With the rapid development of the economy and society, enterprises are increasingly prioritizing environmental and social sustainability alongside economic benefits. As a critical driver of technological innovation, the effective application of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance corporate sustainability performance has garnered considerable attention from both academia and industry. This study explores the impact of AI adoption intensity on corporate sustainability performance, with a particular focus on the mediating role of organizational change and its moderated mediation effect. Employing an empirical analysis approach, this study collected 451 employee survey responses from manufacturing enterprises. The results indicate that AI adoption intensity substantially enhances corporate sustainability performance, reflected in comprehensive improvements in economic, environmental, and social benefits. Furthermore, organizational change serves as a crucial mediator between AI adoption and sustainability performance, with this mediation effect moderated by internal and external environmental factors. The study finds that enterprises with high digital capabilities and innovative cultures are more effective in leveraging AI to enhance sustainability performance. This suggests that in promoting AI applications, enterprises should not only focus on technology adoption but also emphasize internal organizational change and the development of digital capabilities to fully achieve sustainability goals. Through empirical analysis, this study provides an in-depth understanding of the application paths and mechanisms of AI in corporate sustainability, offering a theoretical foundation and practical guidance for corporate managers in strategy and policymaking.

Counterproductive work behavior wastes organizational resources and significantly damages organizational development. The importance of employees’ counterproductive work behaviors in organizations is becoming increasingly obvious. This is directly related to the sustainable development and survival of organizations. This study believes that employee’s behavior is closely related to leadership style. In particular, employees’ in small- and medium-sized enterprises are often manipulated and deceived by leaders, resulting in dissatisfaction and counterproductive work behavior. In order to address this behavior, this study collected survey data from 289 employees from Chinese SMEs to explore the relationship between perceived abusive supervision and organizational political behavior in Machiavellian leadership and counterproductive work behavior. The results suggest that Machiavellian positive influence counterproductive work behavior through a mediating role of perceived abusive supervision. Furthermore, leader organizational political behavior moderates the indirect effect of perceived abusive supervision such that the effect is stronger when leader organizational political behavior is high. This study aimed to identify the variables that increase employees counterproductive work behavior, propose recommendations for reducing employees’ counterproductive work behavior, expanded the scope of counterproductive work behavior research, and provided a theoretical basis for related studies.

In the era of digital transformation, the role of digital leadership in companies is continuously demanded and its importance is increasingly emphasized. In relation to such research background, this study focuses on digital leadership, a new form of leadership rather than traditional leadership as suggested in previous studies, as a way to promote organizational sustainability and provide the moderated mediation model for organizational sustainability in a rapidly changing innovative business environment in the digital age. The main contribution of this study is to fill the gap in previous research and expand the research field on leadership types and organizational sustainability. To achieve our research goals, we conduct empirical study and the questionnaire was distributed to 552 organizational members from Chinese small and medium-sized information technology enterprises. The results presented that digital leadership had positive influence on digital organizational culture, digital capability, and Organizational sustainability. In addition, digital organizational culture and digital capability significantly mediated the relationship between digital leadership and organizational sustainability. Absorptive capacity significantly moderated the mediating effect of digital capability between digital leadership and organizational sustainability. Finally, innovation atmosphere significantly moderated the impact of digital organizational culture on organizational sustainability. The result indicates that digital leadership significantly enhances organizational sustainability both directly and indirectly through digital capabilities and digital organizational culture. Furthermore, absorptive capacity and innovation atmosphere positively moderate these relationships, with high levels of absorptive capacity and innovation atmosphere amplifying the impact of digital leadership on sustainability. This study contributes to the literature by providing a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms through which digital leadership drives organizational sustainability, offering practical insights for SMEs undergoing digital transformation.

An organizational ethical climate enhances the degree of collaboration and cohesion among employees and facilitates the development and interests of organizations. Such roles lead to organizational sustainable development and survival. Therefore, the importance of ethical climate in organizations is becoming increasingly apparent. In this background, this study aims to explore whether an organizational ethical climate can improve whistleblowing behavior and the mediating role of organizational identification in promoting whistleblowing behavior. Most previous studies have only focused on the mediating or moderating role of the model. This study expands the research field, adds the dual moderation of person–organization value congruence and leader ethical behavior, and verifies two moderated mediation models. Overall, the purpose of this study is to determine the behavior of employees under the influence of an organizational ethical climate and, on this basis, propose suggestions for strengthening organizational ethical climate, expanding the scope of research on organizational climate and providing a theoretical basis for related research. In order to achieve the research goals, the data were collected from 344 Chinese SMEs for empirical analysis. The results showed that an organizational ethical climate has no direct impact on whistleblowing behavior but could have a positive effect on whistleblowing formation through the mediating variable of organizational identification. In addition, person–organization value congruence and leader ethical behavior significantly moderated the mediating role of organizational identification between organizational ethical climate and whistleblowing behavior. Finally, the directions that can contribute to future research were suggested.

In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, competition among IT industries is becoming increasingly fierce. If a company is weak in its competitive advantage, it can have a huge negative impact on its organizational sustainability and ultimately lead to organizational failure. In such a research background, we highlighted that employees’ innovative performance via creativity acts as an alternative lubricant to increase the sustainable competitive advantage and promote overall organizational sustainability. In particular, employees’ innovative performance has a great relationship with organizational culture and types of leadership. Hence, we focused on exploring the ways in which visionary leadership increases employees’ innovative performance, presenting and verifying a moderated mediation research model related to the innovative performance. To verify our research model, this study conducted a survey of 303 employees from the information technology (IT) industry of SMEs in China. According to the results, visionary leadership was found to have a positive influence on both psychological empowerment and employees’ innovative performance. In addition, psychological empowerment partially mediated the impact of visionary leadership on the innovation performance. Finally, the organizational learning culture moderated the effects of psychological empowerment and the innovation performance. Overall, this study contributes to revealing the process that leads to employees’ innovative performance and contributes to expanding the research field by verifying the moderated mediation model for a sustainable competitive advantage and organizational sustainability in IT Industry 4.0 for SMEs.

The organizational system is directly associated with overall organizational management and sustainability. The reason is that the organizational system has a strong relationship with organizational performance. One of the most important functions of the organizational system is the high-performance work system, which is the system that manages the employees so that they can maximize their functions, this study focuses on the importance of a high-performance work system in order to achieve organizational goals and increase performance. In particular, a high-performance work system is directly related to innovation performance that secures the competitive advantage of organizations. Based on such background, this study focused on how a high-performance system improves innovation performance. Unlike previous studies, rather than simply focusing on variables exploration or main effect verification, we provided and verified the research model related to the process by which innovation performance occurs. Specifically, this study aimed to investigate whether high-performance work systems in organizations enhance employees’ innovation performance and examined the mediating role of employees’ intrinsic motivation in enhancing innovation performance. In addition, we investigated the moderating role of employee person–organization fit in high-performance work systems and employee intrinsic ation directly. To validate this model, we collected data from 309 members of Chinese SMEs. We found that high-performance work systems positively affect employees’ innovation performance through a person–organization fit and that employees’ person–organization fit significantly moderates the relationship between high-performance work systems and employees’ intrinsic motivation directly. Overall, this study expands the scope of research on the enhancement of employee innovation performance and provides a theoretical basis for related research, which is also a contribution of this study.