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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of job-hopping executives at their former and subsequent firms.

We conduct regression analyses using a sample of firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2010 to 2020 to examine whether CSR performance is similar from one firm to the next as executives switch jobs.

We find a positive relationship between the CSR performance of former and subsequent firms under job-hopping executives. This relationship is the strongest in the year of the job switch; it weakens in the second year and eventually disappears in the third year. In addition, we show that this relationship benefits different CSR stakeholder groups and is contingent on executive and subsequent firm attributes and job-hopping characteristics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that firms that hire a new chief executive officer from a firm with a strong track record in CSR, the new firm experiences a significant surge in CSR performance compared with firms that do not experience such a shock.

This study has implications for executive hiring decisions.

This study extends the understanding of CSR determinants through the lens of inter-organisational ties associated with job-hopping executives.

The purpose of this study is to examine the moderating role of the characteristics of the chief executive officer (CEO) on the association between CEO power and corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance.

This paper conducts multiple regression analyses to empirically test the proposed hypotheses based on a sample of US-based publicly held companies. The sample period extends from 2000 to 2018. Firm-level CSR ratings are obtained from the Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini (KLD) database (currently known as MSCI ESG STATS). Financial data and CEO data are retrieved from Compustat and ExecuComp databases, respectively. Additional test and robustness analysis are performed.

This paper shows that firms with more powerful CEOs are less likely to engage in CSR activities. The negative association between CEO power and CSR is found to be exacerbated by CEOs who are younger, more competent and overconfident; however, this negative association is mitigated by CEOs who are female. This paper also finds that gender plays a more important role among CEO characteristics. Collectively, the findings highlight the potential opportunities to better understand the role of various CEO characteristics that jointly affect CSR.

First, this is the first study providing a comprehensive empirical analysis of how various CEO characteristics jointly affect CSR. Prior studies that focus on standalone CEO characteristics offer an incomplete picture of the relation between a single CEO characteristic and a firm's CSR performance. The current study thus extends the research field by examining the association between seemingly unrelated CEO characteristics and CSR performance. The results also highlight that gender is the critical factor moderating the relationship between CEO power and CSR performance when it is compared with CEO age, ability and overconfidence. Second, the authors add to the literature on employee selection by showing that female CEOs mitigate the negative effect of managerial power on CSR performance. Although the currently available empirical research in management control systems focuses on ex-post analyses of moral hazard mitigation for incumbent employees, both the economics and management literature acknowledge ex ante evidence suggesting that employee selection is even more important. Our findings may provide insight into the selection of CEOs.

There is a paucity of published research regarding service employees’ side of gloomy consequences emanating from value co-creation (VCC). The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the activities and interactions of VCC that can result in negative well-being for service employees.

This paper is a theory synthesis paper and, as such, seeks to accomplish conceptual integration of multiple theories and literature streams.

The origins of negative outcomes of VCC are infinite, and for the purpose of this study, the potential triggers of negative outcomes are limited to typical processes and behaviours initiated by VCC of services. For the purposes of this paper, dysfunctional customer behaviour, customer incivility, value co-destruction, boundary-spanning activities, organisational structure and policies and resource integration are investigated as sources of negative well-being for service employees.

The first limitation is the focus on offline transactions. Although the accepted definition of a service ecosystem provides for it to be a “self-adjusting system” a need could emerge for some formal management structure to cope with the increasing complexity of service transactions. A theoretical implication of this paper is that it includes a few lesser researched elements in the context of VCC. A starting point to deal with undesirable VCC interactions is to distinguish between undesirable interaction outcomes that originated inside the firm (own service employees) and those that originated from outside the firm (dysfunctional customers).

A first suggestion on how managers could deal with undesirable VCC interactions is to distinguish between undesirable interaction outcomes that originated inside the firm (e.g. own service employees, firm policies and structure) and those that originated from outside the firm (e.g. customer incivility and dysfunctional customers), as these two types of interaction outcomes require different interventions. Firms will need to bring together, study, analyse and assess all service employee experiences and challenges generated by VCC interactions. The frequency and significance of negative incidents should indicate the amount of effort and time to be spent on types of negative incidents.

A challenge for service ecosystems is how they will adjust to comply with novel and traditional non-business objectives in the light of transformational, upliftment and other calls from society, whilst at the same time improving the well-being of the entire service ecosystem (i.e. providers, users and society). The improvement of well-being versus reducing suffering/losses/risks is not an option. The words of Hammedi et al. (2024, p. 159) “we move towards the conceptualization of service ecosystem health as a harmonious state in which private, public and planetary well-being merge” are exceptionally fitting here.

The negative consequences of VCC impact the well-being of service employees and are costly for a firm. Suggestions to prevent or limit the impact of undesirable or harmful consequences are made. This study is of value for service businesses, service academics and society. A greater awareness of the destructive nature of negative consequences of VCC will hopefully transpire from this study.

This paper aims to study the effect of the establishment of bankruptcy courts on bond issuance market. This paper helps to predict that the introduction of bankruptcy courts in China can mitigate price distortions caused by the implicit government guarantees and promote the development of the high-risk bond market.

This paper exploits the staggered introduction of bankruptcy courts across cities to implement a differences-in-differences strategy on bond issuance data. Using bonds issued in China between 2018 and 2020, the impact of bankruptcy courts on the bond issuance market can be analyzed.

This paper reveals that bond issuance credit spreads increase and is more sensitive to firm size, profitability and downside risk of issuance entity after the introduction of bankruptcy courts. It also reveals a substantive increase in bond issuance quantity and a decrease in issuer credit ratings following the establishment of bankruptcy courts. In addition, the increase of credit spreads is more prominent for publicly traded bonds, those whose issuers located in provinces with lower judicial confidence, bonds issued by SOEs and bonds with stronger government guarantees. Finally, the role of bankruptcy courts is more pronounced in regions with higher marketization.

This paper relates to previous studies that investigate the impact of laws and institutions on external financing. It helps provide new evidence to this literature on how improvements of efficiency and quality in bankruptcy enforcements relate to the marketization of bond issuance. The results provide further evidence on legal institutions and bond financing.

This study aims to inform prospective listing firms, investors and regulators of the unique drivers of Chinese initial public offering (IPO) pricing on the Hong Kong Exchange.

Using a hand-collected IPO dataset, we investigate whether information uncertainty or investor exuberance drives underpricing and Chinese IPOs’ performance from 2002 to 2015, including 114 state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

Contrasting with the “listing bubble” in the China domestic stock market, generated by the overoptimism of retail investors, we highlight a “placing bubble” among Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong. This is driven by institutional investors’ buoyant demand for Chinese IPO shares, particularly those of SOEs. Chinese listing firms employ discreet earnings management strategies with their working capital accounts to smooth pre-IPO earnings, which becomes apparent to the market only in the long term.

This study is the first to examine the pricing of sought-after Chinese IPOs among international investors, who face various restrictions when investing in the Chinese domestic stock market. Additionally, it is the first study to measure earnings management using hand-collected pre-IPO data in IPO underpricing studies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic feasibility of a three-echelon Halal Meat Supply Chain (HMSC) network that is monitored by a proposed radio frequency identification (RFID)-based management system for enhancing the integrity traceability of Halal meat products and to maximize the average integrity number of Halal meat products, maximize the return of investment (ROI), maximize the capacity utilization of facilities and minimize the total investment cost of the proposed RFID-monitoring system. The location-allocation problem of facilities needs also to be resolved in conjunction with the quantity flow of Halal meat products from farms to abattoirs and from abattoirs to retailers.

First, a deterministic multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model was developed and used for optimizing the proposed RFID-based HMSC network toward a comprised solution based on four conflicting objectives as described above. Second, a stochastic programming model was developed and used for examining the impact on the number of Halal meat products by altering the value of integrity percentage. The ε-constraint approach and the modified weighted sum approach were proposed for acquisition of non-inferior solutions obtained from the developed models. Furthermore, the Max-Min approach was used for selecting the best solution among them.

The research outcome shows the applicability of the developed models using a real case study. Based on the computational results, a reasonable ROI can be achievable by implementing RFID into the HMSC network.

This work addresses interesting avenues for further research on exploring the HMSC network design under different types of uncertainties and transportation means. Also, environmentalism has been becoming increasingly a significant global problem in the present century. Thus, the presented model could be extended to include the environmental aspects as an objective function.

The model can be utilized for food supply chain designers. Also, it could be applied to realistic problems in the field of supply chain management.

Although there were a few studies focusing on the configuration of a number of HMSC networks, this area is overlooked by researchers. The study shows the developed methodology can be a useful tool for designers to determine a cost-effective design of food supply chain networks.

The recent promotion of prefabricated housing (PH) in China has resulted in a prosperous period for its implementation. However, transaction costs (TCs) cause low economic efficiency to stakeholders and hinder the further promotion of PH. No relevant study has yet been made to investigate the TCs and their causes in the PH field. This paper identifies critical TCs and explores the influencing factors from the developers' perspective.

Semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey were used to collect data about TCs and influencing factors. The most influential factors are identified with their impacts on particular TCs, yielded from correlation analysis and logistic regression.

From the developers' perspective in China's PH market, this study identified that the most concerning sources of TCs are: hidden costs arising from disputes, extra workloads from design changes, learning costs, intensive communication and coordination in assembly and unexpected information costs in decision-making. The use of an ordered logistic regression approach indicates that the four most influential factors are: qualification of the general contractor, mandatory local policies, owner type and competitiveness of the developer.

To reduce the TCs, experiencing learning and ensuring the design scheme's complicity are recommended to save information searching and exchanging costs. The implications for the PH developers are for them to: (1) professionalize their own organization and (2) procure high-qualified general contractors. For the policymakers, this means they should improve the clarity of the mandatory local policies for PH step-by-step.

By applying the TCs economic theory, this study explores factors that influence TCs in the PH industry. It sheds light on the influencing mechanism behind the TCs in the context of prefabricated housing.

The current paper aims to analyse the antecedents of leader–member exchange relationships (LMX) by specifically focusing on the influence of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic.

This study uses qualitative research methods with primary interviews as the main data source. Primary interviews with 40 managers from top supermarkets in Nigeria, South Africa and the UK were undertaken.

The authors found that both high-quality positive feedback and constructive criticisms produced the same feelings – more positive interpersonal relationships with their supervisors, higher levels of commitment to their organisations, higher job satisfaction and thus, high-quality LMX relationships. Where criticisms were delivered without greater interpersonal treatment, feedback was perceived as negative, and participants revealed lack of job satisfaction, lack of commitment to their organisations, poor interpersonal relationship with their supervisors, high turnover intent and thus low-quality LMX relationship.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current paper is one of the first studies to highlight the consequences of different feedback delivery tactics on subsequent LMX quality particularly in African context. The authors specifically develop a process-based model of enhancing high-quality LMX, which shows the role of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic in the process. The authors also develop a process-based model that illustrates how negative/unconstructive feedback could result in a low-quality LMX. Finally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is also one of the first to offer a comparative assessment between African and British (the UK) empirical settings and highlight some interesting dynamics concerning LMX quality and role of supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic.

Degradable mulch film (DMF) is a potential alternate to polyethylene (PE) mulching. In this regard, the purpose of this paper is to explore the effects and paths of natural disaster shock and risk aversion influencing farmers’ DMF adoption.

This research is conducted by collecting cross-sectional data of corn farmers in Zhangye, China. First, by using the Tobit model, the paper attempts to explore the effects of natural disaster shock and risk aversion influencing farmers’ DMF adoption. Second, IV-Tobit model is applied to deal with endogenous problems between risk aversion and DMF adoption. Additionally, the researchers used a moderating model to analyze feasible paths of natural disaster shock and risk aversion impacting farmers’ DMF adoption.

The outcomes show that natural disaster shock and risk aversion significantly and positively affect farmers’ DMF adoption. Though risk aversion plays a significant moderating effect in influencing farmers’ DMF adoption by natural disaster shock, the moderating effect has a serious disguising effect. By considering the heterogeneity of risk aversion, the paper further confirms that if the intensity of natural disaster shock is increased by one unit, the intensity of MDF adoption by farmers with high-risk aversion also tends to increase by 15.85%.

This study is the pioneer one, which is evaluating the intensity of farmers’ DMF adoption from adoption ratio, investment amount, labor input and adoption time. Additionally, the research provides important guidelines for policymakers to motivate medium and low-risk aversion farmers to adopt DMF.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the recovery and resilience tourism strategies and possible future development of four main Chinese tourism cities.

The authors collected data from the official accounts of tourism administrations of these cities, tourist attractions and opinions from media and newspapers in Sina Weibo platform. The authors adopted an inductive approach in observing relevant social media posts and applied content analysis to identify main China’s tourism prevention and recovery strategies.

During the mass pandemic infection period, top-down prevention and control measures were implemented by the Chinese central and local governments, with feasible and regional recovery policies and protocols being adapted according to local situations. Measures related to tourism industrial re-employment, improvement of international images and governmental financial supports to re-boost local tourism in Chinese cities were paid great attention. Digitalization, close-to-nature and cultural heritages became important factors in the future development of China’s tourism. Dark tourism, as a potential tourism recovery strategy, also obtained huge emergence, for the memory of people deceased in the pandemic and for the inheritance of national patriotism.

This study enriches the current literature in urban tourism recovery studies analyzing the specific case of Chinese tourism cities and fulfill some voids of previous research mostly focused on the first wave of the pandemic and the recovery strategies mainly of Western cities. It also provides valuable suggestions to tourism practitioners, destinations and urban cities in dealing with regional tourism recession and finding possible solutions for the scenario associated to the COVID-19 and other similar health crisis.