Dissertations

In my dissertation, I aim to examine the effect of CEO polychronicity on firm resilience. Building on the upper echelons theory and attention-based view, I argue that polychronic CEOs could divide their attention to multitask, which might prevent firms with extreme risk; polychronic CEOs should be capable of handling the threats and disruptions. In addition, I propose two moderators: market complexity and firm slack. I plan to collect the data of CEOs in private small-to-medium firms, who are the alumni of DBA programs of Shanghai Jiaotong University. 

The duality inherent in Artificial Intelligence technology entails that while AI has the potential to bring about transformative benefits to organizations, unintended consequences of AI applications could lead to biased and discriminatory outcomes, which could have negative consequences for the organization and society in general. Concerns about such unintended consequences is an impediment to AI adoption where unwilling employees and practitioners often fear ethical breaches, thereby, negatively impacting their engagement with AI driven applications. In response to these concerns various organizations and regulatory bodies have developed governing frameworks broadly known as Responsible AI standards, that set guidelines to design, develop, and deploy ethical AI. 
My research is focused on studying the impact of ethical AI factors on professionals’ intentions to work alongside AI and explore the mechanisms behind this relationship. I have drawn linkages with literature, on Technology Acceptance Model, that specifies the factors that impact the technology usage intentions, namely perceived ease of use and usefulness of the new technology. This study is conducted at the individual employee level as professional employees are important stakeholders that contribute towards the success or failure of any organizational initiative. Employees’ perception of their organization’s social responsibility inversely moderates this relationship; results suggest that when the CSR perceptions are low, positive effect of ethical AI factors on usage intentions is strengthened.  This study can benefit management in achieving organizational goals by leveraging the full potential of AI through improved employee engagement. 
Keywords:   Responsible AI, AI ethics, Corporate social responsibility, employee motivation, AI adoption, Technology Acceptance Model 

Company innovation can not only provide a reference for the formulation of innovation strategies at the micro level of firms, but also has important implications for the economic development at the macro level of the country. However, the mechanism of the process from R&D inputs to firm performance has not been fully investigated, resulting in very different results for different samples and sample intervals. Therefore, using the data of listed companies in China from 2009 to 2017 as the research sample, this paper introduces mediating and moderating variables to empirically analyze the mediating effect of innovation output in the correlation between R&D input and firm performance and the moderating effect of firm heterogeneity, including company size, nature of state-owned equity and location. The main findings of this paper are as follows. First, the impact of R&D input on the financial performance and market value performance of listed companies in China is positive, and the impact is lagged in both cases. Second, innovation output plays an important partial mediating role in the relationship between R&D input and company. Third, company size, nature of state-owned equity and location significantly have partial moderating effect on the relationship between R&D input and performance. My dissertation breaks through the limitation of previous studies that only examine the impact of R&D input on company performance from a single dimension, and investigates the impact of R&D input on the financial performance and market performance, and introduces innovation output as an important mediating variable, as well as examines the moderating role of company heterogeneity from different perspectives, which enriches the research content, expands the research perspective and makes the study more comprehensive.

Commodities refer to physical commodities that can enter the circulation field, but are not in the retail sector, have commodity properties, and are used for large-scale buying and selling in industrial and agricultural production and consumption. In the financial investment market, commodities refer to commodities that are homogeneous, tradable, and widely used as industrial basic raw materials, such as crude oil, non-ferrous metals, steel, agricultural products, iron ore, coal, etc. Commodities are an important component of China's national economy, and many varieties involve the national economy and people's livelihood. Their production capacity and demand are among the top in the world.

In 2021, the trading volume of China's futures market reached a historic high, with significant growth for three consecutive years. In 2021, the trading volume of China's futures market reached 7.514 billion transactions (unilateral) and 58.1.2 trillion yuan, with year-on-year growth of 22.13% and 32.84%, respectively. According to the annual trading volume data compiled by the Futures Industry Association (FIA), the Zhengzhou Stock Exchange, Shanghai Futures Exchange, Dalian Commodity Exchange, and CICC ranked 7th, 8th, 9th, and 27th in global futures and options trading volume rankings, respectively. In the 2021 global trading volume ranking of metal varieties, Chinese varieties occupy 9 out of the top 10 and 13 out of the top 20, including threaded steel, hot-rolled coil, iron ore, ferrosilicon, manganese silicon, etc.

Traditional hedging strategies focus on a single product, typically involving companies hedging the prices of end products or important production raw materials. At present, traditional hedging strategies can no longer meet the needs of physical enterprise production management, and it is necessary to establish hedging strategies that match the rapidly changing domestic and international markets. Thanks to the continuous enrichment of products in China's futures market, it is possible for enterprises to replicate the upstream and downstream industrial chain products involved in terminal product production through the combination of target products in the futures market.

The research in this article has made contributions from both theoretical and practical perspectives.

At the theoretical level, this article innovatively incorporates futures price factors into the mechanism of the classical Cournot yield game equilibrium model. In the process, this article draws inspiration from the ideas of Bayesian methods, making the future price of goods determined by both spot and futures prices, changing the original price generation method, and thus innovating the model. Subsequently, this article derived the optimal production arrangement of the Cournot production game equilibrium model considering futures market prices on an innovative model. By analyzing the optimal production formula, this article found that enterprises considering futures market profits can better arrange their own production and obtain competitive advantages.

At the practical level, this article has done two aspects of work. Firstly, this article uses classic statistical regression methods to conduct a statistical test on whether hot coil products can be hedged based on futures trading profits. It is worth mentioning that this article is not only based on the idea of statistical regression, but also considers actual production processes, and conducts statistical tests on the residuals of pure statistical regression and profits based on actual production processes. The results indicate that both pure statistical regression and profit formulas based on actual production processes conform to the assumption of mean regression, indicating that hedging hot coil varieties based on futures market profits is completely feasible. Subsequently, this article proposes various hedging strategies to verify the superiority of hedging schemes based on futures trading profits. This article constructs two sets of hedging strategies, and compares the performance of single variety hedging strategies and hedging strategies based on hot coil futures market profits in each group. Through backtesting with historical data, this article found that hedging strategies based on hot coil futures trading profits have a higher opening frequency, higher investment returns, and lower volatility, all of which are superior to traditional single variety hedging strategies. Moreover, the single variety hedging strategy will also be affected by macroeconomic factors such as inflation, resulting in a decrease in the effectiveness of price percentiles.

This article also summarizes the risk points of the hedging scheme for industrial chain futures trading profits, and proposes a risk management plan for the risk points, in order to facilitate enterprises to effectively manage risks when using this hedging scheme. This article summarizes three types of risks: strategic risk, operational risk, and fundamental risk, and provides countermeasures for these three types of risks, such as daily exposure management, monitoring of strategic risk indicators, and fundamental research. It also provides key points for enterprise industry chain hedging.

Keywords: Hot coil industry chain; Futures hedging; Cournot equilibrium; risk management
 

The usage of recyclable packaging is a manifestation of corporate social responsibility and conforms to the trend of green development and sustainable development. In recent years, with the rapid growth of the environmental awareness, consumers may tend to choose more environmentally friendly and recyclable packaging products. Therefore, in order to better promote the usage of recyclable packaging, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on why consumers choose recyclable packaging. Started from the impact of recyclable packaging on consumer behavior, this study conducts a questionnaire survey with 314 respondents from all over the country, and adopts single-factor analysis of variance, path analysis, and the Process plug-in in SPSS software to examine that CSR perception mediates the relationship between the recyclable packaging and consumer behavior (consumer purchase intention, customer satisfaction and consumers’ willingness to pay premium). Meanwhile, consumers’ environmental attitude plays significant moderating role between recyclable packaging and CSR perception. Compared with the direct impact of recyclable packaging on consumer behavior, the indirect impact of CSR perception is more significant; when promoting consumers’ CSR perception, consumers who tend to protect the environment produce stronger CSR perception which further enhance consumers’ purchase intention on recyclable packaging; and when purchasing products with recyclable packaging, it will generate more consumer satisfaction and more willingness to pay premium.

The price of iron ore remains high as the demand for steel continuous to grow in major economies. However, the financial performance of different iron ore enterprises varies.This study comprehensively investigates the internal theoretical logic that determines the investment value of iron ore enterprises and puts forward the investment strategy, using the combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, contributing not only theoretical significance but also practical value. The results demonstrate that :
(1) high-grade iron ore can help reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions in the steelmaking process. Under the continuous promotion of the "double carbon" policy, the demand for high-grade iron ore continues to grow in the market, leading to the premium of high-grade ore and the discount of low-grade ore. 
(2) The investment value of an iron ore enterprise is determined by its profit per ton of ore production, and the investment value of an iron ore enterprise can be defined as a function of the iron ore grade it produces. This is because the grade of iron ore has significant impacts on its premium/discounts, revenues and costs. 
(3) At the low point of the price cycle, iron ore oligopolies can utilize their cost advantages to squeeze the enterprises with low grade and high operating costs out of the market. Therefore, the investment value of iron ore enterprises is closely related to the difference between their own profit per ton and the oligopoly's profit per ton. 

The findings of this study have inspirational significance in exploring high-quality iron ore enterprises. First, iron ore enterprises will change their investment strategy from a simple emphasis on cost leadership to an overall cost leadership/differentiation strategy in the near future. Under the new investment logic, one must pay attention to the operating cost, grade and profit per ton. The target enterprise has the investment value only if its profit per ton can match or exceed the one in the oligopolies. Second, since the vast majority of high-grade minerals across the world are already monopolized by oligopolies, the promotion of China's "double carbon" policy will strengthen the market power of these oligopolies. Third, counter-cyclical operations are important methods for long-term investment in the iron ore industry, and the time of purchase should be selected when the oligopoly's profit per ton is approaching zero. Fourth, the exploitation and processing of raw ore in the mining country can improve its industrial function, increase its employment and tax revenue. In particular, the high-grade ore can contribute to carbon emission reduction in China, and the future cross-border investment in iron ore enterprises should take this element into consideration.
 

Prior research has shown that individuals tasked with judgmental forecasting of demand based on time-series data overreact in stable environments and underreact in unstable environments. Kremer et al. (2011) attributed this to the system neglect hypothesis, which claims that forecasters emphasize forecast errors over the system parameters.

The present research investigates interventions that mitigate system neglect and address the causal factors for overreaction and underreaction. Given the desire by organizations to move towards touchless planning and automated decision-making, minimizing human judgment and understanding its drivers is of significant practical importance.

We tested four different interventions on an online subject pool and found that the base treatment (simplest method in terms of cognitive load) outperforms all other interventions. In contrast to Kremer et al.’s original work we found a disconnect between subject’s forecast adjustment scores and forecasting performance.

A key tenet of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory is that leaders treat followers differently, referred to as leader-member exchange differentiation (LMXD) (Yu et al., 2018). When leaders treat followers differently, they develop a varying quality of relationships within the team referred to as LMX quality (LMXQ). LMXQ has received the vast majority of research with findings being largely consistent that higher quality relationships benefit followers (Yu et al., 2018). In contrast, surprisingly, much less research has focused on how this actual differentiation (LMXD) impacts employee reactions and there are no conclusive findings regarding its effects (Bauer & Erdogan, 2015; Chen et al., 2014; Martin et al., 2018).

The vast majority of research on leader differentiation has investigated LMXD in general. That is, studies have merely investigated to what extent leaders differentiate between their followers. In my dissertation, to better understand the effects of LMXD, I theorize that the “why” and “how” leaders differentiate affect followers’ fairness perceptions and team coordination perceptions. Specifically, regarding why leaders may differentiate, I theorize about differentiation in general, based on performance, and based on follower ingratiation. Regarding how leaders differentiate, I theorize about differentiation in resource allocation and differentiation in liking towards followers.

Data for the study were collected using a survey method and gathered usable responses from 338 participants. The results of this study supported the proposed negative effect of differentiation in general, differentiation based on follower ingratiation, differentiation in resource allocation, and differentiation in liking on followers’ fairness and team coordination perceptions. However, contrary to predictions, differentiation based on performance also showed a negative effect on followers’ fairness and team coordination perceptions.

This study examined the effects of LMXD on employee criteria needed to better understand LMXD. Accordingly, it has been able to make several contributions to the extant LMX, team coordination and justice literatures. First, it explored the effects of leader differentiation beyond just examining it in general, hence advancing LMX theory as well as other leadership theories that are similar (for example, transformational leadership theory, individualized leadership theory). Secondly, the dyadic relationship between a leader and follower does not exist in isolation and in fact, affects other team members. This study examined how leader differentiation impacts a critical team process, namely team coordination. Finally, although a number of studies have explored justice perceptions within the LMX literature, there is a lack of a uniform understanding of the relationship between the LMX-related constructs and fairness perceptions.

The paper explores the applicability of ESG evaluation system to Chinese state-owned enterprises. Combining the ESG evaluation system with the comprehensive value of Chinese state-owned enterprises, the author points out that Chinese state-owned enterprises lack their own evaluation system, and establishing the ESG system of Chinese state-owned enterprises is conducive to promoting the disclosure of quantifiable indicators of Chinese state-owned enterprises, objectively demonstrating the comprehensive performance of Chinese state-owned enterprises ESG, and helping enterprises to improve their comprehensive value.

The paper deeply studies the current ESG evaluation system and finds that there are many problems in the application of the international mainstream evaluation system in domestic enterprises. First, the rating agencies are not transparent enough to disclose the specific evaluation methods and assumptions of the benchmark, the evaluation process is not standardized enough, and different rating agencies produce different rating results for the same company. Second, the international ESG evaluation system lacks local indicators, the relevance of central policies is low, does not consider the characteristics of Chinese state-owned enterprises, and does not incorporate the explicit and mandatory requirements of the state for enterprise ESG, such as the "dual carbon" goal, rural revitalization, and common prosperity.

In order to establish the ESG system of Chinese state-owned enterprises, we take non-state-owned enterprises as the reference of this study. It is assumed that the model established will mainly be used for the evaluation of Chinese state-owned enterprises. Using the data from the Golden Bee corporate social responsibility reporting database, we will conduct textual analysis of Chinese state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises' social responsibility reports or environmental, social, and corporate governance reports. This paper deduces several influence factors that may have a great impact on ESG evaluation of Chinese state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises, and finds that there are differences in ESG concern factors between Chinese state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises, and the differences in concern lead to differences in corporate performance. Therefore, this study believes that as state-owned enterprises with different systems from those in the West, there should be a more suitable model to reflect the correlation of specific indicator combinations to their overall business performance.

Finally, part of the results is interviewed with entrepreneurs of Chinese state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises to find out whether the ESG concern factors selected above are the focus of attention of Chinese state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises through empirical test, and finally determine the main factors affecting ESG performance of Chinese state-owned enterprises. Based on this, the evaluation system of ESG evaluation system of Chinese state-owned enterprises is constructed and applied to the implementation and application of ESG management and practice of Chinese state-owned enterprises.
 

In strategic management literature, a crisis is public, unexpected, interferes with the norm, has negative impact on organizations (Raithel & Hock, 2021), and generates widespread negative perceptions among stakeholders (Bundy & Pfarrer, 2015). Among crises, aviation crises are complex and present multiple vulnerabilities due to their scale, and the involvement of numerous stakeholders (Tan et al., 2019). With the high visibility of aviation crises due to the potential for mass injuries, deaths, and collateral damage, it could be seen as a full spectrum crisis – one of the worst among crises. The magnitude of each aviation crisis decides and allows the world to assess the efficacy of an airlines or aviation firm’s crisis management (Ray, 1999). With contemporary research using machine learning for sentiment analyses to map against established frameworks in assessing organizational tactics and review of strategies, this research proposes the use of pretrained machine learning models for sentiment and content analyses for crises in the aviation industry, mapped against the reputational standing of aviation firms after crises to assess the relationship between perceptual crisis management and a firm’s reputational impact from a crisis. Specifically, as the use of social media has been entrenched in management and communication strategies (Kane, 2017), this study retroactively examined the social media data of three airlines in crisis – Malaysia Airlines’ MH370 and AirAsia’s QZ8501 in 2014, and Ethiopian Airlines’ ETH302 in 2019.

This research expands on the conventional approach of organizational learning in strategy literature by incorporating machine learning into the process, elevating the consistency, accuracy, and expediency of organizations breaking bad news in the face of reputational blows. The strategic and research innovation impact of this study is multifold – as a first validation of an emerging social media crisis communication framework (CONSOLE, by Tan et al., 2019) through a pilot study; in proving the correlation of the breaking bad news effectiveness by an organization on its crisis corporate reputation; and in developing the beta version of a dashboard powered by artificial intelligence which classifies and scores organizational messages based on the CONSOLE framework, and presents recommendations to improve the CONSOLE score. Bridging the academic wisdom from different fields and using technology to prevent the relearning of lessons while learning and incorporating the nuances of sentiments in the digital mediascape propel this research to present a holistic view which may guide firms beyond those in the aviation industry better in future crisis management.

The study takes the case of XF's open technology platform as the research object, based on the theories of technological maturity, value co-creation, and network effect. It examines the mechanism of network effect value creation driven by technological maturity in three development stages: "capacity building phase", "business model exploration phase", and "ecological cultivation phase" of the open technology platform. Furthermore, some assumptions within this were empirically tested. The research found that: (1) as the technological maturity increases, the number of active users corresponding to the technical capabilities on the technology open platform significantly grows, reflecting that the network effect brought about by the user scale on this platform is enhanced. (2) With the increase in technological maturity, the intensity of single-user calls increases, indicating that users' interaction with the platform, dependence on it, and usage stickiness are all strengthened, which will further strengthen the network effect of the platform.
The theoretical contributions of this study are mainly reflected in: First, this paper compares open technology platforms with other platforms, especially clarifying the differences from software platforms, and complements and improves the existing platform economy research on platform classification. Second, this paper verifies the relationship between the technical maturity of AI open technology platforms and network effects (user activity, user stickiness). Through research, it is found that technical platforms present differentiated technical maturity at different stages, which has a positive effect on the stimulation, deepening, and expansion of network effects.

Traditional human resource management is looking to identify and develop talent for maximising human capital in a competitive environment with limited resources and negative demographic trends. Attracting, deploying, motivating, developing and retaining talented employees is a corporate norm for meeting organisational goals. Proper human resource processes through rigorous mapping of employees according to the performance-potential matrix allow the grading of employees against peer groups to establish talent pools for development and internal succession planning.

Mindfulness originates from 2,500-year-old Buddhist spiritual practices and has a rare combination of spirituality and science. Eastern perspective originates from Asian traditions focusing on the self-regulation of emotions for improving well-being. Western perspective has developed during the last 50 years in clinical psychology practices and organisational behaviour studies as a present-centred awareness-acceptance model for reducing stress, strengthening emotional intelligence and enabling strategic thinking.

The mindfulness concept has moved from psychology and organisational behaviour studies to leadership development programs. Latest cutting-edge leadership development programs see the mastery of mindfulness only as the first step for increasing leadership capabilities and improving employee performance and job satisfaction.

The current study offers new insights into mindfulness's role in talent management, demonstrating that a higher capacity of consciousness leads to improved talent depth and breadth. The findings indicate compensation mechanisms between mindfulness facets while proving that a high level of both awareness and acceptance is needed to become part of the talent pool for accelerated growth. Evidence also suggests that supervisor mindfulness is essential in unlocking employee talent potential through improving employee mindfulness and proposes a "Winning Mindfulness Formula in the Talent Management Process" to position organisations better in the war for talent.

The VUCA era has resulted in significant uncertainty in the global economy, while deglobalization in international politics and economics, and the interweaving of old and new contradictions, have presented substantial challenges to businesses. On the other hand, aging is a crucial issue that China and the world at large are currently facing. It is essential to study the relationship between employee age structure and enterprise performance, particularly for Chinese companies that emphasize the importance of social status and respect for authority under Confucian culture. 
Different researchers have provided empirical analyses of the effects of age diversity on organizational performance and innovation, but the conclusions are not consistent. According to the research in this paper, age diversity has a negative impact on enterprise performance, which means the richer the diversity of age, the hindering knowledge transfer between young and older workers, ultimately weakening the company's overall performance. However, this negative effect can be mitigated in the face of an increasingly complex and competitive market environment that promotes more knowledge transfer between elder and younger employees.
The paper analyzes the relationship between employee age diversity in enterprises and their business performance and innovation. It reveals the critical mediating role played by knowledge transfer between older and younger employees within organizations in the impact of age diversity on organizational performance and innovation processes. Furthermore, this study examines the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty on the impact of age diversity of employee to the company performance and innovation. This paper enriches the study of the effects of employee age diversity and provides a critical reference for organizations to better help employees cope with the challenges brought by the age structure in a new situation filled with uncertainty.
 

Many empirical research studies suggest that Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) with accounting qualifications improve company performance in various ways such as through better financial reporting accuracy (Aier et al., 2005), internal control (Li et al., 2010), corporate governance (Sun et al., 2015) and tax efficiency (Chen et al., 2020). This suggests that CFOs should be qualified in accounting. However, this study found that this may not always be the case.

By looking at the top listed companies in Singapore, it was found that a significant percentage of CFOs are not accounting qualified, which indicates a significant gap. The study conducted interviews with five groups of stakeholders and found that people who believe in the importance of CFOs’ accounting qualifications view it as a way for companies to signal their financial strength, which aligns with signalling theory. However, those who believe there is no need for CFOs to be accounting qualified tend to believe person-job fit (PJ-Fit) is a more important factor. The study found that when the company size is large, PJ-Fit is more important than signalling. This is because larger companies tend to have more resources to invest in identifying specific attributes of their CFO candidate than relying on the signalling effect. They also have stronger legitimacy and more availability of staff with accounting qualifications.

This study’s findings help deepen the understanding between prior research and the implications for practising managers. This study also suggested areas for future research.

This research is focused on the trilateral cooperation among large Chinese engineering companies, French companies, and African countries, and adopts the case study to address the pain points and its cooperation strategies at the different cooperation stages and help Chinese enterprises leverage third-party markets to expand overseas business under the context of "One Belt and One Road" initiative.

Based on the based on the resource-based view (RBV) and resource dependency theory (RDT), this paper considers the technology and talent resources of French companies as integrable external resources, combined with the equipment, funds, and materials of Chinese multinational enterprises, to form a mutually beneficial and strong alliance for third-party market cooperation. Together, they can promote the development of industries in third countries, improve infrastructure levels, and enhance people’s livelihoods, achieving a synergistic effect where “1+1+1>3”. 

This paper studies the impact of diversification strategies on the resilience of companies to risk shocks, based on the game license approval system reforms of 2018. Using the difference-in-differences method, this paper examines how product diversification, industrial diversification, and international diversification strategies affect company performance after they are exposed to restrictive policy shocks. The findings of this paper indicate that the aforementioned diversification strategies typically decrease the return on assets for companies. However, they have different effects when companies face shocks. Diversification within the gaming industry does not help companies mitigate decreases in performance caused by risk shocks; instead, it leads to a further decline in profitability. In contrast, diversification across different industries can effectively shield companies from risk shocks, resulting in a smaller decline in performance after the shock. The impact of international diversification strategies is similar to that of industrial diversification, as they also reduce the negative effects shocks have on companies. The research in this paper suggests that only unrelated diversification across a broader range of fields can help companies cope with risk shocks in specific areas and effectively disperse their impacts.

Keywords: Policy Impacts, Diversification Strategy, Gaming, Difference-in-Differences Method
 

In this study, we focus on the Chinese A-share market, and particularly on the CSI 800 stocks. Our aim is to conduct a comparison analysis of the prominent environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating agencies in an effort to reflect the growing importance of ESG investment, social responsibility, and sustainable development. We mainly use three mainstream rating agencies’ rating data (i.e., the China Securities Index [CSI], Wind, and SynTao Green Finance) to conduct descriptive statistics and comparative analysis. Furthermore, we conduct grouping tests on the ESG scores in the CSI 800 and across various sectors to explore their effectiveness in stock selection.

Next, to explore the return sources of the ESG factors in the time series, we utilize the Fama–French five-factor model for regression on their long-short portfolios. The portfolio analysis shows that the G-score can only be explained by these five factors to a low degree and that it has a significant alpha (intercept). This finding indicates that some elements of the G-score cannot be explained by the classical asset pricing factors, and may offer financial portfolios additional information. Therefore, we consider the G factor to be one of the most important criteria for stock selection. In the long-short portfolio regression analysis, we find the return source of the ESG factors to be significantly correlated with the size factor (SMB) and the profitability factor (RMW). As such, we then perform grouping tests by controlling for the SMB and RMW factors both separately and simultaneously.

Furthermore, from a practical perspective, we construct the CSI 800 ESG Smart Beta index enhancement strategy by conducting sufficient grouping tests on various screening methods (i.e., positive screening and negative screening). A major finding is that a portfolio constructed by negative screening will not worsen return performance, but instead it may offer more space for the investment manager to generate alpha. These empirical results may serve as useful references for future ESG investment research in the Chinese market. By extension, we further test the effectiveness of the CSI G-score’s bottom factors, by constructing the CSI G plus-score (with seven indicators underlying the CSI G-score) index enhancement strategy. Despite its limited effectiveness, it represents a valuable attempt in the current Chinese A-share market.

The main contributions of this study to empirical research are as follows. We compare three leading domestic ESG rating agencies in the Chinese market, expand the basic sample size, and include an analysis of CSI industry sectors while emphasizing corporate governance factors to provide a reference for further market research in China. Against the backdrop of multiple studies recognizing the importance of the governance factor, we empirically verify that the G factor has better return performance in the grouping tests. Especially in the area of excess return, the G factor offers additional information that cannot be explained by traditional asset pricing factors. Finally, we suggest new visions and directions for future ESG research.

As the cornerstone of traditional Chinese culture, Confucianism profoundly influences Chinese enterprises' behavior. This study empirically examines the impact of Confucianism and corporate governance mechanisms on firms' economic and social performance, yielding the following principal conclusions utilizing data from Chinese-listed companies:
Firstly, Confucianism significantly and positively influences corporate performance. Enterprises deeply rooted in Confucian culture often exhibit superior economic and social performance. This finding indicates the positive role of Confucianism in promoting responsible corporate behaviors and enhancing performance.
Secondly, the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on corporate performance is complex. An increase in institutional ownership correlates positively with corporate performance, suggesting that institutional investors can elevate corporate governance standards through effective oversight. The influence of the proportion of shares held by principal shareholders is more intricate, depending on the regional differences of Confucianism.
Thirdly, an interaction exists between Confucianism and corporate governance mechanisms, jointly affecting corporate performance. The positive effects of Confucianism are more pronounced in firms with robust corporate governance structures, especially those with a higher proportion of independent directors. This finding unveils the complementary roles of Confucianism and corporate governance mechanisms in improving corporate performance.
Lastly, the study identifies the regional heterogeneity in the interactive effects between Confucianism and corporate governance variables. Firms located near different Confucian centers vary significantly in how Confucianism and their interactions with corporate governance mechanisms impact performance. This suggests that regional cultural backgrounds and the depth of Confucianism directly affect corporate performance and modulate through different corporate governance mechanisms. This finding underscores the importance of acknowledging regional heterogeneity and the complex interplay between Confucianism and corporate governance structures when considering their influence on corporate strategies and performance.
By exploring the heterogeneous impacts of Confucianism and corporate governance mechanisms on economic and social performance, this study not only expands the research perspective of the existing literature but also provides new guidance for corporate management practice. Understanding and effectively integrating informal institutions with formal corporate governance mechanisms is crucial for enhancing corporate performance in globalization and multiculturalism.

Keywords: Confucianism; Corporate governance mechanisms; Corporate performance; China

Advertising for enrolment through the Internet has become an important means of enrolment promotion in Chinese universities. However, there is currently no clear research conclusion on how to conduct effective advertising, especially on the selection of factors such as promotion time, promotion platform, and promotion targets. Based on the construal level theory, this study investigated the effects of different types of college enrolment advertising on different new media platforms, using different dimensions of psychological distance corresponding to factors such as promotional time and promotional area. The empirical results show that different advertising types do have significant effect differences on different groups. “Desirable” information is more effective for parents, while the students pays attention to both “desirable” information and “feasible” information at the same time. There are also differences in the publicity effect of different platforms. In the empirical study, the information published on the Kwai and Douyin is more effective to the students, while the information published on the “Moments” is more effective to the parents.

This dissertation delves into the 20-year developmental history of Chinese video websites, with specific emphasis on major players currently in operation such as iQIYI, Tencent Video, Youku, Bilibili, and Mango TV. It critically analyzes the business model of Chinese video websites from five key dimensions—developmental evolution, market operation, content production, user relationships, and policy relations—providing a comprehensive understanding of the industry’s landscape. Research has shown that the business models of Chinese video websites present not a simple chain relationship but a complex network of relationships. Elements such as capital, market, content, technology, users, and policies dynamically interact and balance each other in a game that reflects the unique “Chinese characteristics” of the business model. Several conclusions have been made: 1) While the business model may dynamically adjust according to various technological and capital conditions over time, shifting the focus from valuing UGC to prioritizing PGC as the core represents a fundamental change; 2) Although video websites may have created capital myths through financing and mergers, the core of their business models is centered around excavating and developing user power. Balancing income and expenses, reducing costs, and increasing efficiency, remain key to achieving success in their business models; 3) User power on video websites depends on the content produced, which is now focused on specialization, IP, intelligence, and scenario-based production; 4) Video websites and their users are in a constant dynamic game, where membership systems and fan economies have become both a boon and a bane for the industry’s development. They serve as effective means to stimulate user participation and enhance user loyalty; 5) The survival and development of Chinese video websites are deeply influenced by state power. Their business models need to comply with national laws, regulations, and policies and constantly balance public and commercial interests

With the establishment of the goal of "carbon peak and carbon neutralization" in China, the transformation from traditional energy to renewable energy has become an inevitable trend. Because of lithium-ion battery has higher technological maturity, better economy and safety, it is applied in the field of automobile transportation rapidly.
However, based on the strategic considerations of energy diversification and ESG, as well as the limitations of lithium-ion battery material system in low temperature performance, energy density and charge-discharge rate, hydrogen fuel cell has the opportunity to form symbiosis with lithium-ion battery in specific scenarios, thus giving full play to the technical and cost advantages of the two systems.
At present, there is no comprehensive analysis of hydrogen fuel cell technology development, cost reduction path, China's energy and resources endowment and related industrial policies from the perspective of systematic thinking in the research of hydrogen value chain at home and abroad. By combing and referring to the development path of lithium-ion battery, the thesis compares the advantages and disadvantages of lithium-ion battery and hydrogen fuel cell, and based on the cases of hydrogen related enterprises invested by IDG and other use cases, comprehensively analyzes the development of hydrogen fuel cell in automobile industry in China. By establishing a detailed mathematical model to calculate the cost reduction path of the hydrogen value chain, we can infer the possibility and timeline of outbreak of the large-scale application of hydrogen fuel cell in the field of automobile transportation. 
The thesis updates understanding of the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cell in the field of automobile transportation in China, which plays a great promotion and reference significance to the development of hydrogen value chain and the layout decision of investment companies in the field of hydrogen energy.
 

The Internet, serving as a representative of emerging media, has spawned numerous new professions in the realm of social production, reshaping the landscape of traditional media. This transformation has profoundly influenced the career trajectories of young individuals, leading to a surge in creators on various internet content platforms. In China, the number of content creators on these platforms has surpassed ten million, but income distribution remains unequal. While top creators reap substantial profits, a significant number of mid-tier and micro-tier creators struggle with profitability, encountering career development bottlenecks. Content creators seek more valuable career options, developmental advice, and effective tools to enhance their creative endeavors. On one hand, due to saturated fields and the impact of the pandemic, and on the other hand, with the limited monetization potential and low success rates of Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs), the non-replicability of top influencers, and incidents like contract terminations, MCN companies fail to showcase advanced business models. Perhaps, digitalizing MCNs is a crucial step in boosting the profitability of such companies. Navigating a clear career path for content creators within China's current internet content ecosystem is imperative. Ensuring the success of every content creator dedicated to innovation not only benefits this vast community but also has positive implications for social stability. To address these issues, this study is designed to explore three series, focusing on the novelty of works, the personal style of creators, and the incubation strategies of MCNs, respectively, providing a theoretical foundation for the continuous growth and success of creators.
Substudy One delved into the analysis of creators on Bilibili's Knowledge Zone, specifically those with a fan base exceeding 10,000. We scrutinized all 247,972 works published by 7,310 creators from January 2021 to January 2022. The analysis encompassed various data points, including gender, fan count, views, likes, comments, and the content and quantity of tags. Novelty in works was measured by the relative frequency of tag combinations, revealing a positive U-shaped correlation between work novelty and variables such as views, likes, and comments.
In Substudy Two, we applied a multimodal modeling approach to delve into the research and regression analysis of influencer profiles, investigating how creator styles impact their creative performance. Our study focused on beauty creators on Bilibili with a fan base exceeding 10,000, using videos, audio, and text content from all their works between January 2021 and January 2022 as research samples. We analyzed a 15% sample of creators (129 creators with a total of 1,118 videos). Through multimodal modeling of works and factor analysis of creator styles, we identified six types of blogger styles in the sample: Casual, Energetic, Professional, Sweet, Affable, and Attractive. The regression results revealed that the "Attractive" style has a positive impact on fan count, suggesting that attractiveness may be a key factor in attracting fans for beauty bloggers. The "Sweet" style positively influences the number of video barrage comments, indicating that creators with a sweet style are more effective at engaging audience interaction. This study employs data to quantitatively describe creator personal styles and explore the relationship between creator styles and creative efficacy.
Substudy Three, incorporating internal influencer management data from MCN agencies and conducting case analyses, seeks to uncover how MCN agencies' influencer incubation management strategies aid creators in overcoming creative bottlenecks and fostering growth. The study focused on four influencers incubated by MCN agencies, involving interviews with influencers’ agents, directors, and others. The research included organizing management records and influencer data during the incubation process, resulting in a three-stage model of the influencer's "breaking through" journey: the Development-Stagnation Period, Transition Period, and Second Growth Period. In the Development-Stagnation Period, influencers, starting from their own identity or skills, accumulate a significant fan base with MCN agencies' assistance, overcoming initial bottlenecks. Progressing into the Transition Period, MCN agencies help influencers establish new personas, broaden their horizons, and surpass bottlenecks. The third stage is the Second Growth Period, during which the influencer's new persona gains market acceptance, fan growth accelerates, and user profiles experience breakthroughs. Across these stages, MCN agencies gradually establish comprehensive incubation records and comprehensive quality assessment forms to guide subsequent influencer signings and incubation. This study delineates how MCN agencies' incubation management strategies assist influencers in breaking through bottlenecks and growing, offering guidance on aligning MCN agency strategies with influencer development.
Drawing from these discoveries, this study's theoretical significance is prominently evident in three key aspects. Firstly, it unveils the influence of the novelty on the creative performance of various types of videos, rectifying the existing oversight in research on content creation platforms that neglects the novelty aspect. Secondly, the study comprehensively delineates the "style" of content creators and validates its impact on creative performance, addressing the superficial and one-sided characterization of creator features in existing research. Thirdly, the study sheds light on the collaborative process of content creators and MCNs achieving transformation and second growth, bridging the gap in existing research that often focuses more on the short-term impacts of work and creator features on creative performance while overlooking the long-term inadequacies of MCN agency incubation management strategies and creator growth.
The practical significance of this study for influencer content creation is paramount as it furnishes digital tools for influencers. Simultaneously, the practical outcomes of this research are advantageous for MCN agencies to manage and incubate influencers more scientifically. The study employs big data analysis methods to construct the TVA model for creator profiling, develops an influencer incubation model, and visualizes the incubation process. In conclusion, we also discuss the limitations of this study and potential avenues for future research.

Technological innovation in enterprises is not only the core of competition among firms but also a key driving force for economic growth. The process of corporate technological innovation often requires substantial financial support. However, due to information asymmetry and capital constraints, tech startups face numerous obstacles in technological innovation, making it difficult to sustain innovation. Venture capital plays a critical role in stimulating continuous corporate innovation, providing a solid financial backbone for corporate innovative activities, and playing a pivotal role in promoting core technological breakthroughs. As a significant embodiment of corporate innovative technology, patents can alleviate the information asymmetry between startups and investors by forming a positive patent signal from different perspectives. Therefore, exploring the impact of different types of patent signals on the financing accessibility of tech startups is of significant practical importance. It not only has profound implications for promoting the integration of technology and finance bust also aids the development of small and medium-sized technology enterprises.

This paper compiles a database of financing events for tech startups in the field of advanced manufacturing and healthcare, integrating a full sample of patent data information for these startups. The study finally collects 28,610 financing events and 1,897,517 patent records from January 1992 to March 2024. It constructs patent signals based on quantity, quality, commercial, legal, and technological similarity from the perspectives of the company's independence and its associations. Then, we establish regression models to explore the impact of these variables on tech startups’ financing accessibility. The moderating effect of venture capital’s reputation and attention on the effect of patent signals is further examined. Furthermore, this paper explores the differences in the impact of patent signals on financing accessibility among companies at different technological attributes and financing stages. Lastly, the paper uses survival analysis model to address potential endogeneity issues by testing the impact of patent signals on the likelihood of obtaining financing in subsequent rounds.

The findings of this study are as follows: (1) From an independent perspective, the quantity, quality, commercial, and legal signals generally help startups to obtain larger financing volumes, with patent quantity and quality signal having a greater impact on financing volume. By comparison, the commercial and legal signals of patents have a relatively smaller impact on the cumulative number of investment rounds than on financing volume. (2) From an associative perspective, the technological similarity signal also has a significant positive impact on the likelihood of startups obtaining financing. Besides, this effect is greater than that of independent company-level patent signals. (3) The moderating mechanism analysis shows that the reputation of venture capitals significantly weakens the positive impact of patent signals on financing accessibility, whereas limited attention from investors significantly enhances the effect of technological similarity signals on financing accessibility. (4) Heterogeneity tests indicate that different technological attributes and financing stages of companies affect the impact of patent signals on financing accessibility, but the differences in the magnitude of impact are not substantial. (5) The survival analysis in the robustness tests show that the impact of various patent signals on financing accessibility remains robust after considering endogeneity issues.

The contributions of this paper are threefold: Firstly, at the theoretical level, it enriches the study of the relationship between patent signals and financing accessibility from multiple perspectives such as quantity, quality, commercial, legal, and technological similarity, refining the application of signaling theory in the field of venture capital. Secondly, from methodological side, the paper applies cutting-edge deep learning algorithms and textual analysis to construct a corporate-patent-technology topic graph. Based on the patent text data, this paper innovatively constructs a technological similarity index among startups and extend the measurement of technological association and similarity indicators into Chinese startup financing market. Finally, on the practical side, this paper offers references for strategic decision-making in R&D investment and patent deployment for tech startups. It provides insights for government policy in patent information management and disclosure. Additionally, it enhances venture capital involvement in tech startups, suggesting ways to accelerate the integration of technology and finance.

Keywords: Patent Signals, Technological Similarity, Financing Accessibility, Venture Capital’s Reputation, Venture Capital’s Attention 
 

High net worth wealth owners generally need various advisory services to meet their wealth management needs, such as investment / global asset allocation, intergenerational succession planning, personal and family tax planning, next-generation education, health management, immigration arrangement for family members, etc.

At the current stage, this paper tries to answer below central research questions for Chinese wealth advisors:

From the Perspective of high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) in China, what characteristics should their wealth advisors bear to be considered competent?

Which key competency factors are mostly important in making the wealth advisor successful (reflected through performance rating of wealth advisors)?

The research applies both the literature review and the survey questionnaire.

In conclusion, wealth advisors with below characteristics are more favored by Chinese high net worth wealth owners:

- Above 5 years of relevant working experiences.

- Having a master’s degree or above.

- Commission based income scheme, together with restrictions to avoid product sales oriented or transaction oriented only.

19 competency factors were ultimately formed up under the framework of the competency model for Chinese wealth advisors, with 5 dimensions: Skill: Customer Service Features, Mindset, Trait, Self-Concept, Attitude.

Further, below competency dimensions are proved to be most positively related with the performance of wealth advisors:

- Skill: Customer Service Features: Pressure bearing ability, Customer Acquisition and Relationship Management, and Customer Oriented.

- Trait: Willingness to learn and share.

- Mindset: Controlling Power

Since these questions are answered from the perspective of both high-net-worth individuals and supervisors of Chinese wealth advisors, it provides a reference tool for wealth management institutions to form up a more effective incentive mechanism, and to provide the direction of self-improvement for Chinese wealth advisors.

The brand marketing environment and media environment have changed, and major consumers and consumption behaviors have changed in the Internet era. As business models are constantly changing, more and more companies are following the trend of the times and rejuvenating their brands, or reorganizing them, to have a deeper understanding of consumers whose needs are constantly changing in today's era. They intend to research and develop products that suit the needs of consumers in the new era, and keep pace with the times amidst constant adjustments and changes to rejuvenate their brands. Brand rejuvenation is not a result, but a process. Only by adhering to the rejuvenation marketing strategy and treating it as a long-term strategy can the brand continue to maintain freshness and vitality, thereby being unstoppable.
This paper discusses the brand rejuvenation of traditional apparel companies, focusing on whether brand rejuvenation affects brand preference and purchasing behavior, and how to effectively implement brand rejuvenation strategies. In theory, it constructs a brand rejuvenation measurement model and explores the impact of brand rejuvenation on brand equity, as well as the relationship between brand rejuvenation, brand preference and brand equity. In practice, this paper takes Cabbeen as an example to conduct a case study to analyze the implementation process, influencing factors and implementation effects of Cabbeen's brand rejuvenation strategy. On the one hand, it provides a basis for theoretical analysis, and on the other hand, the research results also provide reference for other peers.
The research results also prove that brand rejuvenation is indeed an effective strategy to enhance brand equity. Brand rejuvenation cannot only directly affect consumers’ purchasing behavior, but also promote consumers’ brand loyalty by enhancing consumers’ brand preferences and in turn promotes consumers’ behaviors such as repurchase, recommendation, and willingness to wait for the brand.

Keywords: apparel companies, brand rejuvenation, brand tendency, purchasing behavior

One of the primary modes of agricultural industrialization is "leading enterprises & farmers," however the contract risk between the two subjects of this mode severely limits the sustainability of the development of agricultural industrialization. This paper introduces the transaction stability factors and behavior factors into the game framework based on the maximization of social welfare, analyzes and solves the equilibrium conditions by applying GHM theory, and obtains the main constraints affecting the stability of contract connection. Additionally, this article develops an empirical model in conjunction with the contract agriculture innovation scenario to examine the primary influences on farmers' income growth, production efficiency, and contract stability. The analysis reveals that the key to maintain the stability of the contract is to reduce the transaction cost of the contract from the perspective of organizational structure, so that the adaptability and incentive of the contract are compatible with the incompleteness of the contract itself; In addition, a solid foundation of trust and the reduction of transaction costs brought about by the contract are generally conducive to the increase of farmers' income and production efficiency, and can better maintain the stability of the contract, so as to achieve the sustainable development of agricultural industrialization.

This study analyzes the relationship between board heterogeneity and the company’s internationalization strategy to determine the internal mechanism through which board heterogeneity affects the company’s internationalization strategy. Based on the analysis of the primary effect, the moderating effects of contextual factors at various levels, such as individual, organization, and environment, are introduced. Subsequently, this study empirically tests the proposed research hypothesis using the data of Chinese listed companies from 2011 to 2020.

The empirical results indicate that board heterogeneity has a positive impact on the company’s internationalization strategy. When the board chairman is female or has a longer tenure, board heterogeneity plays a more crucial role in promoting the company’s internationalization strategy. Board heterogeneity has a greater impact on the internationalization strategy of companies that have more abundant resources and are owned by the state. The higher the dynamics of the external environment and the higher the degree of marketization, the more significant the role of the heterogeneity of the board of directors in promoting the company’s internationalization strategy. Even after modifying the variables’ measurement methods and the regression technique, the conclusions of this research remain robust. Further tests show that board heterogeneity enhances the company’s internationalization strategy by improving its risk-taking level. The heterogeneity of the board of directors enhances company value by promoting the implementation of the company’s internationalization strategy. Relationship heterogeneity and task heterogeneity within the board have diverse effects on the company’s internationalization strategy. Compared with relationship heterogeneity, task heterogeneity is the main reason for the company’s implementation of the internationalization strategy.

The study findings have several theoretical contributions. First, this study contributes to the literature on economic consequences of board heterogeneity by deeply analyzing the impact of board heterogeneity on the company’s internationalization strategy. Second, this study identifies board heterogeneity as an important factor influencing internationalization strategy from the perspective of business practice, thereby enriching related research on the factors influencing internationalization strategy. Third, this study deepens the understanding of the role of the board of directors through theoretical analysis and empirical tests regarding how different levels of factors moderate the relationship between board heterogeneity and the company’s internationalization strategy.

In addition, the research findings have some practical implications. First, companies that plan to or have already begun implementing internationalization strategies can avoid the risks associated with international competition. They can do so by building a heterogeneous board of directors and utilizing the information and resources provided by the differences among board members in terms of gender, age, education level, professional background, tenure, and so on. Second, while improving the structure of the board of directors, we must also consider the impact of individual, organizational, and environmental factors. Third, companies that intend to develop international markets and implement internationalization strategies should maximize the positive role of board heterogeneity, which will help enhance the company’s value.

“Hard technology” is of great national strategic importance and is a sharp tool to invigorate a country with its innovations and advantages. That is how China Science and Technology Innovation Board (STIB) came into being in Shanghai Stock Exchange. When evaluating whether a company on STIB is equipped with “hard technology”, its science and technology innovation attributes should be the essential and core features to look at.
Therefore, it is in need in the market to find an effective way to evaluate an issuer's science and technology innovation (STI) attributes, as well as their impact on the margin of a successful listing and post-listing performance. How to weight the importance of different STI evaluation indicators? How to create a comprehensive index to effectively evaluate a Issuer's STI attributes, as well as whether the contribution degree of each attribute is balanced? Whether or not these STI attributes make a significant difference in the margin of a successful IPO for enterprises of different types and with different property rights natures. All these questions wait for answers.
Consulting the relevant literature, few scholars have studied the success rate of technology-based enterprises and their post-listing performance. In this paper, a principal component analysis method is innovatively used to create a science and technology attribute evaluation index, and a regression model is constructed for empirical research. The conclusions of the study show that the STI attributes significantly improve the issuers listing success rate of issuers and are positively correlated with their long-term performance after listing, while short-term performance is under pressure. There are significant differences in the contribution of individual science and technology innovation attributes to the comprehensive evaluation index, and the size is the R&D investment intensity, the R&D investment level, the personnel structure, and the level of patents. It has no significant impact on the listing success rate of enterprises of different types and different property rights natures. The research results of this paper make certain contributions to empowering China’s Strategy of Scientific and Technological Powerhouse, as well as the STIB Registration-Based IPO Mechanism reform, and are of great significance to market participants such as government decision-makers, investment institutions, and issuers.
Key Words：Registration-Based IPO Mechanism, Science and Technology Innovation Board, Science and Technology Innovation Attributes, IPO Success Rate, Performance
 

Diversification as a strategic objective has become increasingly pursued by many enterprises. However, whether diversification truly brings robust business operations and risk dispersion effects remains a focal point of attention in both academic and practical realms. This study, grounded in Chinese practice, empirically examines the relationship between corporate diversification and bankruptcy risk and further discusses the interactive impact of monetary policy tightening and diversification on corporate bankruptcy risk.
Empirical analysis results indicate a positive correlation between corporate diversification and bankruptcy risk in China. This finding suggests that diversification may not always confer the advantage of risk dispersion to enterprises; it could instead increase the risk of bankruptcy. Additionally, empirical results also demonstrate that monetary policy tightening has a significant positive effect on corporate bankruptcy risk. This outcome remains robust even after changing variables and models. Mediation effect tests indicate that diversification leads to bankruptcy by reducing corporate cash holdings. This study further focuses on other potential internal and external factors that may influence the relationship between diversification and bankruptcy risk. The results show that internal controls, financing constraints, and the quality of external auditing significantly influence the relationship between diversification and bankruptcy risk. Specifically, the impact of diversification and monetary policy tightening on bankruptcy risk is particularly pronounced in companies with higher internal control quality, more significant financing constraints, and poorer external audit quality.
This study further analyzes the moderating effect of a company's Initial Public Offering (IPO) timing on the relationship between diversification and bankruptcy risk. The analysis finds that newly listed companies in the initial period after IPO, due to positive market responses, lower financing costs, and new investment opportunities, may face higher bankruptcy risks from diversification activities. Conversely, companies listed longer and in a more stable maturity phase can significantly reduce their bankruptcy risk through diversification strategies. This result indicates that the effects of diversification strategies vary for companies at different developmental stages.
This research reveals that diversification strategies may not always be the best choice for enterprises in specific macroeconomic and internal environments. When considering expanding their business scope, enterprises need to assess national monetary policies, internal control systems, financing status, and other relevant factors to ensure that their strategic decisions bring long-term value to the organization. This study provides new insights into the relationship between corporate diversification strategies and bankruptcy risk for the academic community. It offers valuable strategic decision-making references for the practical realm, aiding enterprises in making wiser decisions in a complex and dynamic market environment.
 

In any nation or firm, innovation is hailed as a crucial driver of industry and competitiveness. Innovation can involve creating a new product, improving service levels, or augmenting the way of operating a business. The ability to change and adapt business models to value-add customers' needs and produce economic value represents a distinct competitive advantage. One important aspect of innovativeness is being open-minded toward innovative ideas. Disruptive technologies from machine learning to big data are creating new challenges in the marketplace in which firms operate. These merging disruptions are forcing companies to reinvent or calibrate their business models through innovation to remain viable. However, the success of any innovation strategy is highly correlated to the organisation's culture.  Based on our literature review, we argue that both conceptual analysts and practitioners would perceive tackling innovation culture as a “slippery” concept to support innovation, e.g., to achieve better business outcomes. To manage these difficulties successfully in an uncertain future filled with economic turbulence is to make innovation an integral part of a firm's organisation and management. The purpose of this research study is to better understand how manufacturing firms are trying to make innovation work and the challenges they are facing in creating and capturing new value. Several authors have emphasized the importance of an innovation measurement system for assessing innovation, and that it is a key foundation for implementing changes aimed at making the organisation's culture more innovative. The purpose of this single-case study is to explore the innovation culture of an actual Taiwanese medium size OEM lock manufacturer by applying a comprehensive but user-friendly Innovation Quotient assessment instrument to measure the current culture of the firm.   Leaders can then utilise the survey results to intervene and initiate positive change. The implication for positive change entails introducing robust innovation governance to motivate management and staff to work together and innovate.

A rapidly ageing customer base, and an acceleration in the adoption of self-service technologies (SST) are two major trends which are set to have an increasing impact on how companies manage and satisfy customers. While there has been a rich body of work studying  the effects of ageing and SST usage on customers, research on how they might affect cumulative satisfaction appears to be limited. The ageing literature tends to focus on cognition and decision-making processes, while SST research tends to be narrowly focused on SST evaluation and adoption. Our understanding on how ageing affects how satisfied customers are with service providers, and how SST usage within a complex multichannel environments affects cumulative satisfaction appears to be limited. To bridge this gap we conducted two studies using data from the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore.

Study 1 looked at how ageing cohorts affects the established antecedents of customer satisfaction, namely customer expectations, perceived quality, and perceived value. The study also looked at how the inflation experience of ageing cohorts affects perceived value. Contrary to data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index which found an older-more-satisfied phenomena, our study found ageing cohorts to be less satisfied, with a consistently negative effect on all three antecedents. The velocity and magnitude of inflation was also found to have a negative effect on perceived value, with ageing cohorts positively moderating the effects of inflation velocity on perceived value. The findings highlights the potential neglect of senior customers, and provides guidance on how cohort experiences may be an important factor for managers to think about when considering how best to manage an increasingly ageing customer base.

Study 2 looked at how different channel users types moderated the established relationships between perceived quality and customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction and loyalty. Previous research tends to focus on the retail sector, and only on digital SST and offline customers. The effects of different channel user types within more complex multichannel service environments was surprising limited. Using survey data from the banking and telecommunications industry, the study compared the moderating effects of digital SST customers, multichannel customers, and offline customers, on the two established relationships. Across both industries, when compared to offline customers, the quality-satisfaction and satisfaction-loyalty relationships were found to be weaker for digital SST customers. Both established relationships were also found to be strongest among multichannel banking customers when compared with the other two channel user types. As more companies embark on a multichannel strategy by digitally transforming how they serve customers, the differentiated effects found in Study 2 provides managers guidance on how best to manage their channel mix. 

With the rise of big data and artificial intelligence, data intelligence has gradually become the focus of academia and industry. Data intelligence has two obvious characteristics: big data drive and application scene drive. More and more enterprises extract valuable patterns contained in data with prediction and decision analysis methods and technologies such as large-scale data mining, machine learning and deep learning and use them to improve the management and decision in complex practice, so as to promote changes of new business modes, organizational structures and even business strategies, and improve the operational efficiency of organizations. However, there are few studies on how data intelligence affects organizational performance. This dissertation points out three-dimensional elements for data intelligence to achieve iterative development: data, technology and prediction and decision-making capability, and makes a more in-depth exploration on the research and application of the three elements and organizational performance. Based on the relevant data of software enterprises, the author conducted empirical research and finally concluded the mechanism and path of data intelligence affecting the software delivery performance, providing an important reference for other industry organizations to improve the operational efficiency and organizational performance.

By the end of 2021, a total of 93 listed companies in China have undergone bankruptcy reorganization, and the bankruptcy reorganization system has gradually become the main means to rescue listed companies in distress. Specifically, the shareholders' equity adjustment is the focus of the game of interests among multiple stakeholders, which determines the effect of bankruptcy reorganization of listed companies.

Based on the existing cases of bankruptcy reorganization of listed companies, this thesis compares the current situations and challenges of shareholders' equity adjustments, and proposes a balanced shareholders' equity adjustment mechanism to solve the problems in practice by combining the lessons of successful cases and the author's practical experiences.

The thesis demonstrates that an equitable adjustment mechanism for shareholders' equity should be based on the premise of avoiding delisting risks, on the foundation of enhancing the reorganization value, and on the path of transferring the creditors’ equity appropriately, arranging the original shareholders’ equity properly and assigning investors’ equity necessarily, so as to facilitate effective allocation of resources for reorganization of listed companies, promote the maximization of interests of all parties, achieve long-term reorganization effects, and realize the unification of economic and social benefits.

The current Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) era is characterized by a number of factors, including globalization, technological advancements, geopolitical instability, and shifting consumer demands. These factors have combined to create an environment in which businesses and organizations must be highly adaptable and agile to survive and thrive.

To succeed in the current VUCA era, organizations must have the ability to anticipate and respond to change quickly while also being able to adapt to new technologies and business models. This task requires a strong focus on innovation, agility, and collaboration as well as a willingness to take calculated risks and try new approaches; accordingly, transformational leadership has emerged as a critical driver of organizational development in VUCA era. Given that the team is the basic unit of organizational operation, it is crucial for organizations to explore the effects of leadership on team performance and creativity as well as the mechanism underlying those effects.

In this research, I propose that transformational leadership has a positive connection to the team mental model, which consequently benefits team performance and creativity by enhancing team proactive motivational states—team potency and team improvisation. Furthermore, I suggest that variables representing internal and external team environment complexity—team task variety and external team context complexity—moderate and strengthen the effect of transformational leadership on team mental model.

Data were collected from firms located in eastern China using a multisource, three-wave field study design. The final sample consisted of 630 employees from 81 teams. The results provide partial support for the hypotheses proposed in this research. Specifically, I find that transformational leadership has a significant direct effect on team mental model, which in turn has effects on team potency and team improvisation. The serial indirect effects between transformational leadership and team performance/creativity via team potency/improvisation are thus supported. Moreover, the moderating role of internal team environment complexity—team task variety on the relationship between transformational leadership and team mental model is supported, while that of external environmental complexity—external team context is not. I discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for organizations, managers, and employees and highlight directions for future research.

Under the dual support of the government and market, the number of cultural and tourism small towns in China has increased rapidly in recent years. However, many small towns have encountered problems such as poor performance, disputes over interests, and operational deficiencies during their rapid development. As China's economy gradually enters a phase of high-quality development, how to promote the high-quality development of cultural and tourism small towns has become a concern for experts in the industry and academia. Currently, research on the high-quality development of cultural and tourism small towns in China is relatively fragmented and lacks a comprehensive study of the entire development process of these small towns, making it difficult to provide effective theoretical guidance for their high-quality development. Based on this, this study reviews the relevant research on cultural and tourism small towns in China and proposes to construct a system of influential factors for high-quality development of Chinese cultural and tourism small towns from a Life Cycle perspective, using qualitative methods such as case studies. Additionally, the study will use the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the weights of each influential factor.

Firstly, the author delineates the process of the dynamic evolution of the cultural and tourism towns’ high-quality development in China through industry research and literature review. The whole process can be divided into the project proposal, planning, construction, operation, and renewal stages. Then, the author selects W, a top-ranking town in China's cultural and tourism industry, as a case study to summarize the influencing factors of W's high-quality development. It turns out that the factors of W town in each stage of development are different. Specifically, the factors are the development value judgement at the project proposal stage, top-level architecture design, design of three major patterns, and consumer scene creation at the planning stage, high-quality implementation and management at the construction stage, visitor experience design and brand impact at the operation stage, and content and product innovation at the renewal stage. To further test the universality of the findings in the W-town case study, the author selected three additional cases with good development dynamics in China and extracted the influencing factors of their high-quality development based on the grounded theory. The comparative analysis found that the conclusions were basically consistent with the W-town case study. Based on this, the author constructed the impact factor system and designed the expert consultation questionnaire. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) of the questionnaire data calculated the weights of the primary and secondary indicators of the impact factor system.

By combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, this study explores the factors influencing the quality development of several cases throughout their life cycle, which fills the gap of dynamic tracking of cases in existing research on cultural and tourism towns and enriches the perspective of research in this field. The study provides a powerful tool for the government and enterprises to assess the development status of China’s cultural and tourism towns in the future.

This paper includes three studies on divestitures. The first study explores the popular divestiture tool of spin-off in recent years. The study aims to investigate the determining factors of corporate spin-offs and reveal the motives behind this strategic decision. This paper uses a multidimensional dataset of US-listed companies that have spun off between2000 and 2022 and employs a probit regression model to examine five hypotheses: performance, incomplete contract, managerial efficiency, financial constraint, and regulatory requirement. This study provides a more systematic analysis of the factors influencing spin-off decisions and contributes to existing literature on corporate spin-offs.
The second study conducts a preliminary exploration of the motives for divestitures in Chinese companies using three case studies of Chinese enterprises (a state-owned company, a private company, and a listed high-tech company).
The third study explores divestiture tools such as spin-off, equity carve-out, and sell-off. This study analyzes how a company's listing status and whether the enterprise is state- owned affect the choice of divestiture tools. The study collected data from 53,629 Asian companies (including 16,225 Chinesecompanies) that underwent strategic divestitures between 1992 and 2022. The study found that listed companies and privately held non- listed companies are less likely to sell off divested units. Non-listed companies, especially non-listed state-owned enterprises, are more likely to use equity carve-out rather than spin- off as divestiture tools. Listed companies and privately held non-listed companies are more likely to allow management to hold shares after divestiture. In the sub-sample test of listed companies, we found that the shareholder concentration in the parent company has no significant impact on whether the management holds shares after divestitures. We found that the percentage of fund ownership has a significant impact on whether the management holds shares.
Keywords: divestitures, divestitures tools, ownership concentration

In the global environment of tobacco control, along with the increasing concern for health, electronic companies around the world have focused on the research and production of "non-combustible alternatives to cigarettes" to meet the psychology of consumers to quit smoking and the pursuit of fashion, and the most popular products are "Electronic Cigarette” (E-cig) and its similar products. In recent years, domestic E-cig-related products have gradually known by the public, with increasing exposure in the news media and rapid growth in sales. Among them, HnB E-cig has smoking taste closer to the characteristics of traditional cigarettes and therefore is gradually accepted by the market. HnB Tobacco Products, filled in their mouths with tobacco flakes, will heat tobacco via the temperature control technology by the electric heat core, so that the tobacco just releases aromatic substances and nicotine and therefore generate smoke. Therefore, this smoking method involves no combustion, while low-temperature heating of tobacco products can significantly reduce the release of harmful substances, which can both provide smoking satisfaction and reduce coke and harm at the same time. Because E-cig and HnB Tobacco Products have stylish designs, low harm to humans, and numerous product flavors, they have quickly dominated the market among alternatives of traditional cigarettes.

Using least square method and instrumental variables, this dissertation investigates the impact of changes in consumer cognitive ability, attention paid to health, and external factors on the consumption of new e-cigarettes in the E-cig industry to explore the impact of new product changes on changes in Consumer Behavior. By studying this issue, we can effectively get to know the current hotspots and consumption trends in domestic tobacco market, help E-cig companies in developing, designing, and optimizing E-cig products, and facilitate the E-cig players to be more adaptable to the rapidly changing external environment of the industry and promote the healthy development of the E-cig industry.

The first part makes an introduction. It contains the background and significance of the topic selected, the research content, the research method, the framework structure of the research, and the innovation of the dissertation. The second part is mainly divided into two aspects: defining concepts and analyzing the current situation. On the one hand, it is to explain the key terms and concepts, and at the same time systematically compare the advantages and disadvantages of new tobacco and traditional cigarette, to highlight the new product change. On the other hand, it is to make a systematic analysis of the current development status of China's E-cig industry to highlight the importance of this dissertation's research. The third part lists literature review and research hypotheses. This part mainly presents an analysis of three significant factors affecting tobacco, especially E-cig consumption: personal factors such as gender, age and income, health factor and the external factors, such as the cohort effect. Three research hypotheses are proposed based on literature interview: first, age, income and education are closely related to E-cig consumption behavior. Second, lower health risks are an important reason for consumers to choose E-cig over traditional cigarettes. Third, external factors are a key reason for E-cig consumption. The fourth part reveals data, variables, and identification strategies. It mainly introduces the data used, the variables set, and the identification strategy used herein, while also gives the descriptive statistics of the data in this dissertation. The fifth part describes the basic measurement results. This part focuses on the validation of the proposed hypotheses using the data in this dissertation through various methods such as least square regression model, Instrumental Variables Method, principal component analysis, and Shapley decomposition. The sixth part conducts robustness test, specifically by further controlling for county-level fixed effects to demonstrate the robustness of the results of this dissertation. The seventh part gives the research conclusions and policy recommendations. This part summarizes the research of this dissertation, provides policy recommendations on how to further regulate the E-cig industry using changes in Consumer Behavior, and presents the shortcomings of this dissertation and prospects for further research.

In the era of digital transformation, the competition among individual enterprises has evolved into competition of business ecosystems, and the merchants in shopping malls have evolved from atomistic competition to ecological competition. Therefore, merchants must ensure the health of business ecosystems to establish competitive advantages. This study uses the survey data of merchants in five shopping malls in Guangzhou to empirically test the mechanism of the effect of humanized management on the health of business ecosystems in the context of digital transformation.

The empirical results show that: 1. Humanized management of shopping malls helps to build trust and loyalty, promote cooperation between merchants, and thus enhance the health of business ecosystems. 2. Humanized management of shopping malls means that merchants are treated fairly, thus enhancing their sense of fairness. 3. The sense of fairness of merchants plays a mediating role between humanized management and profitability, system connectivity, and relationship predictability, indicating that humanized management creates a good environment for merchants' development after enhancing fairness perception, and also helps to increase the predictability of partners' behavior, thus enhancing the health of business ecosystems. 4. Compared with the merchants in the low digitalization group, the humanized management cognition of merchants in the high digitalization group has a greater effect on enhancing fairness perception, and digitalization positively moderates the indirect relationship between humanized management and profitability, system connectivity, and relationship predictability through fairness perception. The empirical results also show that although the mediating effects of profitability, system connectivity, and relationship predictability and moderating mediating effects are significant, the diversity of partners is not significant, indicating that fairness perception cannot enhance the diversity of partners of merchants.

This study discussed the driver mechanism of business ecosystem health from a micro perspective, and expanded the theory of business ecosystem system. From the perspective of practice, the conclusions of this study are also of great significance for the business practice of shopping malls: first, shopping malls should consider the merchants, monitor their sense of fairness, respect the merchants, and create a atmosphere of mutual trust to enhance their loyalty; second, for merchants, they should increase their investment in digitalization, actively embrace digital transformation, such as interacting with customers online, and publicizing and selling goods; for shopping malls, they can try to establish digital platforms to create an integrated shopping ecosystem beyond serving merchants and customers, in order to enhance competitiveness in the digital era.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of entrepreneurial projects led by scientists and technologists, and the issue of the probability of success of such ventures has come under scrutiny. Many views suggest that entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds can lead to good firm performance, but this is significantly at odds with the reality of high-tech industries. This study finds an entry point and a theoretical gap area to study the relationship between entrepreneurs' technological background and firm performance in entrepreneurial firms in terms of this contradiction between the theory and the phenomenon.
This study builds an analytical framework, research hypotheses and econometric model between entrepreneurs' technological background and firm performance with the help of theoretical foundations such as high-order laddering theory and attention theory. Primary data on the technical background characteristics of entrepreneurs are hand-collected and organized from public channels such as corporate websites, search engines, and industrial and commercial information websites, and data related to the operation of enterprises are collected and organized from CSMAR databases, annual reports of enterprises, third-party databases such as Oriental Fortune, Flush IFind, etc., and a combination of primary and secondary data is used as the main data source. Considering that the impact of major public health events on the production and operation of enterprises in 2020 leads to data distortion, this study adopts five years of operation data before 2019, and establishes the operation data of New Third Board listed specialized and new enterprises from 2015 to 2019 at the reporting time as the sample database. Using statistical analysis software and fixed-effects regression analysis model for empirical testing, the correlation between entrepreneurs' technical background and enterprise performance is demonstrated. On the basis of empirical research, this study also selects cases of entrepreneurial enterprises with typical significance, and thoroughly analyzes and comparatively researches the influence paths and role mechanisms of founders' technical background on enterprise performance from several dimensions such as founders' professional and technical experience, entrepreneurial experience, enterprise business behavior and enterprise performance.
The study led to three main conclusions:
(1) There are significant differences in the mechanisms by which entrepreneurs' technological background characteristics affect the performance of firms at different life cycle stages: entrepreneurs' technological background significantly affects firms' innovation performance and has a negative impact in developmental and growth stage firms; entrepreneurs' technological background significantly affects firms' market performance and has a negative impact in developmental and growth stage firms.
(2) Technology background entrepreneurs influence firm performance in the early stages of development through two mechanisms. First, the entrepreneur's professional and technical experience affects his or her personality traits and behavioral traits. The scientist mentality, shortcomings in market and customer understanding, and lack of experience in business management of entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds lead to a tendency to make wrong decisions in the areas of technological development, commercialization, and internal management, which, in turn, affects the firm's performance. Second, entrepreneurs tend to have significant control in start-up and growth firms, which has a strong impact on business strategy and, in turn, on firm performance. Under the mutual complementarity and interaction of the two mechanisms, the business management weaknesses of entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds can easily be magnified, which in turn can have a greater negative impact on business operations. 
(3) Science and technology enterprises should focus on the balance between technological innovation and commercialization, and should enhance their ability to sustain innovation by optimizing their corporate governance structure and management team configuration. Commercial success is an important criterion to measure the value of technological innovation, and commercialization and marketization are the primary orientation and driving force for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements and technological innovation. Startups need to focus on the balance between technological innovation and commercialization from the very beginning, and put this balance into practice through the corporate governance structure and management team structure. On the one hand, technology background entrepreneurs need to continuously strengthen their awareness of commercialization and build up their business management capacity, and on the other hand, they also need to take the initiative to make organizational changes and achieve balanced development of technological innovation and commercialization through diversification of the management team with the help of financing or the introduction of business management talents, which is of positive significance in enhancing corporate performance.
 

Since the reform and opening up, with the continuous development of China's economy and society, the demand for enterprises to undertake and fulfill social responsibilities has become increasingly high, and social donations are an important way for enterprises to fulfill their social responsibilities. Through social donations, enterprises can use funds, materials and other resources to support social welfare, education, medical and other fields, help solve social problems, and promote harmonious social development. In addition, social donations can help improve a company's image and brand value, enhance consumer trust and support for the company, promote sustainable development, enhance competitiveness and innovation capabilities, cultivate corporate culture and employee awareness, and enhance employees' sense of belonging and responsibility. In the 1990s, the concept of corporate social responsibility was introduced to China, and social donation behavior with enterprises as the main body has experienced rapid development in China. From the perspective of the impact of enterprise size on social donation behavior, small and medium-sized enterprises have poor risk resistance and limited resources, so they participate less in social donation behavior. At present, there is a slight lack of research in the academic community on social donations by small and medium-sized enterprises. There is little attention paid to the influencing factors and financial performance of social donations by small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, this article takes the determining factors and performance effects of donation behavior by small and medium-sized enterprises as the research object to explore and study related issues.
In terms of theoretical research, firstly, this article defines relevant concepts from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises and social donation behavior, with a focus on elaborating on the "Standard Regulations for the Classification of Small and Medium sized Enterprises" jointly formulated by four ministries, and briefly analyzing the characteristics of small and medium-sized enterprises and their impact on social donations. Secondly, this article analyzes the relevant theories of social donations by small and medium-sized enterprises, with a focus on elaborating on the theories of external stakeholders and legitimacy. Once again, this article has summarized and organized relevant literature at home and abroad, focusing on the study of corporate donation behavior, influencing factors of corporate donation behavior, performance effects of corporate donation behavior, and donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises. Finally, this question elaborates on the relevant research hypotheses from the perspectives of the impact of customer donation level and industry donation level on social donations of small and medium-sized enterprises, and proposes research hypotheses on the relationship between social donations of small and medium-sized enterprises and their financial performance.
Based on the above analysis, this article conducted case studies and empirical research. Firstly, this article selects five listed companies as interviewees and conducts an analysis and research on the social donations made by small and medium-sized enterprises and large enterprises based on the comparison of interview results. Secondly, this article selected small and medium-sized board listed companies as the research object, obtained relevant data from the Guotai An database, and conducted research using panel regression models, moderating effect models, etc. From the results of case analysis and empirical research, the main conclusions are as follows: (1) Customer donation level has a promoting effect on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (2) The concentration of customers has a positive moderating effect on the impact of customer donations on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (3) The operating profit margin of enterprises plays a positive moderating role in the process of customer donations affecting the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (4) The level of industry donations has a promoting effect on the donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (5) The degree of industry competition will have a positive moderating effect on the impact of social donation levels on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises in the industry; (6) The degree of positive deviation of performance from peers plays a positive moderating role in the impact of industry social donation levels on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (7) The negative deviation of performance from peers plays a negative moderating role in the impact of industry social donation levels on the social donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises; (8) The donation behavior of small and medium-sized enterprises has a promoting effect on their financial performance. Based on the above research conclusions, this article mainly proposes relevant policy recommendations from the perspectives of the government and enterprises.

Research in dynamic capabilities (Teece 2007) looks at how organizations derive and potentially sustain competitive advantage by dynamically making sense of opportunities, marshalling and manipulating assets and resources in response to these opportunities (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000; Teece, 2007). The study of dynamic managerial capabilities is concerned with the microfoundations – attendant attributes as it were – that underpin managers’ ability to effectively participate in the dynamic capabilities of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring (Helfat & Martin, 2015b; Helfat & Peteraf, 2015). Apart from the predominant cognitive account of microfoundations, there remains an under-theorized and underresearched gap in the field of strategic management on the dispositional attributes of middle managers as potential microfoundations of dynamic managerial capabilities.

The personality disposition of extraversion followed by conscientiousness are generally regarded as the two strongest personality predictors of leadership effectiveness and emergence in the organizational psychology literature (T. A. Judge, Bono, et al., 2002; Cogliser, Gardner, Gavin, & Broberg, 2012). This study thus hypothesizes that extraversion would similarly show up as a predictor of the sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring aspects of dynamic managerial capabilities; while conscientiousness, on the other hand, would be negatively related to the sensing and reconfiguring aspects of dynamic managerial capability. The study examines non-public archival data on 323 focal managers from a publicly listed Japanese multinational company, a global leader in its mainstay business segment of industrial materials in the advanced manufacturing industry.

The personality disposition of extraversion was found to positively influence managerial performance in the dynamic managerial capabilities of sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring, while that of conscientiousness was found to be negatively related to sensing and reconfiguring. The results on extraversion is not surprising given the behavioral imperative for middle managers to actively scan the internal and external environment for opportunities, engage with multiple stakeholders to develop and deploy strategic initiatives, as well as influence organizational constituents towards a vision for change.

The results on conscientiousness raises an interesting conundrum for practitioners and organizations alike seeking to hire and develop the ‘best’ managers, as the very qualities of conscientiousness that support managerial performance in task and operational effectiveness would appear to also inhibit performance in dynamic capabilities, thus signalling that what's best for organizational structure and stability may not be best for strategic adaptability. The research calls to attention the potentially equivocal and complex issues involved in the selection, retention and deployment of managerial human resources, especially in the middle management rung of an organizational hierarchy, as firms undergoing strategic change consider how best to shore-up and preserve the competitive advantage arising from its human capital.

This thesis explores the logistics costs optimization of a cold chain logistics network with a real estate perspective. This study draws on data and experience of a cold chain player in China. This study seeks to help users who are currently renting large amounts of warehouse space to quantitatively and systematically evaluate if they should construct their own warehouses and then do a sale-and-leaseback to achieve economic benefits. Using a computing optimization model, the study was able to find the optimized parameters of warehouse capacity, warehouse quality to build as well as the recommended existing network warehouses to use, to maximize economic benefits for the user-developer. This study combines operations management and real estate finance to provide a holistic financial perspective of an optimized asset and operations strategy.

This study seeks to revalidate existing research insights on the relationship between internationalization and firm performance and to examine the role of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) as a potential moderator to this relationship. The research uses a longitudinal database of US-listed manufacturing companies over the period 2000-19. It employs a foreign market penetration-based construct as well as a foreign production-based construct of internationalization and uses a fixed effects linear regression model for the analysis.

The study suggests that the relationship between foreign market penetration-based internationalization and firm performance shows a declining trend over the past two decades. This may not be a negation of the generally accepted relationship (inverted-U or S-shaped) but a reflection of the data set used and the economic conditions of the study period. The trend towards co-movement of global business cycles has eroded the benefits of internationalization while factors like protectionism and political and foreign currency risk continue to create challenges for diversified firms. Foreign Production based internationalization, on the other hand, does not have a significant relationship with firm performance.

Further, the GFC negatively moderated the relationship in the case of Foreign Market Penetration based internationalization. This could be due to heightened protectionism, increased complexity and cost pressures induced by the crisis. The moderation impact of the GFC in the case of Foreign Production was not significant. This can be attributed to the fact that the strong negative effects mentioned above were attenuated by the benefits of strong subsidiary linkages (i.e. financial support as well as internal markets in the case of vertical linkages.)

Finally, and drawing from these points, the study also suggested that the negative moderation impact of the GFC on firm performance was stronger in the case of foreign market penetration-based internationalization than in the case of foreign production -based internationalization.

Financial Quotient (FQ) has become a common topic of concern in the global academic, business and social communities, but at this stage, academic research on FQ and its education are still immature, theoretical depth and empirical support basis are shortage, and influence factors of FQ and the degree of influence of each factor have not been systematically studied. Therefore, there is a large gap between research and practice.

The purpose of this Paper is to construct a set of scientific and reasonable FQ index for individuals, to find factors that can influence or predict personal financial quotient (PFQ), and to design a formula for calculating FQ index, to construct a set of FQ measures and to apply them systematically and universally to the assessment of PFQ. Based on a study of the established literature, as well as research within the financial industry, this Paper finds that Return on Investment (ROI), ability to control risk, sense of security and happiness construct as a proxy indicator of FQ. Meanwhile, based on interviews and research in the industry and referring to researches in the existing literature, the authors of this Paper selected five factors with strong correlations from dozens of influencing factors of FQ as explanatory variables of FQ in an attempt to uncover the relationship between influencing factors and FQ.

The five influencing factors of FQ include: Risk Appetite/Behavior Bias, Social Networking/Information Channel, Consumption Habits/Consumption Concepts, Growth Environment and Financial Literacy. This Paper will elaborate on the theoretical underpinnings of FQ and its impact factors. Based on the China Household Finance Survey Database of the Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance (CHFS), this Paper selects 74 questions from 2,859 questionnaire questions to construct explanatory variables, and selects 18 questions to construct explained variables for empirical tests, then explores the correlation between each impact factor and FQ

This Paper comprehensively sorts out existing research and expounds the theoretical basis of FQ. The empirical part uses the questionnaires and data from CHFS to construct scoring tables for all explanatory variables and explained variables, drawing the following conclusions: There is a significant negative correlation between Risk Appetite/Behavior Bias and FQ index; a significant positive correlation between Social Networking/Information Channel and FQ index; no significant correlation between Consumption Habits/Consumption Concepts and FQ; a significant positive correlation between Growth Environment and FQ index; a significant positive correlation between Financial Literacy and FQ index.

This paper designs the PFQ index, which will be applied to the FQ education and evaluation in the future. The author will also deepen the research on FQ from multiple dimensions at multiple levels. Scholars, businessmen and educators are welcome to be involved in the research and educational promotion of FQ.

Triggered by the ongoing transformation of Singapore's manufacturing industries towards 'smart(er)' manufacturing with a focus on digitising and automating production processes and more competitive business models, this study contributes to the limited Asian management literature about the readiness and impact of 'Industry 4.0' (I4.0) on the business models of Singapore's Small and Medium-sized manufacturing Enterprises (SMEs). I4.0 encompasses adopting opportunities from end-to-end digitalisation with connected computers and increasingly autonomous automation systems equipped with intelligent machine learning algorithms that control robotics with minimal human input. As the traditional manufacturing model is increasingly replaced by advanced, high-value manufacturing technologies such as the Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT), cloud computing, real-time data processing and insights etc., adopting the right enabling technologies in a phased manner with proper planning (based on a value-added business cum operating model) is critical for the successful adoption of I4.0 solutions.

To examine the readiness and impact of I4.0 on the business models of Singapore's manufacturing SMEs and associated challenges such as digitalisation and business model innovation, a (grounded theory) qualitative case study research approach was adopted based on A. Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas (BMC) framework and semistructured interviews with experts and owner-managers of local manufacturing SMEs. During phase one of the study, eight key decision-makers across Singapore's I4.0 ecosystem comprising government agencies, Institutes of Higher Learnings (IHLs), suppliers/providers of technology, business associations and the local SME sector were interviewed. During phase two, a multiple case study covered four manufacturing SMEs (medical technology, engineering equipment, machine vision and imaging) via inductively analysed indepth interviews with their owner-managers. The expert interviews helped to identify five key drivers (Government's technology push with funding and training support, labour dependence, productivity and efficiency issues, pressure to innovate business models due to increased competition, impact of Covid-19) and four main barriers (ROI concerns, capability and mindset issues, ecosystem limitations) for adopting and implementing Industry 4.0 approaches. Industry 4.0 technologies like IIoT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, Data and Image Analytics, and Big Data were the most preferred technology choices across the four SMEs. The case companies excellently leveraged several BMC related 'building blocks' such as 'Key Partners', 'Key Activities', 'Key Resources', 'Cost Structure' and 'Customer Relationships'. 'Channels' and 'Revenue Streams' turned out to be low impact areas (with 'Value Proposition' and 'Customer Segments' as medium impact areas). A lean manufacturing approach with datadriven decision-making combined with a High-Mix-Low-Volume (HMLV) strategy was the preferred Smart Manufacturing route adopted by the four SMEs.

The case companies (which have benefitted significantly from the ongoing Smart Factory ecosystem expansion led by A*STAR) were moderately advanced on their I4.0 transformation journey. They pursued a (smart) incremental I4.0 adoption strategy via a phased and bite-sized module implementation approach. Challenges ahead include heavy focus on bottom-line metrics, precision engineering skills upgrading and wider use of business models and supply chain innovations such as Product-Service Systems (PSS), Device-as-a- Service (DaaS) or prescriptive AI.