Introduction: The “Green Paper on the Mental Well-being of Chinese Career Women” indicates that around 85% of Career Women face mental health challenges such as anxiety, depression, and anger, with these issues being more common than in their male counterparts in China. Both work and family are identified as two major contributors to these problems. Utilizing Conservation of Resources theory, this paper examines work–family conflict and overwork as significant explanatory variables and develops a moderated mediation model to investigate the mechanisms affecting mental health issues among Chinese career women.Methods: Data were gathered through a questionnaire survey, with 500 questionnaires distributed and 393 responses received. Hayes’ PROCESS macro for SPSS was employed to examine moderated mediation models, with Bootstrap resampling set at 1000.Results: (1) Work–family conflict (abbreviated as WFC) is significantly associated with emotional exhaustion (abbreviated as EE) and mental health problems in career women, with emotional exhaustion serving as a mediator between work–family conflict and mental health. (2) Overwork is positively linked to emotional exhaustion and influences the relationship between work–family conflict and emotional exhaustion. (3) Overwork also moderates the mediation effect of work–family conflict on mental health via emotional exhaustion, amplifying the mediation effect when career women are overburdened.Discussion: This study provides fresh insights into the mechanisms underlying mental health issues among career women, offering valuable information for addressing these challenges.

The significance of political participation in social governance and development is increasingly prominent. Citizens’ institutionalized political participation stands as a primary symbol of realizing people’s ownership. Public trust in government, a crucial emotional element of political participation, serves as a bridge for institutionalized political participation. This study formulates a moderated mediation model, encompassing public cognition, emotions, attitudes, and political behaviors. The model aims to elucidate the attributional paths of governmental governance capacity, social justice, and social security on public trust in government and political participation. The findings underscore three pivotal antecedents of public trust in government: citizens perceptions of governance capacity, social justice, and social security foster political participation behavior through public trust in government, subsequently influencing overall political participation. Political efficacy plays a moderating role, influencing the strength of the mediating effect from public trust in government to institutionalized political participation. This addresses a gap in prior research on the intrinsic motivation of citizens’ political engagement. The study emphasizes the role of political efficacy in facilitating and motivating individuals for “orderly political participation,” providing a practical foundation for enhancing the stability of social governance and democratic development.

Firms belong to social communities that are experts in creation of new knowledge from environment. Knowledge that is generated from past experience and from environment can affect firm’s process positively. Processing knowledge assimilation in a better way, strong leadership abilities are needed. That can recognize knowledge from environment in the sense of opportunities and threats. In this article, we discuss the effect of absorptive capacity (ACAP) and dominant logic (DL) on enterprise resource planning (ERP). Dynamic capabilities (DC) of top managers to absorb the knowledge from the environment and assimilate it according to their needs that improve firm’s enterprise resource planning (ERP). Our main focus in this article is knowledge and how top-level managers routine that knowledge to get the future benefits for their respective firms. The model was adopted from past literature that shows the effect of absorptive capacity its subsets and dominant logic and its dimensions on ERP assimilation. For this study we examined the Chinese firms located in Hefei city (Anhui province) China. Hefei is one of the fastest developing and emerging economic hub in China. Employees from top level are the target group in this study. The results prove our hypotheses that absorptive capacity and dominant logic have a positive influence on ERP in Chinese firms, that not only increases the productivity and performance of the firm, but also helps in the allocation of resources and decision making processes to stand in the dynamic market and oppose any kind of threats. Our results showed positive correlation between all the variables.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the impact of three types of organizational institutional pressures – coercive, normative and mimetic – on the innovative behavior of knowledge workers. It examines the distinct moderating roles of transformational and transactional leadership, with public service motivation (PSM) serving as the mediating mechanism. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on two independent studies (Study 1:36 teams, 380 responses on transformational leadership; Study 2:41 teams, 407 responses on transactional leadership), the authors used a cross-level moderated mediation model. Confirmatory factor analysis validated the measurement structure, and the use of cross-level data ensured methodological rigor. Findings: Transformational leadership amplifies the positive impact of normative and mimetic pressures on PSM, thereby enhancing innovation. Conversely, transactional leadership undermines the motivational link of coercive pressure to PSM, suppressing innovation. These results highlight the situational dependency of leadership: transformational leadership can unlock the innovative potential inherent in norms and imitation pressures, whereas transactional leadership tends to exacerbate execution rigidity in compliance-emphasizing environments, weakening the translation of coercive pressure into innovative behavior. Research limitations/implications: While this study uses cross-level data, it relies on self-reported measures. Although steps were taken to ensure validity in the data analysis, future research could directly measure performance using objective scales to achieve greater scientific rigor. Practical implications: Organizations should strategically align leadership styles with types of institutional pressure. Transformational leadership is critical for leveraging the motivational and innovative potential of normative and mimetic pressures. In contrast, transactional leadership should be minimized in coercive contexts to avoid suppressing creativity. Cultivating PSM through clear communication of institutional goals and fostering autonomy in rule-driven environments can help convert external pressures into sustainable drivers of innovation. Originality/value: This study categorizes institutional pressures into coercive, normative and mimetic types, exploring their unique interplay with leadership styles. The research reveals an asymmetrical leadership effect: transformational leaders enhance innovation in value-driven contexts, whereas transactional leaders impede it in environments tightly regulated by policies and rules. By integrating institutional theory with leadership studies, this research offers a framework for understanding the innovation processes of knowledge workers.