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With the continuous deepening of China's mixed-ownership reform, the participants in the reform have gradually expanded from state-owned enterprises to private enterprises. Whether state-owned equity participation in private enterprises can facilitate the development of environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in private enterprises is a question that needs urgent examination. This study aims to investigate the impact of state-owned equity participation on the ESG performance of private enterprises.

Using Chinese listed companies as the research sample, this study uses econometric methods such as multiple regression to analyze the relationship between state-owned equity and the ESG performance of private enterprises. Additionally, it explores the underlying mechanisms and influencing factors of this relationship.

There is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between state-owned equity and the ESG performance of private enterprises. Mechanism analysis reveals that resource effects and governance effects play a mediating role in this nonlinear relationship. Furthermore, the authors find that environmental regulation and managers' attention to the environment positively moderate the relationship between state-owned equity participation and ESG performance.

A reasonable equity structure is crucial for enhancing corporate ESG performance. Moderate state-owned equity participation helps to leverage resource integration and governance advantages, which will assist private enterprises in maximizing ESG performance and achieving sustainable development.

In advancing the process of mixed-ownership reform, the government should maintain an appropriate proportion of state-owned equity to avoid excessive intervention in enterprise decision-making. At the same time, it should ensure that enterprises can genuinely undertake their social and environmental responsibilities while pursuing economic benefits. This is of great significance for promoting sustainable economic and social development.

This study integrates state-owned equity, ESG and nonlinear relationships into a single research framework. It explores the internal mechanisms and influencing factors of their relationship, overcoming the limitations of previous studies and provides a new perspective for understanding the impact of state-owned equity on corporate ESG performance.

Does the history of the bureaucratic system, along with the establishment of the Great Wall during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1911), affect firm behavior across the borderlands of the Great Wall?

The Ming and Qing dynasties built a centralized administrative system in the borderlands on the south side of the Great Wall, in contrast to the “feudal lordship” system on the north side. Employing a regression discontinuity analysis framework with the Great Wall as a geographical discontinuity, we examine the long-run effects of the Great Wall on firms’ earnings management.

Using a large sample of nonlisted firms in the central core frontier region, we show that the earnings management of firms in the region south of the Great Wall is significantly curtailed compared with firms in the north of it, and this effect is more pronounced for non-SOEs. Our findings are robust to a battery of tests to account for alternative explanations.

Overall, by emphasizing the role of institutions, like legal system, shaped in history on firms’ earnings management, this study sheds new light on institutional determinants of firms’ behaviors in earnings information disclosure.

First, we enrich our understanding of the institutional determinants of firms’ financial reporting outcomes. Second, our findings shed new light on the long-term effects of historical ruling styles on modern corporate behavior.

According to the survey and measurement on rural housing in the Northeast severe cold regions of China, this paper analyzed the existing situation and problems of current rural housing in terms of integral development, functional layout, envelop structure, interior thermal environment, heating system and energy utilization etc.. Based on the climatic features of severe cold regions, as well as rural financial and technical conditions, living and production mode, residential construction characteristics and existing resource status etc., the feasible approaches of achieving building energy saving has been proposed, thus acting as a guidance for new rural housing design in severe cold regions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of dimple radius, depth and density on the lubrication performance of the plunger.

A lubrication model was adopted to consider eccentricity and deformation during the working process of the plunger, and a rig test was performed to confirm the simulation results. The texture was fabricated using laser surface texturing.

The simulation results suggested that when dimple radius or depth increases, oil film thickness of the plunger increases before decreasing, and asperity friction displays an opposite trend. Therefore, appropriate microdimple texture could facilitate lubrication performance improvement and reduce the wear. Microdimples were then lased on the plunger surface, and a basic tribological test was conducted to validate the simulation results. The experimental results suggested that the average friction coefficient decreased from 0.18 to 0.13, a reduction of 27.8%.

The introduction of microdimple on a plunger couple to reduce friction and improve lubrication is expected to provide a new approach to developing high-performance plunger couple and improve the performance of the internal combustion engine. If applied, the surface texture could help reduce friction by around 27% and cap the cost relative to the plugger friction.

The microdimple texture was introduced into the plunger couple of a vehicle to reduce the friction and improve the performance. Findings suggested that surface texture could be used in the automotive industry to improve oil efficiency and lubrication performance.

The peer review history for this article is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ILT-07-2020-0259.

By studying the green development efficiency (GDE) of 33 cities in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian in China, this study strives to conduct an analysis of the sustainable practices implemented in these developed regions, and derive valuable insights that can foster the promotion of green transformation.

First, the urban green development system (GDS) was decomposed into the economic benefit subsystem (EBS), social benefit subsystem (SBS), and pollution control subsystem (PCS). Then, a mixed network SBM model was proposed to evaluate the GDE during 20152020, with Moran’s I and Bootstrap truncated regression model subsequently applied to measure the spatial characteristics and driving factors of efficiency.

Subsystem efficiency presents a distribution trend of PCS > EBS > SBS. There is a particular spatial aggregation effect in EBS efficiency, whereas SBS and PCS efficiencies have no significant spatial autocorrelation. Furthermore, urbanization level contributes significantly to the efficiency of all subsystems; industrial structure, energy consumption, and technological innovation play a crucial role in EBS and SBS; external openness is a pivotal factor in SBS; and environmental regulation has a significant effect on PCS.

This study further decomposes the black box of GDS into subsystems including the economy, society, and environment. Additionally, by employing a mixed network SBM model and Bootstrap truncated regression model to investigate efficiency and its driving factors from the subsystem perspective, it endeavors to derive more detailed research conclusions and policy implications.

Successful implementation of infrastructure projects has been a controversial issue in recent years, particularly in developing countries. This study aims to propose a decision support system (DSS) for the evaluation and prediction of project success while considering sustainability criteria.

To predict sustainable success factor, the study first developed its sustainable success factors and sustainable success criteria. These then formed a decision table. A rough set theory (RST) was then implemented for rules generation. The decision table was used as the input for the rough set, which returned a set of rules as the output. The generated rulesets were then filtered in fuzzy inference system (FIS), before serving as the basis for the DSS. The developed prediction tool was tested and validated by applying data from a real infrastructure project.

The results show that the developed rough set fuzzy method has strong ability in evaluation and prediction of the project success. Hence, the efficacy of the DSS is greatly related to the rule-based system, which applies RST to generate the rules and the result of the FIS was found to be valid via running a case study.

Use of DSS for predicting the sustainable success of the construction projects is gaining progressive interest. Integration of RST and FIS has also been advocated by the seminal literature in terms of developing robust rulesets for impeccable prediction. However, there is no preceding study adopting this integration for predicting project success from the sustainability perspective. The developed system in this study can serve as a tool to assist the decision-makers to dynamically evaluate and predict the success of their own projects based on different sustainability criteria throughout the project life cycle.

The behavioral decision-making of digital-self is one of the important research contents of the network of crowd intelligence. The factors and mechanisms that affect decision-making have attracted the attention of many researchers. Among the factors that influence decision-making, the mind of digital-self plays an important role. Exploring the influence mechanism of digital-selfs’ mind on decision-making is helpful to understand the behaviors of the crowd intelligence network and improve the transaction efficiency in the network of CrowdIntell.

In this paper, the authors use behavioral pattern perception layer, multi-aspect perception layer and memory network enhancement layer to adaptively explore the mind of a digital-self and generate the mental representation of a digital-self from three aspects including external behavior, multi-aspect factors of the mind and memory units. The authors use the mental representations to assist behavioral decision-making.

The evaluation in real-world open data sets shows that the proposed method can model the mind and verify the influence of the mind on the behavioral decisions, and its performance is better than the universal baseline methods for modeling user interest.

In general, the authors use the behaviors of the digital-self to mine and explore its mind, which is used to assist the digital-self to make decisions and promote the transaction in the network of CrowdIntell. This work is one of the early attempts, which uses neural networks to model the mental representation of digital-self.

This paper aims to elucidate what concepts of encroachment in business-to-consumer markets explain the market share increase of companies with sustainability value propositions. It documents the encroachment field, analyses the practice of ten companies and proposes and defines the additional concept of transparency encroachment.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives of companies with an increase in customers and market share due to their sustainability value proposition. These were supplemented with secondary data, like documented interviews, sustainability reports and reports on market development. The interview transcripts and secondary data notes were coded using template analysis.

As the literature on encroachment assumes that new value propositions take away market share from incumbents due to advantages for customers, it is questionable whether it can explain how value propositions with advantages for society as a whole can encroach markets. The results of this study show that the dominant forms of encroachment in the current literature – high-end encroachment, low-end encroachment and business model encroachment – can only partly explain encroachment through sustainability value propositions. An additional encroachment form is identified: transparency encroachment.

This research adds greater clarity to what companies do when they encroach markets with sustainability value propositions. Furthermore, the pattern of transparency encroachment is discussed to define the common aspects of this concept and to argue why these aspects are needed for encroachment. It implies that marketing activities should start from the perception that customers are allies – and not kings – in the development toward higher levels of sustainability.

The paper offers practical implications insofar as it deconstructs three aspects of transparency encroachment that are enacted by companies. Customer awareness, unique experience and customer contribution are all needed to enact transparency encroachment. It is argued that other companies introducing sustainability value propositions to encroach markets should find their own application of these three aspects to create the potential for successful encroachment.

Because of the focus on sustainability aspects of value propositions, this study generates knowledge about the marketing and encroachment of products with a relatively positive impact on society. Adoption of the identified concept of transparency encroachment contributes to sustainable development.

To date, there has been very little marketing research that explores the role of sustainability value propositions in the encroachment of markets. Nonetheless, nowadays customers seem to look beyond their own benefits and are increasingly demanding a new approach that builds upon the sustainability aspects of products. This research adds greater clarity to encroachment through sustainability value propositions.

Social ties may either help chief executive officers (CEOs) supervise chief financial officers' (CFOs) behaviors effectively and improve financial reporting quality or lead to collusion and undermine financial reporting quality. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of social ties between CEOs and CFOs on financial reporting quality.

This paper constructs the CEO–CFO social ties through their mutual alma mater or birthplace. Based on 6,787 Chinese non-financial firm-year observations from 2003 to 2020, the paper conducts an empirical test using the multiple regression method.

The main finding is that firms with CEO–CFO social ties are more likely to exhibit higher financial reporting quality. CEOs with social ties to CFOs can obtain a high level of information and exert a better supervisory and monitoring role. Further, CEO–CFO social ties are more effective when the CEO does not have a financial background and when the institutional environment is weak.

This paper mainly contributes to the literature exploring the impact of executive characteristics on financial reporting quality and the literature examining the relation between social ties and corporate behaviors. Meanwhile, the paper emphasizes the important role of social ties as an informal monitoring mechanism in practice.

In order to improve environmental performance, manufacturing companies around the world have started to seek green practices (GPs) to adopt in their operations. Environmental awareness of the stakeholders has put the pressure and changed the focus of manufacturers. The purpose of this article is to gather GPs used in manufacturing industries through a literature review. It also aims at exploring other elements related to GPs in manufacturing firms.

The paper is exploratory in its approach. After searching relevant research articles from the online database, a review of 103 research articles has been conducted in the area of GPs in manufacturing industries.

This work attempts to offer a comprehensive list of GPs by studying the detailed relevant literature. This paper concludes that the concern of the use of GPs within manufacturing organisations is rising fast around the world, and research in this area is of great interest throughout the world over the last decade.

This study has reported several earlier studies by searching the online database through some selected keywords only, but it has not performed a subjective overview for screening and choosing the research articles. This paper explores and gives a concise description of the GPs in manufacturing that will be helpful for further studies of green manufacturing (GM).

This study provides a comprehensive literature review of GPs in manufacturing industries. This review should give benefits to other scholars and practitioners interested in studying GPs related to manufacturing industries. It might represent new opportunities for relevant research that would contribute to more knowledge of GM being gained.