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This study aims to use institutional and upper echelons theories to comprehensively investigate the intricate interplay between TMT legal expertise and firms' adaptive strategies in legal contexts, notably within emerging economies. It explores how upper echelons experiences shape opportunistic compliance strategies, impacting value and risk perceptions. Drawing on upper echelons theory, the research probes how TMT legal expertise molds firms’ involvement in significant lawsuits, accounting for influential roles. It scrutinizes TMT’s impact on legal strategies, positing that managerial discretion emerges from environmental factors, organizational attributes and executive traits. The study underscores TMT’s internal incentives and external factors’ interplay, molding strategic legal engagement.

To validate this framework, statistical analysis is performed on data from 2,584 Chinese-listed firms. The data set spans 2010–2015, with 5,713 material lawsuits. Chosen due to reliable institutional-level incentives data from the China Market Index Database, years 2016–2019 are excluded for methodological disparities. Moreover, 2007–2009 is omitted to mitigate the potential financial crisis impact. This study’s 11,272 observations ensure robust empirical exploration, offering insights into the interplay of TMT legal expertise, institutional factors and firms’ legal strategies.

The study reveals that firms led by executives with legal expertise are more prone to engage in significant lawsuits, indicating strategic use of legal skills. TMT age moderates this, with older teams less likely to engage. TMT tenure’s effect remains unclear due to tenure-risk preference complexity. Institutional factors matter; less legally mature regions reduce managers’ legal risk intention. Results confirm hypotheses and highlight executive human capital’s impact on firms’ legal strategies.

This study acknowledges contributions while highlighting limitations, including the need for detailed distinctions in lawsuit roles and exploration of heterogeneous TMT power dynamics. Further research is proposed for nuanced power dynamics and comprehensive TMT legal background data. The study advances upper echelons theory by introducing TMT legal expertise as a factor influencing strategic lawsuit behavior. It challenges institutional theory by showing the adaptable legal context, beyond fixed constraints. Moderating factors – group risk attitude and external knowledge – deepen understanding of upper echelons’ impact. Enhanced data collection is encouraged to address limitations and refine findings.

This study’s implications extend to managerial practices. Firms should acknowledge the dynamic legal system, using TMT legal expertise for strategic legal challenges. Executives should pragmatically approach regulations. While legal professionals enhance compliance, caution is needed in selecting TMT members with legal expertise due to the risk of misusing it for unnecessary litigation, potentially misaligned with financial performance goals.

This study combines institutional and upper echelons theories to explore TMT legal expertise’s impact on firms’ adaptive strategies in emerging economies. It challenges the idea of a universally constraining legal environment and highlights how TMT legal expertise enhances firms’ management of complex legal risks. The research introduces TMT legal expertise as an influencing factor in strategic lawsuits, revealing nuanced relationships between legal contexts and strategic decisions. The findings enrich upper echelons theory, challenge conventional institutional views and identify moderating factors that deepen the understanding of upper echelons’ influence in legal landscapes.

This paper aims to evaluate the value creation of cross-border acquisitions conducted by Chinese firms and determinants that result in the different performance. During the recent decades, the world has witnessed multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging economies undertaking aggressive cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M & As). This phenomenon raises great attention in the international business community, and also challenges the traditional understanding in the extant literature.

The authors examine 272 cross-border M & As associated with 48 target countries during the period 1996-2012.

Evidences show that cross-border expansions on average point to negative performance in the short term. The authors also find that prior cross-border M & A experiences, ownership structure of the acquirer (state-owned vs private) and acquirer size positively affect the performance of the acquiring firm.

In addition to contributing to cross-border M & A literature, the findings also provide useful guidance to outward foreign direct investment by firms from emerging economies.

While much research has examined the effect of media literacy in combatting misinformation, whether and to what extent news media literacy influences misinformation-related behaviors (i.e. misinformation sharing, misinformation correction) and the mediating effect of news media skepticism in the process remain less explored. Moreover, this line of research has extensively focused on a polarized information context (e.g. the USA) with less attention to a context where news information is more regulated and centralized. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

The authors conducted a survey study of 720 Chinese adults.

This study reveals that greater new media literacy predicts higher misinformation correction behaviors, but fails to predict caution in sharing misinformation. Findings further demonstrate a nuanced mediating effect of news media skepticism that challenges previous assertions about its protective role. That is, higher news media literacy is associated with lower news media skepticism; lower skepticism is in turn related to lower misinformation sharing and greater misinformation correction.

The current study integrates news media literacy and news media skepticism in understanding misinformation-related behaviors. Findings generally speak to the tangible benefits of news media literacy in helping motivate corrective actions among the general public. However, this study also strikes a cautious note that future investigations of news media skepticism would benefit from a cultural perspective. Its connections with perceptions and effects on behaviors could vary according to different types of media and political landscapes.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2023-0172

This study aims to reveal the mechanism through which union commitment influences job performance in China, focusing on the mediating role of employee participation and the moderating role of affective commitment.

In this study, a cross-sectional design was employed to collect data from 596 union members in 33 unionized enterprises in China's Pearl River Delta region.

The results demonstrate that union commitment is positively related to both employee participation and job performance. Moreover, employee participation mediates the positive relationship between union commitment and job performance. In addition, affective commitment strengthens the relationship between union commitment and employee participation and the mediating effect of employee participation.

This study indirectly identifies the impact of a union on organizational performance from an individual-level perspective. It also provides new evidence for union construction in order to obtain support from corporate executives in China.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature by proposing and examining the mediating role of employee participation and the moderating role of affective commitment in the underlying mechanism between union commitment and job performance.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a strain prediction model of mining overburden deformation, to predict the strain in the subsequent mining stage. In this way, the mining area can be divided into zones with different degrees of risk, and the prevention measures can be taken for the areas predicted to have large deformation.

A similar-material model was built by geological and mining conditions of Zhangzhuang Coal Mine. The evolution characteristics of overburden strain were studied by using the distributed optical fiber sensing (DOFS) technology and the predictive model about overburden deformation was established by applying machine learning. The modeling method of the predictive model based on the similar-material model test was summarized. Finally, this method was applied to engineering.

The strain value predicted by the proposed model was compared with the actual measured value and the accuracy is as high as 97%, which proves that it is feasible to combine DOFS technology with machine learning and introduce it into overburden deformation prediction. When this method was applied to engineering, it also showed good performance.

This paper helps to promote the application of machine learning in the geosciences and mining engineering. It provides a new way to solve similar problems.

The grain size and grain distribution mode have a significant impact on the tribological properties of Babbitt alloy. The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of differentiated SnSb grain size distribution on the improvement of tribological properties of Babbitt alloy.

Babbitt (marked by babbitt-cr), with a differentiated SnSb grain size distribution, was fabricated using a selective zone laser surface treatment. Bare Babbitt with coarse SnSb grain was marked as babbitt-c, and Babbitt with refined SnSb grain was marked as babbitt-r. The microstructure, microhardness and wettability of specimens were tested. The tribological properties of babbitt-c, babbitt-r and babbitt-cr were evaluated under dry and lubricated conditions.

The microstructure transforms from single coarse SnSb grain distribution or single refined SnSb grain distribution to differentiated SnSb grain size distribution, as a result of selective zone laser surface treatment. Among three specimens of microhardness, babbitt-cr showed the highest microhardness. The lipophilicity property of babbitt-cr was better compared to babbitt-c. A mixture of coarse and refined grain is beneficial to improve the tribological properties of Babbitt alloy under dry condition. Furthermore, compared with babbitt-c, the wear resistance of babbitt-cr was enhanced under lubricated condition. However, the anti-wear property of babbitt-cr was not significantly improved relative to babbitt-r with an increase in the loads.

The study demonstrates that modulated different grain size alternating distribution modes can improve the tribological properties of Babbitt alloy.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-09-2022-0259/