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Breakthrough technological innovation is of vital significance for firms to acquire and maintain sustainable competitive advantages. The construction of an innovation ecosystem and the interaction with heterogeneous participants have emerged as a new dominant model for driving sustained breakthrough technological innovation in firms. This study aims to explore the effects of collaborative modes within the innovation ecosystem on firms’ breakthrough technological innovation and the ecological legitimacy mechanisms involved.

The research employs data from 212 innovative firms and conducts empirical research using a two-stage structural equation modeling (SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN) analysis.

The results indicate that firm-firm collaboration (FF), firm-user collaboration (FU), firm-government collaboration (FG), firm-university-institute collaboration (FUI) and firm-intermediary collaboration (FI) all have significant positive effects on breakthrough technological innovation (BTI), with FU being particularly crucial. Furthermore, the results confirm the positive moderating effects of ecological legitimacy (EL) on the relationships between FF and BTI, as well as between FU and BTI. Conversely, EL has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between FUI and BTI, as well as between FI and breakthrough technological innovation. Additionally, EL does not have a significant influence on the relationship between FG and BTI.

Through resource dependence theory (RDT), this study unveils the black box of how collaboration modes within innovation ecosystems impact breakthrough technological innovation. By introducing ecological legitimacy as a contextual factor, a new research perspective is provided for collaboration innovation within innovation ecosystems. The study employs a combination of SEM and ANN for modeling, complementing nonlinear relationships and obtaining robust results in complex mechanisms.

This paper seeks to address emerging practices of social enterprises (SEs) in China by exploring the institutional context, organisational features and legislative framework of this new phenomenon.

The analysis is based on data drawn from secondary sources (laws and regulations, forum transcripts and news reports) and primary evidence (in‐depth study of six SE cases).

The various kinds of SEs are highly diversified in terms of social mission, organisational nature, legal form, and operational pattern; the institutional context is underdeveloped, providing growing but still limited financial, intellectual, technical, and human resources; although it allows increasing space for diversified development dynamics of SEs, the legislative system regulating SEs is still flawed in several vital ways.

This paper relies heavily on qualitative research methods to make a preliminary assessment of the development of China's SEs. Neither primary nor secondary data sources collected for this paper can be used to draw any general conclusion of statistical significance.

The paper sheds light on the overall landscape of the recent development of SEs in China, providing a descriptive and normative foundation for cross‐country comparative studies and quantitative, explanatory analysis.

The missing employee voice has become a salient topic in China. This paper aims to document the newest developments relating to the topic by reviewing the recent literature on employment relations and employee voice. The findings of this paper suggest that the purposes of and channels for the employee voice in China have been undergoing significant changes. Different stakeholder groups have approached the issue. ‘Democratic management’ in China, the country’s home-grown concept of employee voice, has been resurrected to encourage more effective employee representation. Apart from this top-down influence from the government and All-China Federation of Trade Unions, this paper also identifies the bottom-up approach driven by the workers, and the external influence from the global corporate social responsibility campaign and nongovernmental labour organizations. Based on the review of the newest developments in workplace democracy and the employee voice in China, this paper proposes a stakeholder framework incorporating these developments. The authors also suggest some directions for future research.