Delay is the leading challenge in completing Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) projects. Delay can cause excess costs, which reduces company profits. The relationship between subcontractors and the main contractor is a critical factor that can support the success of an EPC project. The problematic financial condition of the main contractor can cause delay in payments to subcontractors. This research will set a model that combines the system dynamics and earned value method to describe the impact of subcontractor advance payments on project performance. The system dynamics method is used to model and analyze the impact of interactions between variables affecting project performance, while the earned value method is applied to quantitatively evaluate project performance and forecast schedule and cost outcomes. These two methods are used complementarily to achieve a holistic understanding of project dynamics and to optimize decision-making. The designed model selects the optimum scenario for project time and costs. The developed model comprises project performance, costs, cash flow, and performance forecasting sub-models. The novelty in this research is a new model for optimizing project implementation time and costs, adding payment rate variables to subcontractors and subcontractor performance rates. The designed model can provide additional information to assist project managers in making decisions.

Business model innovation (BMI) has garnered substantial academic and corporate attention in recent decades. Researchers have not yet agreed on the most complicated BMI practices in the high-tech startups (HTS). Despite being the second-biggest economy in the world today, China has done little research on the practice of business model innovation in China’s high-tech startups. This study addresses the factors that impact the business model innovation of high-tech startups in China. Our study aims to fill the research gap by visualising and analysing, using systematic literature review (SLR) analyses and reviewing 36 in-depth articles, from 688 academic literature sources. Relevant publications from Scopus, Springer, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, and the JDM e-library expose the current research status from 2013 to December 2023 without bias. We conducted a literature-based investigation to identify essential insights on the BMI factors in the literature and derived a high-tech startup’s BMI critical factor. Our study shows that three main factors affect the innovation of business models in high-tech startups in China. The findings raise managers’, entrepreneurs’, and executives’ knowledge of corporate resource bricolage and cognitive style constraints in business model innovation and their pros and cons. The findings will help Chinese academics understand enterprises’ institutional environment and resource bricolage as final suggestions and proposals for corporates, regulators, and policymakers are presented.

This study examines the rapid convergence of the tourism industry with other sectors, driven by the expanding experience economy. A conceptual model was introduced encompassing industry convergence patterns, paths, and effects to assess this convergence’s effectiveness. Using a survey of 392 tourists in Macau, these findings reveal that the tourism industry convergence path and mode positively influence the convergence effect, thereby shaping tourists’ perceived value. Moreover, this study identifies that convergence mode and effect mediate the relationship between the tourism industry convergence path and perceived value. This study validates the efficacy of industrial convergence paths and models in fostering regional industry convergence within the tourism sector. Additionally, it contributes a theoretical framework for evaluating industry convergence effects at a micro level, enhancing both the theoretical understanding and practical applications of Macao’s tourism industry and industrial convergence theory.

This study investigates the influence of Environmental, Social, and Governance Disclosures (ESGD) on the profitability of firms, using a sample of 385 publicly listed companies on the Thai Stock Exchange. Data from 2018 to 2022 is sourced from the Bloomberg database, focusing on ESGD scores as indicators of companies’ ESG commitments. The study utilizes a structural equation model to examine the relationships between independent variables; ESGD, Earnings Per Share (EPS), Debt to Assets ratio (DA), Return on Investment Capital (ROIC), Total Assets (TA), and dependent variables Tobin’s Q (TBQ) and Return on Assets (ROA). The analysis reveals a positive relationship between ESGD and TBQ, but not with ROA. Further exploration is conducted to determine if different ESGD levels (high, medium, low) yield consistent effects on TBQ. The findings indicate discrepancies: high and medium ESGD levels are associated with a negative impact on TBQ when EPS increased, whereas low ESGD levels correlate with an increase in TBQ with rising EPS. This nuanced approach challenges the conventional uniform treatment of ESGD in previous research and provides a deeper understanding of how varying commitments to ESG practices affect a firm’s market valuation and profitability. These insights are crucial for firm management, highlighting the importance of ESGD in relation to other financial variables and their effects on market value. This study offers a new perspective on ESGD’s impact, emphasizing the need for differentiated strategies based on ESG commitment levels.

The coronavirus pandemic has reinforced the need for sustainable, smart tourism and local travel, with rural destinations gaining in their popularity and leading to increased potential of smart rural tourism. However, these processes need adjustments to the current trends, incorporating new transformative business concepts and marketing approaches. In this paper we provide real life examples of new marketing approaches, together with new business models within the context of the use of new digital technologies. Via hermeneutic research approach, consisting of the secondary analysis of the addressed subject of smart rural tourism in adversity of the COVID-19 and 6 semi-structured interviews, the importance of technology is underscored in transforming rural tourism to smart rural tourist destinations. The respondents in the interview section were chosen based on their direct involvement in the presented examples and geographical location, i.e. France, Slovenia and Spain, where presented research examples were developed, concretely within European programmes, i.e. Interreg, Horizon and Rural Development Programme (RDP). Interviews were taking place between 2022 and 2023 in person, email or via Zoom. This two-phased study demonstrates that technology is important in transforming rural tourism to smart tourist destinations and that it ushers new approaches that seem particularly useful in applying to rural areas, creating a rural digital innovation ecosystem, which acts as s heuristic rural tourist model that fosters new types of tourism, i.e. smart rural tourism.

 This research aims to empirically examine the role of learning organization practices in enhancing sustainable organizational performance, utilizing knowledge management and innovation capability as mediating variables. The study was conducted in public IT companies across China, which is a vital sector for driving innovation and economic growth. A mixed-methods approach was employed, with quantitative methods accounting for 70% and qualitative methods for 30% of the research. Purposive sampling was utilized to distribute questionnaires to 546 employees from 10 public IT companies. Statistical analysis was conducted using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The findings indicate that learning organization practices significantly influence knowledge management practices (β = 0.785, p < 0.001) and innovation capability (β = 0.405, p < 0.001). Furthermore, knowledge management practices positively contribute to sustainable organizational performance (β = 0.541, p < 0.001), while innovation capability also has a positive effect (β = 0.143, p < 0.001). Moreover, knowledge management practices partially mediate the relationship between learning organization practices and sustainable performance, with a total effect of 0.788 (p < 0.001). The mediating role of innovation capability is also significant, with a total effect of 0.422 (p = 0.045). The study further includes qualitative in-depth interviews with 20 managers from 10 IT companies across five regions in China: East, South, West, North, and Central. Senior managers were selected through a stratified sampling method to ensure comprehensive representation by including both the largest and smallest companies in each region. These findings underscore the critical role of learning organizations in promoting sustainability through effective knowledge management and innovation capabilities within the IT sector.