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This paper aims to investigate the effect of CEO social media celebrity status on credit ratings and to determine whether potential threats on the CEO celebrity status negatively moderate the above association.

The authors collected tweets for 874 CEOs from 513 unique S&P 1500 firms. A panel data analysis was conducted on a panel with 4,235 observations from 2009 to 2020. We then tested the hypothesis with the ordinal logit model.

The empirical findings confirmed that CEO social media celebrity status is positively associated with corporate credit rating outcomes. Our path analyses revealed that CEOs with higher social media celebrity status have less incentive to conduct risk-taking behaviors and thus benefit credit ratings. When the rating agencies perceive potential threats to CEO celebrity status, including CEO myopia and CEO overconfidence, the association between CEO social media celebrity status and credit rating is weakened.

This study provides an in-depth understanding of CEO social media perception on credit ratings for firms' managers and capital market participants. Findings can help managers and firms improve their strategies for leveraging social media to release credit constraints. The debt market participants could adopt the CEO social media celebrity status and its concerned threats to setting debt contracts with an adequate price.

This is likely to be the first study that examines the effect of CEO social media celebrity status on credit ratings. The findings of this study also reveal that social media certificated celebrity CEOs tend to be capable of enhancing firm revenue and have lower risk-taking incentives, unlike mass media certificated celebrity CEOs.

When explicit integral analysis is performed on a numerical model with viscoelastic artificial boundary elements, an instability phenomenon is likely to occur in the boundary area, reducing the computational efficiency of the numerical calculation and limiting the use of viscoelastic artificial boundary elements in the explicit dynamic analysis of large-scale engineering sites. The main purpose of this study is to improve the stability condition of viscoelastic artificial boundary elements.

A stability analysis method based on local subsystems was adopted to analyze and improve the stability conditions of three-dimensional (3D) viscoelastic artificial boundary elements. Typical boundary subsystems that can represent the localized characteristics of the overall model were established, and their analytical stability conditions were derived with an analysis based on the spectral radius of the transfer matrix. Then, after analyzing the influence of each physical parameter on the analytical-stability conditions, a method for improving the stability condition of the explicit algorithm by increasing the mass density of the artificial boundary elements was proposed.

Numerical wave propagation simulations in uniform and layered half-space models show that, on the premise of ensuring the accuracy of the viscoelastic artificial boundary, the proposed method can effectively improve the numerical stability and the efficiency of the explicit dynamic calculations for the overall system.

The stability improvement method proposed in this study are significant for improving the applicability of viscoelastic artificial boundary elements in explicit dynamic calculations and the calculation efficiency of wave analysis at large-scale engineering sites.

The lockdown of schools to control the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has adversely affected elementary and secondary school students in China. However, little evidence is available that documents their perceptions toward the use of e-learning under the pandemic context. This study aims to explore (1) the underlying determinants influencing the students' intentions to continue e-learning and (2) the role that the COVID-19 pandemic plays in this decision. This study extends the expectation–confirmation model (ECM) through a mixed-methods study.

This study uses a mixed-methods approach. Phase 1 draws conclusions and extracts significant elements related to e-learning during the pandemic by analyzing students' user reviews from platforms. Based on the findings, the authors identify the relevant variables and develop an extended ECM by integrating attitudes and the perceived threat of COVID-19. In Phase 2, the research model is empirically validated using data collected from 36,920 elementary and secondary school students in China. This study uses a mixed-methods approach. Phase 1 draws conclusions and extracts significant elements related to e-learning during the pandemic by analyzing students' user reviews from platforms. Based on the findings, the authors identify the relevant variables and develop an extended ECM by integrating attitudes and the perceived threat of COVID-19. In Phase 2, the research model is empirically validated using data collected from 36,920 elementary and secondary school students in China.

In Phase 1, the results reveal that students' most concern elements in the COVID-19 pandemic are user perceptions toward e-learning and threat perceptions of COVID-19. In Phase 2, the results reveal that perceived usefulness and attitude are the most significant factors in students' intention to continue. The perceived threat of COVID-19 indirectly influences their intention to continue.

The study extends the ECM with a mixed-methods study to understand students' perceptions toward e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study can be helpful in related studies in the context of COVID-19-related diseases or other novel scenarios.

In China's urban context of labor retrenchment, women are faring poorly relative to their male counterparts. Is the same true in China's incipient, dynamic, and expanding legal profession? Findings from four sources of quantitative data suggest that gender inequality in China's private and highly market-driven legal profession is a microcosm of larger patterns of female disadvantage in China's evolving urban labor market. Although employment opportunities for women lawyers have greatly expanded quantitatively, their careers are qualitatively less successful than those of their male counterparts in terms of both income and partnership status. In the Chinese bar, women's significantly shorter career trajectories are perhaps the most important cause of their lower incomes and slimmer chances of becoming a law firm partner. Future research must identify the causes of this significant career longevity gap between men and women in the Chinese legal profession.

The purpose of this paper is to define the concept of guanxi deviant behaviour (GDB) initially on the basis of a theoretical study of guanxi, guanxi behaviour and workplace deviant behaviour and to analyse the influence of GDB and the relationship between GDB and counterproductive work behaviour.

This study collects interview data from 30 enterprise executives, summarises relevant literature from four major databases (two in English and two in Chinese) and applies a grounded theory methodology to refine and further define the core category of GDB, and the main category is interpreted and validated using triangulation.

The three dimensions of GDB are guanxi bribery behaviour, irregular connected transaction behaviour and guanxi allied behaviour. There are links amongst the three dimensions, no dimension has an independent existence and that is not the end of the GDB issue. Generally, the occurrence of a kind of GDB can be construed to be a preparation for the implementation of another kind, and the latter is the real purpose of the perpetrators.

This paper is expected to attract the attention of managers and improve the ability of recognising, preventing and punishing GDB.

This study not only enriches organisational behaviour theory but also enhances the awareness of, and insights into, the negative effects of guanxi.

Laws, regulations, and policies, including specific intergovernmental visa agreements, exert significant influences on people’s mobility and cross-border travels. Such forces are powerful in shaping the emerging Asian tourism market. This chapter provides a critical review and analysis of the laws and regulations that have shaped Chinese outbound tourism. It first reviews the evolution of China’s policies and government attitude toward outbound tourism. The three tourism administration regulations promulgated by the State Council are then reviewed and their implications for outbound tourism are discussed. The Tourism Law enacted in 2013 is reviewed and discussed separately due to its significance and supreme power in China’s legal system. Finally, the chapter discusses the impact of intergovernmental visa facilitation arrangements on Chinese outbound tourism.

This paper examines the impact of state control on stock price crash risk given whether and how ownership structure affects stock price crash risk is relatively underexplored.

The sample includes 2,285 Chinese firms listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. Panel data is used for conducting the analysis and endogeneity is addressed with instrumental variable estimation and by testing how stock price crash risk is affected when the ultimate controller changes from a private-owned company to a state-owned enterprise.

The authors find that state control is negatively associated with future stock price crash risk. The mechanism analysis shows that state control reduces stock price crash risk through the implementation of conservative corporate policies. Furthermore, the impact of state control is more pronounced with more intensive state involvement, e.g. in strategic industries and when a company's ultimate controller is a non-corporate government agency or the central government.

This paper enriches the literature on the controversy of the role of state control and the results of this study highlight the importance of the conservatism of state control on reducing stock return tail risk. The authors also add to the literature on the importance of the policy-risk sharing effect of state ownership.

In the context of an evolving digital-based global economy, this study aims to investige the impact of digital transformation (DT) on a firm’s internal control (IC) quality. It also explores how the personal traits of (CEOs) – such as age, gender and educational background – intersect with DT to shape the IC quality in various types of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The study uses the data from China A-shares non-financial enterprises, listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges between 2007 and 2020. Using the fixed effect regression method alongside various statistical techniques, such as propensity score matching, alternative analysis and instrumental variables analysis, yields robust findings. These methods effectively address issues related to functional form misspecification and potential biases from omitted explanatory variables.

The findings reveal a positive impact of DT on firm IC quality, and this impact is more pronounced in firms when the CEO is female, young and possesses a higher level of education. Notably, the study also distinguishes between central and local state-owned enterprises (SOEs), highlighting that DT has a greater influence on IC quality in central SOEs, where CEOs often have higher political ranks and closer to government monitoring. Overall, the findings are robust and consist to alternative variable and other statistical methods.

Following are the significant implications for both academia and business. First, firms that effectively adopt DT to enhance IC not only gain a strategic advantage over competitors but also establish efficient risk management practices and a robust IC system. Second, better IC resulting from DT can enhance investor and stakeholder confidence. This is particularly important for publicly traded companies, where investors and analysts closely scrutinize the robustness of IC systems. Third, DT could result in cost savings over time, as automation and streamlined processes may reduce the need for manual efforts and resource-intensive tasks associated with IC.

The findings are contributed to the literature in multiple ways. It enhances our comprehension of the intricate DT-IC quality relationship, and provides valuable insights into the transformative impact of DT on organizational operations and risk management. It also introduces a novel perspective by investigating how CEOs personal traits intersect with DT to shape IC quality, contributing to upper echelons theory. Furthermore, it expands the discussions on firm ownership by considering the types of SOEs (central vs. local), in the DT-IC quality context.

This research aims to examine Chinese consumers’ wine consumption and purchasing behaviour.

The study, conducted during the Chinese New Year in early 2006, used in‐depth interviews with 15 consumers in Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.

The results suggest that Chinese consume Chinese spirits for all occasions, yet consume red wine only for special occasions such as Chinese new year and other holidays. A key point for selling red wine to the Chinese is its positive image; drinking red wine is considered trendy and shows good taste. Another key point is consumer perceptions of red wine as healthier than Chinese spirits because wine contains less alcohol. Two other findings are that most Chinese consumers assume all wine is red wine and have little wine knowledge. Most respondents did not know of white wine or that Australia produces wine. Finally, China's culture of face value, mianzi, plays a key role in purchasing and consuming wine. Chinese tend to purchase inexpensive wine for private consumption and public occasions, yielding more mianzi in front of others. In some important occasions, consumers will purchase a foreign (French) red wine to impress their guests and obtain even more mianzi. In most situations, Chinese purchase and consume wine for perceived health and symbolic – lucky or good face – values.

The small sample size is a limitation. Another limitation is that all the respondents lived in the urban area of Guangzhou, one of China's most developed cities. The findings do not generalize to China.

The findings suggest that wine is a symbolic product rather than a necessity product in China; therefore, image is an important attribute for selling wine in China. Furthermore, limited wine knowledge tends to make Chinese consumers rely heavily on price for their wine purchasing decisions, as price relates to mainzi. Chinese consumers’ high awareness of France as a wine making country and their deep‐rooted positive beliefs about French wines pose difficulties for marketing other foreign wines, such as Australian wines, in China.

This is perhaps the first academic study in English of Chinese wine consumption and wine purchasing. It offers important insights on the characteristics of wine consumption and purchasing in China.