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Previous studies have mainly focused on the negative impact of illegitimate tasks on recipients but ignored its impact on observers. Drawing on deservingness theory, this research developed a moderated serial mediation model to examine the underlying mechanism in the relationship between observed illegitimate tasks and observers’ helping behaviour.

This research tested the model using a sample of 218 employees in China through a two-wave field study. A path analysis was conducted with the bootstrapping procedure to test the hypothesized model.

The results showed that the effect of observing illegitimate tasks was contingent upon the degree of the observer’s interpersonal liking towards the recipient. Specifically, when the observer had a high level of interpersonal liking for a coworker, the observer may perceive that the coworker was undeserving of being assigned illegitimate tasks, which increased sympathetic emotion and the sequent helping behaviour.

This study shifted the perspective of the illegitimate task literature from the recipient to the third parties. Additionally, it provided a finer-grained understanding of the mechanism between observed workplace disrespectful treatment and the observer’s helping behaviour.

This bibliometric literature review aims to uncover the (1) intellectual foundations and (2) topical evolution in the field of career aspiration research.

We employed the systematic literature review methodology following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. According to the predetermined criteria, 286 articles were included from the Web of Science database. Then, we employed performance analysis, science mapping and natural language processing to address our research objectives.

Co-citation analysis uncovered four foundational themes: (1) gender and leadership aspiration, (2) Social Cognitive Career Theory, (3) process of career development and (4) adolescents’ career aspiration. Moreover, co-word analysis showed that scholarly foci have shifted from adolescents’ career development to diverse streams. This shift was indicated by the exploration of additional research samples, such as university students, and topics related to specific aspirations (e.g. entrepreneurial and managerial aspirations) and gender issues (e.g. women leadership and gender stereotypes).

Although this review has limitations related to data selection, it presents implications for practice, theory and future research on career aspirations.

The study illuminated the past and development of a research domain, thus advancing the understanding of career aspirations and inspiring future research.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of work-to-family conflict (WFC) on unethical pro-family behavior (UPFB) and work engagement (WE) among Chinese female leaders. In addition, this study investigates the mediating role of work-to-family guilt (WFG) and the moderating role of family centrality (FC) in these relationships.

A quantitative approach was adopted, involving the collection of data through online questionnaires administered at three time points. These data were analyzed using hierarchical regression and the bootstrapping method to test the proposed hypotheses.

WFC exhibited a significant positive correlation with UPFB and a negative correlation with WE; WFG played a mediating role in the relationships between WFC and both UPFB and WE; and FC had a significant moderating effect on the relationship between WFC and WE.

This study sheds light on a model of WFC and its related effects, reveals how WFC affects UPFB and WE and uncovers the mediating role of WFG and the moderating role of FC; pays attention to a unique organizational behavior, UPFB, which enriches research on the antecedents influencing such behaviors; and examines Chinese female leaders in organizations, their current experience of WFC and the resulting psychological and behavioral outcomes.

The aim of this chapter is to describe and discuss the growing intersection of roles and functions between states and multinationals in the field of diplomacy and how diplomatic skills are needed to support transnational companies in their search for markets in emerging countries. Transnational enterprises face multi-stakeholder engagements in the BRICS and increasingly employ techniques and strategies similar to the repertoire of tools used by diplomats and foreign affairs departments. Given the rapidly changing international business environment, we can observe the emergence of private commercial diplomacy. This chapter provides a detailed analysis of these new developments and seeks to explore the negotiations between multinational corporations and states, between multinationals and other stakeholders (local authorities, traditional leaders, NGOs etc.) and between multinationals. This analysis will focus on multinationals in emerging countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China).

Small talk, often regarded as a superficial interaction unrelated to work, is a pervasive and inescapable aspect of daily life and professional settings. In China, where the notion of guanxi – the cultivation of strategic relationships – is deeply valued, workplace small talk (WST) is a strategic tool used by employees to strengthen their interpersonal networks. This study aims to investigate the positive impact of WST on task performance within the Chinese workplace and explores the mechanisms underpinning this relationship.

This study adopted a time-lagged research design to test its hypotheses using data from 516 employees across various Chinese firms.

This study revealed that WST exerts both direct and indirect positive effects on task performance. It boosts task performance indirectly via two mediators: relational energy and positive affect. This study also delineated a chain mediation model wherein WST sequentially elevates task performance by first enhancing relational energy and then fostering positive affect.

Counter to the prevailing focus on the negative repercussions of WST, this study sheds light on its beneficial outcomes, proposing novel pathways connecting WST to task performance. These insights contribute to both academic discourse and the development of practical management strategies.

Given Bali's prominence in Indonesia's hospitality industry, tourist hypermobility regarding food preferences following the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a source of contention. As such, this chapter will investigate extreme mobility by examining how ‘the flashpackers’ construct their nomadic lifestyles. This chapter focuses on the ‘freedom to eat’ in a variety of different types of restaurants throughout the destination – creating a pattern of hypermobility. Flashpacker's hypermobility data come from a network analysis of TripAdvisor reviews – with Bali (Indonesia) serving as the case study location. According to the analysis's findings, there are eight distinct preference groups for food and beverage products in Bali. It was discovered that at least five ‘star factors’ contributed to preferences across the eight groups, including (1) ratings, (2) popularity, (3) ownership, (4) social media and (5) price. In light of these factors, the chapter concludes that research into hypermobility in small island destinations is still in its infancy. It is critical to promote thorough research into the influence and impact of hypermobility on all facets of the tourism industry, including local communities and to demonstrate the industry's economic contribution.

Given the sudden disruption caused by COVID-19, knowledge sharing between organizations has become a meaningful way to improve supply chain resilience. However, there is still a lack of in-depth research on how to reduce the threat to knowledge sharing caused by increased levels of relational risk. With the emergence of new digital technologies, whether blockchain governance can control relational risk and replace traditional relational governance remains to be demonstrated.

This study uses a cross-sectional survey approach in which quantitative data are collected from 300 participants from Chinese manufacturing enterprises to test the hypotheses.

The results show that relational and blockchain governance can significantly and complementarily reduce the level of relational risk in knowledge sharing. When the relational risk is at a low, medium or high level, the best matches of relational and blockchain governance are low-level relational governance–low-level blockchain governance, high-level relational governance–low-level blockchain governance and high-level relational governance–high-level blockchain governance, respectively.

The findings of this study have important practical implications for manufacturing enterprises in terms of how to choose reasonable governance modes to manage relational risk behaviour according to different relational risk levels to better understand the positive role of knowledge sharing in supply chain resilience.

The antecedent variables of knowledge sharing in previous studies are based on transaction cost theory or relational theory and have not moved beyond the original theoretical framework. This paper addresses this limitation, puts knowledge sharing in the academic context of digital technology, considers blockchain governance into the process of relational risk-knowledge sharing and defines blockchain governance, which is a novel approach in the supply chain resilience management literature.

Brand effect is an important source of innovation performance, but rarely any study in the past has paid attention to explore the way firm innovation activities transform into brand effect. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how firm innovation activities transform into brand effect.

A set of hypothesis has been developed to show the relationships among firm innovation activities, brand prototype, brand preference and brand recommendation. The online survey method was used for data collection. In total, 546 valid questionnaires were retrieved. The study used confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling technique to test the hypothesis.

Results indicate that brand prototype leads the process of cognitive processing from innovation activities’ perception to brand preference and recommendation. The consumer perception of process innovation, marketing innovation, product innovation and the store environment have direct impact on brand prototype that further influences product sophistication, brand preference and brand recommendation. But, the most powerful influence is on brand preference. Moreover, product sophistication–attribute-specific brand knowledge has direct impact on brand preference and indirect impact on the brand recommendation. The whole process from brand prototype to brand preference and brand recommendation mainly reflects the strength of the brand effect formation.

This study provides useful managerial insights so that firms can learn the way to maximize brand effect through the management of innovation perception and cultivation of innovation soft capability to enhance innovation performance.

This study unfolds the transformation of firm innovation activities into brand effect that provides a new theoretical explanation and a holistic framework for the source of innovation performance.

The electronic nose is an array of chemical or gas sensors and associated with a pattern-recognition framework competent in identifying and classifying odorant or non-odorant and simple or complex gases. Despite more than 30 years of research, the robust e-nose device is still limited. Most of the challenges towards reliable e-nose devices are associated with the non-stationary environment and non-stationary sensor behaviour. Data distribution of sensor array response evolves with time, referred to as non-stationarity. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive introduction to challenges related to non-stationarity in e-nose design and to review the existing literature from an application, system and algorithm perspective to provide an integrated and practical view.

The authors discuss the non-stationary data in general and the challenges related to the non-stationarity environment in e-nose design or non-stationary sensor behaviour. The challenges are categorised and discussed with the perspective of learning with data obtained from the sensor systems. Later, the e-nose technology is reviewed with the system, application and algorithmic point of view to discuss the current status.

The discussed challenges in e-nose design will be beneficial for researchers, as well as practitioners as it presents a comprehensive view on multiple aspects of non-stationary learning, system, algorithms and applications for e-nose. The paper presents a review of the pattern-recognition techniques, public data sets that are commonly referred to as olfactory research. Generic techniques for learning in the non-stationary environment are also presented. The authors discuss the future direction of research and major open problems related to handling non-stationarity in e-nose design.

The authors first time review the existing literature related to learning with e-nose in a non-stationary environment and existing generic pattern-recognition algorithms for learning in the non-stationary environment to bridge the gap between these two. The authors also present details of publicly available sensor array data sets, which will benefit the upcoming researchers in this field. The authors further emphasise several open problems and future directions, which should be considered to provide efficient solutions that can handle non-stationarity to make e-nose the next everyday device.

Online business can be an attractive career choice but bears gendered implications under China’s market economy. This study aims to examine how highly educated young women negotiate their career choice of online business, given their enhanced career ambitions and the persisting conservative views of their parents. It is to be examined how these factors interact in shaping women’s strategies and commitment to their nonconventional careers.

The study draws on 23 interviews with 18 women involved in online business. The interviews were coded by themes about how women perceive and make career choices to enter online business, the influence of various motivations (e.g., economic security, decency, autonomy and earning potential) and women’s interactions with their parents under gendered social expectations. The study analyzes and categorizes women’s varied strategies and levels of commitment in taking up online business, an attractive but suspicious career for highly educated young women.

The study finds that some women chose to conduct online business as a secondary job behind their stable and formal primary job; their compromise under parents’ preferences and social expectations as “compliant daughters,” willingly or forced, coexisted with their persisting interest in online entrepreneurship. Other women, or “self-determined daughters,” embraced online business as their primary job; some benefited from parents’ tolerant views, but others needed to handle the pressure of parental disapproval by hiding or proving their nonconventional career choices worthwhile.

This study speaks to the gendered opportunity-necessity framework of entrepreneurship by illustrating women’s multiple motivations in China’s market reforms and the rising online entrepreneurship dynamics. The findings contextualize women’s career choices in different family dynamics and suggest how social expectations and gender norms are imposed and transformed, with a focus on the shifting gendered concerns of opportunity, security and decency in an era of digital economy.