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Reveals that the People′s Republic of China is a market in transition. The Chinese Government wants to modernize the retail industry as part of the movement from a planned economy to a market economy. Reports that a series of interviews with managers of government‐owned department stores and co‐operatives, free market retailers and members of the municipal and federal commercial planning committees began in 1992. One year later, when a second series of interviews was conducted, the retail industry was vastly different. Joint ventures increased and store managers were given the right to choose their own form of operation. Consumers have experienced self‐service food stores and foreign department stores opened in Beijing and Shanghai. A third set of interviews conducted in March 1995 showed that many reforms had been rescinded because of high domestic inflation. Several new retail ventures aimed at the nouveaux riches in China have had to position downwards. Concludes that the People′s Republic of China′s change from a planned to a market economy is a lesson in social and market change.

This study aims to investigate the impact of firms’ digital orientation (FDO) on corporate green innovation (CGI) among Chinese firms, examining the effects of financial constraint as the mediator and exploring heterogeneous effects across different firm contexts.

Using a sample of 28,697 firm-year observations from Chinese A-share listed companies (2008–2021), we employ a novel multidimensional measure of FDO derived from textual analysis of corporate annual reports. CGI is quantified using patent-based metrics. We utilize fixed-effects panel data models as benchmark regression to quantify FDO’s impact on CGI. Later, we utilize two-stage least squares, alternate measure for core explanatory variable, alternate as well as lead measures for explained variable and propensity score matching to tackle concerns for potential endogeneity.

Our results unveil a substantial positive connection between FDO and CGI. This connection is facilitated through the alleviation of financial constraints. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of FDO on CGI is more pronounced for state-owned enterprises, firms in areas with lower financial technology development and politically connected firms.

Our findings suggest that managers should view FDO as a strategic posture that can drive sustainable innovation, not just as a technological imperative. Policymakers should consider the role of FDO when designing policies to promote CGI, particularly in less-developed regions.

This study extends current understanding by: (1) Employing a comprehensive multidimensional measure of FDO that goes beyond the existing technologically focused digital transformation matrices. (2) Identifying financial constraints as a key mediating mechanism in the FDO–CGI relationship. (3) Revealing heterogeneous effects across different firm contexts, providing nuanced insights into how institutional and environmental factors moderate this relationship.

Although buying firms increasingly adopt supplier development to help suppliers enhance their ability to deal with environmental issues, little is known about the mechanisms by which buyer-led environmental supplier development (ESD) affects the environmental management capabilities (EMC) of suppliers. Focusing on the supplier perspective and specifically on the role of psychological mechanisms at the supplier level, the authors adopt the stimulus–organism–response framework from functionalist psychology to investigate the mediating role of environment-related supplier perceived relationship value in the association between ESD, in the form of environmental requirements and audits (indirect development – ID) vs. direct development projects (direct development – DD), and supplier EMC.

The authors used structural equation modeling and regression analysis to test the hypotheses using survey data from 221 supplying organizations in China.

Results reveal that each of the three considered dimensions of the environment-related supplier perceived relationship value (i.e. economic, strategic and co-creation) helps enhance EMC. However, while DD influences positively all three dimensions, ID has a positive effect on only the economic and strategic dimensions. Moreover, the mediation analysis suggests that, while DD affects EMC both directly and via the three dimensions of environment-related supplier perceived relationship value (partial mediation), ID affects EMC only through its impact on environment-related supplier perceived relationship economic and strategic value (full mediation).

The study sheds light on the psychological mechanisms that drive suppliers’ involvement in green supplier development activities. By doing so, it contributes to the understanding of ESD practices and processes and their effectiveness.

The current research studies are inconclusive about the positive or negative effects of group faultlines, especially in the Chinese context. To address this issue, this study aims to adopt an interactive perspective to explore the group interaction process. Specifically, this study proposes a new construct “interactive faultlines” to integrate overall faultlines and separate faultlines, and based on categorization-elaboration model (CEM), develops an integrated moderated mediation model to examine when and how interactive faultlines facilitate or inhibit group creativity.

This study tests the model with the samples of 405 employees from 95 groups in China, carrying out confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis and process.

This study finds that the indirect effect of informational faultlines on group creativity through information elaboration is positive when social faultlines are low, but negative when social faultlines are high.

This research provides some practical implications on how to manage group compositions and coordinate group interaction process to make full use of the potential benefits of diverse information and avoid the possible detriment from social categorization.

This study adopts an interactive perspective to consider informational faultlines and social faultlines simultaneously, and constructs a focal concept “interactive faultlines.” Based on CEM, it also offers a fine-grained picture of the double-edged relationship between informational faultlines and group creativity by identifying social faultlines as a moderator and information elaboration as a mediator, which advances knowledge about the linkages between interactive faultlines and group creativity. Particularly, this study is rooted in the Chinese context and brings in indigenous attributes derived from an analysis of Eastern cultures to elucidate the particular effect of informal social connections.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the robustness of the traditional Bhattacharyya metric for the effect of histogram quantization in the histogram-based visual tracking. However, the traditional Bhattacharyya metric neglects the correlation of crossing-bin and is not robust for the effect of histogram quantization.

In this paper, the authors propose a visual tracking method via crossing-bin histogram Bhattacharyya similarity in the particle filter.

A crossing-bin matrix is introduced into the traditional Bhattacharyya similarity for measuring the reference histogram and the candidate histogram, and the basic tasks of measure such as maximum similarity of self and the triangle inequality are proven. The authors use the proposed measure in the particle filter visual tracking framework and address a model update strategy based on the crossing-bin histogram Bhattacharyya similarity to improve the robustness of visual tracking.

In the experiments using the famous challenging benchmark sequences, precision of the proposed method increases by 12.8 per cent comparing the traditional Bhattacharyya similarity and the cost time decreases by 38 times comparing the incremental Bhattacharyya similarity. The experimental results show that the proposed method can track the object robustly and rapidly under illumination change and occlusion.

Urban parks play a key role in recreational activities, public health, and ecosystem services in urban areas. Using GIS and Fragstats, this study investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of urban parks in Xi'an, China from 1949 to 2015 and the corresponding driving forces. The results show that the number and area of parks in Xi'an increased constantly during this period, especially from 2000 to 2015. Up to 2015, small green spaces, usually adjacent to streets, occupied the largest proportion among all types of parks. Archaeological parks were the largest in total area, but wetland parks were leading in average size of a single park. The density of parks was negatively correlated with their distance to the Clock Tower at the center of Xi'an. The dynamics of urban parks in highly urbanized areas were significantly different from that of their counterparts in suburban areas. Driving forces such as urban planning, urbanization and green space policies, and milestone events in the city's development jointly had a great effect on the distribution of parks in Xi'an. The research outcomes will support the upcoming Green Space Planning of Xi'an and benefit the pursuit of sustainability and human wellbeing.

Despite most studies on political ties focusing on the interpersonal relationships between firms and government officials, this study suggests that local party committees (LPCs) create special forms of political ties in China – i.e. organizational political ties. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences that these organizational political ties have on Chinese firms’ innovative activities.

Drawing upon data based on a nationwide survey of Chinese firms in 2013, this study uses a structural equations model to examine the relationship between LPCs and firms’ innovations.

This study found that LPCs do affect firms’ innovations positively, including both radical innovations and incremental innovations.

By suggesting that LPCs are a form of political tie particular to China – i.e. an organizational political tie – this study’s findings may shed fresh light on the research into political ties in other emerging economies.

Compared to traditional political ties, maintaining the organizational political ties fostered by LPCs benefits firms’ innovations significantly in China, making them less costly and more stable.

This paper seeks to discuss the genealogical sources for Chinese immigrants as well as the settlement of Chinese in the USA and the historical evolution of Chinese names, their origins, arrangement and development. It aims to cover the origins of various classes of Chinese surnames, followed by the content description of a traditional genealogical book for jiapu.

The paper researches the various ways that a Chinese person can find out about their ancestry.

The paper reveals the roles of libraries, including serving the needs of patrons interested in genealogical research, preserving and interpreting information through oral and family history projects and collaborating with other libraries through interlibrary loan, document delivery, library consortia, collection management and international resource‐sharing.

The study provides information on where and how to locate the genealogical resources for researching the genealogy of a Chinese family.

The paper analyzes the value of genealogical research as a documentary source for population history, life expectancy in a clan, marriages and family connections, as well as lineage organizations and inter‐lineage relations.

This study aims to examine the effect of supervisor developmental feedback on employee silence behaviour by developing a moderated mediation model. The model focuses on the mediating role of role breadth self-efficacy and high activated positive affect underpinning the relationship between supervisor developmental feedback and employee silence behaviour, and the moderating role of interdependent self-construal.

The two-wave survey was conducted among 265 employees. Structural equation modelling was conducted to test the mediation and moderation mediation hypotheses.

Results indicated that high activated positive affect mediated the negative relationship between supervisor developmental feedback and employee silence behaviour. The authors also found that interdependent self-construal moderated the relationship between supervisor developmental feedback and role breadth self-efficacy, as well as the indirect effect of supervisor developmental feedback on employee silence behaviour via role breadth self-efficacy.

This empirical study provides preliminary evidence of the mediating role of breadth self-efficacy and high activated positive affect in the negative relationship between supervisor developmental feedback and employee silence behaviour. The moderated mediation results further show that the mediation of role breadth self-efficacy between supervisor developmental feedback is contingent on individual interdependent self-construal, such that the mediation effect is significant among individuals with high interdependent self-construal, but the mediation effect of high activated positive effect is independent of individual interdependent self-construal. The findings further extend boundary conditions (interdependent self-construal) that may constrain the effect of supervisor developmental feedback on role breadth self-efficacy and high activated positive affect. The research makes considerable contributions to the cognitive-affective personality system theory by specifying the cognitive and affective mechanisms between supervisor developmental feedback and employee silence behaviour, as well as the boundary conditions.

Given the sudden disruption caused by COVID-19, knowledge sharing between organizations has become a meaningful way to improve supply chain resilience. However, there is still a lack of in-depth research on how to reduce the threat to knowledge sharing caused by increased levels of relational risk. With the emergence of new digital technologies, whether blockchain governance can control relational risk and replace traditional relational governance remains to be demonstrated.

This study uses a cross-sectional survey approach in which quantitative data are collected from 300 participants from Chinese manufacturing enterprises to test the hypotheses.

The results show that relational and blockchain governance can significantly and complementarily reduce the level of relational risk in knowledge sharing. When the relational risk is at a low, medium or high level, the best matches of relational and blockchain governance are low-level relational governance–low-level blockchain governance, high-level relational governance–low-level blockchain governance and high-level relational governance–high-level blockchain governance, respectively.

The findings of this study have important practical implications for manufacturing enterprises in terms of how to choose reasonable governance modes to manage relational risk behaviour according to different relational risk levels to better understand the positive role of knowledge sharing in supply chain resilience.

The antecedent variables of knowledge sharing in previous studies are based on transaction cost theory or relational theory and have not moved beyond the original theoretical framework. This paper addresses this limitation, puts knowledge sharing in the academic context of digital technology, considers blockchain governance into the process of relational risk-knowledge sharing and defines blockchain governance, which is a novel approach in the supply chain resilience management literature.