Purpose: Some indirect evidence indicates that leadership may affect work-related flow, a core concept in positive psychology. However, the exact process of how this relationship takes place is still unknown. Based on the nature of leader-member exchange (LMX), the purpose of this paper is to hypothesize a moderated mediation model of the LMX-flow relationship in which psychological empowerment is the mediator while emotional intelligence (EI) is the moderator.Design/methodology/approach: Two samples are utilized in the study. One sample (n=219) is from the service industry representing a high emotional labor job, and the other sample (n=208) is from the manufacturing industry representing a low emotional labor job.Findings: In both the samples, psychological empowerment mediates the positive relationship between LMX and work-related flow. However, the moderated mediation effect of EI is supported only in the service sample but not in the manufacturing sample.Practical implications: Leader plays an important role in facilitating subordinates’ flow experience by enhancing psychological empowerment. For the high emotional labor job, employees with high EI are better able to transfer leader’s support into flow experience.Originality/value: The paper, as the first study to connect LMX with flow concept, advances the study of positive psychology in workplace context, especially the leadership field. By proposing a mediating mechanism and outlining EI as a moderator, the study explains how LMX relates to flow experience at work.

Digital technology drives global industrial transformation. The synchronized development of organizational digital transformation and innovation systems is pivotal in corporate strategy and governmental governance. The dynamic interaction mechanisms among digital economy, government innovation policy, and regional innovation capacity remain insufficiently explored. This study employs panel data from 15 prefecture-level cities within the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, spanning the years 2012 to 2020, and uses the panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model to investigate the interrelationships among the digital economy, government innovation preferences (the government’s supportive attitude and policy inclination towards innovative activities in the fields of science and technology as well as economic development), and regional innovation capacity. This research emphasizes the impact of the digital economy on regional innovation capacity and the influence of government innovation preferences on regional innovation capacity. The findings indicate that both the digital economy and government innovation preferences significantly enhance technological and product innovation, with this effect being particularly pronounced in the initial stages but diminishing over time. The three dimensions of the digital economy exert varying effects on technological and product innovation. Specifically, digital application has the most substantial impact on technological innovation, whereas infrastructure has a more pronounced effect on product innovation. Overall, the influence of government innovation preferences on technological and product innovation is less significant than that of the digital economy. The intensity of government innovation preferences has a greater impact than does the structure of government innovation preferences; however, in the long term, the structure of government innovation preferences can exert a more stable and sustainable influence. This study offers policy implications for constructing an innovation ecosystem driven by the synergy between government and market forces, particularly in optimizing data governance systems and planning sustainable transformation pathways, which hold practical value.

Empowering leadership can provide more resource support for organizations and better match the characteristics of current knowledge employees, such as a high demand for autonomy and pursuit of value diversification. However, existing literature has not fully clarified the specific cognitive transmission mechanisms linking empowering leadership to knowledge workers’ job crafting, nor has it sufficiently examined the boundary conditions of this relationship under specific individual traits. This study aimed to explore the impact of empowering leadership on knowledge employees’ job crafting by constructing a moderated mediation model. This study introduces role breadth self-efficacy as a mediating variable and learning goal orientation as a moderating variable and collects questionnaire data to investigate the underlying mechanisms among 338 knowledge employees. Empowering leadership has a positive effect on knowledge employees’ job crafting. Role breadth self-efficacy mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and job crafting. Learning goal orientation positively moderated the impact of empowering leadership on role breadth self-efficacy. Building an empowering leadership model with empowerment and psychological safety at its core can stimulate employees’ job crafting. Role breadth self-efficacy can be improved by challenging tasks and systematic training. The implementation of differentiated management based on learning-goal orientation strengthens the empowerment effect. These measures provide feasible paths for organizations to drive adaptive changes.