New quality productive forces refer to modern advanced productive forces that have been created through revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep transformation and upgrading of industries, the core essence of which is the qualitative transformation of the three elements of workers,means of labor, and labor objects and their optimal combination, and the most significant symbol of which is a significant increase in total factor productivity. It significantly differs from the traditional productivity of high input and high energy consumption, emphasizes key and disruptive technological breakthroughs, and is characterized by high technology, high efficiency and high quality. New quality productive forces bring about a qualitative leap in productivity and serve as the driving force for facilitating high-quality development in the new era. The development of artificial intelligence (AI) provides new ideas and new impetus for fostering new quality productive forces and promoting high-quality development. AI's ongoing development will drive technological innovation, increase production intelligence, spawn new economic sectors, and integrate with traditional industries to enhance resource allocation efficiency and labor productivity. This integration will steer traditional production models towards greater scalability and specialization, moving industries up the value chain.
The examination of artificial intelligence's influence on new quality productive forces holds substantial theoretical and practical importance. The literature review indicates that existing studies predominantly concentrate on the essence, value, and developmental priorities of new quality productivity, as well as AI's effects on productivity, economic growth, employment, and industrial structure. However, there is a scarcity of research addressing the nexus between AI and new quality productive forces, and empirical evidence on AI's role in shaping these forces is limited. The reasons and mechanisms by which AI bolsters new quality productive forces are not well understood.
This paper aims to bridge this gap by theoretically and empirically analyzing AI's impact on new quality productive forces using provincial panel data, revealing the underlying mechanisms and regional disparities in AI's promotion of new quality productive forces, thereby enriching and advancing the discourse on AI and new quality productive forces. This study focuses on 30 provincial administrative regions in China. Data limitations preclude the inclusion of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, while Xizang is omitted due to incomplete data records. To ensure data consistency and completeness, linear interpolation is applied to estimate missing values in certain provinces; any unfillable gaps are addressed by listwise deletion, ensuring the reliability of the analysis.
The findings suggest that the development of AI can significantly contribute to the improvement of new quality productive forces. The robustness of the findings of this study is verified by conducting robustness tests,shortening the sample period, replacing the explanatory variable, adding control variables, and removing extreme values. In addition, the study employs the number of robots installed in the U.S. as the instrument variable to address potential endogeneity issues in the model and ensure that the estimates are unbiased. Through mechanism analysis, it reveals that AI contributes to new quality productive forces through three main channels: improving innovation, improving energy efficiency, and improving digitization. Through heterogeneity analysis, the study further finds that the driving effect of AI on new quality productive forces is more significant in regions with high marketization, high technology aggregation, and high industrial structure optimization.
This paper deepens the theoretical mechanisms by which AI promotes new quality productive forces on the basis of the existing literature and provides strong empirical evidence for the new quality productive forces effect of AI through empirical tests. Further, this study explores the fundamental question of the path through which AI mainly affects new quality productive forces within a unified framework, supporting the role of innovation capacity, energy efficiency, and digitization level in the path through which AI affects new quality productive forces, and deepens the existing literature and related studies. In accordance with the findings of the study, the paper puts forward policy recommendations conducive to the full development of AI and the promotion of new quality productive forces, which will provide important decision-making references for the development of new quality productive forces in various regions according to local conditions.

Technological progress and innovation provide the driving force for the transformation and upgrading of productive forces, making them core elements in the development of new quality productive forces. Therefore, questions such as who will drive technological innovation, how to integrate technological innovation resources, and how to promote the industrialization of technological innovation achievements become particularly important. Given the relatively dispersed state of new quality production factors in China, this paper explores the empowerment of new quality productive forces development through flexible technology think tanks. By reviewing existing literature and conducting in-depth analysis of typical cases of domestic flexible technology think tanks, this paper systematically analyzes the theoretical foundation, typical cases, practical obstacles, and development paths of empowering new quality productive forces through flexible technology think tanks.
Flexible technology think tanks, led by project systems, product lines, and special committees, fully utilize digital intelligence technologies to empower the entire process of decision-making and research and development. With the significant advantages of “flexible talent aggregation and comprehensive intelligence gathering”, they serve social, technological, and economic activities. These think tanks, through a boundaryless organizational form, gather new quality entities, promote the establishment of innovation consortia, enhance decision-making effectiveness through human-machine collaboration, stimulate the multiplier effect of production factors, connect industrial and innovation chains through scenario-driven approaches, promote the efficient transformation of technological achievements, and advance institutional innovation through think tank recommendations. Essentially, they serve as a central hub for integrating driving forces from the perspective of new quality productive forces development, offering unique advantages in stimulating the multiplier effect of new quality production factors and promoting the development of new quality productive forces. However, flexible technology think tanks still face issues such as unclear governance models, weak innovation capabilities, incomplete linkage mechanisms, overly singular functional positioning, and the lack of a talent cultivation system for empowering new quality productive forces.
This study introduces several novel contributions. First, it defines the concept of flexible technology think tanks, distinguishing them from physical technology think tanks. It points out that flexible technology think tanks are technology-oriented think tanks that gather scientific and technological talents from various fields both domestically and internationally through digital platforms in a flexible manner, and guide technological decision-making and innovation activities using digital intelligence technologies to provide technical support and strategic advice for national or regional scientific and technological development. Second, it proposes the theoretical logic of empowering new quality productive forces through flexible technology think tanks, discussing dimensions such as gathering and nurturing new quality entities, building innovation consortia, enabling decision-making with digital intelligence, constructing data infrastructure, unleashing the multiplier effect of new quality production factors, promoting efficient transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and advancing new production relations. This provides valuable insights into fully leveraging the comprehensive effectiveness of flexible technology think tanks to empower the development of new quality productive forces.
Finally, to effectively empower new quality productive forces, it is essential to address the practical challenges faced by flexible technology think tanks. This involves enhancing their governance and evaluation mechanisms and leveraging digital intelligence to build think tanks with distinctive Chinese characteristics. Concurrently, it is crucial to bolster the dominant position of enterprises and actively foster innovation consortia with enterprises at the core. Flexible technology think tanks must integrate with enterprises, not just as external advisors but as active collaborators. By doing so, they can empower enterprises to reinforce their foundational and leading roles in technological innovation, talent development, achievement transformation, and production transformation. This approach is particularly important for stimulating the internal vitality and amplifying the linkage effects of leading scientific research enterprises in innovation. The synergy between flexible technology think tanks and innovation consortia should be anchored in enterprises, forming a collaborative framework that drives research activities.
Future research could further explore the mechanisms and significance of flexible technology think tanks in new quality productive forces through empirical tools, particularly focusing on the specific mechanisms and significance of innovation consortia and scenario paradigms.

New quality productive forces are the productivity driven by future technological innovation. Its formation and development are the result of the continuous impact of many emerging technologies like big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. In the digital economy era, data serves as a new production factor that can be applied across various scenarios and reused by multiple entities, enhancing the input-output efficiency of other production factors. It is becoming a powerful driving force for the formation of new quality productive forces. As crucial micro-entities within the economic system, enterprises are not only producers of goods and services, but also demanders of production factors. In modern enterprises, the value form of data elements is data resources. Ultimately, social productivity manifests its powerful dynamism and effectiveness through various types of enterprises. Therefore, it is necessary to explore how data resources empower the development of enterprises new quality productive forces from the perspective of micro-enterprises.
This paper conducts an analysis on three levels. Firstly, this paper systematically explains the connotations of productive forces, new quality productive forces and enterprise new quality productive forces, as well as analyzes the essence, attributes, and functional forms of data resources. Secondly, by exploring the substitution effect, synergy effect, innovation effect, and connection effect of data resources, this paper analyzes how these effects cultivate new-quality laborers, generate new-quality labor materials, and expand new-quality labor objects, so as to construct a theoretical logic framework for data resources to empower the development of enterprises new quality productive forces. Finally, starting from the three dimensions of cultivating new-quality laborers, generating new-quality labor materials, and expanding new-quality labor objects, this paper proposes practical constraints and enhancement paths for data resources to empower the development of enterprise new quality productive forces.
This paper contributes to promoting research on new quality productive forces from a micro-enterprise level and data element perspective, further enriching the relevant research on Marxist productivity theory and Xi Jinping's theoretical system of economic thought. This paper also aids in promoting the cultivation and implementation of new quality productive forces, providing theoretical research references for guiding enterprises to unleash the data multiplier effect and continuously advance new quality productive forces development.
The main research conclusions are threefold. Firstly, in terms of theoretical logic, data resources drive the development of enterprises new quality productive forces by cultivating new-quality laborers, promoting new-quality labor materials, and expanding new-quality labor objects. The underlying logic includes substitution effect, synergy effect, innovation effect, and connection effect. In the aspect of cultivating new-quality laborers, data resources drive high-quality workers to replace low-skilled workers, enhance employees' competencies, assist enterprises in utilizing various digital-intelligent workers, and help form value and emotional connections between enterprises and high-skilled workers. In the aspect of generating new-quality labor materials, data resources drive highly data-related labor materials to replace traditional labor materials, promote the intelligentization and greenization of traditional labor materials,, foster innovative development of labor materials, and effectively link internal and external labor materials. In the aspect of expanding new-quality labor objects, data resources drive new labor objects to replace traditional labor objects, promote intelligent use and green improvements, foster innovative development of labor materials, and effectively connect internal and external labor objects. Secondly, practical challenges hinder the empowerment of these new productive forces. These include a mismatch in the supply and demand for big data professionals, difficulty in improving workers' data literacy, integrating diverse data sources efficiently, and planning precise data infrastructure. There are also issues with unclear data ownership and the ineffective integration of data resources with application scenarios. Thirdly, in terms of improvement paths, to address challenges of cultivating new-quality laborers, efforts should focus on enhancing big data talent training and improving data literacy among general workers. To overcome constraints in generating new-quality labor materials, methods for integrating multi-source heterogeneous data should be explored, and enterprise-specific data infrastructure development should be promoted. To resolve limitations on expanding new-quality labor objects, efforts should focus on clarifying data ownership and enriching data resource application scenarios.

As the core value of Confucianism in China, Zhongyong thinking has greatly influenced organizational decision-making in modern enterprises. However, in contrast to the attention received in practice, there is relatively little research on the theory of Zhongyong thinking, which falls into the category of being popular in practice but niche in theory,and there is a lack of empirical research at the organizational level. More importantly, there is still some controversy over how Zhongyong thinking affects creativity in current research.
In order to more effectively advance theoretical innovation of Zhongyong thinking, this study decomposes the independent variables into two dimensions: eclectic thinking and integrative thinking, and sets specific entrepreneurial scenarios to explore how the above two dimensions of Zhongyong thinking are impacted by organizational contexts, and present differentiated impact mechanisms as well. The study constructs dual paths of "integrative-thinking, paradoxical leadership behavior, organizational creativity" and " eclectic-thinking, non-performance-based pay system, organizational creativity", and empirically explores the impact mechanism of "the integrative" and "the eclectic" on behavioral decision-making and organizational creativity in state-owned enterprises.
Questionnaire surveys were conducted on state-owned enterprises that are currently undergoing or have already implemented mixed ownership reforms, and different subsidiaries are considered as different samples. To reduce common method variance errors, paired questionnaires are used. Questionnaire A covers integrative-eclectic thinking, paradoxical leadership style, and non-performance-based pay system of senior executives, filled out by 3-5 department managers. Questionnaire B evaluates the entrepreneurial orientation level, executive transactional leadership, and organizational creativity, completed by 2-4 supervisors. Considering the causal relationship among variables, data collection was conducted at intervals.
From an examination of 857 longitudinal questionnaires encompassing 119 sets, the study deduces that Zhongyong's integrative thinking stimulates organizational creativity in state-owned enterprises through paradoxical leadership behavior; while Zhongyong's eclectic-thinking undermines organizational creativity through non-performance-based pay. In addition, after the introduction of entrepreneurial orientation and transactional leadership style of private enterprises, the above correlations change as follows: path I has a stronger positive relationship under high entrepreneurial orientation, while the negative relationship of path II is weakened in scenarios with high transactional leadership style.
This paper makes the following three contributions. (1)It responds to scholars' call for more research on the relationship between Zhongyong thinking and creativity by revealing the theoretical black box of the inconsistency between them. It incorporates the controversy of the “double-edged sword” theory by drawing on the paradox theory and dividing Zhongyong thinking into “integrative-thinking” and “eclectic-thinking”. (2) It expands the application scenarios of Zhongyong thinking by introducing local situational variables such as paradoxical leadership behavior and non-performance-based pay system. Furthermore, it explores the antecedents of creativity, and provides inspiration for enhancing state-owned enterprises management effectiveness. (3) The study uncovers the synergistic effect of Zhongyong thinking and entrepreneurial context by introducing representative entrepreneurial situational variables about the process of participating in mixed ownership reform.It substantiates the scholarly proposition that the key of mixed ownership reform is the combination of the strength of state-owned enterprises and the vitality of private enterprises.
This paper suggests that managers should fully recognize the essence of "integrative component" contained in Zhongyong thinking. When facing difficulties or challenges, managers need to draw on the Chinese wisdom of a balanced and inclusive way of thinking. At the same time, managers should dialectically view the "double-edged sword" effect of the "eclectic component" of Zhongyong and avoid its potential negative impact. Finally, the study provides theoretical guidance on how to choose partners for state-owned enterprises to carry out mixed ownership reform. Such reform should not solely focus on "mixed equity"; it should also consider the characteristics of strategic partners, such as their innovativeness, proactivity, and risk-taking capabilities. In conclusion, this study deepens the understanding of the situational influence mechanism of Zhongyong thinking and provides empirical evidence for advancing mixed ownership reform in state-owned enterprises.

Organizations are required not only to leverage existing knowledge, technologies, and other resources to enhance current products or services but also to explore novel technologies, knowledge, and resources to generate innovative ideas. Ambidextrous innovation is a critical factor influencing an organization’s ability to achieve a competitive advantage. However, given the evolving boundary conditions organizations face over time, a static approach to ambidextrous innovation is unlikely to provide sustainable value. Consequently, organizations must continuously adjust the emphasis of their ambidextrous innovation configurations to align with the dynamic environmental demands within specific industries.
Existing research suggests that the external environment does not directly dictate corporate strategic choices, top managers’ cognition and interpretations of environmental factors drive strategic choices. Typically, top managers simplify complex external environmental information into a two-dimensional cognitive framework of opportunities and threats, which in turn influences their strategic decisions regarding ambidextrous innovation. However, existing studies have reported inconsistent findings on how opportunity-threat cognition affects ambidextrous innovation configurations. This inconsistency arises because individual cognitive limitations constrain decision-makers to focus on only a subset of salient events within a limited time frame and the final strategic decisions depend on which specific pieces of information decision-makers attention on and how they cognitively process these selected pieces of information. The profit-loss framework, as a crucial psychological model in strategic decision-making, provides particularly salient information for decision-makers. Therefore, this study focuses on the combined effect of profit-loss attention and opportunity-threat cognitive classification of top managers on ambidextrous innovation and constructs four combination contexts of "high-high", "low-low", "high-low", and "low-high" based on the differences in the level of profit-loss attention and opportunity-threat cognitive classification of top managers.
Using the annual report data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2023, this study employs the response surface analysis method to investigate the combination effect of profit-loss attention and opportunity-threat cognitive classification of top managers on dynamic configuration of ambidextrous innovation, and the moderating effect of organizational size. The results indicate that the more consistent the level of profit-loss attention and opportunity-threat cognitive classification is,the more the ambidextrous innovation is inclined to exploratory innovation. Specifically, when top managers focus on profit-loss and have a high degree of opportunity-threat cognition, ambidextrous innovation is more likely to lean toward exploratory innovation compared to scenarios where they have lower profit-loss attention and low opportunity-threat cognition (even with a high degree of threat cognition); when a high level of profit-loss attention and a low level of opportunity-threat cognition (high level of threat cognition) are compared to low profit-loss attention and a high level of opportunity-threat cognition, the ambidextrous innovation is more inclined to exploitative innovation. Organization size moderates the combination effects of top management′s profit-loss attention and opportunity-threat cognitive classification on the dynamic configuration of ambidextrous innovation. As the organization size increases, the consistency of top management′s profit-loss attention and opportunity-threat cognition increases in positive relationship with exploratory innovation.
Drawing on attention-based theory and threat-rigidity theory, this study investigates how the organizations adjust the emphasis of ambidextrous innovation in four combination contexts of profit-loss attention and opportunity-threat cognition classification of top managers from a combinational perspective. It provides a novel perspective on organizational ambidextrous innovation. Unlike prior studies that apply threat-rigidity theory to analyze the relationship between opportunity-threat cognition and ambidextrous innovation, this study differentiates the varying degrees of threat posed by losses and explores the dysfunctional aspects of threat-rigidity theory, which contributes to a deeper understanding of application of threat-rigidity theory in organizational ambidextrous innovation. Specifically, this study reconciles conflicting conclusions in existing research regarding the relationship between opportunity-threat cognition and ambidextrous innovation and offer explanations for these inconsistencies. Furthermore, the findings of this study have significant implications for strategic decision-making by top management in enterprises. Enterprises need to keep optimizing the dynamic management of ambidextrous innovation,with a balance of adaptability and innovativeness. They should systematically analyze environmental issues, analyze the support capacity of resources for innovation and enhance the effectiveness of strategic decision-making; while it is necessary to establish a comprehensive risk assessment mechanism to estimate their risk-bearing capacity.

China's economy has been transitioning from a phase of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development, which highlights the tasks of speeding up efforts to achieve greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology, moving faster to create a new pattern of development, and developing new quality productive forces. Disruptive technological innovation is an important component of new quality productive forces. However, due to the high-risk characteristics of disruptive technological innovation, executives, out of consideration for their own interests, show an obvious risk aversion tendency in project decision-making, which seriously affects the improvement of the level of disruptive technology and the establishment of long-term competitive advantage for enterprises. Thus, how to mobilize executives' motivation to conduct disruptive technology innovation activities has become an important issue, among which the establishment of a reasonable and effective incentive mechanism plays an important role in the improvement of the level of enterprise disruptive technology innovation.
Existing literature has discussed the relationship between corporate innovation and positive incentive methods such as cash incentives, equity incentives, career promotion incentives, on-the-job consumption incentives, and salary gap incentives that increase the personal income of executives. However, such incentives have not taken into account the personal risks that executives may face in risk decision-making. Valuing the role of failure tolerance in innovation incentives is more important than positive incentives such as cash and equity incentives. The nature of directors' and officers' liability insurance is an exemption incentive for executives, which is clearer and easier to measure than other ways of increasing executives' tolerance for innovation failure, and the loss compensation that the incentive brings to executives is more intuitive, which makes it particularly important to study its "bottom-up effect" on executives' incentives.
Therefore, this paper adopts Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory to analyze the relationship among exemption incentives, risk-taking, digital transformation and disruptive technological innovation, and constructs a moderated mediation model to empirically test it with a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2011 to 2022. It is found that (1)liability exemption incentives can increase the level of disruptive technological innovation; (2)liability exemption incentives positively promote disruptive technological innovation by increasing the level of risk-taking; (3) the impact of risk-taking on disruptive technological innovation is positively strengthened when the firm's degree of digital transformation is high, and the path effect of risk-taking in the relationship between liability exemption incentives and a disruptive technological innovation is also amplified; and (4) Further research found that there is also a positive facilitating effect of liability exemption incentives on the persistence of disruptive technological innovation; disclaimer incentives for firms in a low risk-taking culture and high market competition environment promote disruptive technological innovation more significantly than for firms in a high risk-taking culture and low market competition environment.
Different from the research on positive incentives, this paper focuses on reducing executives' personal risk in decision-making, considers directors' liability insurance as a form of exemption incentives from an incentive perspective, and analyzes its impact on corporate disruptive technological innovations, which complements the relevant research on executive incentives. In addition, this paper applies the moderated mediation model to unify the relationship among liability exemption incentives, risk taking, digital transformation, and disruptive technological innovation in a unified theoretical analysis and empirical test, which provides a more systematic analytical framework for how executive incentives affect corporate disruptive technological innovation, and further enriches and deepens people's understanding of the relationship between exemption incentives and corporate disruptive innovation. The findings of this paper improve the understanding of executive incentives from the perspective of the "bottom-up effect" of exemptions, and provide insights and reference for enterprises to integrate multiple incentives to improve disruptive technological innovation and promote the development of new quality productive forces. This study has limitations in terms of samples and data, and thus future research could expand the sample sizes, explore more transmission pathways following other theories, and further study disruptive technological innovation from the perspective of non patent technology innovation.

The complexity and uncertainty inherent in the entrepreneurial process often cause significant anxiety for entrepreneurs, profoundly influencing their decision-making. This study explores the relationship between entrepreneurial anxiety and pivot decision-making, grounded in cognitive dissonance theory. Startups frequently adjust or transform their products, business practices, or even entire business models in response to customer feedback, performance gaps, and organizational commitments. However, finding the correct path in one attempt is challenging. Entrepreneurs face the dilemma that transformation can be risky, but avoiding transformation can also be detrimental. Thus, understanding why and when entrepreneurs pivot remains a crucial question. Following cognitive dissonance and self-determination theories, this study examines 239 entrepreneurs to address the following key questions: First, does entrepreneurial anxiety affect pivot decisions? Second, does cognitive dissonance serve as an intermediary mechanism through which anxiety influences these decisions? Third, are there differences in how entrepreneurs' internal motivations drive pivot decisions?
This study uses structural equation modeling to analyze the net impact of antecedent variables on outcome variables, and tests the hypothesized relationships between entrepreneurial anxiety, cognitive dissonance, and pivot decision-making. All variables in this study are selected to use the Likert-6 scale (excluding control variables) to enable the 239 entrepreneurs to make unbiased choices, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree). All scales follow the back-translation method to ensure accuracy and content validity. In addition, this article uses SPSS 26.0 to conduct descriptive statistics on each variable. To further clarify the relationship between entrepreneurial anxiety and entrepreneurial pivot decision-making, this study conducts a configuration analysis of the antecedents triggering entrepreneurial pivot using the fuzzy set qualitative comparison method (fsQCA) based on the structural equation model (SEM).
The results indicate that entrepreneurial anxiety triggers pivot decisions. Entrepreneurs often experience anxiety due to the high stakes and uncertainties of their ventures, leading to cognitive dissonance—a psychological state of discomfort from conflicting cognitions—which in turn drives radical decisions like pivoting. Moreover, high levels of work-family conflict intensify the impact of anxiety on cognitive dissonance. Entrepreneurs balancing their professional and personal lives may find that added stress amplifies their anxiety, exacerbating cognitive dissonance. Additionally, a strong entrepreneurial identity centrality, in which entrepreneurs closely associate their identity with their entrepreneurial role, makes cognitive dissonance more likely to drive pivots. These entrepreneurs are more prone to radical decision-making to resolve the discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance.The fsQCA analysis reveals that no single factor is sufficient to cause pivots. Instead, various factors collectively influence the decision-making process in distinct ways, underscoring the non-linear and complex nature of entrepreneurial decision-making.
This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of entrepreneurial pivots by integrating psychological factors, specifically anxiety and cognitive dissonance, into the analysis. It challenges the common assumption that anxiety leads to conservative decision-making by demonstrating that entrepreneurial anxiety can drive radical pivot decisions. The study also expands on cognitive dissonance theory by applying it to entrepreneurship, offering a novel perspective on the psychological mechanisms behind strategic pivots. Furthermore, these findings have significant practical implications for entrepreneurs and startup advisors. The study highlights the importance of managing anxiety and cognitive dissonance to make informed strategic decisions. Entrepreneurs should recognize the potential impact of their emotional states on decision-making and develop strategies to mitigate these effects, such as stress management techniques, seeking support from mentors, or balancing work and family responsibilities more effectively. In addition, understanding the role of entrepreneurial identity centrality can help entrepreneurs navigate their psychological responses to business challenges more effectively. It is worth noting that this study is a preliminary investigation of entrepreneurial pivot decisions and future researchers are warranted to explore other influencing factors. They could also consider conducting research on a larger scale to reduce the noise effects of regional culture, demographic geography, and other factors on the relationship between entrepreneurial emotions and entrepreneurial decision-making.

Although the niche suitability of innovation ecosystems in various regions of China has improved, the overall level of niche suitability of innovation ecosystems is low, and there is unbalanced development across the east and west. The construction of niche-suitable innovation ecosystems is an important way to achieve high-quality economic development and promote regional coordination. With the wide application of a new generation of digital technologies such as big data, blockchain, and artificial intelligence, digital technology has been transforming the interaction mode of resources, labor, knowledge, information and other elements between subjects, which in turn brings changes to the ecological aspects of each subject.
From the perspective of ecological flow, this study constructs an index system for calculating the ecological niche suitability of regional new-type ecosystems based on three dimensions: innovation population, ecological flow, and community habitat; and from the perspective of configuration, it follows the quintuple helix innovation theory, and 31 provinces in China are taken as research samples to explore the multi-agent interaction in the digital context and the configuration path of the niche suitability of regional new species ecosystems by the fsQCA method. It is found that there is a "multiple concurrent causal relationship" to improve the niche suitability of regional innovation ecosystems, and enterprise digital innovation, knowledge innovation of academic and research institutions, digital government governance, user feedback and the digital environment do not constitute necessary conditions for improving the suitability of regional innovation ecosystems. Two main paths to improve the niche suitability of regional innovation ecosystem in the digital context are clarified: user-driven under enterprise leadership and innovation-driven industry-university cooperation under government assistance; and the configuration restricting the improvement of niche suitability of regional innovation ecosystem mainly includes three paths: the ambidextrous innovation inhibition of digital innovation and digital environment, the obstacle of collaborative innovation of the subject under the constraints of digital innovation, and the difficulty of user-enterprise interaction under environmental constraints. There are significant differences in the paths of achieving high niche suitability of regional innovation ecosystems between developed and underdeveloped regions, regions acting like"knowledge sponge" and regions acting like "knowledge fountain", and user feedback has little impact in developed regions, while underdeveloped regions rely on the synergy between enterprises' digital innovation and digital environment, and the digital innovation of enterprises plays an important role in the regions acting like "knowledge sponge" , while the construction of the digital environment in the regions acting like "knowledge fountain" is very important.
The establishment of the niche suitability index system of regional innovation ecosystems in this paper is helpful to better grasp the internal logic of improving the overall efficiency of regional innovation ecosystems, which not only expands the theoretical basis for the extension of ecology to the field of regional innovation, but also enriches the theoretical connotation of niche suitability; while the analysis of the configuration path of the regional innovation ecosystem to achieve high niche suitability and the location effect caused by different development degrees and resource endowments in different regions, and the discussion on the complex mechanism of the connection and interaction of various innovation subjects in the digital context expand the practical application of the quintuple helix innovation theory in the field of niche suitability.
These results have important implications for policymakers and practitioners. First, in the digital context, policy formulation should take holistic consideration and give full play to the linkage effect of multi-agent innovation combinations. Meanwhile, it is necessary to improve digital-related laws and regulations, and promote industry-academia-research collaboration, as well as cooperation between the government and the public. Then, developed regions should utilize their own resource endowments and actively carry out the "industry-university-research" in-depth knowledge exchange platform; underdeveloped regions should pay attention to the coupling effect between enterprises and the digital environment. Areas acting like knowledge fountains should consolidate the foundation of digital infrastructure construction, continue to promote the application of emerging technologies, and areas acting like knowledge sponges should reduce the risk of digital transformation for small and medium-sized enterprises and improve their corporate financing systems.

The digital innovation ecosystem is constantly breaking the boundaries of traditional innovation with the help of digital technology and platform enabling mechanisms, and has become an accelerator for digital economic growth and the transformation from old to new growth drivers. The resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem not only emphasizes the stability and adaptability of the main subjects, elements, environment, structure and function in digital innovation when subjected to external shocks and pressures, but also includes the evolutionary ability of upgrading to a system with better digital innovation efficiency. How should the resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem be measured? What antecedent conditions constitute the necessary conditions for the strong/weak resilience of digital innovation ecosystem? What antecedent configurations constitute sufficient conditions for the strong/weak resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem? Is there a significant spatio-temporal effect of antecedent configuration? These problems necessitate further scholarly investigation and in-depth discourse.
To explore the above issues, this research establishes an indicator system for regional digital innovation ecosystem resilience, comprising subsystems of subject diversity, element fluidity, environmental buffering, structural networking, and functional evolvement. Employing the "Wuli-Shili-Renli" (WSR) framework and dynamic QCA method, this research utilizes panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2022 to explore the configurational paths of digital industry agglomeration, industrial diversification, innovation protection system, market institution, government innovation preference, and enterprise technological innovation level on enhancing the resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem.
The research reveals several findings. Firstly, market institution is a necessary condition for strong resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem, while other factors, although not necessary over time, are essential for certain provinces in terms of spatial dimension. Secondly, there are four configurational paths that contribute to robust resilience. These can be classified into two types: the WSR collaborative type and the SR cooperative type. In the WSR collaborative path, the "Wuli" condition of digital industry agglomeration, linked with other "Shili" and "Renli" conditions,is the keys to the resilient development of regional digital innovation ecosystem. In the SR cooperative path, "Shili" and "Renli" conditions play a synergistic role in the resilient development. These two types indicate that in the digital economy, governments and enterprises, as the "clever hands" in constructing resilience of regional digital innovation ecosystem, can achieve autonomous upgrading in a "resource-rich" scenario through digital industry agglomeration, or rely on the spillover effects of superior provincial digital industries to realize dependent upgrading in a "resource-scarce" predicament. Thirdly, there are four weak resilience paths, which can be categorized as hindrance type and deficiency type. The hindrance type emphasizes that in the absence of support from digital industry agglomeration and other "Shili" and "Renli" conditions, industrial diversification has posed a challenge to the resilience development of digital innovation ecosystem. The deficiency type is characterized by the lack of core and peripheral conditions in the "Wuli", "Shili", and "Renli" aspects during the resilient development of regional digital innovation ecosystem, representing a scenario where resources, technological capabilities, and entities are all absent. Fourthly, the consistency adjustment distances within and between groups are less than 0.2, indicating that the configurations do not exhibit significant temporal or case effects. However, by comparing the average coverage of each configuration across the four regions, there are certain commonalities and differences in configurational preferences among regions.
This study not only expands the comprehensive evaluation system of regional digital innovation ecosystem resilience, but also enriches the exploration of complex antecedent conditions of resilience formation of regional digital innovation ecosystem. At the same time, by combining WSR methodology and dynamic QCA method, the research extends the application boundary of WSR methodology and enriches the theoretical research on the resilience of digital innovation ecosystem in the context of China. In addition, dynamic QCA method breaks through the "time blind zone" problem of static data,and explores the antecedent configurations and evolutionary laws of digital innovation ecosystem resilience from the perspective of spatio-temporal dual dimension. Finally, the research conclusions provide a valuable path reference for the resilient development of regional digital innovation ecosystem, and contribute new insights and theoretical support for the high-quality development of digital economy.

This research focuses on the development of China's new energy industry, with the aim of exploring the various factors that influence its development and their temporal evolution patterns. Grounded in the context of severe environmental issues and the need for energy transition, this study specifically examines the role of China's "peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality" goals in driving the development of the new energy industry.
The research questions revolve around the influencing factors of new energy industry development and how they differ under different temporal and spatial conditions. To address these questions, this study adopts a multilevel socio-technical system (STS) theoretical framework and utilizes fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Through an in-depth analysis, the study investigates the development pathways of the new energy industry in 30 provinces of China during the "12th Five-Year Plan" and "13th Five-Year Plan" periods.
Methodologically, this paper begins by conducting a literature-based bibliometric analysis to extract the core influencing factors of new energy industry development. Subsequently, a three-level influence factor model is constructed, encompassing the macro, meso, and micro levels. By the fsQCA method, configurational analysis is performed on different factor combinations that affect the development of the new energy industry, thereby identifying key factors and their interactions that promote industry development. Notably, this study innovatively introduces the temporal dimension into the QCA model, allowing for an exploration of the changing characteristics of driving factors in the new energy industry from the 12th Five-Year Plan to the 13th Five-Year Plan in China.
The main findings of this study highlight the different configurations observed in the development of the high-level new energy industry during the "12th Five-Year Plan" and "13th Five-Year Plan" periods in China. In the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, two configurations drove the high-level development of the new energy industry: a configuration driven by both resource endowment and electricity demand under the dominance of economic development, and a configuration driven by resource endowment and intellectual support as dual drivers. In the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, three configurations were identified: a configuration driven by intellectual support, a configuration driven by policy based on resource endowment, and a configuration driven by both electricity demand and technological research and development.
The study also identified different configurations for the development of non-high-level new energy industries during the "12th Five-Year Plan" and "13th Five-Year Plan" periods. In the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, three configurations and five pathways were observed, while in the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, three configurations and three pathways were identified. Further analysis revealed that the main driving modes of new energy development differed between the two periods. The "12th Five-Year Plan" period was characterized by a pattern of "Landscape leads-niche responds", whereas the "13th Five-Year Plan" period exhibited a "niche dominance-regime change" pattern.
These findings suggest that government support alone is not sufficient for the development of the new energy industry. The driving forces behind its growth vary significantly across temporal and spatial dimensions. The transition from the "12th Five-Year Plan" to the "13th Five-Year Plan" witnessed a shift from macro-environmental leadership to micro-niche-level dominance in the development of China's new energy industry. Resource endowment and electricity demand were identified as crucial factors influencing industrial development during different periods. Additionally, intellectual support and technological research and development played increasingly important roles in the industry's development at the micro-level.
Informed by these insights, this study offers recommendations for the development of China's new energy industry. It suggests placing greater emphasis on nurturing micro-level driving forces, particularly through technological innovation and talent cultivation. Policymakers should formulate targeted strategies for new energy industry development by considering regional resource endowments and market demands. Additionally, attention should be paid to changes in social electricity demand, guiding new energy consumption at the meso level, promoting institutional and mechanistic innovation to stimulate market demand, and facilitating the high-quality development of the new energy industry. Finally, the study proposes that future research could explore the development trends of the new energy industry and construct prediction models to provide a more scientific basis for policy formulation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a crucial driving force for industrial transformation in the fourth industrial revolution due to its wide applicability and the growing trend of data intelligence. The direction of technical progress, the prospect of industrial development, and even the interests of countries are all significantly affected by ongoing developments in AI in which technology standards play a crucial role. Many developed countries have adopted AI technology standards as a strategic tool to outperform their competitors. It is a fundamental practical problem worth studying to explore the development path of national AI technology standardization to clarify the formation mechanism of technology standard competitiveness(TSC).Studies have suggested that technology standardization is affected by a diverse and complex set of factors, including technical background, system design, market environment, and the characteristics of the standard’s participants. However, the conventional symmetric causal method may not be suitable in a specific scenario and could not adequately predict actuality. Given the complexity of technology standardization and the dynamic development of the AI industry, it is necessary to explore the influence mechanism and path of TSC from the configuration perspective and multi-dimensionality.
This study introduces the TOE framework and constructs a research framework affecting the formation of TSC from three aspects: technology, organization, and environment. In addition, to account for asymmetry, this study adopts the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to obtain a variety of equivalent paths leading to TSC. The sample of this study involves 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in the Chinese mainland and 32 foreign countries. Through necessity analysis and sufficiency analysis, the study compares and analyzes the domestic and international similarities and differences in the distribution of necessary conditions, core conditions, and configuration factors, and then it puts forward countermeasures and suggestions, aiming to provide a reference for China to form a high-TSC and discourse power in the field of global AI industry.
Analysis indicates that the formation of AI Technology Standard Competitiveness (TSC) at both domestic and international levels does not rely on a single set of necessary conditions. Instead, it requires the integration and alignment of various factors across technology, organization, and environment dimensions. The sufficient analysis shows that the core condition of domestic AI high-TSC is organizational participation, while the international level is market demand, and there are three equivalent configurations at the domestic and international levels. These insights suggest the breakthrough of AI technology standard capability in various regions requires the scientific allocation of multi-dimensional elements, and differentiated mechanism selection and strategic deployment can be carried out according to their resource endowment, by analogy with the drive path of high-TSC with similar characteristics, and the construction path can be tailored to improve the TSC through ongoing dynamic improvement.
This study makes several contributions to theory and practice. First, within the TOE theoretical framework, a comprehensive model of influencing factors of the whole process of technology standardization from the stage of technology patenting, patent standardization, and standard industrialization is constructed. This study expands the application range of the TOE theoretical model and deepens the relevant research on the TSC. Second, this study challenges the traditional symmetric causal thinking and analyzes the causal complexity of multiple factors from the perspective of configuration theory. It uses the fsQCA method to explore the heterogeneity, causal asymmetric relationship between cases, and the equivalent path of producing the same result. The findings open the black box of the complex interaction between the standard innovation endowment and the standard competitiveness in different regions at home and abroad. Third, the results indicate that policymakers should enhance the ability of innovation subjects to participate in the formulation of technical standards, form an internal drive, strengthen the supply and demand interaction of the AI market, and enhance the external drive, thus forming a long-term driving force for the TSC. While it is essential to attach importance to the key role of a good academic ecology in forming the AI high-TSC, to promote the continuous high-quality output of academic achievements in the field of AI, and continuously consolidate the foundation of AI technology standardization and innovation.

With the rapid development of the digital economy, platform-based enterprises, as vital carriers of this economic paradigm, leverage their scale effects, network effects, and data effects and have significant advantages in reducing transaction costs and improving resource utilization. As a result, these companies have experienced rapid growth in recent years. However, due to the lack of concrete guidelines for digital governance, they face a variety of difficulties and challenges in reality. From a practical standpoint, platform-based enterprises face numerous challenges in fulfilling their digital responsibilities, including issues such as data misuse, data security, data hegemony, and algorithmic discrimination, involving factors of individuals, organizations, and other aspects. Corporate executives, positioned at the central position of enterprises' linkage with social networks, wield significant influence over digital responsibility initiatives through their reputational capital. Investigating how executive reputation shapes the fulfillment of digital responsibilities in platform-based enterprises—and the underlying mechanisms—holds both theoretical innovation and practical relevance.
New institutionalism theory emphasizes that the institutional environment fundamentally shapes organizational behavior, and organizations adjust their actions through a series of mechanisms under institutional pressure to gain legitimacy. It provides a powerful perspective for in-depth research on the fulfillment mechanisms of digital responsibility of platform companies. In the digital realm, platform companies are also embedded in a complex institutional environment, influenced by the interplay of both formal and informal institutions, such as national laws and regulations, industry norms, and social ethical standards. On the one hand, formal institutions, such as data protection laws and antitrust laws, directly constrain the digital operations of platform companies, stipulating the basic behavioral guidelines for enterprises in data collection, use, storage, and market competition. On the other hand, informal institutions, such as public opinion, user expectations, and industry culture, subtly influence the decision-making and actions of platform companies, prompting them to pay attention to their digital image and social reputation. Against this backdrop, focusing on corporate legitimacy and institutional pressure from the perspective of new institutionalism, this study examines the factors that affect the willingness of platform companies to actively fulfill their digital responsibilities and further explores whether there are different pathways for this influence.
This paper selects listed companies in the Internet and information technology industry from 2015 to 2022 as the research samples. After the screening process, 1 308 samples were ultimately obtained. To explore the impact of executive reputation on digital responsibility fulfillment in platform based enterprises, this paper constructs a benchmark regression model. It sets the executive reputation as the explanatory variable, and the moderating variables include regulatory institutional pressure, normative institutional pressure, and cognitive institutional pressure. Additionally, regulatory institutional pressure is further divided into administrative pressure (AP) and industry pressure (IP). Subsequently, basic regression analysis, mediation effect tests, moderation effect tests, and robustness tests are conducted to verify the hypothesis that executive reputation can promote the fulfillment of digital responsibilities in platform-based companies.
Research findings rooted in new institutionalism reveal that executive reputation substantially enhances platform-based enterprises′ commitment to digital responsibility. The higher the executives' reputation, the more likely it is that the platform-based enterprises they lead will achieve a higher level of digital responsibility fulfillment. This dynamic operates through two channels: first, reputation fulfills executives′ psychological and emotional needs, motivating them to champion digital responsibility strategies; second, to avoid reputational damage from scandals, executives proactively engage in digital responsibility efforts to safeguard their standing. Dual agency costs play a significant mediating role in the performance of digital responsibilities by platform-based enterprises and the reputation of executives. High-reputation executives actively participate in governance, curbing controlling shareholders′ misuse of resources, reducing Type II agency costs, and thereby advancing digital responsibility of platform-based enterprises. Institutional pressures also amplify enterprises′ willingness to act from the perspective of new institutionalism. Notably, the positive impact of executive reputation is more pronounced in enterprises with robust internal governance and high analyst scrutiny.
Looking ahead, platform-based enterprises should prioritize digital self-regulation, cultivate a culture of accountability, optimize governance frameworks, and strengthen executive reputation management. Concurrently, it should further incentivize their commitment to digital responsibility by accelerating the development of institutional pressure transmission mechanisms.

Digital transformation relies on the application of digital technology to achieve disruptive innovation in enterprise factor reorganization, R&D production, operation and sales, and can trigger multi-level changes in individuals, organizations, and industries. In the context of environmental regulation constraints and high-quality development demands, digital transformation is regarded as an important solution to achieve sustainable development that balances corporate economic development, environmental protection, and social responsibility. Digitalization and sustainable development have become hot topics in academia and industry. Scholars have analyzed from the perspective of resource-based view, dynamic capability theory and information processing theory, found that digital transformation can have a positive impact on sustainable development. However, some scholars have questioned the actual effect of digital transformation, believing that most digital transformation projects have failed to achieve the expected effect of improving corporate economic returns. In addition, negative behaviors such as differential pricing, carbon emissions, and information leakage derived from digital transformation will generate digital liability risks, which will have a negative impact on corporate environmental and social benefits.
This study employs meta-analysis, a rigorous research methodology known for synthesizing findings from existing studies, to explore the relationship between enterprise digital transformation and sustainable development. By leveraging data from a broad and varied range of samples, the study enhances the objectivity and robustness of its analysis. It uses the funnel plot technique and a fail-safe number approach to assess publication bias within the dataset. Utilizing the software of CMA 3.0 , the study processes encoded data to investigate heterogeneity and the principal effects of digital transformation on sustainable development. Aligning with the triple bottom line principle of sustainable development, the study categorizes sustainable development into economic, environmental, and social dimensions. On the basis of 177 effect values from 143 samples, it scrutinizes the impact of digital transformation on sustainable development and its sub-dimensions, as well as the moderating effects of organizational context factors and measurement methods on this relationship.
The study reveals that, first, digital transformation effectively promotes the sustainable development of enterprises, and the promotion intensity of the three connotations of sustainable development is economic value, environmental value, and social value. Second, in terms of subdivision, digital transformation has the best incentive effect on supply chain management, organizational resilience, and new product development performance. Third, the impact of digital transformation on enterprises with different characteristics is asymmetric. The digital transformation of non-manufacturing enterprises, non-heavy pollution industries, and small and medium-sized enterprises has a stronger role in promoting sustainable development performance, and the industrial technological intensity is not a moderating factor affecting the relationship between the two. Fourth, when assessing the relationship between two variables, subjective measurement methods tend to yield stronger correlations compared to objective measurement methods.
In theory, the study uses large sample and cross-context sample data to test the correlation between digital transformation and sustainable development, and obtains a more stable effect value. It also provides a new basis for explaining the contradictory conclusions through subdivision dimensions and moderating effect analysis, which further deepens the logical framework and internal mechanism between digital transformation and sustainable development. This has practical significance for clarifying the complex logical relationship between digital transformation and sustainable development, and also has certain implications for the future direction of related research. In practice, when enterprises specifically solve conflicts such as external environment regulation and social problem solving, they need to focus on the significance of digital solutions. The formulation of digital transformation strategies should be closely centered around key variables such as enterprise scale, industry type, and industry characteristics. In addition, the government should formulate a digital transformation policy system based on incentive goals and enterprise conditions to maximize the positive effects of digital transformation.
Future studies could dissect digital transformation into detailed dimensions like technology applications and management to understand its mechanisms on sustainable development, incorporate moderating variables like cultural and organizational differences, and expand analysis to employee and industry levels to assess practical impacts on achieving sustainability goals and addressing social issues.

In the new era driven by the digital economy, business process digitalization has become an important starting point for promoting the process of digital transformation, and it is crucial for accelerating the cultivation of new forms of high quality productive forces and driving high-quality economic development. Value co-creation is the internal logic behind the effective operation of digital platforms, yet existing research has not fully revealed the growth path of value co-creation within digital platforms that drive the business process digitalization of manufacturing SMEs. Value co-creation is a resource interaction process of mutualism and symbiosis among multiple entities in the platform ecology, which often requires the synergistic effect of internal and external contextual factors. Therefore, it is necessary to deeply explore the complex mechanism of value co-creation within digital platforms influencing business process digitalization. Addressing the aforementioned research gaps, this study introduces the mediating role of digital strategy renewal and the moderating effect of digital platform resilience, to reveal the internal mechanism of value co-creation affecting business process digitalization on the digital platform.
This study selects manufacturing SMEs in Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang of China, as the survey respondents, collects data through questionnaires by online and offline methods, and completes the distribution of questionnaires through alumni, acquaintances, and other means, with 247 samples from manufacturing SMEs finally obtained. The measurement indicators for the questionnaire survey are modified from well-established scales at home and abroad. In addition, this study introduces four control variables, namely, the number of years since the establishment of the company, company size, market volatility, and technological volatility to exclude the potential influence of related variables on the research results. The study verifies the hypothesis by constructing a multiple linear regression model. In order to further verify the hypothesis, the Bootstrap test is made to examine the chain mediating role of environmental adaptive learning and digital technology embedding.
The results show that value co-creation within the digital platform has a significant positive impact on the business process digitalization of manufacturing SMEs. Meanwhile, environmental adaptive learning and digital technology embedding play a partial mediating role and a chain mediating role between value co-creation and business process digitalization. In addition, the connectivity resilience of digital platform could strengthen the mediating role of environmental adaptive learning and digital technology embedding, and the recovery resilience of digital platform could enhance the mediating effect of digital technology embedding. However, the moderating effect of recovery resilience on the mediating role of environmental adaptive learning has not been verified. This study not only expands the research results of value co-creation from the perspective of digital platform, but also opens the 'black box' of the path for value co-creation affecting business process digitalization from the perspective of digital strategy renewal. Firstly,from the perspective of manufacturing SMEs, this study reveals the internal mechanism of value co-creation affecting business process digitalization and deepens the cross-research of value co-creation and business process digitalization. Secondly, the findings enrich the research on digital strategy renewal by identifying the mediating role of digital strategy renewal in the mechanism between value co-creation and business process digitalization , making a positive response to the call for the exploration of ‘how the digital platform enables the digital transformation of enterprises'. Finally, by verifying the moderating effect of digital platform resilience, this paper expands the microscopic mechanism of value co-creation driving business process digitalization. What's more, this study provides practical guidance for enterprises to leverage the enabling of digital platform to facilitate digital transformation and value creation. First, enterprises should actively form or join digital platforms that focus on mutual co-creation and collaboration among partners to help digitize processes within the organization. Second, SMEs can achieve process digitalization goals by carrying out digital strategy renewal. Third, SMEs should pay attention to the positive role of the resilience of digital platforms in the process of value co-creation so as to promote the realization of process digitalization within the organization.

With the rapid advancement of digital intelligence technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data, there is a large-scale displacement of human work occurring. Unlike the simple replacement of manual labor in the era of mechanization, advanced artificial intelligence is now capable of performing knowledge-intensive or innovative tasks, reducing employees' sense of job security. Moreover, digital technology breaks traditional occupational structures and boundaries, compelling employees to constantly acquire and learn new knowledge and technology to meet the demand of "human-machine symbiosis". Simply stated, digitalization and intellectualization amplify the intricate interplay between individuals and society, resulting in greater diversity, dynamism, and complexity. Given the astonishing influence of digital technology, employees must navigate complex, dynamic knowledge exchange across multiple hierarchies of the whole labor ecosystem to sustain their careers. This makes career sustainability a significant challenge for organizations and individuals nowadays.
Although the concept of career sustainability has garnered increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners, it remains in its nascent stages. Moreover, there is a lack of a comprehensive review of current state of extant literature. To address this gap, bibliometric techniques and systematic literature review (SLR) are used to map the thematic, intellectual and conceptual structures latent in 225 articles published in top journals between 1993-2023 from databases of WoS (Web of Science) and CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure). More specifically, this paper conducts citation bursts and co-citation network analyses to identify the research fronts and intellectual bases in the research field, and then iteratively codes these related articles to explore the theoretical foundation, antecedents, consequences, and mechanisms of career sustainability, and builds the 2W1H (Why-What-How) knowledge framework so as to identify key research gaps.
The main findings are as follows: First, the current literature still places more emphasis on the conceptualization of relevant notions and the development of effective measurement scales, indicating that career sustainability research remains in its nascent stage while an overarching theoretical foundation has not yet been established. Second, the intellectual bases of career sustainability studies can be classified into four parts: Conceptual development, evolving agenda, psychological foundation, and career ecosystem. Third, the conservation of resources theory, the self-determination theory, the life-span view, and the job demands-Resources model are recognized as key theoretical underpinnings to elucidate the antecedents and consequences of sustainable careers. Fourth, hitherto researchers mostly understand the notion of career sustainability through the lens of individuals or organizations, respectively: the former focuses on elucidating how individual factors change the meaning of career in different phases of life; the latter mainly describes the influences of various contextual factors on the sustainability of careers, such as technological economy and social change.
Upon summarizing the findings, this article further identifies several limitations in the current body of research: First, there is a notable absence of robust theoretical frameworks concerning career sustainability. Second, the investigation of contingency factors and outcomes associated with career sustainability is sparse. Third, a conceptual model specifically designed for the Chinese context has yet to be developed. Fourth, there is a scarcity of studies utilizing mixed methods or advanced analytical techniques.
To address these gaps, future research could (1) advance and refine measurement indicators through the lens of a dynamic career ecosystem, thereby enhancing the conceptual understanding of career sustainability; (2)integrate the theory of Yin-Yang harmony cognition with the concept of "building a community of shared future for mankind" to develop a conceptual model specific to the Chinese context; (3) adopt an interdisciplinary approach, merging career theory with knowledge management theory, to explore the antecedents and outcomes of career sustainability; (4)conduct more extensive studies to examine how career sustainability influences variables such as innovative behavior, career resilience, and future work self; (5)employ mixed-method approaches to investigate the interaction of cross-level variables within the context of sustainable career development, including the impact of macroeconomic factors like the development of "new quality productive forces"; (6) investigate the diverse functions of explicit and tacit knowledge sharing in shaping the mechanisms that underpin career sustainability, drawing from the paradox of knowledge exchange; (7)uncover the operational mechanisms and explore the participatory roles of various stakeholders within the career ecosystem.