Search results

We investigated consumers’ environmental, social and local beliefs and their impact on attitudes, subjective norms and willingness to pay for sustainable coffee in the understudied context of Thailand.

The study is based on a survey of 253 Thai consumers, analysed through an extended model of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB).

The study validates the TPB model in the Thai demographic, finding a significant positive impact of environmental and local beliefs and subjective norms on willingness to pay for sustainable coffee. More importantly, it proposes an extended model of TPB, stressing the central role of “local beliefs” in sustainable consumption in a Global South context.

This study demonstrates the importance of “localness” in the practice of sustainable consumption in Thailand, namely the beliefs in the support for the local economy and prosperity for the local community. This expands our understanding of the heterogeneous meanings associated with the practice of sustainable consumption in a South-East Asian context.

This study aims to report the development and experimental evaluation of two kinds of PANI@semiconductor based photocathodic anti-corrosion coating, for application on stainless steel substrates.

PANI was in situ chemical polymerized on TiO₂ and BiVO₄ particles, and FT-IR and SEM/EDS were used to understand the characteristics and elemental distribution of the composite particles. Composite coatings, which consisted of epoxy, PANI@TiO₂ or PANI@BiVO₄ and graphene, were prepared on the 304L stainless steel. Photoelectrochemical response measurement, electrochemical tests and immersion tests were used to assess the anti-corrosion performance of the prepared coatings in 45°C 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. And the corrosion protection mechanism was further explained by combining with surface observation.

The photoelectrochemical response tests revealed the good photocathodic effect of the coatings, and the reversible oxidation-reduction properties of PANI (pseudocapacitive effect) leading to the repeated usage of the coatings. Consequently, the anti-corrosion mechanism of the composite coating is attributed to the physical barrier effect of the coating, the anodic protection effect of PANI and the photocathodic and energy store effect.

These kind coatings could prevent corrosion from day to night for stainless steel, which has great engineering application prospects on stainless steel corrosion protection.

According to the resource-based theory, a firm’s unique resources and capabilities are the key to its competitive advantage. This paper aims to investigate the effect of top management team (TMT) stability, an important intangible resource of the firm, on the maturity mismatch between investment and financing of companies. Additionally, we explore the moderating effects of state ownership and institutional ownership in this context.

This study conducts an empirical analysis based on the ordinary least squares (OLS) model with a sample of Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2010 to 2022.

The results show that TMT stability significantly mitigates the degree of maturity mismatch. Both state ownership and institutional ownership weaken the negative effect of TMT stability on maturity mismatch. Besides, alleviating financing constraints is a crucial pathway through which TMT stability influences maturity mismatch.

The findings help firms to effectively retain TMT talents and reduce the occurrence of maturity mismatch.

This paper not only helps to expand the research on the economic effects of TMT stability but also provides new ideas on how to alleviate the maturity mismatch of companies.

This study aims to summarize studies that compared the performance of health-care institutions led by leaders with medical background versus those with no medical background.

A systematic search was conducted on three databases: PubMed, Ovid Medline and Google Scholar to identify relevant peer-reviewed studies using the keywords “performance,” “impact,” “physician,” “medical,” “doctor,” “leader,” “healthcare institutions” and “hospital.” Only quantitative studies that compared the performance of health-care institutions led by leaders with medical background versus non-medical background were included. Articles were screened and assessed for eligibility before the relevant data were extracted to summarize, appraise and make a narrative account of the findings.

A total of eight studies were included, four were based in the USA, two in the UK and one from Germany and one from the Arab World. Half of the studies (n = 4) reported overall better health-care institutional performance in terms of hospital quality ranking such as clinical effectiveness and patient safety under leaders with medical background, whereas one study showed poorer performance. The remaining studies reported mixed results among the different performance indicators, especially financial performance.

While medical background leaders may have an edge in clinical competence to manage health-care institutions, it will be beneficial to equip them with essential management skills to optimize leadership competence and enhance organizational performance.

The exclusive inclusion of quantitative empirical studies that compared health-care institutional performance medical and non-medical leaders provides a clearer link between the relationship between health-care institutional performance and the leaders’ background.

Organic food consumption has received great attention due to the increase in consumer environmental and health concerns. This study intends to analyse how customers' green purchasing intentions for organic food are affected by internal factors of attitude and health consciousness and external factors of social norms and environmental concern, as well as how green trust operates as a moderator between green purchase intention and actual purchase.

A quantitative research methodology was employed in this study. The data (n = 323) were gathered via a self-administered questionnaire. The respondents, who were current purchasers of organic food, were chosen through a purposive sampling technique. Data were analysed using exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modelling with the aid of IBM SPSS 25.0 and AMOS 25.

The results reveal that customers' green purchase intention for organic products is positively influenced by internal factors (attitude and health consciousness) and external factors (social norms and environmental concern). This study also shows the moderating effect of green trust on intention and action, demonstrating the necessity of building green trust among customers to diminish green purchasing inconsistency.

The study's results have ramifications for producers of organic goods, merchants and market oversight organizations. Establishing a viable strategy while considering customers' concerns about health and the environment is necessary. The formulated strategy must target specific customer niches, therefore strengthening customers' trust in and understanding of organic food items, which will in turn diminish green purchasing inconsistency in the organic industry.

This study contributes to the existing literature by extending the Theory of Planned Behaviour model to organic food consumption and by visualizing how various factors (internal, external and green trust) affect a consumer's inclination to make organic food purchases. The authors added to the empirical evidence that green trust plays a crucial role in stimulating green buying intentions into behaviour and ultimately diminishing green purchasing inconsistency.

This study aims to validate the impact of waiting staff’s attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control on customer dissuasion from over-ordering and identify their antecedents using an extended theory of planned behaviour.

We selected three categories of restaurants (30 in total, including fine dining, casual dining, and fast food) in Macao and Zhuhai (China) for conducting the survey using a purposive sampling approach. The respondents were waiting staff who took customers’ orders in the past three months. In total, 393 valid responses were used for a structural-equation-modelling analysis.

The results show that restaurant waiting staff’s attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control have positive effects on their intention to dissuade customers from over-ordering. Our study further reveals that perceived behavioural control is far more influential than attitudes and subjective norms on restaurant employees’ intentions to intervene with over-ordering. We also validate seven antecedents, including environmental concern and communication for attitudes, peer influence, supervisor influence, and organisational support for subjective norms, and self-efficacy and training for perceived behavioural control.

The food-waste literature tends to focus on consumers in home and restaurant settings and has paid scarce attention to the role of restaurant waiting staff in intervening in consumers’ waste behaviours. We fill in this research gap by revealing a formation mechanism for waiting staff’s intention to dissuade over-ordering.

This study examines the direct and indirect effects of organizational environmental orientation (EO)/culture, quality management practices (QMP) and sustainability experience (SE) on the relationship between organizational green practices (GP) and the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability performance (SuP).

To test the seven hypotheses, a structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The responses of 365 managers from various USA businesses in the service industries were analyzed using IBM SPSS and structural equation modeling (SEM)-AMOS.

The empirical results indicate that positive SuP in the economic, environmental and social dimensions and organizational GP can be improved by a strong culture of EO, effective QMP and substantial SE.

This research fills the gap in existing research between important organizational and environmental priorities and SuP. Consequently, the study provides managers with important strategic guidance: for environmental practices to achieve profitability and sustainability success, companies must promote an environmental-mindful culture and strategically invest in integrated QM systems.

This research is one of the first that explores how organizational environmental culture and QMP affect directly and indirectly the relationship between GP and SuP. These results provide empirical evidence to support the claim that environmental culture and QMP have significant direct and indirect effects on the relationship between GP and SuP dimensions.

This study aims to identify and analyse the gains and strains associated with flexible working practices (FWPs) introduced and adopted prior to and during the pandemic and consider how these experiences are likely to shape the future of workplace flexibility post-pandemic.

A case study research strategy was adopted to explore the FWPs implemented by a state-owned organisation in the Chinese publishing industry. A mixed data collection method was used. Quantitative data was collected from 50 valid questionnaires, which was followed by 7 qualitative interviews to gain rich insights into the availability and effectiveness of various FWPs and associated benefits and drawbacks.

While the results confirm positive effects FWPs have on employee engagement and retention and on business continuity and employee well-being during the pandemic, the empirical analysis highlights the performance-driven patterns in use and impacts of some FWPs, which caused concerns and dilemmas. Besides the increasing intense market competition, the changing face of state-owned enterprises and managerial attitudes have been found to have significant effects on the use of FWPs.

This paper has contributed to a better understanding of flexible working in an under-researched setting, reflected in changes before and during the pandemic, offering an insight into the commercialised nature of flexible working in the Chinese context. It has implications for organisations and HR practitioners as they envision future workplace flexibility.

This study aims to examine whether the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) by audit firms and their clients affects audit efficiency and audit quality.

This study empirically examines the abovementioned research question based on data from China for the years 2011 to 2020. It uses audit report lag as a proxy for audit efficiency and the likelihood of annual report restatement as a proxy for audit quality. It adopts the propensity score matching and the two-stage OLS regression model to address the endogeneity issue led by firms’ innate complicated functions.

The findings show that when audit firms and their clients use AI separately, there's a positive link between AI use and audit report lag. However, when audit firms and clients use AI together, there's a negative link between AI use and audit report delays that enhance overall audit efficiency. Next, the authors observe a negative link between AI use and the likelihood of a restatement. Finally, the authors find that the association between AI adoption and audit quality is driven by increased audit effort lag. Results are consistent and robust to endogeneity tests and sensitivity analyses.

Findings can complement the audit quality and corporate governance literature by clarifying that external audit must evolve through digitalization and the incorporation of newly developed digital tools, such as AI.

In online purchase for dietary supplements, due to the lack of professional advice from pharmacists, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) has become an important source of information for consumers to make purchase decisions. How can firms use eWOM resources to increase sales? The purpose of this paper is to provide practical methods for firms by exploring the effects of eWOM on sales and developing a sales prediction model based on eWOM.

The data came from 120 dietary supplements on Tmall.com. The authors extracted the product sales as dependent variable and 11 eWOM factors as independent variables. The multicollinearity was tested by using variance inflation factor and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator. The multiple linear regression was used to investigate the effects of eWOM on sales. Drawing on white- and black-box approaches, six models were developed. Comparing the root mean square error, the authors selected the optimal one as their target sales prediction model.

Product ratings, total reviews and favorites are positively and strongly associated with sales. Questions and additional reviews have negative effects on sales. The random forest model has the best prediction performance.

The research focuses on eWOM of dietary supplement. First, the authors show that easily accessible eWOM from online platforms can be used to evaluate effects and predict sales. Second, the authors introduce white- and black-box models through machine learning to assess eWOM. Firms could use the described models to foster their marketing initiatives.