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  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    LI Qi, LIU Ligang, SHAO Jianbing
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(4): 412-438. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0022-6

    Digital transformation provides companies with a productive approach to transforming and upgrading enterprise resources and capabilities and to exploiting external subject forces to unleash and magnify their potential, thus advancing high-quality enterprise development. Therefore, using regression analysis of the data of China's non-financial listed firms from 2007‒2019 obtained by Python, this paper finds that digital transformation has enormously improved enterprise performance. Furthermore, digital transformation has powerfully boosted supply chain integration, which has played a mediation role in the impact of digital transformation on enterprise performance. Finally, entrepreneurship plays a positive moderating effect on enterprise performance through supply chain integration during digital transformation. The further heterogeneity analysis finds that digital transformation performs better in large, public, state-owned, mature, and non-manufacturing (service industry) enterprises. However, the positive effect of digital transformation on enterprise performance and supply chain integration is not significant in small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, supply chain integration cannot play a mediating role in the impact of digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises upon their performance. This paper probes the realization mechanism and micro-foundation of digital transformation, and its conclusion contributes to high-quality digital transformation.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    LI Haijian, DU Shuang
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(4): 371-393. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0020-2

    Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and common prosperity have the consistency of philosophy and goal. In the process of delivering CSR, enterprises can merge their tangible and intangible assets to realize a positive cycle of sustainable development and common prosperity. Enterprises can also open up space for both commercial and social value by integrating altruism with self-interest, public welfare with utilitarianism, cost with capital, and today's developmentwith tomorrow's development. Indeed, the unification of commercial value and social value can extend pathways to common prosperity and improve common prosperity. By way of the super CSR, enterprises can spread the wealth of their culture and values to society through material products, ethical products, and intergenerational inheritance based on the high compatibility of enterprise high-dimensional culture, enterprise craftsmanship, and enterprise civilizations. They can thus play a leading role in promoting the ethical wealth of the whole of society. Public and private enterprises should maximize their respective advantages in promoting common prosperity of society for realizing the common progress of the people, and should strike a balance between efficiency and fairness.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    ZHAO Donghui, SUN Xinbo, QIAN Yu, ZHANG Dapeng
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(3): 270-294. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0014-3

    Entrepreneurship has always been a key production factor in sustainable innovation and development of enterprises. However, individual entrepreneurship in the industrial economy era no longer satisfies the digital-age innovation demands of “being quick, stable and lasting,” revealing that the characteristics of digital-age entrepreneurship are crucial to understanding sources of continuous innovation. Therefore, this paper adopts grounded theory and qualitative research on four companies, and finds that digital innovation uncertainty is the key to the emergence of entrepreneurship, the social attributes of digital technology. The adaption of enterprise organizational structure triggers the transmission of entrepreneurship from the individual level to the organizational level, thus forming an ethics system that is dependent on entrepreneurs’ behavioral process and that widely exists in organization groups. Organizational entrepreneurship consists of market adaptation, value orientation, self employment and community sense. The research is helpful in clarifying the relationship between digital technology and entrepreneurship, in enriching the connotation of digital-age entrepreneurship, helping managers to inspire potential entrepreneurship of organization members, and promoting continuous innovation of enterprises.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    LIU Junyong, LIU Minghui, SUN Ruiqi
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(2): 207-224. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0010-5

    In the digitalization context, a financial shared services center (FSSC) is designed to engage quality management in providing standardized financial shared services and risk control, completing the fundamental financial work, and offering valueadded fina

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    ZHANG Zenglian, XU Fangyuan
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(4): 394-411. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0021-9

    High-quality economic development can be achieved if a major strategic direction for China are delivered from the macro level to the micro level. Taking A-listed enterprises in China from 2005 to 2018 as samples, this paper studies the impact of directors and officers liability insurance (D&O insurance) on the highquality enterprise development. The research results show that D&O insurance can promote high-quality development. In addition, the mechanism test shows that D&O insurance can reduce agency costs and improve innovations and high-quality enterprise development. Further analysis shows that when stateowned enterprises including their internal controls has no major defects, D&O insurance has more significant positive impact. Thus, this paper suggests that the insurance should be promoted for realizing high-quality enterprise development.

  • OPINION
    ZHOU Jianjun, JU Fang
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(4): 337-339. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0016-7

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    ZHOU Zucheng
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(4): 342-357. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0018-1

    The relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics (BE) is both a practical and theoretical issue. Unlike the traditional way of clarifying the relationship through identifying and comparing the extant definitions of the two terms, this study addresses and compares CSR and BE from three perspectives (basic concepts, academic fields, and social movements) in two analytical dimensions (in practice and in theory). This study indicates that: The relationship between the concept of CSR and BE is different from either the relationship between CSR as an academic field and BE as another academic field or the relationship between CSR as a movement and BE as another movement; within the relationships of the two concepts, fields and movements, the relationship between them in practice is different from that in theory; and CSR and BE are neither totally independent nor one of mutual inclusion, rather, they have similarities and differences.

  • Research Article
    SUN Kunpeng, LUO Ting, XIAO Xing
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(2): 162-189. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0008-8

    This paper analyzes the impact of talent policy on the R&D personnel recruitment and corporate innovation. The research is based on more than 5.8 million online recruitments from listed companies from 2017 to 2018. The study makes five principal findings. Firstly, companies affected by talent policy have significantly increased the number of R&D personnel recruited. Secondly, at the policy level, the incentive effect varies according to different levels of talent policy subsidies and threshold requirements, with more significant effects observed where subsidies are higher and threshold requirements are lower. Thirdly, at the enterprise level, the incentive effect is more significant for high-tech enterprises, better governance companies, and non-state owned enterprises. Fourthly, at the city level, the incentive effect is more significant in cities with better economic development, higher administrative levels, and better scientific research support environments. Finally, after the introduction of talent policy, there have been significant improvements in enterprises' R&D investment, patent output and R&D efficiency. In terms of R&D personnel recruitment, this paper provides micro-level evidence for the influence effect, and identifies specific mechanisms and boundary conditions of talent policy on corporate innovation. It expands the research on the influence effect of government and institutional factors on corporate innovation. In addition, it provides reference for accelerating the building up of a talent-strong country, deepening the implementation of innovation-driven development strategy and realizing economic transformation and upgrading.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    WU Changqi, ZHANG Kunxian, CHEN Xiaorong
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(2): 105-125. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0006-0

    Emerging digital technology are bringing convenience to the global economy and transforming business organizations. The structural changes brought about by digitalization are particularly significant for enterprises in traditional industries. Starting fro

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    BAI Min, WANG Renxiang
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(4): 358-370. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0019-8

    From the perspective of sustainable development, this paper analyzes the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the corporate continuous innovation based on the theory of innovation economics and the demand for innovationdriven development, and then conducts a series of empirical tests based on a sample of Chinese A-shared listed companies from 2008 to 2016. The results show that better CSR performance is conducive to the continuous innovation, and this positive relationship is more pronounced for firms with voluntary accounting information disclosure, for firms of non-high-technology industries, and when policy uncertainty is high. This paper not only enriches the literature on CSR but also provides theoretical references for the innovation practice of enterprises under the innovation-driven strategy.

  • OPINION
    LI Gang
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(4): 340-341. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0017-4

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    CHEN Jin, YANG Zhen, YIN Ximing
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(3): 225-237. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0011-2

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    MENG Lingbiao, QI Shanhong
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(3): 238-253. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0012-9

    Entrepreneurship, a critical source of economic development, requires cultivation to carry it forward. From the perspective of culture, which is the root of thought and attitude, this paper lists the successful entrepreneurs both from China and other countries whose management practices have been influenced by Lao Tzu’s philosophy of management, discusses the convergence of that philosophy with entrepreneurship, and highlights the decisive influence of entrepreneurial mindset. It also explores the cultural pathway to cultivation of entrepreneurship, that is, it addresses the shaping of world outlook of “the unity of humanity and nature” (天人合一) and “something and nothing creating each other”(有无相生).The paper considers the life outlook of “taking hearts as my own, selflessness defines me”(以百姓心为心,无私成其私 ), the value of “respecting and valuing morality”(尊道贵德) and “staying free from arbitrariness”(自然无为). Following the requirements of the times and regional cultural characteristics, this paper refines the entrepreneurship structure model at four levels: mission-driven responsibility mindset, awe-inspiring arbitrariness-free mindset, symbiotic and win-win altruism mindset and progressive mindset. The objective is to help to promote the creative transformation of contemporary values of traditional culture.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    DING Xiaoqin
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(1): 2-26. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0002-6

    China's state-owned enterprises(SOEs) have developed more than 70 years since the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949. From 1949 to 1978,SOEs provided material guarantee for the construction of the PRC, laid a solid foundation for the industrialization process,and ensured that the people were masters of their own affairs. From 1978 to 2012, SOEs upgraded their growth quality and increased their efficiency for improving people's material and cultural life. Since 2012, SOEs have become “stronger, better and bigger”on all fronts for satisfying people's growing expectations for a better life. In essence,reforming SOEs means interpreting and exercising the people-centered development philosophy, and means addressing principal social contradiction through different stages of socialist development, as SOEs care about the main needs of the people. Such a development is a process of constant exploration and continuous growth from strength to strength, which is the inherent logic of theory and practice of SOE growth in new China for more than 70 years.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    XIAO Hongjun, ZHANG Zhe
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(1): 63-73. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0004-0

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    JIANG Fuxiu, WANG Ying
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(1): 27-62. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0003-3

    The top-level design of national governance plays a leading role in reforming the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at the micro level. Following the overall objectives of comprehensively deepening reforms,this paper argues that the objective of SOEs corporate governance reform at this stage should be to improve and develop the SOEs corporate governance system with Chinese characteristics and modernize SOEs corporate governance system and governance capacity. To achieve this ambitious objective, this paper considers the theory of SOEs corporate governance with Chinese characteristics, and then explores the concrete manifestation and implementation pathway to the modernization of SOEs corporate governance system and governance capacity. This paper thus enriches the theory of corporate governance and provides insights into the new era SOEs corporate governance reform.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    LI Xiaolei, ZHANG Yuming
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(3): 254-269. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0013-6

    In the traditional Confucian gentleman culture, Chinese entrepreneurs have cultivated unique mindset and have harnessed such mindset in managing the government-business relationship, which is strategically critical for innovation. This paper builds a theoretical framework of Confucianist entrepreneurship—collaborative innovation—enterprise performance, studies the impact of such entrepreneurship on enterprise performance. From the perspective of collaborative innovation, internal innovation mechanism has been studied, and the moderating effect and conditional boundary of the cordial and clean government business relationship have been further validated. A survey of 1,437 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) made in China in 2019 found that: (1) Confucianist entrepreneurship has a significant positive impact on promoting the enterprise performance; (2) collaborative innovation has demonstrated the action mechanism of Confucianist entrepreneurship on enterprise performance; (3) the cordial and clean government-business relationship positively moderates entrepreneurship on enterprise performance. It also has the positive intermediary effect on collaborative innovation between Confucianist entrepreneurs and enterprise performance. This study has not only expanded the scope of research on entrepreneurship and Confucian culture and ethics, but has also extended the integration of entrepreneurship and collaborative innovation to the micro level, providing theoretical and practical inspiration for the innovation practices of small and micro-sized (SMEs) enterprises.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    QI Yudong, CAI Chengwei
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(2): 187-206. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0009-1

    This paper establishes indicators to measure the degree of digitalization of enterprises with the text mining method, based on the 2011?2018 annual report of China’s listed non-high-tech manufacturing companies, and in the resourcebased view to investigat

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    HU Guodong, WANG Tianjiao
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(3): 295-336. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0015-0

    The modern equity incentive system, which takes shareholders’ interests first as the logic of governance, is based on material reward and short-term behavior, making it difficult to fundamentally build an economic interest community between enterprises and employees. How to avoid opportunistic behavior in equity incentive and stimulate employees’ prolonged sense of organizational identity for enterprise sustainability is an important governance problem of modern enterprises. Based on the theory of social embeddedness, this study uses constructing grounded theory to explore the incentive theory of Qiaojiazihao, which means an exceptional family business owned and run in Shanxi Province but well known throughout China by a family surnamed Qiao in the Qing Dynasty. Qiaojiazihao takes the Confucian community thought as its foundation of social values, the Confucian concept of righteousness and interests as its business ethics, and the social factors, such as emotion and trust, are embedded in its economic organization. The labor sharing incentive thus forms the pathway to Geo-cultural community-social identity community-economic interests community. On this basis, it abstracts the internal mechanism of value generation-system coupling-interest strengthening as the logic of the community based labor sharing incentive of Chinese classical enterprises. This study deepens the understanding of the equity incentive system of Chinese classical enterprises, and is enlightening for revising the institutional logic of rational calculation of equity incentive based on material interests and improving corporate governance and employee shareholding methods from the perspective of social embeddedness. Therefore, this study is helpful to understand the role of employee incentive in securing for employment stability, comprehensiveness, and loyalty.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    QI Yudong, DU Bo, WEN Xin
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(1): 74-125. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0005-7

    China's state-owned enterprises(SOEs) are facing an embedded integration of new functional mission,new classification reform and new digital development. These new tasks require SOEs to embrace digital strategic transformation and innovation for high-quality fulfillment of their national mission. Studying their digital transformation practices, this paper systematically explores the mechanism and path of embedding national mission into SOE digital transformation, and the mode selection of SOE digital transformation under different mission guidance. The findings are: (1) The SOE functional mission focusing on economic development,strategic support and public services in the new era is undertaken by for-profit, strategic and public functional SOEs; (2) the foreign circulation path based on the positioning mechanism-mapping mechanism and the internal consumption connection path for the state capital strategic positioning constitute a double two-way mechanism of embedding the national mission to the SOE digital strategic transformation, leading SOEs to build market-oriented, capacity-oriented and public-oriented digital transformation modes; (3) the three types of reform modes have respectively produced the action mechanism featuring agile strengthening,toughness strengthening and adaptability strengthening, which support the SOE classification performance. This paper attempts to make up for the research gap such as the lack of integration of the SOE digital strategic transformation mode by constructing the theoretical mode of SOE digital strategic transformation under the guidance of national mission, and reveals the intermediary mechanism of digital strategic transformation to support SOEs for fulfilling their functional missions.

  • Research Article
    YIN Kui, ZHAO Jing, NIE Qi
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(2): 215-238. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0010-9

    Innovative leadership and innovation oriented human resource management practices (HRMPs) are soft and hard measures, respectively, that promote team innovation performance (TIP). This study is based on human capital theory, integrating the leadership process model and the content-process-results framework of HRM (HRM-CPO), and using data from 259 teams and 1,278 employees in leader subordinate pairs. Results show that team human capital (THC) is an important mediator in explaining the impact of introducing innovation-oriented practices on TIP. In addition, innovative leadership can improve THC by increasing the level of implemented innovation-oriented HRMPs, thereby affecting TIP. The study extends the level at which HRMPs and leadership behaviors work together and responds to the call for integration of two major research fields of HRM and leadership behavior.

  • Research Article
    ZHU Ying, ZHENG Xiaoqi, ZHANG Yan
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(2): 239-252. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0011-6

    Science and technology innovation talents are at the core of technology innovation, and their mobility has become a source of competition between regions and institutes. This paper analyzes the curriculum vitaes (CVs) of young and middle-aged leading talents in technology innovation, and explores their mobility patterns during their schooling and employment, leading to the following observations: A high-quality learning environment is an essential for the development of innovation talents; the mobility intensity has increased, and the phenomenon of “inbreeding” has been alleviated; the total number of institution or location changes is positively correlated with age, and the overall trend of mobility is stable; the regional imbalance of talent mobility has intensified, and the Matthew Effect, whereby initial advantage amplifies success and initial disadvantage amplifies disadvantage, has become prominent. This paper proposes measures such as refining cross-border mobility policy, expanding the academic vision of innovation talents, encouraging talent employment mobility, optimizing the allocation of resources, improving the human resource environment, establishing a talent development ecology, enriching educational resources, and coordinating the relationship between talent cultivation and talent attraction. These measures are expected to provide insights into the development and mobility of technology innovation talents and to be beneficial for the improvement of science and technology innovation talents policies.

  • Research Article
    LIANG Yan, WANG Jiayin
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(2): 253-271. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0012-3

    Based on the theory of planned behavior, this study considers entrepreneurial traits and divides the entrepreneurial environment into policy environment, economic environment, and educational and cultural environment. Using SPSS 23.0 and Amos 24.0 softwares, a structural equation model of entrepreneurial intentions for university students originating from Hong Kong and Macao is constructed. A questionnaire survey method is used to collect data from 689 Hong Kong and Macao students in Chinese mainland universities to explore the factors influencing their entrepreneurial intentions and the ranges of their entrepreneurial intentions based on demographic variables. The results show that entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, entrepreneurial traits, and entrepreneurial environment have a significant positive impact on the entrepreneurial intentions of Hong Kong and Macao students in the mainland universities. Male students have a higher level of entrepreneurial intentions than female students. Hong Kong students are more likely to have entrepreneurial intentions than Macao students, and students in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (briefly, Greater Bay Area) universities are more likely to have such intentions than those from non-Greater Bay Area universities. Students majoring in science, engineering and medicine show a lower likelihood of intension than those majoring in humanities and social sciences. To comprehensively improve the entrepreneurial intentions of Hong Kong and Macao students and enable them to better shoulder their responsibilities in sharing the development dividends of the Greater Bay Area, it is necessary to start from the entrepreneurial environment and from the perspective of cultivating innovative talents. A support framework that integrates a training system, an ecological system, and a resource system is proposed to support students from Hong Kong and Macao in entrepreneurial development in the mainland.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    ZHU Xiumei, LIU Yue
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(2): 126-150. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0007-7

    The rapid development of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain technology makes the digital intelligence transformation of an enterprise possible. Based on the case study of Haier Group, this paper attempts to address the rationales behin

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    LIU Yi, XIE Kang, DENG Honglin
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2022, 16(2): 151-186. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-007-022-0008-4

    Extant research mostly focuses on the impact of big data on product development (PD) process and performance, and yet there is a lack of theoretical exploration of the transformation path, realization mechanism and transformation paradigm while moving fro

  • Abstracts
    SUN Bo
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(2): 272-278. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0013-0

    Abstracts

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    ZHUANG Qinqin, LIN Ruixing, LUO Weijie
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(1): 126-159. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0006-4

    Innovation is the source of power for high-quality development, and a relaxed institutional arrangement is a necessity for promoting innovation in enterprises. This paper examines the impact of fault tolerance on corporate innovation, theoretically analyzes the positive effects of fault tolerance on stimulating innovation, and estimates the influence of fault tolerance on corporate innovation by using the panel data of listed manufacturing companies from 2007 to 2019, taking the quasi-natural experiment of fault-tolerance system in various places since the new round of state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform. This study finds that the fault-tolerance system has significantly improved the R&D investment and patent application of the pilot SOEs,but the incentive effect is mainly reflected in the utility model patents; fault-tolerance system mainly promotes corporate innovation by alleviating managers' career worries and improving governance ability.Furthermore, the fault-tolerance system is more effective for small and medium-sized SOEs with low market competition and can alleviate the restriction of agency cost on corporate innovation. In addition, the fault-tolerance system has not yet had a significant spillover effect on private enterprises.These results show that in the SOE reform, it is necessary to strengthen the institutional arrangement of fault-tolerance and create a relaxed environment to encourage innovation; it is necessary to organically integrate fault-tolerance-system design into executive measurement and corporate governance, promote fault-tolerant system to be implemented in a wider range of enterprises, and enhance the incentive effect on high-quality innovation.

  • Editorial
    CHEN Jin
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(2): 161-161. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0007-1

  • Research Article
    GUO Xingguang, CHEN Xi
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(4): 425-448. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0028-2

    The development of data science provides new opportunities for innovation in Chinese manufacturing enterprises. As the manufacturing sector urgently needs transformation and upgrading, studying how data empowerment drives innovation in manufacturing enterprises is of strategic significance. This work reviews domestic and foreign research from five aspects: product innovation, business model innovation, long-term competitiveness of enterprises, innovation ecosystem of enterprises, and industry upgrading. It summarizes the main forms and objects of data empowerment, analyzes the paths and mechanisms of data empowerment, and creates a systematic research framework to explore the “black box” of data empowerment that drives manufacturing innovation. Such a framework provides theoretical references for the transformation and upgrading of China’s manufacturing sector. Finally, future prospects are proposed to address the extant research gaps and to conduct more indepth research on innovation driven by data empowerment in the manufacturing sector.

  • SPECIAL ISSUE
    CHEN Jin
    Frontiers of Business Research in China, 2023, 17(1): 1-1. https://doi.org/10.3868/s070-008-023-0001-9