Feng Xu, Songshan (Sam) Huang and Shuaishuai Li
This study aims to examine the effects of three aspects of perceived advantage (i.e. time-saving, money-saving and convenience) on Chinese consumers’ continuance usage intention…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the effects of three aspects of perceived advantage (i.e. time-saving, money-saving and convenience) on Chinese consumers’ continuance usage intention and behavior of using tourism mobile applications (apps) in the context of Chinese society and culture.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey data were collected at 20 key tourist attractions in Jinan, China from tourists who visit the attractions. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypothetical model.
Findings
Empirical findings revealed that time-saving directly affected consumers’ continuance usage intention but did not influence user behavior; on the contrary, money-saving had a direct effect on user behavior, but not on intention. Convenience was found to affect both intention and behavior and had a much stronger total effect on user behavior than time-saving and money-saving.
Research limitations/implications
The study findings offer insights into the further development of tourism mobile apps. While money-saving can be an effective marketing offer for user adoption of tourism mobile apps, tourism mobile apps operators should further tap into the value of time and convenience in designing and developing tourism mobile apps.
Originality/value
The study expands on practical knowledge of Chinese consumers’ behavior toward using tourism apps.
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Feng Xu, Benhua Xu, Verl Anderson and Cam Caldwell
Humility as an important factor for leaders was identified by Collins (2001) and his colleagues in an extensive research project about the leadership qualities of the leaders of…
Abstract
Purpose
Humility as an important factor for leaders was identified by Collins (2001) and his colleagues in an extensive research project about the leadership qualities of the leaders of companies that transitioned from “good” to “great.” This paper is an empirical study of six factors closely associated with humility and leadership and the purpose of this paper is to identify how Chinese business students and Chinese employees perceive the importance of six factors associated with humility as enlightened leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper summarizes recent research about humility and leadership and suggests seven hypotheses about the importance of six factors associated with humility as enlightened leadership.
Findings
This study confirms that Chinese respondents affirmed the value of all six factors and identified the statistical significance of three of the factors studied.
Research limitations/implications
A limitation of this study is that it is exploratory in nature and contained many factors that made conducting factor analysis indeterminable. The practical implications of this study are that it provides confirming information about understanding the value system and priorities of Chinese employees and future workers when multi-national companies interact with Chinese partners.
Originality/value
This study provides valuable information about the six factors associated with humility as enlightened leadership. This study is the first of its kind that empirically tests Chinese attitudes associated with humility and leadership.
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Ziying Cao, Verl Anderson, Feng Xu and Cam Caldwell
The purpose of this paper is to examine the values of Chinese university students as future leaders and employees in a global economy. Despite the fact that China’s role in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the values of Chinese university students as future leaders and employees in a global economy. Despite the fact that China’s role in the world economy has become increasingly important, little has been done to examine the nature of tomorrow’s Chinese business leaders.
Design/methodology/approach
A values survey was administered to business major students at a Tier 1 Chinese university and data were collected from 984 respondents to test five hypotheses relevant to values for Chinese youths.
Findings
This study suggests that today’s Chinese business students view traditional Chinese values through a lens influenced by western cultural and economic thinking as well as positive and negative impacts from rapid economic development.
Research limitations/implications
This paper is an empirical study based on a survey being administered to Chinese university students in two major cities in China. A limitation would be that all Chinese youth of the same age may not have the same values as this set of university students, or even those of Chinese students from a different region of China.
Originality/value
This paper is among the first to identify the current cultural values of the younger Chinese of university age population.
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Botong Xue, Feng Xu, Xin Luo and Merrill Warkentin
A growing number of studies have investigated the effect of ethical leadership on behavioral outcome of employees. However, considering the important role of ethics in IS…
Abstract
Purpose
A growing number of studies have investigated the effect of ethical leadership on behavioral outcome of employees. However, considering the important role of ethics in IS security, the security literature lacks a theoretical and empirical investigation of the relationship between ethical leadership and employees' security behavior, such as information security policy (ISP) violation. Drawing on social learning and social exchange theories, this paper empirically tests the impact of ethical leadership on employees' ISP violation intention through both information security climate (i.e. from a moral manager's perspective) and affective commitment (i.e. from a moral person's perspective).
Design/methodology/approach
The research was developed based on social learning theory and social exchange theory. To measure the variables in the model, the authors used and adapted measurement items from previous studies. The authors conducted a scenario-based survey with 339 valid responses to test and validate the research model.
Findings
Results indicated that information security climate fully mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and ISP violation intention. The authors also found that information security climate enhances the negative effect of affective commitment on ISP violation intention.
Originality/value
This research contributes to the literature of information security by introducing the role of ethical leadership and integrating two theories into our research model. This study also calls attention to how information security climate and affective commitment mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and employees' ISP violation intention. The theory-driven study provides important pragmatic guidance for enhancing the understanding of the importance of ethical leadership in information systems security research.
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Dazhong Wu, Mohamad Sepehri, Jian Hua and Feng Xu
This paper aims to conduct an empirical study to investigate whether an industry’s position affects the transmission of information and economic shocks.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to conduct an empirical study to investigate whether an industry’s position affects the transmission of information and economic shocks.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper conducts an empirical study of inventory performance based on a large panel of 71 industries in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail sectors over a 10-year period (2007–2016).
Findings
It is found that the position of a focal industry in the supply chain network moderates the impacts of macroeconomic uncertainty shocks and shocks from supplier/customer industries on the focal industry’s inventory. On the one hand, more central industries are more sensitive to macroeconomic uncertainty shocks as well as spillover shocks from their supplier and customer industries. On the other hand, uncertainty shocks from more central industries have higher impact on their partner industries than those from less central industries.
Practical implications
A manager needs to take into account the network positions of suppliers/customers in supply network when making inventory decisions. For example, when sharing information with partners, the network position of a partner affects how important its information is.
Originality/value
The key novelty of this paper is the introduction of network structure that represents the supplier–customer relationships in the entire economy, and the modeling of uncertainty shocks transmitted through the supply chain network.
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Najaf Iqbal, Ju Feng Xu, Zeeshan Fareed, Guangcai Wan and Lina Ma
This study attempts to document the impact of financial leverage on corporate innovation in the Chinese nonfinancial public firms listed on Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges.
Abstract
Purpose
This study attempts to document the impact of financial leverage on corporate innovation in the Chinese nonfinancial public firms listed on Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges.
Design/methodology/approach
The firm-level data are collected from CSMAR database for ten years, ranging from 2007 to 2016. The authors have employed the panel fixed effects model and further system GMM approach for analysis. The sample is segregated on the basis of state (SOE) and nonstate ownership (NSOE) to check for the diverse effects. In total, three different proxies of financial leverage are used to unearth the varying impact of short-time and long-term leverage separately. Further, corporate innovation is divided into input innovation (R&D/Sales and R&D/Assets) and output innovation (patents and inventions).
Findings
The results suggest that financial leverage is detrimental to the input innovation while conducive for the output innovation when measured by the number of patents. Contrarily, leverage has a negative influence over the output innovation when measured by the number of inventions. This implies that leverage is more damaging for the highest form of innovativeness (inventions) in China. Input innovation is more sensitive to the changes in long-term leverage versus short-term leverage. Further, the authors find that innovation in SOEs is more sensitive to the changes in the leverage as compared to the NSOEs. The results are free from the threat of endogeneity and identification problems, as reported by the system GMM model.
Research limitations/implications
The authors did not segregate the sample on the basis of industry/sector.
Practical implications
The firms pursuing a strategy of radical innovation should try to keep their debt levels lower in order to achieve a higher innovation performance. Although, a rise in the leverage may mean an increased access to finance for a firm but such an access comes at a cost in the form of damage to the corporate innovation. However, increased debt financing may not be so bad for the firms that want to achieve a moderate and not the highest level of innovation. Such firms can produce recurring and synergic effects with debt financing and moderate innovation, once they achieve a level of innovation performance that satisfies their financiers.
Originality/value
To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is probably the first study to check the impact of firm-level financial leverage on both input and output innovation in the Chinese public-listed nonfinancial firms' panel data perspective till now.
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Feng Xu, Xueru Yang and Xiaogang He
Political connections are widely acknowledged as an effective political strategy for achieving firm value. However, surprisingly little is known about the association between…
Abstract
Purpose
Political connections are widely acknowledged as an effective political strategy for achieving firm value. However, surprisingly little is known about the association between political connections and individual-level outcomes (e.g. subjective well-being) and the underlying mechanism for this link.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on the schematic model of social capital and entrepreneurship and utilizing a sample of rural Chinese entrepreneurs, the authors developed and tested a multilevel model delineating the impact of political connections on entrepreneur well-being (job and life satisfaction) via the mediating roles of bribing behavior and institutional trust at individual and provincial levels.
Findings
Multilevel analyses revealed that at the individual level, political connections were positively associated with job and life satisfaction; bribing behavior and institutional trust served as partial mediators of these associations. These effects were deviated when examining them at the provincial level.
Research limitations/implications
The theoretical implications concerning the political connections and subjective well-being effects as well as comparative entrepreneurship were discussed.
Practical implications
Further, the authors provide guidance for both entrepreneurs and policymakers.
Originality/value
The study linked political connections to entrepreneurs' subjective well-being which is increasingly seen as an important ingredient of personal success via distinguishing the individual-level effects from the provincial-level effects. Thus, the study further contributes to the contextualized understanding of the entrepreneurship literature.
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Benhua Xu, Feng Xu, Cam Caldwell, Geoff Sheard and Larry Floyd
The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of trustworthiness at an organizational level. A comparison of Chinese and US perspectives facilitated the identified insight…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of trustworthiness at an organizational level. A comparison of Chinese and US perspectives facilitated the identified insight into the nature of trustworthiness.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is an exploratory study of cross-cultural perceptions of trustworthiness at an organizational level. A survey was administered to business school students, faculty members and industrial managers in a major Chinese city. Usable data collected from 398 respondents was analyzed identifying significant factors characterizing organizational trustworthiness.
Findings
Seven factors were identified that characterize organizational trustworthiness. These factors were significant for both US and Chinese respondents, with procedural fairness considered most important of the identified factors.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to trustworthiness literature at the organizational level. Prior empirical research is based on data collected from US business school students. This is the first reported study based on a comparison of data collected from Chinese and US participants. Identifying the seven significant factors characterizing organizational trustworthiness has practical value to international employers who work with the Chinese students who will become tomorrow’s Chinese employees.
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Xinyu Mei, Feng Xu, Zhipeng Zhang and Yu Tao
Workers' unsafe behavior is the main cause of construction safety accidents, thereby highlighting the critical importance of behavior-based management. To compensate for the…
Abstract
Purpose
Workers' unsafe behavior is the main cause of construction safety accidents, thereby highlighting the critical importance of behavior-based management. To compensate for the limitations of computer vision in tackling knowledge-intensive issues, semantic-based methods have gained increasing attention in the field of construction safety management. Knowledge graph provides an efficient and visualized method for the identification of various unsafe behaviors.
Design/methodology/approach
This study proposes an unsafe behavior identification framework by integrating computer vision and knowledge graph–based reasoning. An enhanced ontology model anchors our framework, with image features from YOLOv5, COCO Panoptic Segmentation and DeepSORT integrated into the graph database, culminating in a structured knowledge graph. An inference module is also developed, enabling automated the extraction of unsafe behavior knowledge through rule-based reasoning.
Findings
A case application is implemented to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. Results show that the method can identify various unsafe behaviors from images of construction sites and provide mitigation recommendations for safety managers by automated reasoning, thus supporting on-site safety management and safety education.
Originality/value
Existing studies focus on spatial relationships, often neglecting the diversified spatiotemporal information in images. Besides, previous research in construction safety only partially automated knowledge graph construction and reasoning processes. In contrast, this study constructs an enhanced knowledge graph integrating static and dynamic data, coupled with an inference module for fully automated knowledge-based unsafe behavior identification. It can help managers grasp the workers’ behavior dynamics and timely implement measures to correct violations.