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The regulatory landscape surrounding international construction projects presents significant challenges, and contractors are still struggling to pay a painful price for their performance in the project. While existing research has identified various causes of contractor compliance, the intricate interplay of these factors and their impact on compliance remain largely elusive. The motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) framework may hold the key to determining what factors can foster induced contractor compliance in international projects.

This study collected 124 valid data samples from practitioners involved in large-scale international contracting projects through expert interviews and questionnaire surveys. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was employed to analyze the diverse combinations of contractor compliance factors.

The study identifies seven key factors that contribute to compliance behavior among international construction contractors: economic motivation, social motivation, normative motivation, legal completeness, deterrent sanctions, organizational learning and compliance management ability. The interplay of these factors promotes compliance in the following ways: When international construction contractors are influenced by both social and normative motivations, they exhibit a higher level of compliance. In situations where regulatory systems are relatively weak, the ability to manage compliance becomes the primary driver of compliance behavior for businesses. A comprehensive legal framework creates a conducive environment for contractors to improve their compliance through organizational learning.

The findings offer guidance for international construction contractors in enhancing compliance by considering factors such as motivations, legal frameworks, organizational learning and compliance management. This can lead to improved risk management and performance in international projects.

This research enhances fair and ethical practices in international construction by identifying compliance drivers, fostering positive social impact, mitigating negative consequences and empowering local communities. It informs legal and regulatory reform, encourages improved business practices and contributes to knowledge advancement in the field. Overall, the findings have the potential to positively impact the social fabric of international construction projects.

This study has made an important contribution to the field of compliance theory by integrating theories from multiple disciplinary domains and constructing a new theoretical framework from the perspectives of motivation, opportunity and capability. By elucidating how these factors interact and influence compliance behavior among international construction contractors, this research aids in understanding the complex dynamics of contractor compliance behavior and provides theoretical reference for compliance governance within the construction industry.

This study aims to examine the impact of information communication technology-enabled work during non-working hours (ICT-enabled WNWHs), as a source of stress, on employee behavioral outcomes –in-role job performance, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) that benefit organizations and OCBs that benefit individuals, through emotional responses – work exhaustion, nonwork exhaustion and organization-based self-esteem. As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdowns demonstrated that employees frequently engage in ICT-enabled WNWHs, studying stress induced by ICT-enabled WNWHs is essential for understanding employee adaptation to the work-from-home trend that emerged from COVID-19 lockdowns.

A quantitative survey comprising 1,178 employees in China was conducted, and the data reliability and validity were confirmed. Partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis was employed to test the hypotheses.

The study results empirically proved that, although ICT-enabled WNWHs had significant effects on employee behavioral outcomes, the related emotional responses were the mediators of the stress transmission mechanism that directly affected employee behavioral outcomes. Notably, work exhaustion and organization-based self-esteem partially mediate the stress transmission mechanism, while nonwork exhaustion exerts a full mediating effect.

This study proposes the stress transmission mechanism of ICT-enabled WNWHs and delineates emotional responses regarding the work environment attributes of ICT-enabled WNWHs, an approach rarely seen in prior IS studies. To our best knowledge, this study is the first to identify and empirically demonstrate organization-based self-esteem as one among the emotional responses to ICT-enabled WNWHs. Furthermore, it expands understanding of the holistic impacts of ICT-enabled WNWHs, which is lacking in information systems (IS) literature.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between nonmarket strategy and innovation performance, as well as the boundary factors that influence this relationship in the context of the pharmaceutical industry in emerging markets.

This study analyzed matched data of 227 Chinese pharmaceutical firms and two secondary databases with SPSS to examine the hypotheses.

Nonmarket strategy promotes the innovation performance. High level of firm internal knowledge utilization ability and strategic flexibility strengthens the effect of nonmarket strategy in promoting innovation performance, while information technology (IT) environment weakens the effect of nonmarket strategy in promoting innovation performance.

The research studies the positive impact of nonmarket strategy on innovation performance in the specific context of Chinese pharmaceutical industry, and it introduces the internal capabilities and external IT environment of the firm as moderators of the relationship between nonmarket strategy and innovation performance. More importantly, this research echoes the call for research on moderator of nonmarket strategy and identifies important boundary conditions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it also explores the impact of the IT environment on the implementation of nonmarket strategy for the first time, which deepens the research on nonmarket strategy’s effect on innovation.

This paper examines how the level of low-carbon awareness (LCA) affects the remanufacturing strategy in a supply chain with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and an independent remanufacturer (IR) competing with each other.

Game theory and operations optimization.

The studies analytically characterize the threshold levels of the LCA in response to which the OEM and the IR will change their remanufacturing strategies from no remanufacturing to partial remanufacturing and then to full remanufacturing. In addition, the studies reveal that as compared with the OEM, the IR has more flexibility in terms of the market entry to remanufacturing with the level of LCA increasing. With the extended studies, it is exhibited that the above findings are robust to a good extent.

It can provide decision support for remanufacturing enterprises.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly raised economic risk and uncertainty worldwide. How does COVID-19 affect urban housing markets? Is there any difference when different areas encounter COVID-19? This study aims to investigate the impacts of the pandemic on housing prices by using Beijing’s housing markets data in 2020.

The authors use transaction-level data from April to September in 2020 to conduct a hedonic price analysis of the housing markets in Beijing. The data included 70,843 transactions scraped from a real estate agent’s website. The authors use the difference-in-differences approach to evaluate the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak from the Beijing Xinfadi market (the largest and most important food wholesale market in Beijing) in 2020.

This outbreak of COVID-19 caused a 6.3% drop in housing prices in Beijing from April to September in 2020. However, the impacts of COVID-19 on housing prices in different urban neighbourhoods were spatially heterogeneous. Housing prices in neighbourhoods with industries that rely on face-to-face communication were more affected by the pandemic, while those that can work remotely were less affected.

By investigating the impacts of COVID-19 on housing prices in Beijing, this study illustrates that urban housing prices would be impacted by the pandemic, at least in the short term. While the rise and fall of housing prices were found spatially heterogeneous in Beijing, it suggests that urban neighbourhoods with specific socioeconomic characteristics and geographic locations would unfold different resilience when encountering pandemic. By using data scraping and rigorous statistical tools, the study is probably one of the first ones examining the consequences of COVID-19 in intra-urban housing markets.

To solve the problem of low sensitivity of traditional capacitive proximity sensor, this paper aims to propose a novel capacitive sensor for detection of an approaching conductor.

Five capacitive proximity sensors with different structures are designed and the performance is compared with the traditional capacitive sensor. The impacts of geometrical parameters on the performance of the proposed capacitive sensor are studied. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the proposed capacitive sensor to an approaching conductor with different sizes is discussed. Also, how the designed capacitive sensor is sensitive to the lateral placement of the approaching object is analyzed.

Several capacitive proximity sensor structures have been designed and analyzed. It is found that the capacitive sensor with the top small ring-bottom large ring structure shows stronger electric field distribution around the top electrode and higher sensitivity to the approaching conductor than other sensors. Through further analysis of the proposed sensor, the results demonstrate that proposed capacitive sensor is effective for proximity object detection.

This paper proposes a novel capacitive proximity sensor with top small ring-bottom large ring structure. Compared with the traditional capacitive sensor, the proposed capacitive sensor is more sensitive to the approaching object. This would be helpful for the accurate detection of the approaching object. Also, the top and bottom electrodes are much smaller.

China’s rapid pace of urbanization has resulted in millions of rural residents migrating from rural areas to urban areas for better job opportunities. Due to economic pressures and the nature of China’s demographic policies, many of these migrants have been forced to leave their children with relatives – typically paternal grandparents – at home in the countryside. Thus, while income for most migrant families has risen, a major unintended consequence of this labor movement has been the emergence of a potentially vulnerable sub-population of left-behind children (LBCs). The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of parental migration on both the academic performance and mental health of LBCs.

Longitudinal data were drawn from three waves of a panel survey that followed the same students and their families – including their migration behavior (i.e. whether both parents, one parent, no parent migrated) – between 2015 and 2016. The survey covers more than 33,000 students in one province of central China. The authors apply a student fixed-effects model that controls for both observable and unobservable confounding variables to explicate the causal effects of parental migration on the academic and mental health outcomes for LBC. The authors also employ these methods to test whether these effects differ by the type of migration or by gender of the child.

The authors found no overall impact of parental migration on either academic performance or mental health of LBCs, regardless of the type of migration behavior. The authors did find, however, that when the authors examined heterogeneous effects by gender (which was possible due to the large sample size), parental migration resulted in significantly higher anxiety levels for left-behind girls. The results suggest that parental migration affects left-behind boys and girls differently and that policymakers should take a more tailored approach to addressing the problems faced by LBCs.

The main contributions of this paper come from the large and representative sample, as well as the causal effects analysis of being left-behind on both academic performance and mental health. First, the paper uses comprehensive panel data from a representative and populous province in China, and the sample size is the largest one among LBC-related papers to the authors’ knowledge. Second, the paper separately examines the causal effects on the student outcomes of different migration strategies. Third, the paper analyzes the heterogeneous effects of different migration strategies on LBC gender. The authors believe that the paper makes a key contribution to the literature.