A manufacturer with complex end-products can play the “hub firm” role in its supplier network and manage the relationship among its suppliers, but it mostly does not know how to…
Abstract
Purpose
A manufacturer with complex end-products can play the “hub firm” role in its supplier network and manage the relationship among its suppliers, but it mostly does not know how to manage suppliers’ coopetitive relationship for improving its innovation. This study aims to investigate the influence of horizontal supplier–supplier (S-S) competition and cooperation in the supplier network on the quantity and quality of manufacturer’s innovation, to unravel the manufacturers’ coopetitive strategic sourcing.
Design/methodology/approach
The study conducts negative binomial regression using the data from 130 listed Japanese manufacturers and their first-tier supplier networks as the analysis unit.
Findings
The results indicate that both S-S competition and cooperation have inverted U-shaped effects on manufacturers’ innovation. As to the interplay of S-S competition and cooperation in driving manufacturers’ innovation, the one weakens the other’s inverted U-shaped role. It also shows that simultaneously maintaining moderate cooperation and competition among suppliers is a good choice for manufacturer innovation, and when there is high S-S competition, motivating high cooperation among suppliers is also a way to enhance manufacturers’ innovation. All of the effects are more significant and robust on the innovation quality than the innovation quantity.
Originality/value
This study contributes to linking the dyadic analysis of vertical relationships to the network analysis of horizontal S-S relations and exploring the under-researched interplay between competition and cooperation in driving the ego firm’s innovation. It provides insights to manufacturers’ policymakers on how to strategically manage their supplier networks and S-S coopetition to improve their innovation performance.
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Chenxiao Wang, Feng Guo and Qingpu Zhang
Based on the literature on disruptive innovation, this research explores how disruptive innovation directly and indirectly (via innovation speed and innovation quality) influences…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the literature on disruptive innovation, this research explores how disruptive innovation directly and indirectly (via innovation speed and innovation quality) influences firm performance in relation to the contingency of market-supporting institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 207 firms was gathered through questionnaires targeting senior managers and R&D managers from high-tech firms in China with two waves including explanatory variables and outcome variables.
Findings
This empirical results indicate that disruptive innovation positively affects firm performance, and that innovation speed and innovation quality mediate the relationship between disruptive innovation and firm performance. Meanwhile, market-supporting institutions positively moderate the relationship between innovation speed and firm performance, but negatively moderate the relationship between innovation quality and firm performance.
Research limitations/implications
This study suggests that disruptive innovation is important to firm performance, innovation speed and innovation quality play mediating roles, and market-supporting institutions acts as moderating effects. A research limitation is that the data were collected mainly through a questionnaire.
Practical implications
Firms should incorporate disruptive innovation as an important strategy and improve innovation speed and innovation quality to promote firm performance, and policymakers should improve the levels of market-supporting institutions to facilitate innovation and performance.
Originality/value
This study contributes the literature of disruptive innovation by uncovering the positive effect of disruptive innovation and firm performance and the mediating effects of innovation speed and innovation quality on the abovementioned relationship, and revealing their contingency effects of market-supporting institutions.
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Shuqing Chen, Xitong Guo, Tianshi Wu and Xiaofeng Ju
With the advent of the Digital 2.0 era, online doctor–patient (D–P) interaction has become increasingly popular. However, due to the fact that doctors use their fragmented time to…
Abstract
Purpose
With the advent of the Digital 2.0 era, online doctor–patient (D–P) interaction has become increasingly popular. However, due to the fact that doctors use their fragmented time to serve patients, online D–P interaction inevitably has some problems, such as the lack of pertinence in the reply content and doctors' relative unfamiliarity with their individual patients. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to excavate whether potential D–P social ties and D–P knowledge ties accentuate or attenuate the influence of patient selection (online and offline selection).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used the methods of text mining and empirical analysis on the structured and unstructured data of an online consultation platform in China to examine the research hypotheses.
Findings
The findings illustrate that the potential D–P social ties increase the influence on patient selection, as do the potential D–P knowledge ties. Specifically, the effect of social ties on patient selection is positively moderated by patient health literacy. Conversely, health literacy weakens the link between knowledge ties and patient selection. In addition, the doctor's title weakens the influence of social ties on patient selection, in contrast to knowledge ties (partially).
Originality/value
This study provides guidance for doctors and patients on how to communicate effectively and alleviate tension within D–P relationships. The study’s findings have both theoretical and practical implications for both doctors' and online platforms' decision-making.
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Yuanyuan Dang, Shanshan Guo, Haochen Song and Yi Li
Prior studies on the impact of incentives on physicians’ online participation mainly focused on different incentives while ignoring the difficulty of setting monetary incentives…
Abstract
Purpose
Prior studies on the impact of incentives on physicians’ online participation mainly focused on different incentives while ignoring the difficulty of setting monetary incentives efficiently. Based on goal-setting theory, the current research examines the relationship between incentives with goals of varying difficulty and professional health knowledge sharing (PHKS) in online health knowledge-sharing platforms (OHKSPs).
Design/methodology/approach
Four field experiments with different monetary incentives were conducted by one of China’s largest OHKSPs, with whom the researchers cooperated in data collection. Monthly panel data on 10,584 physicians were collected from September 2018 to December 2019. There were 9,376 physicians in the treatment group and 1,208 in the control group. The authors used a difference-in-difference (DID) model to explore the research question based on the same control group and the Chow test with seemingly unrelated estimation (sureg) to compare regression coefficients between four groups. Several robustness checks were performed to validate the main results, including a relative time model, multiple falsification tests and a DID estimation using the propensity score matching method.
Findings
The results show that the monetary incentive significantly positively affected the volume of physicians’ PHKS directly with negative spillover to the duration of physicians’ PHKS. Moreover, the positive effect of incentives with higher difficulty on the volume of physicians’ PHKS was significantly smaller than that of incentives with low difficulty. Finally, professional title had a positive moderating effect on the volume of goal difficulty setting and did not significantly moderate the effect on the duration of physicians’ PHKS.
Research limitations/implications
Some limitations of this study are: firstly, because the field experiments were enterprise benefit oriented, the treatment and control groups were not balanced. Secondly, the experiments for different incentive measures were relatively similar, making it challenging to validate a causal effect. Finally, more consideration should be given to the strategy for setting hierarchical incentives in future research.
Originality/value
The research indicates that monetary incentives have a bilateral effect on PHKS, i.e. a positive direct effect on the volume of physicians’ contributions and a negative spillover effect on the duration of physicians’ PHKS. The professional titles of physicians also moderate such bilateral switches of PHKS. Furthermore, when a physician’s energy is limited, the goal difficulty setting of the incentive mechanism tends to be low. The more difficult the incentives are, the more inefficient the effects on physicians’ PHKS will be.
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With the increased flow of Syrian Muslim refugees entering new places such as Scotland, attention has been given to Syrians’ adaptation to their new settings. This chapter…
Abstract
With the increased flow of Syrian Muslim refugees entering new places such as Scotland, attention has been given to Syrians’ adaptation to their new settings. This chapter explores refugee parents’ roles in mediating their children’s educational experiences. The study is informed by theory of identity (Hall, 1996), Orientalism (Said, 1978), framing (Bernstein, 2000), and hegemony in curriculum (Apple, 2004). Snowball sampling was used to recruit participants in Glasgow. Semi-structured interviews and vignettes were used to generate data with 12 parents and 12 school-aged children in 12 refugee families. The chapter explores how these families have encountered new aspects of their education, such as different pedagogy and Eurocentric curriculum. By examining the participants’ various ways of dealing with these aspects, the chapter explores educational challenges that did not exist before their displacement, demonstrates the inherent diversity within refugee populations, and conceptualizes their negotiation with new contingencies using Hall’s concept of identity as a relational and contingent process.
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Yabin Yang, Xitong Guo, Tianshi Wu and Doug Vogel
Social media facilitates the communication and the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients. However, limited research has examined the role of social media in a…
Abstract
Purpose
Social media facilitates the communication and the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients. However, limited research has examined the role of social media in a physicians' online return. This study, therefore, investigates physicians' online economic and social capital return in relation to physicians' use of social media and consumer engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
Using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with fixed effects (FE) and panel data collected from Sina Weibo and Sina Health, this study analyzes the impact of physicians' social media use and consumer engagement on physicians' online return and the moderation effect of professional seniority.
Findings
The results reveal that physicians' use of social media and consumer sharing behavior positively affect physicians' online economic return. In contrast, consumer engagement positively impacts physicians' online social capital return. While professional seniority enhances the effect of physicians' social media use on online economic return, professional seniority only enhances the relationship between consumers' sharing behavior to the posts and physicians' online social capital return when professional seniority comes to consumer engagement.
Originality/value
This study reveals the different roles of social media use and consumer engagement in physicians' online return. The results also extend and examine the social media affordances theory in online healthcare communities and social media platforms.
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This chapter examines the development of accounting thought and practices in China with the purpose of illustrating its relevance to current accounting policies and practices. The…
Abstract
This chapter examines the development of accounting thought and practices in China with the purpose of illustrating its relevance to current accounting policies and practices. The review indicates that changes in accounting in China did not usually occur completely and easily. Over the past three decades, while Chinese accounting has gradually moved toward the Anglo-American model, convergence has presented unique features in China. For example, the review suggests that the accounting reforms in China have been heavily government-driven and that uniform accounting systems still remain. Chinese regulators maintain a cautious attitude toward the application of fair value and professional judgment, which are essentially the center of the Anglo-American accounting system. Furthermore, Chinese accounting regulators have a different view of business combinations from the IASB and have developed alternative accounting methods for those transactions. China’s departure from IFRS reflects its politico-economic context and essentially challenges the IASB’s goal of achieving international accounting convergence. China’s approach to internationally acceptable practices is likely to have implications for the effectiveness of the imported ideas.
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Jian-Jun Wang, Huiyuan Liu and Jiao Ye
Online medical teams (OMTs) are gaining popularity as a new form of online health service to provide patients with prompt and guaranteed treatment. While the effective development…
Abstract
Purpose
Online medical teams (OMTs) are gaining popularity as a new form of online health service to provide patients with prompt and guaranteed treatment. While the effective development of an OMT depends on physicians’ active participation, there is insufficient research on how a doctor gains from the OMT, especially from the multilevel and cross-level perspectives. In attempting to narrow this knowledge gap, the authors hypothesize multilevel and cross-level professional capital determinants of physicians’ performance in online health-care communities (OHCs) through the lens of social exchange theory.
Design/methodology/approach
This study develops a cross-level model to explain the effects of individual and team professional capital on physicians’ performance. To test the research model and hypotheses, the authors leverage data of 10,398 physicians engaged in 2,611 popular OMTs in China in conjunction with the hierarchical linear model approach.
Findings
The results indicated that physicians’ status capital (SC) and decisional capital (DC) are positively related to their performance. The SC and DC of an OMT not only increase physicians’ performance but also indirectly strengthen the positive effect of physicians’ SC on their performance. In contrast, OMTs’ SC and DC lessen the importance of physicians’ DC in promoting their performance.
Originality/value
By studying the mechanism between professional capital and physicians’ performance, this study provides several contributions to theory and practice. Specifically, this study contributes to the extant professional capital research by uncovering the influencing pathways of professional capital on physicians’ performance from a cross-level perspective. These findings suggest physicians pay close attention to the strength and mechanism of OMTs’ professional capital in improving their online performance.
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Zhenzhou Zhao and Canglong Wang
This special issue aims to address the complexities and dynamics in contemporary China’s citizen-making processes, with a focus on the educational dimension.
Abstract
Purpose
This special issue aims to address the complexities and dynamics in contemporary China’s citizen-making processes, with a focus on the educational dimension.
Design/methodology/approach
The four articles in this special issue present citizen-making processes in both educational and cultural arenas. Based on the rich, first-hand data collected inside and outside China, the researchers revealed the dynamics of the educative processes, as the interplay of different mechanisms produces new understandings of citizenship practice.
Findings
This special issue sheds light on the rise of new types of citizens, who are emerging at the grassroots level in China, beyond the state’s strict direct regulations, along with the rise of market forces and multicultural communities in Chinese society today. Contributors to this special issue have captured an ongoing change, in that the diversified citizen-making mechanisms are, to a certain extent, mitigating the party-state’s definitive monopoly on forging citizens and are creating new spaces for individuals to develop fresh forms of political subjectivity and citizenship practice. In this sense, we argue for the unpacking of the citizen-making processes in present-day China not only from the lens of state-dominated, top-down initiatives but also from that of participatory, bottom-up initiatives performed by grassroots groups with differentiated socio-economic statuses and cultural traditions.
Originality/value
This special issue can be regarded as a contribution to the growing field of Chinese citizenship studies, which constitutes an integral part of the unfinished project of citizenship after orientalism.