What Type of Social Support Is Important for Student Resilience During COVID-19? A Latent Profile Analysis

In the face of the sudden outbreak of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), some students showed resilience in coping with difficulties while some did not. While different types of students showed different levels of resilience, are there significant characteristics among students with similar levels of resilience? In this study, 3,454 students (aged 15–25 years) were surveyed to understand students' perceived social support-coping modes while investigating the demographic characteristics and mental health status of subclasses of different modes. We found that (1) in the two subgroups of students with extremely low and low levels of perceived social support, the source of students' perceived social support did not have a clear orientation; in the two subgroups with moderate and high levels of perceived social support, the most perceived emotional support was from family and friends, while the least perceived support was companionship from teachers, classmates, and relatives, and problems related to the dependability of friends and communication with family. (2) The degree of social support perceived by students is directly proportional to the coping tendency, i.e., as the degree of perceived social support increases, the proportion of students adopting active coping strategies increases while that of students adopting negative coping strategies decreases; thus, we concluded that high levels of emotional support from family and friends can increase students' tendency of adopting positive strategies to cope with difficulties, while problems related to the dependability of friends and communication with family decrease students' tendency of adopting positive coping strategies. (3) Gender had a significant impact on the extremely low and low levels of perceived social support-negative coping tendencies; these subgroups accounted for 34.6% of the total students. Gender showed no significant influence on other subgroups, a school type had no impact on the distribution of the subgroups. (4) The higher the degree of perceived social support, the lower is the degree of students' general anxiety, and the lower is the degree of impact by the COVID-19 pandemic. The subdivision of student groups allows us to design more targeted support programmes for students with different psychological characteristics to help them alleviate stress during the COVID-19 epidemic

Effect of Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Machiavellianism on Entrepreneurial Intention—The Mediating of Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy

The driving factors behind the exploration and search for entrepreneurial intention (EI) are critical to entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial practice. To reveal in depth the influence of personality traits on EI, our study introduces the opposite of proactive personality—the dark triad that consists of narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Our study used the MBA students of Tianjin University as a sample to analyze the relationship between the dark triad, entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and EI. A total of 334 MBA students aged 24–47 years participated and the participation rate is 95.71%. The data collection was largely concentrated in the period from May 15 to June 5, 2018. From the overall perspective of the dark triad, the results show that the dark triad positively predicts EI, and ESE has a partial mediating effect on the dark triad and EI. From the perspective of the three members of the dark triad, the study found that narcissism/psychopathy has a negative effect on ESE and EI; narcissism/psychopathy has a non-linear effect on EI; Machiavellianism has a positive effect on ESE and EI; and ESE has a mediating effect on the three members of the dark triad and EI. In short, our research reveals that the three members of the dark triad have different effects on EI in different cultural contexts, and the research findings have certain reference value for further improvement of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial practice

How Does Supply Chain Resilience Affect Supply Chain Performance? The Mediating Effect of Sustainability

In recent years, interruption or failure events have occurred due to frequent natural disasters, the outbreak of COVID-19, policy environment turbulence, an increasingly complex business environment, and the increasingly fragile global supply chain. This has reduced the efficiency of supply chains and customer service quality and increased operating costs, creating new requirements for supply chain flexibility and sustainability. When investigating 21 companies based on 200 questionnaires and a structural equation model analysis, the results showed that the elasticity of the supply chain for supply chain sustainability, economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environment sustainability has an obvious positive effect: supply chain sustainability has an obvious positive effect on supply chain performance. Supply chain resilience has no direct positive effect on supply chain performance, but it has a strong indirect effect on supply chain performance under the mediating effect of supply chain sustainability. In view of this, in order to create sustainable supply chain development and improve the performances of supply chains, it is necessary to establish the awareness of risk prevention, root the risk culture in supply chain network organization, and improve supply chain resilience in multiple dimensions. Enterprises in the supply chain should continue to build their resilience and establish effective strategies to integrate supply chains. The intermediary role of sustainability in supply chains and of supply chain flexibility in supply chain performance shows the influence of economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable angles, such as the implementation of supply chain management, the maximization of the interests of the whole supply chain, improving the ability of supply chain enterprises to innovate and develop, establishing customer awareness, and enhancing humanistic ideas. Dynamic selection of supply chain partners while focusing on their green performance promotes the green development of supply chain enterprises

Opportunities or Threats? The Role of Entrepreneurial Risk Perception in Shaping the Entrepreneurial Motivation

Entrepreneurial risk is an important factor that individuals must consider when starting their own business. The COVID-19 continues to rage, bringing great challenges to China’s economy and entrepreneurial activities. In this study, college students encounter greater entrepreneurial risks. There are two opposing views on the role of entrepreneurial risk in shaping individual entrepreneurial motivation: one view that risk is a threat, and the other view that entrepreneurial risk contains opportunity. Existing studies have discussed the issues from individual factors and environment factors, respectively, ignoring the combined effects of individual and environment factors. Person–situation transactions theory points out that individuals usually make their final behavior choices based on their comprehensive evaluation of environmental factors and themselves. Therefore, individual and environment factors should be integrated to investigate the effect of entrepreneurial risk on entrepreneurial motivation. Based on the person–situation transactions theory, this study establishes a theoretical model that entrepreneurial risk perception influences necessity and opportunity entrepreneurial motivation through entrepreneurial self-efficacy and discusses the moderating effect of entrepreneurship policy. A questionnaire survey was conducted on 595 fresh graduates from eight universities in China to obtain relevant data and the Structural Equation modelling was established to test the hypothesis. The results confirm that without the influence of external factors, college students regard entrepreneurial risk as a great threat, which not only weakens their entrepreneurial self-efficacy, but also reduces their necessity and opportunity entrepreneurial motivation. However, with the support of good entrepreneurial policies, entrepreneurial risk can be transformed into an opportunity to improve the entrepreneurs motivation driven by necessity of college students, but the impact on the opportunity motivation is not significant. This study deeply analyzes the dual characteristics of entrepreneurial risk perception in the process of shaping individual entrepreneurial motivation, expands the related research on entrepreneurial risk perception and entrepreneurial motivation, and has important implications for the government and universities to formulate entrepreneurial policies for college students

Entrepreneurship through the platform strategy in the digital era: Insights and research opportunities

Entrepreneurship has gained increasing research attention in recent years. Although researchers largely agree the importance of innovation in the process of entrepreneurship, little research explores how the emerging innovation approaches can facilitate the above process. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies on entrepreneurship adopting the open platform strategy in light of the digital evolution. To address this research gap, this study investigates how entrepreneurs can take advantage of the platform-based innovation ecosystem in the entrepreneurial process. First, the study discusses various platform-based innovations for entrepreneurs and elaborates on the implementation with examples and practices. Accordingly, the study demonstrates a framework which categorizes these innovation platforms to fulfill the needs at two pivotal stages of the innovation process (i.e. invention and commercialization) for entrepreneurs. The study also discusses the concerns and issues an innovation platform ecosystem may bring forth for entrepreneurs. Finally, the study proposes a number of topics that merit further research. This study represents the first effort to categorize online platforms and develop an innovation process-based framework of platforms for entrepreneurs

Smart City Development in Taiwan: From the Perspective of the Information Security Policy

A smart city is developed through the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, big data, mobile Internet, and other new generation technologies regarding information and communication, and data resources in various fields are integrated and applied. The issue of information security in the network era is the strategic focus, as well as the focus of people’s attention, during Taiwan’s smart city construction. Information security policies are the information security guidelines for organizations, and are key to the organization’s information security performance; moreover, such policies show the organization’s support and commitment to the information security of smart cities. This paper discusses the model of information security policy in Taiwan’s smart cities, uses Path Analysis to explore the characteristics of information security policy in smart cities, and examines the relationship between the formulation, implementation, maintenance, and effectiveness of information security policies. Furthermore, this study examines the impact on the effectiveness of organizational information security policies and information security performance from the following aspects: The length of information security policy publication time, policy review, policy advocacy, employee compliance, fair law enforcement, etc., which are all concrete manifestations of the formulation, implementation, and maintenance of information security policy models. Through a questionnaire survey, the correlation between various assumptions, as well as the relationship between organizational information security characteristics, information security policies, and the effectiveness of information security, are verified one by one during the implementation of information security policies. Finally, conclusions and implications are put forward

How Nonlocal Entrepreneurial Teams Achieve Sustainable Performance: The Interaction between Regional Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Organizational Legitimacy

Nonlocal entrepreneurship plays an important role in promoting regional economic development. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the influence of the subjective and objective factors (organizational legitimacy and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem) of nonlocal entrepreneurship on its sustainable performance and boundary conditions. Through the analysis of 608 questionnaires of 237 teams at different times, the following conclusions are drawn: First, we find that entrepreneurial ecosystems and organizational legitimacy effectively promote nonlocal entrepreneurial teams’ sustainable performance, and strategic flexibility has positive moderating effects on this relationship. Secondly, through polynomial regression and response surface analysis, we find that the interaction between entrepreneurial ecosystems and organizational legitimacy has a positive impact on sustainable performance. Specifically, compared with the inconsistent status of entrepreneurial ecosystems and organizational legitimacy, the sustainable performance is higher under a consistent status. Compared with the low consistency status of entrepreneurial ecosystems and organizational legitimacy, the sustainable performance in the high consistency status is higher. Therefore, we suggest that the government, universities, and enterprises should build entrepreneurial ecosystems to promote the sustainability of nonlocal entrepreneurial teams. For nonlocal entrepreneurial teams, organizational legitimacy and strategic flexibility should be enhanced. The presented research adds to the literature by integrating subject and object factors (organizational legitimacy and regional entrepreneurial ecosystem), which has important theoretical significance

Development and Challenges of Social Enterprises in Taiwan—From the Perspective of Community Development

Social enterprises (SEs) have formed a naturally conscientious atmosphere in Taiwan, which has not only diluted the boundary between society and enterprises, but also transformed the inherent thinking of nonprofit organizations (NPOs). SEs operate under cross-organizational and cross-departmental models. For years, the rapid economic development of Taiwan has focused on the pursuit of profit without focusing on the development of NPOs. Only after the economy began to slow down did society gradually see a new trend based on the concept of SEs and the cultivation of community self-sufficiency to solve social problems. Its successful implementation is of great significance to the sustainable development of Taiwan. Community industry is based on the community and it is people-oriented. From the perspective of sustainable development, community industry is invested in economic activities and creates multiple benefits to a sustainable community and to social, environmental, cultural, financial, and other developments. From the early “production and welfare construction” to the “new hometown overall construction policy”, Taiwan has placed emphasis on inherent local industry activation, such as the establishment of local industrial exchange centers, local industry sustainable mechanism construction, local characteristic small community enterprises, as well as economic plans, including “Sustainable Employment Hope Project” and “Diverse Employment Development Program”, promoted by the Labor Commission since 2001. All of these are focused on building and developing a community industry, and relevant authorities look forward to the vitality of the community industry to create more job opportunities and community interests. Based on literature review of social enterprise, this paper leads small- and medium-sized community industries to meet the development of business models from the economic perspective of commercialization and the social perspective of social innovation in order to solve the quality crisis that is faced by nonprofit organizations and to maintain the sustainable development of the enterprise. By the design of a nonprofit and mutual-assistance mechanism, poverty relief results can be obtained. SEs, which are similar to regular enterprises, can encounter challenging business environments and they must also possess the ability to assume business risks. Specifically, SEs must consider the dual goals of having a social mission while achieving economic goals. This study provides a detailed understanding of the existence and operational characteristics of SEs in Taiwan

Using Virtual Gifts on Live Streaming Platforms as a Sustainable Strategy to Stimulate Consumers’ Green Purchase Intention

As the use of live-stream marketing by corporations to sell products is increasing, the sustainability of this marketing model has been a controversial topic in recent years. In this study, we propose that live-stream marketing can be used as a sustainable strategy to improve the relationship between customers and the companies endorsed by broadcasters. Based on signal theory and the framework of “affordance--psychological outcome--consumer behavior”, this study answers the question from the perspective of virtual gift visibility, and finds that social presence and self-esteem serve as mediators, and self-monitoring personality as a moderator, of the relationship between online visibility of virtual gifts and green purchasing. Our research model was tested using structural equation model analysis. Data were collected from 552 users of Chinese live streaming platforms in China, and it was found that online gift visibility of live-stream marketing can be used as a sustainable strategy to stimulate customers’ purchase intention. Social presence is a full mediator of the relationship between the online visibility of virtual gifts and green purchases. Furthermore, self-monitoring personality moderates the relationships among the online visibility of virtual gifts, social presence, and green purchase intention. Our research not only extends the understanding of online gifts as a link between consumers and broadcasters, but also clarifies the process of how online gifts lead to green purchase intention