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The construction industry has experienced an irreversible digital transformation to smart construction. Many countries have published supporting policies to encourage the development of smart construction. However, there is no universally valid approach. This paper thus aims to evaluate smart construction policies issued by 24 pilot cities in China and identify applicable policy tools and their impact.

This paper collected 33 governmental documents on smart construction through the official websites in China. Different policy tools were classified into supply-side, demand-side and environment-side categories. The supporting policies of smart construction development in pilot cities were quantitatively evaluated by using a policy modeling consistency index (PMC-index) model.

Supply-type and environment-type policy instruments were used more frequently than demand-type policies in 24 pilot cities. Most of the 24 pilot cities had an evaluation of PMC-index over 8, realizing the consistency of smart construction policies. Eight pilot cities had an evaluation of PMC-index of 6–7.99, realizing acceptable consistency. Only Foshan City has an evaluation of PMC-index below 4, which may reflect a poor consistency of policy implementation. The paper proposes consistencies of smart construction policies of 24 pilot cities and valid policy instruments, including the presale of commercial residential buildings, additional bonus points in the tendering process and cooperating with multiple departments when promoting smart construction.

This paper contributes to expanding policy evaluation studies in the smart construction field and provides concrete suggestions for policymakers to formulate more effective and specific policies and strategies for the development of smart construction.

This study aims to explore how the three dimensions of karma – karmic duty orientation, indifference to rewards and equanimity – influence empathy and moral obligation, with implications for social economics.

The research was conducted on a valid sample of 401 university students in Vietnam, using hierarchical regression to test formulated hypotheses.

The analysis reveals that karmic duty orientation and indifference to rewards significantly enhance empathy and moral obligation, indicating that individuals with a strong sense of moral duty and intrinsic motivation are more likely to engage in ethical and pro-social behaviors. Equanimity was not found to impact empathy or moral obligation significantly.

Organizations and policymakers should focus on cultivating moral duties, intrinsic motivations and resilience in ethical behavior to promote social responsibility and sustainability and ensure long-term social and economic stability.

This study contributes to social economics by integrating ethical dimensions of karma into the analysis of moral behavior, offering a fresh perspective that challenges traditional economic models centered on self-interest. The research provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how moral principles influence economic decisions and social outcomes.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-07-2023-0571

This chapter presents data and analysis to conceptualise the role of the executive principal, and how the executive principal practises leadership in formal school partnerships in China. To achieve this, this research draws on Foucault’s concept of pastoral power, enriching it through interplay with Chinese notions of morality. This research is anchored in one innovative educational organisation – the Education Collective (EC). The EC is a large-scale and multi-level educational organisation formed by two or more schools or campuses guided by a common concept and bound by a contract. Education collectivisation has now become the mainstream model of running compulsory education in China. The head of the EC, often referred to as the executive principal, is the legal representative of each EC and is responsible for the entire collective.

This study aims to determine whether knowledge creation processes (KCPs) – knowledge exchange and knowledge integration affect digital innovation (DI), including information technology (IT)-enabled capabilities (ITECs) as a mediator and absorptive capacity (AC) as a moderator.

With a survey data set of 390 employees from Pakistani software small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the current study employed Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using Smart Partial Least Squares to estimate the structural relationships in the conceptual model.

The results confirm that KCPs – knowledge exchange and knowledge integration positively enhance software SME's DI; ITECs play a partial mediating role in the linkage between KCPs and DI; AC positively moderates the relationship between knowledge integration and ITECs, and ITECs and DI, while AC doesn’t moderate the relationship between knowledge exchange and ITECs. The AC positively moderates the mediating role of ITECs amongst KCPs (knowledge exchange and knowledge integration) and DI, respectively.

This research uniquely integrates the knowledge-based view and dynamic capability theory to present a comprehensive framework that explains the interdependencies between knowledge process, ITECs and AC in driving DI. This approach advances the understanding of how software SMEs can strengthen internal knowledge and IT resources to achieve superior innovation outcomes.

Instant crowdsourcing logistics (ICL) platform is an emerging business model in the field of logistics services. Crowdsourcees’ active participation in platform value co-creation is the key to success for this business model. This study aims to explore the influence of platform governance mechanisms on crowdsourcees’ participation in value co-creation on the platform.

Based on governance theory, this study constructed a model of the influence of platform governance mechanisms on crowdsourcees’ value co-creation intentions and discussed the role of community diversity in this model. The survey data of 319 collected from crowdsourcees on China’s well-known ICL platform were analyzed using a partial least squares structural equation model.

The results showed that platform governance mechanisms have a significant influence on crowdsourcees’ value co-creation intentions. Among them, the impact of the welfare resource support mechanism is the largest, followed by the reputation reward and punishment mechanism, while the price coordination mechanism has the least impact. Community diversity has a significant positive moderating effect on the welfare resource support mechanism and crowdsourcees’ value co-creation intentions, but not between other governance mechanisms and crowdsourcees’ value co-creation intentions.

The results provide references for ICL platform to develop a targeted governance mechanism to enhance the positive role of community diversity and reduce the negative impact.

The present work aimed to identify the impact of accrual-based earnings management on the cost of equity (KE) through corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a moderating variable on European Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) companies.

The authors used data from a sample of 366 European firms over the 2012–2022 period. The data were collected from the Thomson Reuters Asset 4 and I/B/E/S database and analyzed using STATA 17 as a statistical software package.

As expected, the results showed a negative relationship between accruals, CSR and KE. Moreover, they suggest that the moderating variable negatively affects the relationship between accruals and the KE.

The results are pertinent to stakeholders and investors, who would pressure companies to enhance the quality of disclosed information and mitigate risks facing the company.

The main contribution lies in examining the relationship between accruals and KE through CSR in the European ESG context.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to empirical research on individual ambidexterity drivers. This paper analyzes the relationships between inclusive leadership, team knowledge acquisition, team knowledge sharing, digital tools usage and individual ambidexterity.

This study conducted a questionnaire survey of high-tech and manufacturing enterprises in China and obtained 75 leader questionnaires and 365 employee questionnaires. The hypotheses were tested using hierarchical and cross-level regressions.

The research indicates that inclusive leadership improves team knowledge acquisition and sharing. However, only team knowledge sharing significantly boosts individual ambidexterity, and not team knowledge acquisition. Thus, inclusive leadership fosters individual ambidexterity primarily through team knowledge sharing. Digital tools usage strengthens the impact of inclusive leadership on team knowledge sharing, thereby intensifying its effect on individual ambidexterity. However, digital tools usage weakens the effect of inclusive leadership on team knowledge acquisition.

First, this study addresses the call for research on ambidexterity at different levels, revealing the heterogeneous impact of team knowledge acquisition and sharing on individual ambidexterity. Second, this study developed a theoretical model to explore how leadership affects individual ambidexterity. Third, this study responds to the question that digitalization has won, but has leadership lost by investigating the role of digital tools usage in the relationship between inclusive leadership and team knowledge integration.

This study aims to investigate whether mainland Chinese audit firms’ entry into the H-share market to provide audit services affects their mainland audit pricing.

Using data on A-share listed companies in China from 2008 to 2018, a difference-in-differences model to test the research question is designed. Robustness tests are conducted to rule out alternative explanations and additional tests to shed light on the extent and inner workings of the main effect.

The entry of mainland audit firms into the H-share audit market leads to a significant decrease in mainland audit pricing. Moreover, this main effect is (i) growing with the importance of H-share audit services to mainland auditors, (ii) stronger for mainland auditors with lower industry specialisation and shorter tenures, (iii) partially mediated by audit efficiency and (iv) greater when mainland clients have higher bargaining power. Furthermore, mainland auditors’ entry into the H-share audit market does not result in significant deterioration in their mainland audit quality, and significantly increases their market share in the mainland audit market.

This study provides new empirical evidence of the relationship between audit firms’ development strategy for internationalisation and audit pricing, extends the literature on auditing issues in emerging markets and should be of potential interest to regulators and investors.

Users’ active participation in platform value co-creation is the key to the development of crowdsourcing logistics platforms, especially the active participation of the crowdsourcee who provide logistics services. However, driven by self-interest, coupled with loose links among subjects on the platform ecological chain, it is difficult for users to effectively form value co-creation intentions. This study aims to explore how platform governance affects crowdsourcees’ intention to participate in value co-creation on the platform through individual cognition.

Based on social cognitive theory (SCT), this study built a research model and took the crowdsourcee on China’s well-known crowdsourcing logistics platforms as the investigation object, using the collected 302 valid survey data to test the model.

The results showed that platform governance mechanisms have a significant influence on crowdsourcees’ intention to participate in value co-creation on the platform, either directly or through crowdsourcee cognition, and the impact is different. The crowdsourcee cognition plays a mediating role between platform governance mechanisms and crowdsourcees’ intention to participate in value co-creation on the platform, and the mediating effect of value acquisition perception (VAP) is significantly higher than self-efficacy (SE).

The results provided references for crowdsourcing logistics platforms to develop a targeted governance mechanism to promote the platform to achieve value co-creation.

This paper aims to apply the spacing effect of capacitive imaging (CI) sensors to inspect and differentiate external flaws of the protective module, internal flaws of the protective module and external flaws of the metallic module in oil and gas pipelines simultaneously. Through experimental verification, a method for differentiating three distinct kinds of flaws derived from the spacing effect of CI sensors has been demonstrated.

A 3Dimensions (3D) model for simulating the inspection of these flaws was established by using COMSOL. A novel CI sensor with adjustable working electrode spacing was designed, and a modular CI system was developed to substantiate the theoretical findings with experimental evidence. A method for differentiating three distinct kinds of flaws derived from the spacing effect of CI sensors was established.

The results indicate that the method can successfully discriminate external flaws of the protective module, internal flaws of the protective module and external flaws of the metallic module using CI sensors.

The method for differentiating three distinct kinds of flaws derived from the spacing effect of CI sensors is vital for keeping the transportation safety of oil and gas pipelines.