Foreign direct investment (FDI) has long been regarded as a key source of new knowledge external to the domestic economy, but relatively little is known about how the host regions’ technological upgrading is affected by industrial structure in terms of considering cognitive proximity. This article explores how industrial structure, whether related or unrelated, influences technological upgrading within and across cities. Based on a panel dataset on 239 Chinese cities in 2001–2009, our empirical results show that FDI spillover has a positive effect on local technological upgrading in both nearby and neighboring cities. Therefore, in Chinese cities, related industrial variety significantly enhances FDI spillover, while unrelated industrial variety diminishes FDI spillover. Only related industrial variety has a spatial effect, and it facilitates technology transfers and disseminations of FDI across cities. Our empirical evidence has implications at both the theoretical level and for policy making.

Many studies have examined the negative effects of work-family conflict on society, organizations, and individuals. Nonetheless, alleviating employee work-family conflict is a topic worthy of further investigation. Few studies examine the antecedent variables of work-family conflict from personal skill and Guanxi perspectives. Studies that test the moderating role of family-friendly practices at the organization level are also rare. Accordingly, we collected data from 404 employees of 51 organizations. The research data are time-lagged and multileveled. The results of hierarchical linear model (HLM) show: (1) Employee political skill negatively affects employee perceived work-family conflict; (2) Employee political skill positively affects supervisor-subordinate Guanxi; (3) Supervisor-subordinate Guanxi partially mediates the relationship between employee political skill and employee work-family conflict (that is, employees can use their political skill to build high-quality supervisor-subordinate Guanxi, further reducing their perceived work-family conflict); (4) Organization family-friendly practices negatively moderate the relationship between supervisor-subordinate Guanxi and work-family conflict (that is, in organizations with high level family-friendly practices, the negative relationship between supervisor-subordinate Guanxi and work-family conflict becomes weak); Furthermore, by coding with Mplus software (Muthen & Muthen, Los Angeles, CA, USA), we also find: (5) Organization family-friendly practices moderate the indirect effect of employee political skill on employee work-family conflict. The results have both theoretical and empirical implications. Further research directions are addressed at the end.