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This paper aims to test the causal relationship between urban-biased policy and urban-rural income gap and further examine the moderating role of government intervention.

Based on the provincial Government Work Reports and the long-term policy practice of implementing the target responsibility system, the authors construct a unique indicator of urban-biased policy in China. Further, applying the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces in 2003–2018, the authors explore the causal relationship between urban-biased policy and urban-rural income gap.

The results show that urban-biased policy has contributed to the widen urban-rural income gap in China, which supports Lipton's urban-biased hypothesis. Further research shows that the stronger the government intervention, the bigger the role of urban-biased policy in widening urban-rural income gap.

On the one hand, this study not only investigates the direct effect of urban-biased policy on urban-rural income gap, but also examines the moderating effect from the perspective of government intervention, which helps to enrich the relevant studies of urban-biased theory. On the other hand, the authors' findings provide the latest empirical evidence for urban-biased policy to widen urban-rural income gap and presents a reference and warning for China and other developing countries about balancing the relationship between equity and efficiency during economic development.

As China is on an inevitable march into the digital era, firms have accumulated abundant digital assets, such as algorithms and data. Facing the possibility of using digital assets as a new type input, besides traditional inputs such as capital and labor, would powerful managers perform better? Would managerial power help managers increase the efficiency of how a firm combines traditional and digital inputs and converts them into outputs? Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether powerful managers promotes corporate productivity by using digital assets as a new input.

Using data from listed Chinese firms between 2008 and 2020, the authors constructed panel regressions with three-way fixed effects to examine whether and how managerial power influences corporate productivity in the current digital context, particularly under market uncertainty.

The findings reveal no consistent relationship between managerial power and corporate productivity. The results explain this from two contrasting effects: while managerial power promotes technological change it hinders technical efficiency – two components of total productivity. Moreover, this study identifies market uncertainty as a significant external contingency. In uncertain markets, strong managerial power positively impacts corporate productivity.

The results extend extant theoretical insights in the literature on how managerial power might influence corporate productivity.

Based on strategic choice theory, this study examines the impact and mechanisms of intellectual property demonstration city (IPDC) policy in China on corporate ESG performance.

This study uses China’s A-share listed companies’ data from 2009 to 2019 and conducts a difference-in-differences (DID) to explore the causal relationship between IPDC policy and corporate ESG performance.

Baseline regression results indicate that the IPDC policy can significantly improve corporate ESG performance. Mechanism tests reveal that the IPDC policy expands firm green technology innovation, enhances firm human capital investment and increases government innovation subsidies, thereby promoting corporate ESG performance. Moderating effect results show that the promotion impact on corporate ESG performance of the IPDC policy is diminished by government fiscal pressure. Heterogeneity analyses indicate that the IPDC policy has a stronger impact on corporate ESG performance in key cities, firms in high-tech industries, firms with a higher reliance on intellectual property protection (IPP) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The findings enrich the theoretical research on the influencing factors of corporate ESG performance and provide practical references to strengthen IPP and implement a more thorough intellectual property development strategy.

With the development of digitalization and interconnection, there is a growing need for enterprise customers to ensure the compatibility of the third-party components they are using in the manufacturing process, thus raising the integration requirements for the Industrial Internet platform and its third-party developers. Therefore, our study investigates the optimal integration decision of the Industrial Internet platform while considering its access price, the integration cost, and the net utility derived by enterprise customers from the third-party components.

We model a two-sided Industrial Internet platform that connects customers on the demand side to the developers on the supply side. We then explore the integration decision of the Industrial Internet platform and its important factors by solving the optimal profit function.

First, despite the high integration cost of third-party developers, the platform still chooses to integrate when enterprise customers derive high utility from the third-party components. Second, due to the compatibility effect, charging the enterprise customers a higher price may reduce the platform profits when these customers derive low utility from the third-party components. Third, the platform profits will increase along with the integration cost of third-party developers when it is low in the case where enterprise customers derive low utility from third-party components.

Our findings offer insightful takeaways for the Industrial Internet platform when making integration decisions.

Green funds represent a hybrid approach that integrates both environmental and financial considerations. Firms also strive to balance social benefits with economic performance. This study aims to analyze how green fund shareholdings impact firms’ dual performance and explores the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions.

This study uses a sample of A-share companies listed on China’s exchanges from 2008 to 2022. A fixed effects model is used to assess the dual value of green funds in enhancing both environmental and financial performance while also exploring viable pathways to achieve a “win-win” outcome.

Green fund shareholdings significantly enhance both financial and environmental performance, with corporate reputation and corporate transparency acting as mediators. Media oversight and executive compensation positively moderate the relationship between green fund shareholdings and dual performance. In competitive industries, the influence of green fund shareholdings on environmental performance is more pronounced than their effect on financial performance. In the context of politically connected firms, green fund shareholdings have a reduced impact on financial performance, with no significant difference in environmental performance. In addition, the impact of green funds on ownership structure is heterogeneous, promoting dual performance in private firms but not in state-owned enterprises.

This study enhances the understanding of green funds’ dual investment logic, provides deeper insights into their role in fostering sustainable corporate development and extends the application of institutional logic in enterprise management.

New quality productive forces (NQPF) are critical for high-quality economic development. As digital mergers and acquisitions (M&As) gain prominence in corporate digital transformation, understanding their impact on NQPF is essential. This study explores whether digital M&As enhance NQPF in firms and identifies key mechanisms that drive this effect.

This study investigates the impact of corporate digital M&As on NQPF using a multi-period difference-in-difference (DID) methodology. Analyzing a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2021, the study explores how digital M&As contribute to NQPF, identifying firm innovation and data assets as key mechanisms. It also examines how external factors, such as industrial structure, urban human capital and economic policy uncertainty, moderate the effect of digital M&As on NQPF.

The study reveals three key findings: (1) Digital M&As significantly enhance corporate NQPF; (2) innovation and data assets serve as key mechanisms through which digital M&As drive NQPF and (3) external factors, including industrial structure, urban human capital and economic policy uncertainty, amplify the positive effects of digital M&As on NQPF.

Firms should leverage digital M&As as a strategic tool for improving NQPF, focusing on innovation and data assets. Policymakers can support this transformation by fostering an environment that enhances the positive impact of digital M&As on economic development.

This paper introduces a novel NQPF index, offering a comprehensive measurement of the concept. It provides new insights into how digital M&As affect NQPF, filling a gap in the literature on digital transformation and offering actionable recommendations for firms and policymakers.

Metadiscourse is an important dialogue technique used in productive knowledge building to help a group evaluate and advance their knowledge progress. Previous studies have identified and defined various types of metadiscourse. However, there is scant knowledge about how different metadiscourse types emerge among different groups or what implicit correlations lie between progressive discourse and metadiscourse. Moreover, research on how different types of metadiscourse influence groups' knowledge advancement and artifacts is still inadequate. Therefore, this study aims to further examine the roles that different types of metadiscourse play in the collaborative knowledge building community on both a fine-grained (i.e. progressive discourse) and coarse-grained (i.e. group knowledge advancement and group artifacts) level.

Data for this study are drawn from the behaviour of undergraduate students participating in a 12-week course at a key university in China. On the fine-grained level, epistemic network analysis (ENA) is applied to illustrate how metadiscourse promotes the development of progressive discourse. On the coarse-grained level, two different chi-square tests are conducted to examine the roles of different types of metadiscourse in groups' knowledge advancement and artifacts.

The analysis allowed several conclusions to be drawn. First, the types of metadiscourse that students most often adopted were reflecting on ideas development (RD) and commenting on ideas (CI); they less frequently adopted setting group goals (SG) and making group plans (MP). Second, most types of metadiscourse correlated with developments in progressive discourse, particularly RD and CI. Third, the metadiscourse types RD, CI and coordinating group efforts (CE) played essential roles in knowledge advancement. Fourth, higher-quality artifacts could be created by using the metadiscourse type reviewing the state of knowledge building progress (RP).

A more profound comprehension of the role that metadiscourse plays in the collaborative knowledge building community not only contributes to the literature in the knowledge building field but also carries a significant meaning in regulating community, promoting learner agency and sustained knowledge, and consequently improving collaborative learning performance.

The construction and real estate sectors are vital to national economies, but traditional construction methods often lead to challenges such as safety risks, noise and environmental pollution. While intelligent construction is believed to mitigate these issues, there is a lack of solid empirical evidence on whether it truly benefits the general public. This paper seeks to explore the societal benefits of intelligent construction from the public’s perspective, addressing this research gap.

The research adopts a two-step approach. First, topic mining is conducted to identify topics closely related to the public’s daily life, such as environmental impact, construction traffic management and construction technologies. These topics are then analyzed through sentiment analysis using a bidirectional long short-term memory model with attention mechanism to determine whether the public has a favorable view of these aspects of intelligent construction, indirectly demonstrating the benefits to the public.

The primary topics identified include “industry development,” “technology enterprise,” “construction equipment,” “intelligent technology,” “environmental protection,” “robots” and “construction traffic management.” Sentiment analysis shows that public sentiment is overwhelmingly positive across all topics and regions, with “environmental protection,” “construction traffic management” and “robots” receiving the most favorable reactions.

This study provides empirical evidence of the societal benefits of intelligent construction from the public’s viewpoint using social media data. The results highlight the need for continued promotion and adoption of intelligent construction due to its positive impact on society.

This study explores whether and how financial agglomeration affects enterprise specialization, and whether it weakens the division effects of logistics accessibility.

Using the panel data of A-share listed companies in the Chinese manufacturing industry from 2010 to 2018, the authors test the hypotheses of the research framework by constructing a double fixed effect model.

First, for every 1% increase in financial agglomeration and logistics accessibility, enterprise specialization will increase by 1.8% and 5.6%. Meanwhile, financial agglomeration weakens the division effects of logistics accessibility. After a multiple robustness test, the above conclusions still hold. Second, the mechanism test shows that financial agglomeration can promote enterprise specialization through cost saving effect, scale expansion effect and technological progress effect. Third, financial agglomeration has a stronger positive impact and negative moderating effect on enterprise specialization in periphery areas and small-scale enterprises, but logistics accessibility is more likely to increase enterprise specialization in core regions and small-scale firms.

In the context of the global value chain (GVC) reshaping caused by the transformation of the international situation, exploring the relationship among financial agglomeration, logistics accessibility and enterprise specialization based on China’s experience can be an important insight for other emerging economies to enhance their position in the GVC.

The above findings enrich the literature on the division of labor among firms and contribute to the further improvement of GVC theory and division theory.

In the digital workplace, enterprise social media (ESM) are widely used for work and social purposes, which may afford employees resources to build their career adaptability. However, limited theoretical evidence is about how to build career adaptability through different ESM uses (work-oriented ESM use and socialization-oriented ESM use). This study thus aims to enrich the theoretical understanding of the relationship between different ESM uses and career adaptability by examining the different mediating mechanisms of role clarity and psychological closeness and the moderating effect of mindfulness based on affordance theory.

SPSS PROCESS and AMOS were used to analyze the data collected from 209 full-time employees at three-time points.

Our results showed that work-oriented ESM use exerts a positive effect on employees’ career adaptability via role clarity, while socialization-oriented ESM use has a positive effect on employees’ career adaptability via psychological closeness. Mindfulness strengthens the positive effect of work-oriented ESM use on career adaptability via role clarity.

Managers need to notice that both work-oriented and socialization-oriented ESM use can benefit employees, but there are different effecting mechanisms of ESM use for work and social purposes, and organizations should keep cultivating the mindfulness of employees.

This study contributes to the ESM literature by investigating two different influencing mechanisms of ESM uses on employees’ career adaptability and the moderating effects of mindfulness.