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This investigation endeavors to examine the routes by which environmental–social–governance (ESG) performance influences the competitive landscape for logistics enterprises, with a particular emphasis on the function of digitalization in this complex process. The research underscores the significance of the ESG context in the realm of digitalization, providing valuable insights into its impact on the overall competitiveness of logistics enterprises.

This research gathers information from a total of 90 logistics enterprises that are publicly traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share stock markets for analysis and model testing. Due to the multiple pathways of influence and the constrained size of the sample, it has been decided that the Piecewise structural–equation–modeling (SEM) approach will be employed.

The research reveals that ESG factors positively impact enterprises' competitiveness (EC). The augmentation of competitiveness is attributed to the moderating role of green technology innovation (GTI) and agency costs between ESG and EC. In the context of digitalization, the level of digitalization of logistics enterprises may create a capital squeeze effect on environmental performance, weakening competitiveness. Conversely, the level of digitalization positively regulates the promoting effect of governance performance on competitiveness.

This research provides a sound theoretical foundation for understanding how ESG contributes to boosting the competitiveness of Chinese logistics enterprises and extends the application of Piecewise SEM in the research field of logistics enterprise competitiveness. Furthermore, it offers a practical pathway for companies to implement ESG practices and foster competitiveness in digital environments.

The objective of this study is to generate new fiscal transparency indicators based on fiscal sustainability reports voluntarily disclosed by Chilean companies, leaders in Latin America in the issuance of green, social and sustainability corporate bonds (OECD, 2023a; OECD, 2018).

The sample included the analysis of sustainability reports of 30 Chilean companies with the highest market capitalization published in the period 2021. A correlation was carried out for each of the companies in the sample with the intention of detecting differences between several groups of paired dichotomous variables. For this, Cochran's Q test was used; the McNemar test; the Friedman test; the Wilcoxon test; the Levene test and the Kruskal−Wallis test were also used.

In the case of the companies in the sample, for the 2021 period there was an increase in disclosures of tax strategies compared to the study carried out by Faúndez-Ugalde et al. (2022) for the period 2020. However, there is still a lower degree of compliance in reporting fiscal risks and “country by country” information.

The commitment of companies to assume tax transparency standards improves their behavior in compliance with their tax obligations and provides greater certainty to develop actions to mitigate their tax risks.

The results demonstrate practical implications, where fiscal sustainability reports can enhance the work of tax administrations by defining indicators of good fiscal practices.

This study expands the research on the fiscal sustainability standards of Chilean companies, thus providing a deeper understanding of their performance regarding fiscal transparency.

Leakage serves as a core indicator of sealing performance degradation, particularly under high-speed and heavy-duty operational where increased leakage is common. Within heavy-duty vehicle transmissions, the leakage can lead to excessive pressure loss and eventual transmission failure. This study aims to introduce a predictive method for assessing sealing ring leakage in vehicle transmissions based on operating conditions.

Seal test was carried out using a specialized seal test rig. Various data points were collected during this test, including leakage, friction torque, oil temperature, oil pressure and rotating speed. The collected data underwent noise separation and reconstruction using the complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise method. Subsequently, a leakage prediction model is developed using the random forest regression with parameter optimization. A quantitative evaluation for influencing factors in leakage prediction process is investigated.

The results achieve a mean accuracy index exceeding 95%, demonstrating close alignment between predicted and actual leakage values. Feature contribution results highlight that the trends of the oil temperature, friction torque and oil pressure significantly affect the leakage prediction, with the oil temperature trend exerting the most substantial influence.

This work sheds light on the interplay between operating conditions and sealing performance degradation, offering valuable insights for understanding and addressing sealing issues effectively.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-07-2024-0271/

The purpose of this study is to develop a new hybrid method that combines interpretative structural modeling (ISM) and matrix cross-impact multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) to investigate the influencing factors of sustainable infrastructure vulnerability (SIV).

(1) Literature review and case study were used to identify the possible influencing factors; (2) a semi-structured interview was conducted to identify representative factors and the interrelationships among influencing factors; (3) ISM was adopted to identify the hierarchical structure of factors; (4) MICMAC was used to analyze the driving power (DRP) and dependence power (DEP) of each factor and (5) Semi-structured interview was used to propose strategies for overcoming SIV.

Results indicate that (1) 18 representative factors related to SIV were identified; (2) the relationship between these factors was divided into a five-layer hierarchical structure. The 18 representative factors were divided into driving factors, dependent factors, linkage factors and independent factors and (3) 12 strategies were presented to address the negative effects of these factors.

The findings illustrate the factors influencing SIV and their hierarchical structures, which can benefit the stakeholders and practitioners of an infrastructure project by encouraging them to take effective countermeasures to deal with related SIVs.

Given the competitiveness of the business environment globally, environmental, social and governance (ESG), which represents a sustainable development framework that integrates environmental, social and corporate governance factors, has become an increasingly recognized concept in emerging markets. In the case of Ghana, its implementation is influenced by several factors, including leadership.

Drawing on the resource-based view theory, higher-order theory and stakeholder theory, we developed and evaluated a serial mediation model to explain how ESG performance and corporate reputation can connect transformational leadership to enhance competitive advantage. Utilizing the Process Macro model 6 in SPSS, data were collected from 340 senior managers/executives and middle-level managers from European multinational firms operating in Ghana.

The results indicate that transformational leadership positively affects ESG performance. Enhanced ESG performance, in turn, leads to improved corporate reputation, which subsequently results in a stronger competitive advantage.

This study is limited to European multinational firms operating in Ghana, which may restrict the generalizability of the findings to other contexts or regions.

The findings suggest that organizations aiming to strengthen their competitive advantage should prioritize transformational leadership practices that foster ESG initiatives, as these are critical drivers of corporate reputation and market positioning.

This study provides new insights into the interwovenness between ESG performance and leadership in enhancing corporate reputation and competitive advantage within the context of emerging markets.

Organizations encourage green creativity among their employees to reduce environmental pollution and attain sustainable development. Green, inclusive leadership can produce positive outcomes and influence employees' green innovation. However, green inclusive leadership and green creativity are empirically less examined in the sustainability literature. Therefore, this study theorized a conceptual model based on the organizational creativity theory to explore the influence of green inclusive leadership on employees’ green creativity. It also aimed to explore the intermediating effect of green passion and green absorptive capacity on the relationship between green inclusive leadership and green creativity.

Data were gathered through a self-administered questionnaire-based survey from 540 employees of a manufacturing enterprise in China. The hypotheses were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique.

The findings reveal that green inclusive leadership positively and significantly influences employees' green creativity. Moreover, the results show that green passion and green absorptive capacity play positive mediating roles in the relationship between green inclusive leadership and green creativity.

This study offers practical implications for Chinese manufacturing enterprises, where green inclusive leadership is essential to enhance green passion, green absorptive capacity and green creativity among employees.

Drawing upon the organizational creativity theory, this research study is novel because it is one of the few empirical research studies to explore green inclusive leadership and green creativity in Chinese manufacturing enterprises. It further establishes the positive mediating role of green passion and green absorptive capacity in the relationship between green inclusive leadership and green creativity.

Organizations' technological management capabilities (TMC) have emerged as a powerful tool to enable manufacturing firms to deal with environmental issues. This empirical investigation aims to introduce and validate a novel conceptual framework that seeks to uncover the latent relationships among the selected constructs of this study. Organizational TMC could enhance green production (GP) and reinforce the green competitive advantage (GCA) among manufacturing firms. Therefore, this research investigates the role of TMC of firms such as artificial intelligence capability (AIC), big data analytics capability (BDAC) and Internet of things capability (IOTC) in reshaping green innovation (RGI), employee development (ED), GP and GCA.

The Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling was proposed to test and validate this research’s conceptual model using 463 valid responses from manufacturing under the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) umbrella.

Our statistical findings confirmed that TMCs such as AIC, BDAC and IOTC supported the GP and CGA. ED and RGI positively correlated to GP. The hypotheses testing results also confirmed the mediating role of ED, RGI and GP and the moderating role of green firm innovativeness capability (GFIC) in the underdeveloped context of the manufacturing industry under the CPEC.

Moreover, the statistical findings of this study extend the existing literature by validating the possible direct, indirect/mediation and indirect/moderation relationship between TMC and GCA.

This study aims to improve the lubrication performance of molybdenum disulfide powders at textured surface of cemented carbide materials, a squeeze motion of vibration assistance method was introduced and investigated.

Surface texture was fabricated on YT15 cemented carbide samples using a laser marking machine. After that, a tribological experiment was carried out on a self-built friction testing machine under different amplitude and frequency of squeeze motion conditions. Moreover, a simulation model was also established to verify the principle of squeeze motion on the lubrication performance improving of MoS₂ particles at textured interfaces.

Analysis results indicated that surface texture on test sample can increase the storage ability of solid lubrication particles, and the lubrication film at the contact interface is more easily formed due to the reciprocating action. Squeeze motion can improve the storage ability of it due to an intermittent contact, which provides an opportunity for MoS₂ particles infiltration, and then a more uniform distribution and load-bearing properties of force chain are also established and formed simultaneously. Thus, a better tribological performance at the contact interface is obtained.

The main contribution of this work is to provide a reference for the molybdenum disulfide powder lubrication with textured surface of cemented carbide materials.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2024-0166/

The study examined the influence of internal marketing orientation on employees’ innovative behaviour through the mediating role of workforce agility and the moderating role of psychological empowerment.

We collected 731 valid responses from frontline employees in the hospitality industry in Ghana. The data were analysed using hierarchical regression analysis in SPSS.

The findings show that internal marketing orientation significantly influenced workforce agility and innovative behaviour. Also, workforce agility significantly influenced employee innovative behaviour. Again, the study found that workforce agility partially mediated the relationship between internal marketing orientation and employee innovative behaviour. Psychological empowerment significantly moderated the relationship between workforce agility and employees innovative behaviour.

In order to promote agile behaviour and enhance innovative thinking when assigning tasks for company products and services, organisations should develop and implement suitable internal marketing orientation programmes and policies regarding opportunities for career growth, promotion and advancement.

This study offers timely empirical insights into how organisations can promote employee innovation, particularly in the hospitality sector, where human capital is imperative for service excellence and competitiveness.

The study constructs a novel theoretical model based on resource orchestration theory and examines it using data from Ghanaian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Entrepreneurial bricolage (EB) represents a creative mechanism by which SMEs navigate resource challenges to become competitive. The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between EB to both innovation performance and firm performance among manufacturing SMEs in Ghana. In addition, we also examine the mediating role of polychronicity in the relationship between EB, innovation performance and firm performance.

The results suggest that EB positively and significantly influences both innovation performance and firm performance. Furthermore, polychronicity partially mediates the relationship between EB and innovation performance and between EB and firm performance.

This study enhances our understanding of the conditions under which EB may facilitate the attainment of innovation and firm performance among manufacturing SMEs. These findings also proffer practical and managerial implications for managing SMEs under resource constraints.