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As less is known about how internal communication can influence employees’ whistleblowing intention, this study aims to explore how participatory communication, organizational listening and organizational responsiveness influence employees’ external whistleblowing intention.

An online survey was conducted with 657 employees across various industries in the United States.

The results revealed that participatory communication, organizational listening and organizational responsiveness can fulfill the organization’s relational contract with their employees. As a communication-charged outcome, the fulfillment of employees’ relational psychological contract is associated with a lower intention to blow the whistle externally.

This study is among the first to examine internal communication strategies, namely, participatory communication, organizational listening and organizational responsiveness, as the antecedents of employees’ relational psychological contract and external whistleblowing intention.

Facilitated by social media, employee activism is on the rise, often in response to organizations' own socially irresponsible behavior. Given that digital employee activism is a vital yet underexplored research arena, the purpose of this study is to propose and test a theoretical model for understanding this phenomenon.

A survey was launched on Dynata, a US-based consumer panel company. A total of 657 representative full-time employees working at different levels of positions participated the survey to indicate their perceptual and behavioral responses to organizational social irresponsibility.

Moral obligation was a significant factor in mediating the relationship between organizational social irresponsibility and digital employee activism. Ideological psychological contract adds supplemental weights moderating the mediation effect on digital employee activism.

This study, based on social regulation theory, explores the rise of employee activism in response to organizations’ socially irresponsible behavior. The study identifies moral obligation and ideological psychological contract as the driving forces behind digital employee activism. This study advances digital employee activism scholarship by incorporating the normative lens of moral obligation and ideological psychological contract.

This study aims to explore why Chinese consumers pay for digital content products by investigating the experiences of Chinese consumers living in first-tier and second-tier cities regarding paid digital knowledge products.

A total of 19 in-depth interviews were conducted to collect data, and the phenomenological reduction was adopted to analyze data.

This study reveals that Chinese consumers use paid digital knowledge products to alleviate stress and anxiety stemming from real-life competition and the fear of falling behind. While consumers acknowledge the limited assistance that paid knowledge products can offer, their acceptance and expectations of paid digital knowledge products remain positive.

Paid digital knowledge represents an innovative phenomenon, with few scholars outside China having studied it. This study contributes a conceptual framework to understand the motivations of Chinese consumers with high purchasing power residing in first-tier and second-tier cities to invest in digital content.

This study aims to contribute to the existing institutional literature by examining the impact of regional social trust on foreign firm performance.

In this study, 10,286 annual observations of foreign firms in China from 2008 to 2020 are used to test the research hypotheses using an ordinary least square regression model.

Social trust can improve foreign firm performance by reducing operating costs and increasing risk-taking capacity, while formal institutions and economic policy uncertainty strengthen the positive relationship between social trust and foreign firm performance. Moreover, the results of the heterogeneity test show that the positive relationship is only manifested in the samples from the eastern region and is more pronounced in the samples of small- and medium-sized foreign firms and non-manufacturing foreign firms.

This study makes a theoretical contribution to the literature on institutional theory and foreign firm performance, as well as providing practical guidance to foreign firms on how to improve their performance.

This article aims to develop and validate a theoretical model via survey data to identify the affordances and challenges influencing metaverse adoption. We specifically examine the impact of immersion on users' adoption decisions and identify which affordances predict this immersion. Additionally, this paper assesses the importance of perceived risks in users' decision-making processes regarding future metaverse engagement.

Using regression models applied to 198 survey responses, we tested our proposed model. To deepen our insights, we also conducted a qualitative analysis.

The findings confirm that users' perceptions of immersion and perceived risks are critical determinants in adoption decisions. Social presence, influenced by factors such as ubiquity and interoperability, emerges as a key component of immersion. From the qualitative data, we identified two potential strategies to enhance metaverse immersion: technical improvements and offline device-assisted strategies.

Our study contributes to the literature on information systems (IS) adoption and provides practical insights for practitioners on crucial considerations in metaverse design.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding control measures have harmed the mental health of professionals working in the construction industry. Existing research has also indicated that demographic characteristics are leading variables causing differences in individual’s perceptions on mental health and psychosocial hazardous factors. Combining these, this research aims to compare the differences and similarities of the perceived mental health outcomes and psychosocial hazards among construction professionals with different demographic characteristics during the pandemic.

Using a questionnaire survey, data were collected from 531 construction professionals working in Chinese construction companies, which were analyzed quantitatively using mean score comparative analysis, Mann–Whitney U test and Kruskal–Wallis H test, as well as Spearman’s correlation analysis.

The results indicate that construction professionals with different ages, years of working experience and positions are exposed to different psychosocial hazards, resulting in different mental health conditions during the pandemic. Age and years of working experience are also strong predictors of the level of depression and anxiety experienced by construction professionals; that is, mental ill health tends to decrease with the increase of age and experience. Male department/unit heads, working in a company office environment for a private company and aged 31–40 years old with 11–20 years of working experience, tend to have the best mental health condition. In contrast, psychosocial hazards are more likely to produce the most serious impact on male site-based construction professionals working for a state-owned company, either with less than one year of working experience or in a senior management position.

Despite the significant contribution of the construction industry to the global economy, the differences and similarities of the mental health outcomes and psychosocial hazards among construction professionals with different demographic characteristics during the pandemic remain unknown. This research, therefore, reveals the mental health outcomes and psychosocial hazard impacts among different types of construction professionals during the pandemic. Specifically, this research unveils the important personal characteristics which are closely associated with poor mental health and the stronger impacts of psychosocial hazards on the mental health of construction professionals during the pandemic. The results are valuable for governments and construction companies to formulate targeted mental health intervention strategies during future public health emergencies.

This study aims to explore the impact of mobile learning on educating Iranian adult neo-literates within courses held by Iranian Literacy Movement Organization.

A concurrent mixed-methods design was used to investigate to what extent the adult neo-literates in Shiraz, Iran, were ready to use mobile phones in their courses. The qualitative section involved merging and summarizing basic themes into organizing themes. The themes were then integrated to create a single global theme.

The results showed that the participants were ready to embrace m-learning. Instrumentality was the most influential factor contributing to neo-literates’ readiness for m-learning. Findings also showed that from learners’ standpoint, mobile phones presented some unique features, enabling them to integrate elements from both distance and face-to-face courses. They also believed that mobile phones or other information and communications technology gadgets provided better opportunities for learning, although they fall short of fully replacing human instructors.

The limitations of the study were the participants’ limited familiarity with the research procedure and the impossibility of holding joint gatherings at specific locations.

This applied study helps the literacy movement to take strong steps toward creating an educational environment that guarantees learning anytime and anywhere for its learners.

In the context of the severe global challenges posed by climate and environmental issues, this paper aims to explore the connection between female Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and the level of sustainable development in companies. This study aims to investigate the impact of female CEOs on corporate ESG performance and provide a detailed analysis of the underlying mechanisms.

This study uses a sample of listed companies from 2010 to 2021, as reported by Bloomberg. This study uses logit regression models to test hypotheses and conduct robustness tests using the generalized method of moments, propensity score matching and heckman two statge tests.

The research findings indicate that female CEOs can enhance a company’s ESG performance, primarily by elevating the level of green innovation and engaging in more philanthropic activities. When environmental uncertainty is high, the risk-averse attitude of female CEOs may diminish the enhancement of ESG performance. However, granting a higher proportion of equity to female CEOs incentivizes risk-taking, thereby strengthening the improvement of ESG performance. Further analysis reveals that the impact of female CEOs on ESG performance is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises, high-pollution industries, and companies with low financing constraints.

The authors have shown that two key ways in which female CEOs enhance a company’s ESG performance are by increasing the level of green innovation and assuming more social responsibility. Nonetheless, this remains a shortcoming of this work, opening a door for future research to examine and enrich. There may be other possible mechanisms explaining the influence of female CEOs on corporate ESG performance. More research is warranted about the CEO’s additional traits, which were not considered in this study but may have an impact on a company’s ESG performance. Finally, while the analysis has delved into the moderating effects of external factors such as environmental uncertainty and CEO ownership on the influence of female CEOs on corporate ESG performance, there is room for exploring whether other factors also play a moderating role in future studies.

First, the findings of this study highlight the beneficial societal and economic effects of choosing female CEOs. The inclination to take on social responsibility and care for the environment are both higher among female CEOs. Furthermore, the authors have also discovered that female CEOs possess unique advantages in promoting corporate sustainability and enhancing ESG standards. This can contribute to breaking down stereotypes about gender roles in the workplace. Finally, this research shows that organizational heterogeneity and market risks have an impact on female CEOs’ capacity to improve company ESG performance.

A significant innovation of this paper lies in its unique focus on the connection between female CEOs and corporate ESG performance, along with the underlying mechanisms. Against the backdrop of sustainable development, the paper integrates social gender theory, upper echelon theory and agency theory into a comprehensive framework, shedding light on the influence of female CEOs on ESG performance and the associated mechanisms.

Objectively evaluating the fairness of the algorithm, exploring in specific scenarios combined with scenario characteristics and constructing the algorithm fairness evaluation index system in specific scenarios.

This paper selects marketing scenarios, and in accordance with the idea of “theory construction-scene feature extraction-enterprise practice,” summarizes the definition and standard of fairness, combs the application link process of marketing algorithms and establishes the fairness evaluation index system of marketing equity allocation algorithms. Taking simulated marketing data as an example, the fairness performance of marketing algorithms in some feature areas is measured, and the effectiveness of the evaluation system proposed in this paper is verified.

The study reached the following conclusions: (1) Different fairness evaluation criteria have different emphases, and may produce different results. Therefore, different fairness definitions and standards should be selected in different fields according to the characteristics of the scene. (2) The fairness of the marketing equity distribution algorithm can be measured from three aspects: marketing coverage, marketing intensity and marketing frequency. Specifically, for the fairness of coverage, two standards of equal opportunity and different misjudgment rates are selected, and the standard of group fairness is selected for intensity and frequency. (3) For different characteristic fields, different degrees of fairness restrictions should be imposed, and the interpretation of their calculation results and the means of subsequent intervention should also be different according to the marketing objectives and industry characteristics.

First of all, the fairness sensitivity of different feature fields is different, but this paper does not classify the importance of feature fields. In the future, we can build a classification table of sensitive attributes according to the importance of sensitive attributes to give different evaluation and protection priorities. Second, in this paper, only one set of marketing data simulation data is selected to measure the overall algorithm fairness, after which multiple sets of marketing campaigns can be measured and compared to reflect the long-term performance of marketing algorithm fairness. Third, this paper does not continue to explore interventions and measures to improve algorithmic fairness. Different feature fields should be subject to different degrees of fairness constraints, and therefore their subsequent interventions should be different, which needs to be continued to be explored in future research.

This paper combines the specific features of marketing scenarios and selects appropriate fairness evaluation criteria to build an index system for fairness evaluation of marketing algorithms, which provides a reference for assessing and managing the fairness of marketing algorithms.

Algorithm governance and algorithmic fairness are very important issues in the era of artificial intelligence, and the construction of the algorithmic fairness evaluation index system in marketing scenarios in this paper lays a safe foundation for the application of AI algorithms and technologies in marketing scenarios, provides tools and means of algorithm governance and empowers the promotion of safe, efficient and orderly development of algorithms.

In this paper, firstly, the standards of fairness are comprehensively sorted out, and the difference between different standards and evaluation focuses is clarified, and secondly, focusing on the marketing scenario, combined with its characteristics, key fairness evaluation links are put forward, and different standards are innovatively selected to evaluate the fairness in the process of applying marketing algorithms and to build the corresponding index system, which forms the systematic fairness evaluation tool of marketing algorithms.

When solving the cogging torque of complex electromagnetic structures, such as consequent pole hybrid excitation synchronous (CPHES) machine, traditional methods have a huge computational complexity. The notable feature of CPHES machine is the symmetric range of field-strengthening and field-weakening, but this type of machine is destined to be equipped with a complex electromagnetic structure. The purpose of this paper is to propose a hybrid analysis method to quickly and accurately solve the cogging torque of complex 3D electromagnetic structure, which is applicable to CPHES machine with different magnetic pole shapings.

In this paper, a hybrid method for calculating the cogging torque of CPHES machine is proposed, which considers three commonly used pole shapings. Firstly, through magnetic field analysis, the complex 3D finite element analysis (FEA) is simplified to 2D field computing. Secondly, the discretization method is used to obtain the distribution of permeance and permeance differential along the circumference of the air-gap, taking into account the effect of slots. Finally, the cogging torque of the whole motor is obtained by using the idea of modular calculation and the symmetry of the rotor structure.

This method is applicable to different pole shapings. The experimental results show that the proposed method is consistent with 3D FEA and experimental measured results, and the average calculation time is reduced from 8 h to 4 min.

This paper proposes a new concept for calculating cogging torque, which is a hybrid calculation of dimension reduction and discretization modules. Based on magnetic field analysis, the 3D problem is simplified into a 2D issue, reducing computational complexity. Based on the symmetry of the machine structure, a modeling method for discretized analytical models is proposed to calculate the cogging torque of the machine.