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PurposeThis study aims to investigate the impact of digital orientation (DO) on organizational resilience (OR) and explore the contingency effects of human resource slack and nature of enterprise ownership.Design/methodology/approachThe model hypotheses were tested using fixed effects regression on panel data collected from Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms spanning from 2007 to 2020.FindingsDO has a positive effect on OR. Human resource slack positively moderates the relationship between DO and OR. Additionally, DO enhances OR more effectively in non-state-owned firms than in state-owned firms.Research limitations/implicationsThis study relies on data from a single industry from a single country.Practical implicationsThe study supports that firms facing uncertainty, risk and pressure should promptly develop their DO strategy. Firms can derive greater resilience from implementing a DO strategy when they have a high-level human resource pool. State-owned enterprises will benefit from a DO strategy if they make some adaptive changes in leadership, structure, culture and mindset aspects.Originality/valueThis study is the first to examine the relationship between DO and OR, contributing to the existing literature on digital transformation and organizational resilience. It offers valuable insights for practitioners and policymakers seeking to adapt their organizations for the digital era and foster predictive, defensive and growth responses strategies in a dynamic business environment.

Green finance integrates the concept of environmental governance into the financial industry, which is conducive to sustainable development. Applying the mediating effect model, this paper investigates the effect of green finance on urban haze pollution and explores the mediating role of technological innovation of enterprises between them. Based on a sample of 639 enterprises in China over 2016–2019, a significantly negative effect of green finance on urban haze pollution is found. An increase of one standard deviation in green finance decreases PM2.5 concentration by 8.8 μg/m3, ceteris paribus. Further, green finance may improve environmental quality by promoting technological innovation. Considering the heterogeneity of enterprise ownership, this mediating effect exists in non-state-owned enterprises, while it cannot be observed in state-owned enterprises. This study proposes a new solution for pollution: using green financial tools to promote environmentally friendly technological progress.

The increasing focus on environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) has led to a growing interest in how firms’ internal behaviors affect their contributions in promoting sustainable economic development and fulfilling social responsibility. While previous studies have often explored the impact of internal controls on corporate investment decisions, little attention has been paid to the impact of internal controls on corporate green innovation. To this end, we explored the relationship between internal control, environmental investment, and green innovation using data from 2014–2019 for A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen, China. The regression results show that there is a significant positive relationship between internal control and corporate green innovation. The improvement of internal control has a significant positive impact on firms’ active adoption of environmental protection investment. Environmental investment plays a partially mediating role in the process of internal control’s influence on green innovation. This implies that the effect of internal control on green innovation further affects green innovation through the indirect effect of environmental investment, in addition to the direct effect. Moreover, through further research, we find that the above influence relationship is significantly present in both heavily polluting and non-heavily polluting enterprises, as well as in state-owned and private enterprises, but is more significant in heavily polluting firms and private firms. Finally, this study responds to the debate on whether internal controls inhibit or promote enterprise innovation. We advocate further research on this issue in the future in terms of the differences in the accountability systems and customs of firms’ decision-making in different countries.

The relationship between firm ownership and innovation is a critical academic topic. Although agriculture is pivotal to emerging economies, empirical evidence on how internal institutions (firm ownership) and the external institutional environment jointly influence innovation in this sector remains limited. Based on the resource-based view and institutional theory, this study develops an integrated analytical framework linking firm ownership and institutional environment to agricultural innovation. The framework is tested using an unbalanced panel of 117 Chinese agricultural listed firms during 2004-2022, employing firm-fixed-effects models and multiple robustness checks. The findings reveal that: (1) Agricultural state-owned enterprises (SOEs) demonstrate the highest innovation performance, especially those controlled by the central government. (2) However, in China's major grain-producing regions and seed industry, the innovation performance of SOEs was not superior to that of private enterprises. (3) Improvements in the institutional environment positively moderate the relationship between firm ownership and agricultural innovation. This study enriches the literature on institutional economics and corporate innovation and deepens the understanding of innovation mechanisms in emerging economies. It also provides valuable policy implications for governments acting as patient investors, balancing multiple roles, optimizing the institutional environment, and offering differentiated support.

In some cases, enterprise fears uncertainty more than the policy itself, and this fear can impede innovation. However, this study finds that uncertainty is the source of enterprise’s innovation. We took Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2018 as the research sample and studied the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on green technology innovation (GTI). Based on China’s EPU index and green patent-application data of Chinese-listed enterprises, this study adopted a panel fixed regression model and found that EPU has a slightly promoting effect on GTI of Chinese-listed enterprises. This effect is also affected by enterprise ownership and industry characteristics. Among them, EPU has a stronger promoting effect on GTI activities of state-owned enterprises and high-tech enterprises than common enterprises. In particular, if EPU increases, the GTI of high-polluting enterprises is not as great as the incentive effect of ordinary enterprises. The reasons may be that state-owned enterprises have more implicit capital guarantees, high-tech enterprises have higher innovation motivation, and high-polluting enterprises have stronger dependence on traditional production equipment. These results can provide a reference for the debate on “uncertainty.” The conclusions of this paper contain unique policy implications.

Purpose External institutional policy and its impact on corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been widely discussed by researchers, but its effect still remains controversial. This study aims to use the minimum wage policy as an illustrative example to analyze its impact on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of tourist enterprises. Furthermore, the research seeks to examine the boundary conditions that influence the minimum wage’s effect on CSR. Design/methodology/approach This paper takes the data of 42 listed tourism companies from 2010 to 2020 in China as samples and uses the mixed OLS regression method and the fixed effects panel model to examine the effect of the minimum wage on CSR. Findings Findings show that increasing wages has a significantly negative impact on their total CSR investment. Also, low-operating-capacity enterprises and private enterprises will react more adversely when faced with increasing minimum wages. And found that the increase of minimum wage has no significant negative impact on the strategic social responsibility of tourism enterprises; however, it has a significantly negative impact on their tactical social responsibility. In addition, as far as employees’ rights and interests are concerned, the minimum wage increase has effectively increased employee salaries, but the nonsalary benefits of the employees have significantly decreased. Originality/value The contribution of this paper not only expands the research on the antecedents and boundary mechanisms of CSR but also clarifies the specific effect of the rise of the minimum wage on corporate social responsibility; it further deepens the impact of institutional policy factors on CSR, which also opens new perspectives for policy evaluation and provides a theoretical basis for government policymakers.

Zhong-yong thinking, a typical value orientation and mode of thought in traditional Chinese culture, has garnered significant scholarly attention. Various cross-sectional studies have explored the relationship between Zhong-yong thinking and innovation; yet, research specifically examining the impact of Zhong-yong thinking on green innovation is scarce. This study adopts the upper echelons theory and theory of manager cognition to investigate the influence of entrepreneurs’ Zhong-yong thinking on green innovation while simultaneously considering institutional pressure and enterprise ownership types as boundary conditions. By analyzing 302 questionnaire responses, the empirical results demonstrate a direct positive effect of Zhong-yong thinking on green innovation. Moreover, institutional pressure positively moderates the relationship between Zhong-yong thinking and green innovation. State-owned enterprises exhibit a more significant impact of Zhong-yong thinking on green innovation than non-SOEs. Overall, this study contributes to the theoretical research of Zhong-yong in management disciplines, particularly in the green innovation literature. Its findings also hold implications for the practice of green innovation in enterprises.

Promoting technological innovation is an essential issue for enterprises to maintain sustainable development in a highly competitive environment. Previous studies have focused on exploring the linear relationship between intellectual capital and technological innovation, ignoring the possibility of a non-linear relationship between them. This study draws on a dualistic view of intellectual capital and divides it into two elements: human capital and structural capital. Based on the factor endowment theory, we explored the non-linear relationship between intellectual capital and technological innovation, using the data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2019 as the sample, and then analyzed the moderating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on their relationship. The results of the OLS regressions indicated a significant U-shaped relationship between intellectual capital and its elements on technological innovation. This means a “regressive” effect of low levels of intellectual capital on technological innovation and an “incremental” effect of high levels of intellectual capital on technological innovation. Improving CSR could positively enhance the U-shaped effect of intellectual capital on technological innovation. A further study found that the U-shaped effects of intellectual capital and human capital on technological innovation were still supported in state-owned and private enterprises. The U-shaped effect of structural capital on technological innovation was still supported in private enterprises but not in state-owned enterprises. This study explored the relationship between intellectual capital and technological innovation from a unique perspective. It provides a theoretical basis for enterprises to appropriately fulfill their social responsibility and actively promote technological innovation.

The issue of corporate rent-seeking, which stems from the misuse of authority, remains a critical concern for the international community. Drawing on agency theory and resource dependence theory, this study explores the relationship between corporate digitalization strategies (DSs) and corporate rent-seeking. We test our theoretical hypotheses by utilizing panel data encompassing Chinese A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2021. Our findings suggest that corporate DSs have a significant negative influence on rent-seeking. Several robustness tests support this conclusion. Moreover, our analysis indicates that a DS is particularly effective in curtailing rent-seeking behaviors within state-owned enterprises (SOEs) compared with their non-state-owned counterparts. However, contrary to our hypothesis, a DS is less effective in suppressing corporate rent-seeking among firms where the executive team has legal backgrounds. These findings suggest that top managers, especially within SOEs, should prioritize the early formulation of digital transformation strategies to reduce rent-seeking behavior. Additionally, when implementing digital transformation, firms should carefully integrate members with legal backgrounds into their executive teams and strengthen ethical education and supervision for executives with legal expertise.