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Mining user-concerned actionable and interpretable hot topics will help management departments fully grasp the latest events and make timely decisions. Existing topic models primarily integrate word embedding and matrix decomposition, which only generates keyword-based hot topics with weak interpretability, making it difficult to meet the specific needs of users. Mining phrase-based hot topics with syntactic dependency structure have been proven to model structure information effectively. A key challenge lies in the effective integration of the above information into the hot topic mining process.

This paper proposes the nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF)-based hot topic mining method, semantics syntax-assisted hot topic model (SSAHM), which combines semantic association and syntactic dependency structure. First, a semantic–syntactic component association matrix is constructed. Then, the matrix is used as a constraint condition to be incorporated into the block coordinate descent (BCD)-based matrix decomposition process. Finally, a hot topic information-driven phrase extraction algorithm is applied to describe hot topics.

The efficacy of the developed model is demonstrated on two real-world datasets, and the effects of dependency structure information on different topics are compared. The qualitative examples further explain the application of the method in real scenarios.

Most prior research focuses on keyword-based hot topics. Thus, the literature is advanced by mining phrase-based hot topics with syntactic dependency structure, which can effectively analyze the semantics. The development of syntactic dependency structure considering the combination of word order and part-of-speech (POS) is a step forward as word order, and POS are only separately utilized in the prior literature. Ignoring this synergy may miss important information, such as grammatical structure coherence and logical relations between syntactic components.

This paper aims to explore the potential relationship between internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the decline of organised labour in countries of the global North. Given the opposing trends since the late 20th century and the widespread adherence of internationally recognised labour standards in CSR codes, standards, and reporting frameworks, questions arise about the disparity between CSR rhetoric and practice regarding the collective rights of in-house employees. The paper further explores the tendency in CSR scholarship to overlook violations of collective rights for in-house employees in the global North.

To examine whether there is an elective affinity between the rise of CSR and the decline of organised labour, the paper uses a discursive institutionalism approach, providing a meta-theoretical analysis of academic literature on internal CSR. A scoping review methodology was used to identify relevant literature and compile it into an empirical corpus for a metatheoretical analysis. The empirical corpus, consisting of 38 articles, was generated through a Google Scholar (GS) search guided by the following questions: (1) What are the dominant conceptual framings of internal CSR? (2) What are the dominant roles and practical aspects of internal CSR?

The paper identifies two key disparities in the literature: (1) between rhetoric and practice regarding the collective rights of in-house employees in the global North and (2) between the extensive CSR research on violations of collective rights of value chain workers and the limited attention to in-house employees’ collective rights. The analysis highlights two factors contributing to these disparities: the integration of internal CSR into the corporate managerial toolbox and the distinction in CSR discourse between core labour standards and workplace issues. The analysis shows that internal CSR has an elective affinity with the decline of organised labour.

While scoping reviews are often standalone studies, this paper used the methodology for its stated purpose. Limitations include the broad span of internal CSR across various academic fields and reliance solely on GS. Measures taken to enhance inclusivity were unlimited review period, refined inclusion criteria and keywords during the selection process and cross-checks of cited articles.

Considering the implications of the decline of organised labour on workers’ collective voice, poverty and the distribution gap in wealth and income, this paper suggests that for CSR to play a significant role in advancing sustainable social justice, scholars and practitioners should look at ways to reduce the disparity between rhetoric and practice regarding employees’ voice and collective rights.

The paper lays the foundation for a better understanding of the potential links between internal CSR and the decline of organised labour. It addresses a gap in the literature on the interrelations between CSR and organised labour in the global North and proposes root causes of this gap. This contribution enriches the scarce literature exploring the potential elective affinity between CSR and transformations in the global economy and labour markets since the late 1980s. Finally, the paper deepens the understanding of the implications of CSR for employees’ collective rights and voice as well as for organised labour.

This study investigates the relationships among digital transformation, technological innovation, industry–university–research collaborations and labor income share in manufacturing firms.

The relationships are tested using an empirical method, constructing regression models, by collecting 1,240 manufacturing firms and 9,029 items listed on the A-share market in China from 2013 to 2020.

The results indicate that digital transformation has a positive effect on manufacturing companies’ labor income share. Technological innovation can mediate the effect of digital transformation on labor income share. Industry–university–research cooperation can positively moderate the promotion effect of digital transformation on labor income share but cannot moderate the mediating effect of technological innovation. Heterogeneity analysis also found that firms without service-based transformation and nonstate-owned firms are better able to increase their labor income share through digital transformation.

This study provides a new path to increase the labor income share of enterprises to achieve common prosperity, which is important for manufacturing enterprises to better transform and upgrade to achieve high-quality development.

Forest as a vital natural resource in China plays an irreplaceable important role in safeguarding ecological security and human survival and development. Due to the vast territory, huge population and widespread forest landscape of China, forest management is a complex system involving massive data and various management activities. To effectively implement sustainable forest management, the big data technology has been utilized to analyze China’s forestry resources. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to clarify the role of big data technology in China’s forest management.

In this paper, the authors revisited the roles of big data in forest ecosystem monitoring, forestry management system development, and forest policy implementation.

It demonstrates that big data technology has a great potential in forest ecosystem protection and management, as well as the government’s determination for forest ecosystem protection. However, to deepen the application of big data in forest management, several challenges still need to be tackled.

Thus, enhancing modern science and technology to improve big data, cloud computing, and information technologies and their combinations will contribute to tackle the challenges and achieve wisdom of forest management.

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.

This study examines the relationship between demand forecasting error and retail inventory management in an uncertain supplier yield context. Replenishment is segmented into off-season and peak-season, with the former characterized by longer lead times and higher supply uncertainty. In contrast, the latter incurs higher acquisition costs but ensures certain supply, with the retailer's purchase volume aligning with the acquired volume. Retailers can replenish in both phases, receiving goods before the sales season. This paper focuses on the impact of the retailer's demand forecasting bias on their sales period profits for both phases.

This study adopts a data-driven research approach by drawing inspiration from real data provided by a cooperating enterprise to address research problems. Mathematical modeling is employed to solve the problems, and the resulting optimal strategies are tested and validated in real-world scenarios. Furthermore, the applicability of the optimal strategies is enhanced by incorporating numerical simulations under other general distributions.

The study's findings reveal that a greater disparity between predicted and actual demand distributions can significantly reduce the profits that a retailer-supplier system can earn, with the optimal purchase volume also being affected. Moreover, the paper shows that the mean of the forecasting error has a more substantial impact on system revenue than the variance of the forecasting error. Specifically, the larger the absolute difference between the predicted and actual means, the lower the system revenue. As a result, managers should focus on improving the quality of demand forecasting, especially the accuracy of mean forecasting, when making replenishment decisions.

This study established a two-stage inventory optimization model that simultaneously considers random yield and demand forecast quality, and provides explicit expressions for optimal strategies under two specific demand distributions. Furthermore, the authors focused on how forecast error affects the optimal inventory strategy and obtained interesting properties of the optimal solution. In particular, the property that the optimal procurement quantity no longer changes with increasing forecast error under certain conditions is noteworthy, and has not been previously noted by scholars. Therefore, the study fills a gap in the literature.

This study established a two-stage inventory optimization model that simultaneously considers random yield and demand forecast quality, and provides explicit expressions for optimal strategies under two specific demand distributions. Furthermore, the authors focused on how forecast error affects the optimal inventory strategy and obtained interesting properties of the optimal solution. In particular, the property that the optimal procurement quantity no longer changes with increasing forecast error under certain conditions is noteworthy, and has not been previously noted by scholars. Therefore, the study fills a gap in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility that design research involving a series of actions is an appropriate approach to memory place-making. It tries to explore how memory expressed in public space and how memory place becomes an agency system and re-organize fragments of memory in practice specifically.

Taking the memory project of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge (NYRB) as an example of design research and re-establishing new cognitions of contemporary memory place-making through the elaboration and analysis of the design process of a series of teaching, exhibition and public participatory activities.

Design research is oriented towards multi-discipline campaigns of agency and actions and acts as thinking patterns and integration mechanisms, so that the memory place-making can be incorporated into the scope of planning and design. This paper suggests that contemporary memory place-making should pay more attention to the spiritual experience of individual participation and the identity relations behind these emotional memories. On one hand, social bonds are established between people and have involved more public participation. On the other hand, multiple resources are integrated through a series of practical activities and design research, and the memory place becomes a catalyst for individual memory, emotions and communication thus redefining memory place-making.

NYRB is a controversial mid-20th century national monument. In the social context of contemporary China, design research has helped to redefine and shape this national icon into a contemporary memory place where people can share memories of the bridge.

It is project-based in the sense of adding the dimension of memory to the practice of place-making through design research.

This paper is an empirical attempt to verify the interplay between political change, fleet nationality, and the evolution of shipping networks. North Korea offers a good example of a socialist maritime country that has experienced much contrasting geopolitical contexts since 1990. A database of vessel movements between North Korean ports and other ports is analyzed. Main results show differences between North Korean and foreign fleets in terms of traffic (vessel size, age, berthing time) and geographical coverage. South Korean ports tend to play a new role in the reorganization of North Korean-related flows in Northeast Asia.

Due to the increasing demand for public services, as a new form of public governance, e-participation has emerged. Scholars from various disciplines have published plenty of research results on e-participation. This paper aims to reveal the research status frontiers directly by mapping knowledge domains.

The authors take 1,322 articles on e-participation published in Web of Science from 2001 to 2017 as research object. They then run the information visualization software CiteSpace to drill deeper into the literature data.

The study found that e-participation research has the obvious interdisciplinary feature; the author and institution cooperation networks with less internal cooperation are relatively sparse; the USA ranks first in the field of e-participation research, followed by the UK, with the other countries lagged behind; and e-participation through social media is gradually becoming the new research focus.

Based on the objective data and information visualization technology, the research intuitively reveals the research status and development trend of e-participation.

This study aims to understand how integration efforts at both communication and channel levels can foster customer engagement behavior in the retail sector from the perspective of employees.

Data were collected through 231 face-to-face questionnaires completed by frontline employees in shopping centers. A structural equation modeling approach was applied to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results highlight the importance of integration efforts as external stimuli for enhancing employees’ perceptions about customer engagement behavior. Findings extend the stimulus-organism-response model by predicting responses that go beyond employees’ behavior to predict customer engagement behavior. Results also confirm the mediating role of attitudes toward marketing communications and synergy realization in the proposed model.

Retailers should integrate their multiple channels and operate consistently and in coordination through them to develop employees’ perceptions about customer engagement behavior. Managers should regularly collect information from their employees as they represent an important touchpoint in omnichannel retailing.

There is a gap in the omnichannel retailing literature regarding how integration efforts at a communication level may complement integration efforts at a channel level for developing customer engagement. This study addresses this gap by adopting a novel perspective using frontline employees as a source of information for assessing customer engagement behavior. It extends knowledge about how customer engagement behavior may be developed and strengthened from the employees’ point of view.

Este estudio analiza, desde la perspectiva del empleado, cómo la integración de la comunicación y la coordinación de los canales de distribución fomenta el engagement de los clientes en el sector minorista.

Los datos fueron recogidos a través de 231 cuestionarios personales realizados a empleados de centros comerciales. Las hipótesis se contrastaron mediante un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales.

Los resultados destacan la importancia de la integración para fomentar la percepción de los empleados acerca del engagement del cliente. Estos resultados extienden la aplicación del Modelo de Estimulo-Organismo-Respuesta para predecir no sólo el comportamiento de los empleados si no el engagement del cliente. Los resultados también corroboran el rol mediador de la actitud hacia las comunicaciones de marketing y la obtención de sinergias.

Los distribuidores deben integrar todos los canales y actuar de forma coordinada y consistente para mejorar la percepción de los empleados acerca del engagement del cliente. Se debe recabar información periódica sobre las percepciones de los empleados ya que constituyen un importante punto de contacto en la gestión omnicanal de los establecimientos comerciales.

Este estudio aborda un gap existente en la literatura acerca de cómo los esfuerzos de integración a nivel de comunicación complementan los esfuerzos a nivel de canal para fomentar el engagement del cliente. La novedad de este estudio reside en estudiar estos aspectos desde la perspectiva de los empleados.

本研究旨在从员工的角度了解沟通和渠道层面的整合工作如何促进零售部门的顾客参与行为。

数据收集于购物中心一线员工所填写的231份面对面问卷。应用结构方程建模方法来检验所提出的假设。

本文结果强调了整合工作作为外部激励对于提高员工对顾客参与行为的认知的重要性。研究结果通过预测超越员工行为的反应来预测客户参与行为, 从而扩展了刺激-机体-反应模型。结果还证实了对营销传播和协同实现的态度在所提出的模型中的中介作用。

零售商应该整合其多种渠道, 并通过这些渠道持续协调地运作, 以培养员工对顾客参与行为的认知。管理者应该定期从员工那里收集信息, 因为他们是全渠道零售的一个重要接触点。

在全渠道零售业的文献中, 关于沟通层面的整合工作如何补充渠道层面的整合工作以发展顾客参与的问题, 存在研究差距。本研究通过采用新颖的视角, 将一线员工作为评估顾客参与行为的信息来源来解决这一差距。它扩展了关于如何从员工的角度发展和加强顾客参与行为的知识。