With the development of national strategies (such as Industrial 4.0 and Made in China 2025), how to build digital enterprises and cultivate innovation capabilities of enterprises has become a critical problem to Chinese manufacturing enterprises. However, the literature on the specific path of information technology (IT) capabilities to the innovation of enterprises is still lacking a body of relevant empirical research. In particular, it has not yet thought to explore the information technology capabilities, digital transformation, and then innovation performance of manufacturing enterprises. By performing a questionnaire investigation for 138 Chinese manufacturing enterprises, this study adopted both a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the set relations of the conjunctions and conditions and the statistical associations by studying the relationships among information technology capabilities, digital transformation and innovation performance. The results show that the positive impacts of information technology capabilities on the process innovation performance and the digital transformation, as well as the positive impacts of digital transformation on both process innovation performance and product innovation performance. Specifically, digital transformation takes on a new function of partial mediation of IT capabilities and process innovation performance, and digital transformation functions as a complete mediator for IT capabilities and product innovation performance. The combinations of causal recipes related to innovation performance are provided by a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Through the analyses of SEM and fsQCA, this research develops the formation mechanisms of both process innovation performance and product innovation performance, and provides guidance for both IT and innovation management of manufacturing enterprises in China.

Purpose: With the increasingly collaborative nature of innovation and the expanding role of digital platforms on inter-firm collaboration, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of digital platforms on collaborative innovation capability (CIC) under conditions of two distinctive governance mechanisms. Furthermore, the competitive benefits of CIC at different levels of environmental uncertainty are examined to clarify the performance of collaborative innovation. Design/methodology/approach: The research model is proposed based on dynamic capabilities theory, information technology (IT)-enabled organizational capability and governance mechanisms literature, and then validated by using partial least squares with data collected from 200 Chinese firms that engage in digital collaboration with their major channel distributors. Findings: Empirical results show that the enabling effect of digital platforms capability on CIC is positively moderated by relational governance while negatively moderated by formal governance, and both governance mechanisms directly and positively influence CIC; the positive relationship between CIC and competitive performance is stronger for higher level of environmental uncertainty; and CIC is the key mediator converting digital platforms capability into competitive performance. Originality/value: This study enriches the existing literatures in IT-innovation relationship by not only surfacing the interplay of digital platforms capability with two distinctive governance mechanisms in building CIC, but also clarifying the competitive benefits of CIC in an uncertain environment. Moreover, this study helps explain the controversial issue of the business value of IT capability by discovering the mediating role of CIC.

Purpose: E-commerce content platforms are a typical type of multi-sided platform that combines transactions with social media platforms. To solve the managerial dilemma of balancing the tension between control and autonomy of influencers' output performance, this study aims to investigate how exercising output controls through performance rewards and performance punishments impact the quantity and quality of influencers' content generation.Design/methodology/approach: Choosing JD WeChat Shopping Circle as the research context and leveraging the introduction of a double commission subsidy policy and a removal policy as quasi-natural experiments, this study applied the difference-in-differences (DID) method to empirically test hypotheses.Findings: Performance rewards incentivize influencers to generate high-quality content, but such incentivizing effects attenuate over time. Performance punishment drives influencers to generate expected pieces of high-quality content, and such safeguarding effects accentuate over time.Originality/value: This study proposes output controls as an important form of governance mechanism in multi-sided platforms and substantiates how rewards and punishments as two facets of incentives affect complementors' behaviors. In addition, by distinguishing performance-contingent rewards from completion-contingent rewards, this study helps resolve the mixed findings on the effects of monetary rewards in the user-generated content (UGC) literature.

The methods consumers use to reduce their perceived risk and make reasonable purchase decisions can be synthesized under the umbrella term “consumer information search behavior” (CISB). As one key factor that conveys a product’s value and quality, price has a significant impact on CISB. There are few studies that comprehensively consider the impact of price level (PL) and perceived price dispersion (PPD) on CISB, and there is a certain disagreement about the impact of PPD specific to the online shopping environment. To address this research gap, we construct a model using the data from 5515 consumers’ purchasing and browsing behavior on a B2C e-commerce website, selecting six products as our research objects. We use a hierarchical regression analysis method to study the influence of product PL and PPD on CISB, and to explore the moderating effect of product categories (durables and consumables) on the relationship between PL, PPD and CISB. The results show that PL significantly affects CISB, and that product categories have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between PL and CISB. For durable goods, when the PL is high, consumers tend to increase their search behavior, both in depth and in breadth, and for consumables with low PL but higher purchase frequency, consumers likewise tend to increase their search behavior. In the B2C online shopping environment, PPD has a significant positive effect on CISB, and product category has a moderating effect on the relationship between PPD and CISB. When consumers purchase consumables, the higher the PPD, the higher the depth of CISB. The findings have several implications for marketing practitioners and enterprises advertising, also can help customers save time and energy in their search behaviors.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the first global “Infodemic” in the era of social media. Understanding how governments deal with the negative impacts of the infodemic (e.g., public panic) has become a priority. This paper uses the theoretical framework of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to explore mechanisms for alleviating panic associated with the infodemic. It considers, in particular, the quality of information circulated on Government Social Media (GSM) as the central route and local government trust as the peripheral route. An empirical study was conducted using data from a focus group interview and a questionnaire survey collected within the first three weeks following the citywide lockdown of Wuhan, China. The results show that as: (1) Quality of GSM information does not significantly reduce public panic, but local government trust significantly increases people’s pandemic prevention knowledge; (2) Pandemic prevention knowledge is a critical mediator between information quality of GSM and public panic, as well as local government trust and public panic; and (3) Information quality of GSM significantly increases people’s trust in local governments. This paper contributes to the literature on infodemic and government social media and provides implications for practice.