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This study aims to explore the neoliberalization of higher education and its impact on gender-sensitive workplaces for international academic staff. Using a qualitative multiple-case study approach, the research examines how neoliberal policies intersect with gender-sensitive practices within academic institutions, characterized by marketization, privatization and commodification. The theoretical framework integrates Foucault’s concept of governmentality, Bourdieu’s notion of capital, intersectionality from gender theory and paradox theory to analyze the conflicting demands faced by international employees.

This study’s data comes from semistructured interviews with international academic staff and document analysis of institutional policies. The findings reveal that neoliberal policies often undermine gender-sensitive initiatives by prioritizing market-driven objectives over inclusivity, creating paradoxical tensions for international employees, especially women and minorities, who navigate both gender and nationality-based challenges.

The study concludes that while neoliberalization in higher education fosters a competitive environment, it simultaneously complicates the implementation of effective gender-sensitive practices. Institutions must address these tensions by reevaluating their policies to better support diverse international staff.

This research contributes to the literature by highlighting the complex dynamics at the intersection of neoliberalism, gender sensitivity and international employee experiences. It offers insights for policymakers and academic leaders committed to fostering inclusive and equitable workplaces.

Body language is an integral part of interpersonal communication and exchange, which can convey rich emotions, intentions and information. However, how anchor’s body language works in live-streaming e-commerce (LSE) has yet to receive adequate attention. Based on dual systems theory of decision-making, this paper aims to explore the impact of anchor’s body language on the performance of LSE from the perspective of customer engagement behavior and to examine the moderating role of anchor’s relational social interaction.

The authors confirmed the theoretical model through empirical analysis of structured data from 1,415 actual livestreaming rooms from Douyin, as well as unstructured data of 418,939 min of video and audio, 1,985,473 words of text and 423,302 keyframe images.

The study found that anchor’s body language has a significant positive effect on the performance of LSE, and customer engagement behavior plays a partially mediating role. The moderating effect suggests that anchor’s relational social interaction and body language have substitution effects in enhancing customer engagement behavior and the performance of LSE, which reveals the substitution relationship between anchor’s verbal and nonverbal interactions in LSE.

This study is one of the earlier literature focusing on anchor’s body language, and the findings provide practical references for enhancing customer engagement behavior and achieving performance growth in LSE.

This research is aimed to examine how environmental pollution affects consumers' preference for self-improvement products.

Through a series of three experimental studies, this research substantiates our hypotheses by employing various manipulations of environmental pollution and examining different types of self-improvement products.

The research demonstrates that environmental pollution enhances consumers' preference for self-improvement products via the mediation of perceived environmental responsibility. And the effect is negatively moderated by social equity sensitivity.

The recurrent incidence of environmental pollution has elicited significant concern among the general public and academic scholars. An overwhelming majority of research examining the impact of pollution on consumer behavior has concentrated on its influence on environmentally friendly and healthy consumption patterns. Nevertheless, the current research proposes that pollution fosters a preference for products associated with self-improvement, mediated by perceived environmental responsibility, with the effects being moderated by social equity sensitivity.

The study explores the mechanism between employee demand–ability fit and promotability ratings. Moreover, we examine whether political skill moderates the relationship above.

The present study received 260 effective supervisor-rated questionnaires from various industries in Taiwan.

The results reveal that employee demand–ability fit positively relates to promotability ratings, and task performance mediates the above relationship. In addition, political skill positively moderates the relationship between employee demand–ability fit and task performance.

We used the supervisor rating for our variables to test the hypotheses.

Lack of access to finance is a major constraint to the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurship in developing countries. The recent proliferation of mobile phone services, access to the internet and emerging technologies has led to a surge in the use of FinTech in Africa and is transforming the financial sector. This paper aims to examine whether FinTech developments heterogeneously contribute to the growth of digital finance for SMEs and entrepreneurship in 47 African countries from 2013 to 2020.

The paper uses a novel method of moments quantile regression, which deals with heterogeneity and endogeneity in diverse conditions for asymmetric and nonlinear models.

The empirical results reveal that the rise of FinTech companies offering services in Africa heterogeneously increases digital finance for SMEs and entrepreneurship in their different stages of growth. FinTech developments have a strong and positive impact in countries with higher levels of digital finance than those with lower levels. FinTech developments and digital finance positively and significantly influence entrepreneurship in Africa, particularly in the nascent and transitional development stages of entrepreneurship. Institutional quality has a considerable positive moderating effect when used as a control rather than an interaction variable.

The results suggest the need to promote FinTech developments in Africa: to provide a wide range of alternative digital finance schemes to SMEs and to promote entrepreneurship, especially in countries where entrepreneurship is in the nascent and transitional development stages. The results also underscore the need to promote FinTech development through supportive regulations and institutional quality to reduce risks related to FinTech and digital financing schemes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first attempts to account for the often overlooked heterogeneity effects and show that the influence of FinTech developments is not homogenous across the varying development stages of digital finance and entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the convergence of linguistic features between physicians and patients with chronic diseases facilitates the effectiveness of physician–patient communication in online health communities (OHCs). Drawing on communication accommodation theory (CAT), the authors develop a research model that illustrates how the convergence of semantic features (language concreteness and emotional intensity) and stylistic features (language style) influence patient satisfaction and compliance. The model also incorporates the moderating effects of the physician's social status and the patients' complications.

The data, collected from a prominent online health platform in China, include 15,448 consultation records over five years. The logistic regression is leveraged to test the hypotheses.

The findings reveal that convergent semantic features, such as language concreteness and emotional intensity, along with stylistic features like language style, enhance patient satisfaction, which in turn leads to increased compliance. Additionally, the physician’s social status strengthens the effect of convergent emotional intensity but weakens the effect of convergent language concreteness. The physician’s social status has no significant impact on the link between convergent language style and satisfaction. Patients' complications weaken the effect of satisfaction on their compliance.

This study contributes to the CAT and OHC literature by enhancing the understanding of the role of linguistic convergence in the effectiveness of online physician–patient communication and provides managerial implications for physicians on how to accommodate their communicative styles toward chronic patients to improve patient satisfaction and compliance.

Managers in China prioritize the cultivation of loyal employees, resulting in positive effects associated with leader-member exchange (LMX). However, fragmented evidence suggests that LMX also can trigger deviant behavior. LMX provides employees with access to resources, while it also harbors potential risks for deviant behaviors. Based on the cognitive-affective system theory of personality and resource-related theories, this study aims to explore the double-edged sword effects of LMX by examining how LMX influences interpersonal deviant behaviors through emotional and cognitive pathways, respectively.

This study involved three waves of paired data surveys that were conducted in China over one month, and a total of 117 leaders and 235 subordinates participated in this study.

Even though LMX as a job resource reduces workplace anxiety, LMX also generates work overload for employees. Workplace anxiety and work overload further result in interpersonal deviant behavior. Narcissistic admiration, as a personality trait, can weaken the mediating role of work overload but not that of workplace anxiety.

The finding can help managers pay attention to negative effect of LMX and provide suggestions for preventing employees’ workplace deviant behavior.

The findings revealed how LMX leads to negative outcomes in the workplace. In addition, the results demonstrated the buffering effect of narcissistic admiration on the negative effect of LMX.

This study aims to examine the impact of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation platforms’ green marketing on consumers’ pro-environmental behavioural intention through the mediation of consumer trust and engagement, following the social influence theory and the stimulus–organism–response model.

A questionnaire survey was designed to collect data from American P2P accommodation consumers. Data collection was conducted through an outsourced survey company. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The study reveals that P2P accommodation platforms’ green marketing orientation was positively associated with consumer trust in the platform and consumer engagement with the platform. Both consumer trust and consumer engagement positively enhanced consumers’ pro-environmental behavioural intention in the P2P accommodation consumption, serving as effective mediators between consumers’ perceptions of green marketing orientation and pro-environmental behavioural intention.

The study offers practical insights for P2P accommodation platforms and operators in engaging in green marketing and fostering consumers’ pro-environmental consumption behaviours in P2P accommodations.

The study addresses the grand question of whether business operators’ responsible production behaviour can possibly lead to consumers’ responsible consumption behaviour in the P2P accommodation sector. It contributes to the literature on P2P accommodation by providing evidence to show green marketing practices of P2P accommodation platforms can lead to consumers’ pro-environmental behavioural intention. It provides both theoretical value for knowledge advancement and practical value to guide more sustainable industry practices.

Characterised by simultaneous food waste and shortages, our current food system is far from sustainable. Industry 4.0 has responded with technology-enabled innovations, including digital food-sharing platforms aimed at facilitating the efficient redistribution of surplus food. However, potential users often express reluctance to adopt such platforms, prompting this study to explore the underlying reasons for their hesitations.

This study was conducted in China, the world’s largest platform economy, where food-sharing platforms are notably absent. Using a vignette-based qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 potential users. The data were analysed through thematic analysis to uncover insights into adoption intentions.

The findings highlight the relevance of factors identified in existing technology acceptance theories, such as performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, hedonic motivation, facilitating conditions and price value, in shaping adoption intentions. Additionally, content-specific and context-specific factors – such as trust in other users and the platform, concerns about “losing face” (mianzi) and safety concerns during the pandemic – emerged as critical influences on users' decisions to engage with these platforms.

This study contributes to scholarly discussions on enhancing the effectiveness of new technological innovations for food supply chain sustainability. The theoretical contributions expand the technology acceptance literature by incorporating factors related to platform service content and operating context.

This paper explores the concept of information precarity, tracing some of its foundations to microaggressions and systemic injustices experienced by marginalized populations over time as race-based trauma, which functions as a mediating mechanism affecting the information practices of individuals and communities.

We describe the conceptual background of information precarity, information practices, microaggressions and race-based trauma, then illustrate these concepts through interviews and focus groups from a network of people and organizations helping a Latinx community navigate the COVID crisis.

The conceptual framework connecting information precarity with microaggressions and race-based trauma provides context and explanation for the information practices of marginalized communities living in information precarity.

The study primarily explored adverse experiences such as microaggressions, which means that instances where Latinx individuals successfully navigated systemic barriers should be further explored. The study is based on the lived experiences of a specific group of Latinx individuals from a particular geographic area. Thus, findings may not be generalizable to all Latinx populations or other marginalized groups. This study’s findings suggest that efforts to improve information access must go beyond providing resources or making more policies. We recommend actions. Recognizing that race-based trauma affects how people engage with information highlights the importance of building and maintaining trust with marginalized communities.

In this study, we suggest actions. Recognizing that race-based trauma affects how people engage with information highlights the importance of building and maintaining trust with marginalized communities. Culturally sensitive outreach strategies such as support networks, community advisory boards, cultural liaisons or information brokers are crucial. Institutions can and should create environments where individuals feel safe to seek and share information with more personalized or community-specific approaches and a long-term commitment to information accessibility.

First, it illustrates the mechanisms through which precarity persists by showing how microaggressions are a systemic barrier that significantly shapes information practices and perpetuates vulnerability. Second, we demonstrated that race-based trauma is a mediating factor in information precarity, highlighting how racism emerges tangibly in everyday interactions as a mediating factor in information practices. Third, we show that information precarity, mediated by race-based trauma, can result in an information practice of avoidance as a protective mechanism to steer clear of unfair treatment and racist behavior.