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This study aims to explore the traditional plant dyeing of Xinjiang Atlas silk fabrics, providing references for the comprehensive utilization of plant dyes in intangible cultural heritage.

The focus of this study is on dyeing experiments of Atlas silk fabrics using safflower extracts, constrained by regional resources. Safflower dry flowers grown in Xinjiang were selected, rinsed with pure water and rubbed. Yellow pigments were removed by adding edible white vinegar. Red pigments from safflower were extracted using an alkaline solution prepared with Populus euphratica ash, a special product of Xinjiang. The extraction rate was analyzed under varying material-to-liquor ratios, pH values, times and temperatures. Direct dyeing process experiments were conducted to obtain different colorimetric L, a, b and K/S values for comparison. Samples with good color development were selected to test the impact of dyeing immersions on color development, and their color fastness, UV protection and antibacterial effects were verified.

The dyeing experiments on silk fabrics confirmed their UV protection capabilities and antibacterial properties, demonstrating effectiveness against E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus. As a major producer of safflower, Xinjiang underscores the significance of safflower as an essential plant dyes on the Silk Road. This study reveals its market potential and suitability for use in the plant dyeing process of Atlas silk, producing vibrant red and pink colors.

The experiments indicated that after removing yellow pigments, the highest extraction rate of red pigment from safflower was achieved at a pH value of 10–11, a temperature of 30°C and an extraction time of 40 min. The best bright red color effect with strong color fastness was obtained with a material-to-liquor ratio of 1:20, a temperature of 40°C and three immersions. The best light pink color effect with strong color fastness was a material-to-liquor ratio of 1:80, a temperature of 30°C and two immersions.

The pandemic has caused severe disruptions and significant losses in various industries. In particular, the nursing service industry has been greatly affected, leading to increased service costs and attrition of nursing service provider (NSP) residents. Although prior studies suggest that outsourcing may mitigate losses from disruptions, there still lacks a detailed analysis of whether and when to adopt such a disruption solution.

This study develops a two-period game-theoretical model to explore the impacts of demand and cost disruptions caused by the pandemic on NSPs’ operational strategies, suppliers’ strategy choices and equilibrium prices and demand.

The results present several novel managerial insights. First, we suggest that higher demand and cost disruptions decrease service demand, but do not necessarily prompt an NSP to outsource nursing services. Interestingly, we find that even when the service cost of the outsourcing strategy is low, the NSP may still insist on the in-house strategy. Additionally, the equilibrium strategy does not always result in lower prices and higher demand.

Our findings provide insightful takeaways for NSPs to cope with the pandemic in the nursing service industry. The results also offer theoretical support for other industries to recover from demand and cost disruptions.

This study examines the link between the knowledge creation process, ambidextrous innovation, and competitive advantage. Further, this study also tested the moderating role of organizational agility on the relationship between the knowledge creation process and ambidextrous innovation.

The empirical study’s data were collected by surveying 306 respondents employed in 140 Pakistani Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The questionnaire was designed according to the study’s requirements and was based on theoretical knowledge and findings from previous research on the knowledge-creation process, ambidextrous innovation, and competitive advantage. All hypotheses were tested using a structured regression method.

The study indicates that the knowledge creation process significantly impacts a firm’s competitive advantage. Additionally, this study demonstrates that ambidextrous innovation can moderate the relationship between the knowledge-creation process and competitive advantage.

Future studies should examine mediating factors, such as organizational culture, leadership style, and industry characteristics, as well as moderating variables, such as environmental turbulence.

This study guides SME leaders on the importance of knowledge creation and ambidextrous innovation in achieving operational success and gaining a competitive advantage.

This study explores how the knowledge creation process directly and indirectly, enhances organizational capacity for competitive advantage through the mediating roles of ambidextrous innovation and the moderating role of organizational agility.

This paper examines whether there is a presence of behavioral consistency in CEOs' earnings management decisions. Based on insights from the career imprint theory, we propose that firms are more likely to engage in earnings management when their newly appointed CEOs come from firms that were also involved in such practices. Empirical support was found by analyzing a dataset that tracks 855 CEO transitions. Additionally, we find that the strength of this effect is influenced by factors such as the age of the CEO when they joined their previous firm, the length of their tenure at the previous firm, the size of the former firm, and the strength of corporate governance in their current firm. Furthermore, additional tests support the idea of “moral cleansing” behavior in CEOs, but not the “slippery slope” mechanism.

This paper examines the effect of board reforms on managerial risk-taking incentive provision in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) whose managers are undue risk-averse.

We use the staggered implementation of board reforms in Chinese central government-controlled state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) as an exogenous shock to board governance. We collect data on board reforms for a set of pilot CSOEs during the period 2005 to 2020 from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) website by hand. We use a generalized difference-in-difference (DID) design to test the effect of staggered board reform adoption on managerial risk-taking incentive provision.

We find a positive relationship between board reforms and risk-taking inventive provision, i.e. pay-performance sensitivity, promotion-performance sensitivity and performance target difficulty. The documented relationship is stronger when the value of risk-taking is higher. We also find that board reforms lead to greater risky but value-enhancing investments and that managerial risk-taking incentive provision acts as an important channel through which board reforms improve value-enhancing risk-taking.

Our findings suggest that board reforms that improve board governance are effective in addressing risk-related agency conflicts in emerging markets. The findings also highlight the importance of managerial risk-taking incentive provision in inducing risky but value-enhancing investments.

The discrepancy between the content of an article and its title is a key characteristic of fake news. Current methods for detecting fake news often ignore the significant difference in length between the content and its title. In addition, relying solely on textual discrepancies between the title and content to distinguish between real and fake news has proven ineffective. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new approach called semantic enhancement network with content–title discrepancy (SEN–CTD), which enhances the accuracy of fake news detection.

The SEN–CTD framework is composed of two primary modules: the SEN and the content–title comparison network (CTCN). The SEN is designed to enrich the representation of news titles by integrating external information and position information to capture the context. Meanwhile, the CTCN focuses on assessing the consistency between the content of news articles and their corresponding titles examining both emotional tones and semantic attributes.

The SEN–CTD model performs well on the GossipCop, PolitiFact and RealNews data sets, achieving accuracies of 80.28%, 86.88% and 84.96%, respectively. These results highlight its effectiveness in accurately detecting fake news across different types of content.

The SEN is specifically designed to improve the representation of extremely short texts, enhancing the depth and accuracy of analyses for brief content. The CTCN is tailored to examine the consistency between news titles and their corresponding content, ensuring a thorough comparative evaluation of both emotional and semantic discrepancies.

Well-constructed transportation infrastructure may effectively decrease barriers to the flow of innovative human resources and inventive elements, accelerating enterprise innovation activities. This study will explore how HSR helps enterprises achieve ambidextrous innovation, including the mediating mechanism of absorbed slack resources, innovative talents, and the heterogeneous effects of management shareholding ratio and financing constraints.

Based on resource dependence theory and social network theory, this study employs a quasi-natural experiment of China’s high-speed railway and builds a multi-time point DID model to investigate its influence on enterprise ambidextrous innovation.

Results suggest that the HSR positively influences both exploitative and exploratory innovation, and the influence is more substantial on exploitative innovation. Further analysis finds two influencing channels through which HSR influences enterprise ambidextrous innovation: providing redundant resources and attracting innovative talents. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that HSR has a more significant positive effect on exploratory innovation for enterprises with high management shareholding. In the low financing constraint group, the HSR opening has a more significant impact on ambidextrous innovation.

In ambidextrous innovation, enterprises should rationalize the allocation of resources, attach importance to the innovative talent introduction, and choose differentiated paths based on intrinsic characteristics. Meanwhile, the government should actively improve the HSR routes and continuously improve the innovative environment.

This study enriches the theoretical research framework of HSR and ambidextrous innovation by identifying the channel mechanisms and boundary conditions through which HSR affects ambidextrous innovation and expands the consequences of HSR and the antecedents of ambidextrous.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and promoters’ share pledging activity for real estate and construction firms in India. The author further divides the sample into financially sound and financially constrained firms and re-examines the relationship between EPU and promoters’ share pledging activity for them. Additionally, the author investigates the moderating effect of EPU on firm-level cash holding for pledged firms.

The author conducts multiple regression to examine the effect of EPU on the share-pledging activity of a firm on sample data of Indian construction and real estate firms. The financial and pledging data was collected for all listed firms from March 2009 to March 2020 from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. The EPU data was re-estimated using the three-period moving average method. All data used in the study was collected from secondary sources.

The author finds that EPU influences pledging activity, and the association between them is opposite for financially constrained and financially sound firms. Also, the author reports that an increase in EPU increases firm-level cash holding for pledged firms, and the interaction between EPU and share pledging is significantly associated with firm-level cash holding.

The managerial implications of this study are manifold. Managers of financially constrained firms should pay attention to the promoters pledging activity so that in a rising EPU environment, issues of managerial entrenchment can be avoided. Moreover, any further promoters’ share pledging activity under rising EPU conditions may force managers to hoard higher cash and thus reducing investment and profitability.

This paper presents evidence of relationship between EPU, share pledging activity and firm-level cash holding in an emerging economy. The study also compares the response of financially constrained and financially sound firms for EPU on equity pledging activity and that of equity pledging on firm-level cash holdings.

The construction industry has been investigating “where Henry Ford is in the industry system.” Given that listed construction enterprises are the backbone of the promotion of the high-quality development of the industry, their research and innovation are of considerable importance. This study aims to comprehensively assess the research and development (R&D) status quo and trends within various types of construction enterprises in order to identify effective strategies to enhance R&D efficiency in the construction industry.

Based on the data won from annual reports and the CSMAR database for the period 2016–2020, this study examines 104 listed construction enterprises in China. By applying both the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method and the Malmquist productivity index, this research compares and analyzes the static and dynamic differences in R&D efficiency across different types of construction enterprises.

Results suggest that the magnitude of change in the Malmquist decomposition index of 104 listed construction enterprises gradually narrowed, but the comprehensive technological level remained relatively low. Although state-owned enterprises had an advantage in scale efficiency, meaning they could maximize output with given inputs, their technological progress efficiency, also known as the degree of technological innovation, was significantly lower than that of private enterprises. As one finding, state-owned enterprises in comparison with private enterprises experience significant R&D inefficiency. It represents the main cause of their low degree of technological innovation and efficiency.

This study assesses the R&D efficiency of listed construction enterprises in China from the perspective of different market segments, state-owned and private enterprises and suggests approaches to improve strategies for various corporate types. Thus, the study’s new findings contribute to addressing the challenge of low R&D levels in the construction industry in the fields of engineering, construction and architectural management.

The purpose of this systematic literature review (SLR) is to examine the theoretical landscape of knowledge hiding (KH) research, identifies prevailing theories, the different ways KH is understood within these theories and the underlying assumptions that shape these views. Based on this, ideas for further research are derived to advance the theoretical basis of KH studies.

Using a theory-based SLR, the authors analysed 170 scientific papers from Scopus and Web of Science. This involved thematic analysis to categorise theories frequently applied in KH research and a detailed examination to link core assumptions to these theoretical perspectives.

The analysis revealed a reliance on 86 distinct theories, with a notable emphasis on social exchange theory and conservation of resources theory. KH is predominantly conceptualised as a negative, objective, reactive and relational behaviour rooted in social reciprocity and resource conservation. The review uncovers the multifaceted nature of KH, challenging the field to incorporate broader theoretical views that encompass positive aspects, subjective experiences, strategic intentions and non-relational determinants of KH.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically map and analyse the theoretical underpinnings of KH research. It offers a unique contribution by categorising the diverse theories applied in KH studies and explicitly linking these theories to their inherent assumptions about KH. This approach provides a comprehensive overview that not only identifies gaps in the current research landscape but also proposes alternative theoretical perspectives for exploring KH, thereby setting a new direction for future studies in this field.