The diffusion of big data in recent years has stimulated many companies to develop big data analytics capability (BDAC) to boost innovation performance. However, research regarding how and when BDAC can increase innovation performance is still scant. This study aims to test how (i.e., the mediating role of strategic flexibility and strategic innovation) and when (i.e., the moderating role of environmental uncertainty) BDAC can boost a firm’s innovation performance drawing on resource-based theory. Through a survey of 421 Chinese managers and employees who are engaged in the field of big data analytics, this study reveals that (1) BDAC has a positive effect on innovation performance, (2) strategic flexibility and strategic innovation play a significant serial mediating role in this relationship, and (3) the positive effect of BDAC on innovation performance is more significant under high (vs. low) environmental uncertainty conditions. This study contributes to the extant literature by verifying how BDAC can increase a firm’s innovation performance through the serial mediating role of strategic flexibility and strategic innovation. It also confirms a contingent factor (i.e., environmental uncertainty) regarding the positive effect of BDAC on innovation performance.

This study focuses on the restorative effects of immersive virtual reality (VR) forest experiences on elderly people during the COVID-19 lockdown. A field experiment with 63 elderly participants was conducted in an elderly care institution in China. The results showed that a five-minute VR forest experience with three minutes of subsequent reliving can bring immediate psychological improvements (i.e., increased positive affect, decreased negative affect, and enhanced stress recovery) to elderly individuals. The negative affect decrease and stress recovery enhancement were more obvious among introverted individuals. Furthermore, participating in three VR forest experiences over 3 consecutive days can bring continuous psychological improvements. Moreover, short VR forest experiences were unable to significantly decrease the blood pressure of participants. The effects of three VR experiences over 3 days on blood pressure improvement were also nonsignificant. Additionally, VR forest experiences can increase elderly participants’ intentions to undertake real forest therapy.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine a possible negative spillover effect in sports sponsorship to answer whether the sponsored team’s poor performance will have a negative effect on audiences’ trust in its sponsor’s brand. The authors further analysed whether the audience’s attitude towards the team plays a mediating role and whether the audience’s personality type (active vs passive) plays a moderating role in this negative spillover effect. Design/methodology/approach: Three experimental studies were conducted with 380 Chinese undergraduates and MBA student participants over two years. The authors designed the experiment as a computer-mediated intervention in which good, poor and neutral performance groups were compared. After the respondents were exposed to the intervention, we asked them to answer questions using a computer terminal. We analysed the data from the three experiments through analysis of variance (ANOVA), regression analysis and a bootstrap. Findings: The audiences who were exposed to a team’s poor performance condition reported less trust in the sponsor’s brand relative to those exposed to a good performance condition, and the brand trust was even lower than for those who were exposed to a control condition (no performance information). Further, the audience’s negative attitude towards the sports team mediated the negative effect of the team’s poor performance on its sponsor’s brand trust. The negative effect was more obvious for individuals with Type A personalities (active) than for those with Type B personalities (passive). Originality/value: The prior literature has neglected a possible negative effect of a sports team’s performance on its sponsor’s brand trust. In particular, questions of whether, how and when this negative effect occurs are critical for sponsors, teams, and audiences. Since sports team sponsorship is burgeoning in China, the negative implications are unclear in this new context. Thus, the revelation that the negative spillover effects of a team’s poor performance on audiences’ trust in the sponsor’s brand provides two original contributions. First, the negative effect reveals value for multiple sponsorship stakeholders. Second, the Chinese context in this study adds value for future research and practice regarding both Chinese-foreign and domestic Chinese decisions.

This study aims to investigate the causes of workplace complaints among Chinese employees and to develop a scale to measure them, drawing on the theory of work adjustment. We first obtained 49 items regarding employees' complaints following rigorous item generation and refinement procedures. Then, we conducted a survey with convenience sampling and obtained a sample of 268 employees. The exploratory factor analysis based on this sample generated a six-factor solution that explained 65.85% of the variance. The six factors include four person-environment (P-E) interactional factors, namely, dissatisfaction due to (a) interpersonal relationships; (b) management systems; (c) work conditions; and (d) authoritarian leadership; and two P-E misfit factors, namely, perceived misfit regarding (e) work content; and (f) job responsibilities. Furthermore, we obtained another sample of 349 employees through snowball sampling, on which we further validated the six-correlated-factor solution through confirmatory factor analysis. This study contributes to the literature by identifying causes of Chinese employees' complaints different from those attributed to their counterparts in Western cultures. This outcome particularly reveals that “dissatisfaction with interpersonal relationships” with colleagues was the leading cause of complaints among Chinese employees, rather than the “misfit between employees' needs and organizational rewards” revealed by Western culture-based studies. Both our findings and the scale we developed have practical implications for companies that employ Chinese employees.