Search Results (220)

With the acceleration of digitalization, smart cities have emerged as a key institutional practice reshaping urban governance and spatial development. However, the impact of smart cities on land use efficiency and the conditions under which these effects are shaped by interactions among different policy tools remain insufficiently understood. This study adopts a policy mix perspective, situating smart city pilots within an institutional environment shaped by regulatory, incentive-based, and enabling policy tools, and systematically examines their impact on land use efficiency and underlying mechanisms. Based on data of 285 Chinese prefecture-level cities over 2000–2021, the study treats smart city pilot as a quasi-natural experiment and applies a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) design, supplemented by moderation and triple-difference models. The results indicate that the smart city pilot significantly enhances land use efficiency overall, although the effects vary across regions and topographical conditions. Further analysis reveals that policy tools with different functional attributes exert differential moderating effects: regulatory policy tools, represented by environmental regulation intensity, negatively moderate the land use efficiency gains of smart cities, while incentive-based tools, such as science and technology fiscal incentives, positively amplify these effects. Additionally, cities implementing both smart city pilots and the “Broadband China” Strategy pilot experience significantly greater improvements, highlighting the enabling policy tools in amplifying smart city performance. Overall, the impact of the smart city pilot on land use efficiency is not isolated but highly contingent on the surrounding policy mix. Interactions among policy tools systematically shape land use outcomes under digital urban governance, offering actionable insights for coordinated policy design. Full article

In the era of digital transformation, organizations increasingly invest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance competitiveness, yet persistent evidence shows that AI investment does not automatically translate into superior firm performance. Drawing on the Resource-Based View (RBV) and Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT), this study aims to explain this paradox by examining how AI-enabled dynamic capability (AIDC) is converted into performance outcomes through organizational mechanisms. Specifically, the study investigates the mediating roles of organizational data-driven culture (DDC) and organizational learning (OL). Data were collected from 254 senior managers and executives in U.S. firms actively employing AI technologies and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that AIDC exerts a significant direct effect on firm performance as well as indirect effects through both DDC and OL. Serial mediation analysis reveals that AIDC enhances performance by first fostering a data-driven mindset and subsequently institutionalizing learning processes that translate AI-generated insights into actionable organizational routines. Moreover, DDC plays a contingent moderating role in the AIDC–performance relationship, revealing a nonlinear effect whereby excessive reliance on data weakens the marginal performance benefits of AIDC. Taken together, these findings demonstrate the dual role of data-driven culture: while DDC functions as an enabling mediator that facilitates AI value creation, beyond a threshold it constrains dynamic reconfiguration by limiting managerial discretion and strategic flexibility. This insight exposes the “dark side” of data-driven culture and extends the RBV and DCT by introducing a boundary condition to the performance effects of AI-enabled capabilities. From a managerial perspective, the study highlights the importance of balancing analytical discipline with adaptive learning to sustain digital efficiency and strategic agility. Full article

Digitalization is widely heralded as a catalyst for growth, yet its role in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 10 (Reduced Inequalities) remains deeply contested. Moving beyond linear assumptions of “digital dividends,” this study adopts a complex socio-technical systems perspective to unravel the configurational pathways linking digitalization to national income inequality. We analyze a high-quality balanced panel of 56 major economies from 2012 to 2022. Employing Panel Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Panel fsQCA) and Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA), this study proposes an evidence-based typology of digitalization-inequality pathways. We reveal that the impact of digital transformation is asymmetric and contingent on geo-economic contexts. NCA identifies Digital Infrastructure, Innovation, and Governance as necessary “bottlenecks” for social equity. Sufficiency analysis uncovers three distinct sustainable development modes: an “Open Innovation Mode” in affluent small economies, driven by global integration and technological frontiers; a “Governance-Regulated Industry Mode” in major economies, where strong state capacity regulates digital industrial scale; and an “Open Niche Mode” for transition economies, leveraging openness to bypass domestic structural deficits. Conversely, we identify a critical “Hollow Governance Trap” in the Global South, where digital governance efforts fail to reduce inequality in the absence of real industrial and infrastructural foundations. These findings challenge one-size-fits-all policies, suggesting that bridging the global digital divide requires context-specific strategies—ranging from synergistic integration to asymmetric breakthroughs—that align digital investments with institutional capacity. Full article

Processes of preparing repertoire for performance in the field of artistic pianism are far from linear, often involving many epistemic modes contributing to an ever-evolving relationship between the pianist, the score and their instrument. Beyond the absorption and internalisation of the score (note-learning, memorisation, addressing technical issues), a range of contingent elements preoccupy pianists in their artistic journey of interpretation. These multifarious influences and approaches have increasingly been acknowledged in the field of Artistic Research, which has for some time sought to move beyond textualist, singular readings of works as bearers of fixed meanings and recognise the creative role of performers and the experience they bring. Through scholarly and phenomenological enquiry concerning the practice of ‘La vallée des cloches’ from Miroirs by Maurice Ravel, in this article, I attempt to represent the multi-modal complexity involved in the creative process of interpretation from my perspective as pianist and artistic researcher. I present novel engagement with scholarship in a multidisciplinary sense, demonstrating a dialogue through which scholarship and performance can interact. I reveal new insights about ‘La vallée des cloches’ through the analysis of my own diary entries logged over three practice sessions, exploring the themes of sound conceptualisation, the consideration of musical structure, and the creation of meaning. Full article

From an interbehavioral and contingential perspective, family dialogues about sexuality are understood as patterns of verbal interaction regulated by social, gender, and caregiving contingencies rather than as individual attitudes or intentions. Background: This study analyzes the functional conditions under which family dialogues about sexuality occur between mothers and their adolescent sons and daughters, considering caregiving roles and gender norms that regulate these interactions. The research aimed to identify the functional relations between communicative practices and the social contingencies that maintain or inhibit them. Methods: A qualitative approach grounded in interbehavioral psychology was employed, using semistructured interviews with 40 mothers of students from a public middle school in Puebla, Mexico. Data were analyzed through contingency analysis, distinguishing micro- and macrocontingential systems related to family sexual education. Results: Results show that, although patterns of avoidance and discourse displacement toward schools or peers persist, families exhibit increasing openness toward comprehensive sexuality education and recognize its preventive value against violence, adolescent pregnancy, and misinformation. Functional delegation and adolescent mediation of dialogue were identified, along with emerging inclusive macrocontingencies linked to the acceptance of diverse families and LGBTIQ+ themes. Conclusions: It is concluded that households function as self-regulated interbehavioral systems in which historical and gender contingencies restrict sexual dialogue, yet gradual functional changes toward respect, inclusion, and shared educational responsibility are observed. Full article

In the rapidly evolving digital economy, the expansion of business-to-business e-commerce ecosystems has compelled traditional industries to integrate into digital supply chains to achieve sustainable development. Industrial e-commerce is no longer limited to online transactions but extends to the digital transformation of backend operations. Drawing upon the perspective of the digital business ecosystem, this study investigates how digital supply chain integration, manifested through digital transformation, impacts energy efficiency. By utilizing a panel fixed effects model and advanced text mining techniques on a dataset of 721 listed firms in the resource-intensive sectors of China spanning from 2011 to 2023, this research constructs a novel index to quantify corporate digital maturity based on semantic analysis. The empirical results demonstrate that digital transformation significantly enhances energy efficiency by facilitating optimized resource allocation and data-driven decision making required by modern digital markets. Mechanism analysis reveals that green innovation functions as a pivotal mediator that bridges the gap between digital investments and environmental performance. Furthermore, this relationship is found to be contingent upon corporate social responsibility strategies, ownership structures, and the scale of the firm. This study contributes to the electronic commerce literature by elucidating how traditional manufacturers can leverage digital technologies and green innovation to navigate the twin transition of digitalization and sustainability, offering theoretical implications for platform governance in industrial sectors. Full article

Low-income individuals are unlikely to save relatively large sums on a regular basis; however, many still fall short of even the modest threshold required for long-term financial security. This study examines the determinants of benchmark-defined undersaving among retail e-payment agents (REAs) operating in the urban slums of Lagos, Nigeria. We use a contingent valuation survey, descriptive analysis, and logistic regression to examine how selected behavioural and demographic factors, alongside a 60-day experimental intervention—the Programmed Microsaving Scheme (PMSS), a hard daily commitment savings device—affect the likelihood of undersaving, defined as saving less than 12% of each REA’s average daily income. While the PMSS appears to have contributed to improvements in post-treatment saving participation and performance among REAs, it did not significantly increase the likelihood of reaching or exceeding the benchmark savings threshold. Consistent with this, average daily income, age, gender, marital status, education, and religion are statistically insignificant predictors of benchmark-defined undersaving. In contrast, self-control, measured using a literature-validated instrument, exhibits a statistically significant negative association with benchmark-defined undersaving, indicating that higher self-control reduces the likelihood of failing to meet the benchmark. Measured risk aversion similarly shows no significant association. Notably, this study introduces a novel 60-day PMSS, co-designed with REAs and neobanks to accommodate daily income savings—a characteristic of the informal sector largely overlooked in the literature on commitment savings devices. From a policy perspective, the findings suggest that while short-horizon commitment devices (such as the 60-day PMSS) and financial literacy are associated with improvements in microsavings among low-income daily earners, achieving benchmark-level saving might require longer-term and more adaptive mechanisms that address income volatility and mitigate other inherent risks. Full article

Scholarly research offers a robust theoretical understanding of design-to-construction processes, but there is a shortage of empirically grounded accounts that trace how procurement decisions, industrial conditions, and production dynamics interact within specific projects. This shortage is largely due to the scarcity of accessible data—constrained by confidentiality obligations and reluctance to disclose contentious procedures—and to the practical difficulty of reconstructing construction processes in a way that follows multiple actors’ perspectives (client, designers, contractor, consultants) within concrete technical, contractual, and market conditions. This paper argues that historical archival material offers a way to address this evidentiary and methodological gap. It reconstructs the construction of the Cameron Offices (1967–1976) in Canberra as an evidence-rich design-to-construction case-story, based on systematic analysis of contracts, specifications, correspondence, site minutes, and technical reports. The resulting case-story preserves multiple perspectives as well as sequence and contingency, rendering project decision-making, production dynamics, and external constraints both highly interconnected and analytically legible. In doing so, the study demonstrates the potential of historical archives as a source of construction data and advances case-stories as a methodological avenue that complements existing analytical models, supports case-based learning, and sets a future agenda for integrating historical, archive-based evidence into design-to-construction research and practice. Full article

This study investigates the key success factors of IT project management in an emerging, innovation-oriented economy using evidence from Kazakhstan. Drawing on expert interviews and an anonymous enterprise survey, we rank 59 processes across the project life cycle and test three hypotheses concerning the roles of human factors and professional governance. The results confirm broad alignment with success factors commonly reported in mature economies yet reveal a distinctive pattern at earlier maturity stages: team composition, communication, and collaboration have a stronger impact on project success than formal controlling and detailed financial governance. We also identify a substantial gap between the declared importance of success factors and their actual implementation—particularly in integration-stage budgeting, acceptance testing and quality assurance, and lessons-learned practices—highlighting how limited practical experience constrains the adoption of governance routines. The findings refine contingency perspectives on project success by positioning key success factors along a development trajectory in which people-centric capabilities serve as prerequisites for the subsequent effectiveness of “hard” project-management methods. The study advances understanding of the role of IT project management in countries at an early stage of developing an innovation-driven economy. Full article

Abusive supervision remains a pervasive and damaging phenomenon in organizations, prompting a critical need to understand preventive mechanisms. We adopt a leader-centric, actor-focused perspective to investigate how a positive organizational context can inhibit leaders’ destructive behaviors. Drawing on Affective Events Theory (AET), we propose that leaders’ awareness of their organization’s philanthropic activities serves as a positive, morally salient event that generates feelings of moral pride. This pride, in turn, is theorized to reduce the likelihood of abusive supervision. Furthermore, we posit that this process is contingent on leaders’ moral reputation maintenance concerns, such that the negative relationship between moral pride and abusive supervision is stronger for leaders who are highly concerned with being perceived as moral. We tested this model using a three-wave survey study involving 434 leaders. The results support our hypotheses, indicating that perceived philanthropy awareness is positively associated with moral pride, which, in turn, predicts lower abusive supervision. This indirect effect is significantly stronger for leaders with high moral reputation maintenance concerns. Our findings contribute to the literature by identifying a novel, positive, and self-regulatory pathway for preventing abusive supervision and showing that applying AET to understand how macro-level organizational good deeds can translate into improved micro-level leader conduct. Full article

Short-video platforms such as TikTok, Douyin, and Instagram Reels have transformed digital consumption into an immersive, algorithmically mediated commerce ecosystem. This study examines how compulsive short video use (CSV), a maladaptive pattern linked to diminished self-regulation, shapes purchase intention (PI). Drawing on compulsive consumption theory, dual-process perspectives, and socio-technical systems theory (STST), we estimate a structural equation model using survey data from 542 active short-video users. The results show that CSV exerts a strong and consistent positive effect on PI, indicating that compulsive engagement functions as a commercially consequential psychological state. This relationship is contingent on socio-technical conditions: technical support and platform familiarity substantially amplify the CSV–PI pathway, social belonging provides weaker but positive reinforcement, and social interaction attenuates the effect by redirecting attention away from transactional cues. These findings position CSV as both a form of digital pathology and a commercially activating mechanism within socio-technical environments. The study also offers guidance for platform managers seeking to balance monetization with ethical responsibility in short-video commerce ecosystems. Full article

Influencer marketing practice predominantly favors same-niche partnerships; however, industry evidence suggests that unconventional pairings can sometimes outperform traditional matches, highlighting a knowledge gap regarding how collaboration structure influences consumer response. Drawing on Optimal Distinctiveness Theory, this research examines whether cross-niche collaborations enhance brand evaluations by fulfilling concurrent desires for inclusion and differentiation. Four controlled experiments (total N = 1482) employing Instagram-style stimuli and behavioral intention measures compare same- versus cross-niche alliances while manipulating or measuring consumers’ need for uniqueness and category expertise. Across studies, cross-niche (versus same-niche) collaborations consistently improve brand attitude, an effect fully mediated by heightened perceptions of brand innovation. Moderation analyses reveal that this indirect effect is amplified among consumers high in need for uniqueness but attenuated—and in some cases reversed—among category experts, who tend to prefer the depth signaled by same-niche partnerships. Alternative explanations, including curiosity, source credibility, and message liking, are empirically ruled out. These findings extend Optimal Distinctiveness Theory to influencer branding by identifying collaboration type as a market-level cue signaling innovation while refining influencer effectiveness models through a dual-contingency framework that incorporates motivational and knowledge-based audience factors. From a managerial perspective, the results suggest deploying cross-niche alliances when targeting novelty-seeking or novice segments while preserving niche purity or offering technical justification when addressing expert consumers, thereby aligning collaboration strategies with audience composition. Full article

Although the use of mobile payments has become increasingly prevalent, understanding the factors that persuade users to continue to rely on the transaction method remains limited. This study applied the Uses and Gratifications Theory and a contingency perspective to examine the relationship between personalized artificial intelligence and users’ intention to continue using mobile payments. Drawing on the contingency perspective, we also assessed four moderating factors: age, educational level, social network, and technological diversity. Using survey data collected from 515 Chinese users and applying hierarchical regression analysis, our results reveal that personalized artificial intelligence significantly enhances users’ intention to continue using mobile payments. Educational level, social network, and technological diversity also have a positive influence but age has a deterring effect. Our empirical findings constitute an academic contribution to a deeper understanding of the dynamics that persuade mobile payment users not to change their routine. Full article

This research analyzes the relationships among environmental factors, organizational structure, strategic orientation, and organizational performance within the Romanian medical system, addressing a theoretical gap in this context. A quantitative approach was applied, analyzing data from 502 employees in the Romanian medical sector. The study used a dual framework, integrating gestalt theory and mediation to examine the environment–structure–strategy–performance relationship. Two-stage cluster analysis, one-way analysis of variance, and partial least squares structural equation modeling tested direct and mediated effects among the variables. From a gestalt perspective, five distinct clusters demonstrated the interplay between environment, structure, and strategy. Romanian healthcare organizations align their structural elements and strategic decisions coherently and distinctly, considering contextual constraints, with implications for several performance dimensions, including patient satisfaction, financial stability, innovation, and internal process improvement. From a mediation perspective, both direct and mediated relationships indicate that organizational structure and strategic orientation positively affect organizational performance and suppress the negative contextual effects. This study contributes theoretically by extending contingency and gestalt theories to the Romanian healthcare context, showing that contextual fit, rather than structural uniformity, determines performance variation. Practically, the findings guide healthcare managers and policymakers in attenuating contextual shocks and improving organizational performance through strategic alignment and flexible structural design. Full article

Fears regarding the future of coral reefs are reflected in a growing scientific effort, worldwide, to help corals survive and adapt to the impacts of climate change through new management strategies. To be viable, these strategies must not only be ecologically beneficial and technically feasible; they must be developed in partnership with Indigenous peoples and sensitive to the needs and aspirations of local communities, stakeholders and broader publics. This paper synthesizes insights from a comprehensive program of qualitative and quantitative social research, conducted through Australia’s Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, exploring local community and public perspectives on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and the prospect of assisted adaptation. While the results of this research indicate strong support for prospective interventions to help the GBR, they also demonstrate that local communities and the broader Australian public hold multiple visions for the GBR’s future and engage in careful processes to imagine and evaluate assisted adaptation. We discuss the implications of this complexity for the development of technically robust and socially responsible adaptation intervention in the GBR, emphasizing the opportunities it presents for robust and inclusive dialogue, knowledge building, and governance around these strategies. Community and public support, we conclude, is contingent on moving beyond the seemingly straightforward question of whether or not people support intervention and towards forms of engagement that allow space for social and cultural diversity and the co-creation of ethically grounded adaptation pathways. Full article