Search results

Legislation plays a vital role in solving carbon emissions reduction and climate change issues. China began to implement a low-carbon economic policy in 2010, but the effect of the policy needs to be evaluated. Accordingly, this paper aims to discuss China’s low-carbon policy through exploring the following two questions, namely, whether the policy effect reaches the expected goal and whether the policy effects will balance economic development and emission reduction. Then, the paper puts forward suggestions for the improvement of China’s low-carbon policy.

This paper is organized around three distinct aspects of policy effect evaluation. This paper uses the synthetic control method to construct a policy effect evaluation model and conducts a quasi-natural experiment. The paper selects annual panel data from 2003 to 2015, which is selected from 33 provinces. A comparative analysis of carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption and economic development between Hubei Province and Liaoning Province.

The results reveal that the implementation of the low-carbon pilot province policy in 2010 has a significant impact on the emission reduction effect of Liaoning Province, but the impact on the emission reduction effect of Hubei Province is not significant. The carbon emission trading system implemented in 2012 has reduced the emission reductions in Hubei Province and Liaoning Province has achieved better emission reduction effects after the implementation of this policy. After the implementation of the policy, the economic development of Hubei Province has been improved, but it has not brought help to the economic development of Liaoning Province. These findings provide new insights into the use of an emissions trading system for improving economic development and ultimately facilitate the attainment of the broader goal of sustainability.

This paper proposes an innovative policy effect evaluation method by considering the status of unit gross domestic product, fixed asset investment in the energy industry, energy consumption, emission reduction technology innovation and other evaluation indicators. This paper contributes to broadening current methods of policy effect evaluation in China.

Food and beverage (F&B) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must diversify their markets and obtain predictable sources of revenues to withstand difficult and volatile periods such as the post-pandemic geopolitical scenario, recently burdened by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. On the other hand, another strand of the literature suggests that public procurement could be considered a great source of income, enabling solid contracts, revenues and cash-flow stability. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the role of public procurement, the adoption of e-commerce platforms and their interactions in affecting the exporting performances of SMEs operating in the F&B sector.

The study retrieves data from 2,186 Italian F&B manufacturing SMEs relying on Margò by Cribis database. Therefore, it conducts a structured equational model (SEM) to test the developed hypotheses empirically.

The findings reveal that digital selling platforms positively affect exports, whereas public procurement negatively affects F&B SMEs exports. Nonetheless, findings underline that the interaction between public procurement and the adoption of digital selling platforms dampens public procurement's negative effects on exports.

This study brings an original contribution to the F&B literature by conducting empirical research on an extensive sample of firms from one of the most influential countries in the F&B vertical, Italy, with officially registered data. More importantly, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this study pioneers the investigation of the relationship between public procurement and e-commerce platforms in affecting F&B SMEs' export performances.

With the rapid development of the service industry, service innovation has gradually become a hot topic in business today. How to further improve employees' service innovative behaviors has become critical to organizations' survival and success. Servant leadership, as a leadership style characterized by serving others, is closely related to employees' service innovative behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical framework to examine the influence of servant leadership on employees' service innovative behavior, the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of identification with the leader.

To test the theoretical model, a multi-time survey method was used to collect data from 381employees from a large high-tech company in Mainland China.

The results confirm that servant leadership can promote employees' service innovative behavior and intrinsic motivation. Meanwhile, employees' intrinsic motivation partly mediates the influence of servant leadership on their service innovative behavior. Moreover, this mediating relationship is conditional on the moderating role of individual identification with the leader in the path from servant leadership to individual intrinsic motivation.

The key limitation of this study lies in the representativeness of sample data, which is the convenience of non-probability sampling and self-reported data only from a large high-tech company in China.

This study not only further verified a promotion factor of individual service innovative behavior from the perspective of leader influence, but also enriched the understanding of the positive influence of servant leadership on employees.

This study is the first to examine the relationships among servant leadership, employees' intrinsic motivation, identification with the leader and service innovative behavior. The results may help to open the “black box” of the relationship between servant leadership and employees' service innovative behavior by introducing their intrinsic motivation. The conclusions also indicate employees' identification with the leader is an important boundary condition among their relationships. Particularly, it not only moderates the relationship between servant leadership and intrinsic motivation, but also moderates the mediating role of intrinsic motivation.

This study aims to investigate the impact of supply chain concentration (SCC) on corporate research and development (R&D) investment and determine the moderating roles of industry concentration and financing constraints on the relationship between SCC and R&D investment.

The study collected data from Chinese listed companies, used the fixed effects model to test the research hypotheses and further used the two-stage Heckman test and propensity score matching (PSM) to address potential endogeneity issues.

The result reveals a negative impact of SCC on corporate R&D investment. In addition, industry concentration mitigates the negative impact of SCC on corporate R&D investment, but financing constraints strengthen the negative impact.

This study introduces the concept of SCC and empirically tests its effect on R&D investment, further explaining the lack of corporate innovation. This study inspires companies to strengthen SC management and weigh the level of SCC with environmental factors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of innovation on the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.

The paper uses data from the surveys on SMEs in Vietnam conducted by the Development Economics Research Group at the University of Copenhagen, the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research, Central Institute for Economic Management and Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs, and applies least squared regressions and 2SLS regressions to examine the effect of innovation on the performance of SMEs.

The authors find that SMEs with innovation tend to perform better than SMEs without innovation. The authors further show that the positive effect of innovation on firm performance mainly comes from the effect of improvement of existing products, an important type of innovation in SMEs. This result is persistent when the authors use propensity matching score and 2SLS regression with instrumental variable approaches. Overall, the results show the important role of innovation in enhancing the firm performance of SMEs, which sheds light on the literature on the controversial relation between innovation and SMEs performance in the world.

The major limitation of the paper is the lack of data. Although the database used in the paper is widely used to analyze SMEs in Vietnam, it covers about 2,500 firms in only nine provinces/cities in Vietnam.

Policymakers should enact relevant policies to support SMEs with innovation activities, thereby increasing firm performance and their competitiveness. For instance, encouragement policies or financial incentives (tax reduction or subsidies) for innovative firms should be implemented and/or fostered.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the effect of different types of innovation on the performance of SMEs in Vietnam.

Recent service studies suggest focusing on the service triad consisting of technology-customer-frontline employee (FLE). This study empirically investigates the role of service robots in this service triad, with the aim to understand the augmentation or substitution role of service robots in driving utilitarian and hedonic value and ultimately customer repatronage.

In study 1, field data are collected from customers (n = 108) who interacted with a service robot and FLE in a fast casual dining restaurant. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test hypotheses about the impact of service robots' anthropomorphism, social presence, value perceptions and augmentation opportunities in the service triad. In study 2, empirical data from a scenario-based experimental design (n = 361) complement the field study by further scrutinizing the interplay between the service robot and FLEs within the service triad.

The study provides three important contributions. First, the authors provide empirical evidence for the interplay between different actors in the “customer-FLE-technology” service triad resulting in customer repatronage. Second, the empirical findings advance the service management literature by unraveling the relationship between anthropomorphism and social presence and their effect on perceived value in the service triad. And third, the study identifies utilitarian value of service robots as a driver of customer repatronage in fast casual dining restaurants.

The results help service managers, service robot engineers and designers, and policy makers to better understand the implications of anthropomorphism, and how the utilitarian value of service robots can offer the potential for augmentation or substitution roles in the service triad.

Building on existing conceptual and laboratory studies on service robots, this is one of the first field studies on the service triad consisting of service robots – customers – frontline employees. The empirical study on service triads provides evidence for the potential of FLEs to augment service robots that exhibit lower levels of functional performance to achieve customer repatronage. FLEs can do this by demonstrating a high willingness to help and having excellent interactions with customers. This finding advocates the joint service delivery by FLE – service robot teams in situations where service robot technology is not fully optimized.

This study explores the impact of ethical and authentic leadership on employees' workplace perceptions, focusing on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), trust in leader, commitment, employee voice and empowerment in independent hotels across two contrasting Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) clusters: Germanic and Middle-Eastern clusters. It examines how national culture influences these relationships in the hospitality industry.

Data were collected from 1,678 employees in independent hotels in the Germanic European cluster (Germany and the Netherlands) and the Middle-Eastern cluster (Qatar and Turkey) using selective and snowball sampling techniques. Hypotheses were tested using two-stage structural equation modelling.

Ethical leadership significantly affects employee voice in Germany and the Netherlands but not in Qatar and Turkey. Authentic leadership positively influences employee voice in Qatar, Turkey and Germany but does not significantly impact trust in leader in any of the four countries. The study underscores the role of cultural dimensions, particularly power distance, in shaping these relationships.

This research contributes to the literature by investigating the effects of ethical and authentic leadership on key organisational variables in culturally diverse contexts within the hospitality industry. The findings highlight the necessity of considering national culture in leadership practices and suggest practical implications for independent hotels to adapt their leadership approaches to enhance employee outcomes. Future research should explore cultural dimensions as moderators in organisational relationships.

This research addressed online customer-to-customer (C2C) incivility during digital service recovery.

To examine the effectiveness of managerial responses to online C2C incivility post a restaurant service failure, a 2 (Managerial response: general vs specific) x 2 (Failure severity: high vs low) quasi-experimental design was employed. A pretest was conducted with 123 restaurant consumers via Amazon Mechanical Turk, followed by a main study with 174 restaurant consumers. Taking a mixed-method approach, this research first asked open-ended questions to explore how participants perceived the restaurant’s motivation for providing a generic versus a specific response. Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS procedure was then performed for hypotheses testing.

The results revealed significant interaction effects of managerial responses and failure severity on perceived online service climate and revisit intention, mediated by trust with managerial responses.

This research yielded unique insight into C2C incivility management literature and industry practices in the context of digital customer service recovery.

A systematic investigation of postgraduate leadership programs for health and/or human services offered by Australian higher education institutions was undertaken.

Quantitative analysis identified the core characteristics of the programs. A thematic analysis of the course learning outcomes was conducted and six major themes of disciplinary leadership and management knowledge; research and analytical skills; professional practice; communication and collaboration; creativity and innovation; and system knowledge are shared in this study.

The authors conclude that Australian universities have taken an evidence-based approach to leadership education.

More work might need to be undertaken to ensure leadership theories are incorporated into learning outcomes.

This study explored the ramifications of COVID-19 on construction operations in Malaysia.

Following a detailed literature review, 37 ramifications are identified and divided into nine aspects. A self-designed survey is then employed to seek the perceptions of construction practitioners around the Klang Valley region regarding the significance of the ramifications. A total of 203 valid responses are subjected to statistical analyses to prioritise the ramifications.

All the potential ramifications are perceived to be significant, with the five utmost critical ramifications being rescheduling the project timeline, compliance with government SOP, delay in the handover project, compulsory COVID-19 test for all workers and the extra cost incurred to provide COVID-19 test for workers.

This study highlights the ramifications of COVID-19 on construction operations and deliberately informs construction organizations regarding the shortcomings of recent construction management. Besides, the insights suggested that industry practitioners devise corresponding strategies for project sustainability in future similar crises.

The findings serve as a valuable reference and are benign to industry professionals and researchers from developing nations, especially nations that share similar characteristics to Malaysia.