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The metaverse has garnered increasing attention from researchers and practitioners, yet numerous firms remain hesitant to invest in it due to ongoing debates about its potential financial benefits. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze how the implementation of metaverse initiatives affects firms’ stock market value – an area that remains underexplored in the existing literature. Additionally, there is a significant lack of research on the contingency factors that shape the stock market reaction, leaving a noticeable gap in managerial guidance on the timing and benefits of investments in the metaverse. To narrow these gaps, we examine whether and when the implementation of metaverse initiatives enhances firms’ stock market value.

Based on 73 metaverse implementation announcements disclosed by Chinese listed firms during January 2021–August 2023, we employ an event study approach to test the hypotheses.

We find that metaverse implementation announcements elicit a positive stock market reaction. Moreover, the stock market reaction is stronger for technology-focused announcements and smaller firms, or when public attention to the metaverse is higher. Nevertheless, firms’ growth prospects do not significantly alter the stock market reaction.

This study extends the nascent literature on the metaverse by applying signaling theory to offer novel insights into the signaling effect of metaverse implementation announcements on stock market value and the boundary conditions under which the effectiveness of the signal varies. Besides, it provides managers with important implications regarding how to tailor the investment and information disclosure strategies of the metaverse to more effectively enhance firms’ stock market value.

Drawing upon socio-technical system theory, this study intends to investigate the effects of the congruence and incongruence between artificial intelligence (AI) and explorative learning on supply chain resilience as well as the moderating role of organizational inertia.

Using survey data collected from 170 Chinese manufacturing firms, we performed polynomial regression and response surface analyses to test our hypotheses.

We find that the congruence between AI and explorative learning enhances firms’ supply chain resilience, while the incongruence between these two factors impairs their supply chain resilience. In addition, compared with low–low congruence, high–high congruence between AI and explorative learning improves supply chain resilience to a greater extent. Moreover, organizational inertia attenuates the positive influence of the congruence between AI and explorative learning on supply chain resilience, while it aggravates the negative influence of the incongruence between these two factors on supply chain resilience.

Our study expands the literature on supply chain resilience by demonstrating that the congruence between a firm’s AI (i.e. technical aspect) and explorative learning (i.e. social aspect) boosts its supply chain resilience. More importantly, our study sheds new light on the role of organizational inertia in moderating the congruent effect of AI and explorative learning, thereby extending the boundary condition for socio-technical system theory in the supply chain resilience literature.

Drawing upon the theory of communication visibility, this research intends to investigate the direct effect of enterprise social media (ESM) usage on team members’ knowledge creation capability (KCC) and the mediating effects of psychological safety and team identification. In addition, it aims to untangle how the efficacy of ESM usage varies between pre- and post-COVID-19 periods.

Using two-wave survey data from 240 members nested within 60 teams, this study utilizes a multilevel approach to test the proposed hypotheses.

We discover that ESM usage enhances team members’ KCC. More importantly, the results show that psychological safety and team identification mediate the ESM–KCC linkage. Interestingly, we further find that the impacts of ESM usage on team members’ KCC, psychological safety, and team identification are stronger in the pre-COVID-19 period than those in the post-COVID-19 period.

This research sheds light on the ESM literature by unraveling the mechanisms of psychological safety and team identification underlying the linkage between ESM usage and team members’ KCC. Moreover, it advances our understanding of the differential efficacy of ESM usage in pre- and post-COVID-19 periods.