc friction and wear tester.

Under the dry friction, the wear mechanism was dominated by ploughing and abrasive wear, and the contact status was elastic contact under the load less than 25 N. With the increase of the load, the friction coefficient decreased; the main wear mechanism was fatigue fracture, and the contact status turned into plastic contact. Under water lubrication, effective lubrication film could be produced on the worn surface, and it had a function of fluid lubrication under the load less than 15 N. With the increase of the load, the pin and the disc came into direct contact, and the friction and wear of the pairs were aggravated; the wear mechanism changed from chemical wear into abrasive wear and brittle spalling.

The study on the effect of the load on the tribological properties of Si₃N₄-hBN sliding against Si₃N₄ was investigated under dry and water lubrication condition in the way of contact stress.

The purpose of this empirical research is to investigate the influence of interactive virtually present others (VPOs) on a firm response and customers’ reiterated complaints (follow-ups) during service failures. This research follows up on previous experimental studies that suggest VPOs affect the focal customers’ complaint intention.

More than 16,000 posts (of complaints and complainants’ follow-ups) on 13 airline Facebook pages were analyzed using partial least squares.

This empirical study found that customers’ complaints are attended to the extent the complaints are followed up with more comments as supported by VPOs suggesting a contagion effect. Besides, it appears, the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the grease. The interactive virtual presence of others does not have an effect on a firm response toward them, despite their support to complainants and calling the airline to act.

To date, previous experimental studies have only featured a single VPO in potential complainants’ responses; however, in this empirical study the authors take into consideration the interaction of several VPOs in the service failure. Also, the focus is on the influence of VPOs on customers' complaints rather than the other way around.