Democratic management is a notion of worker democracy unique to China. It has been revived and extended legislatively to enterprises of all types in the past decade. Can democratic management bring about mutually beneficial labour relations in China? Drawing on social exchange theory, this study uses mixed methods to explore employees' current experience and the outcomes of democratic management in Chinese coal-mining firms. An employee survey reports a positive relationship between employees' perceived efficacy of democratic management and wider organizational commitment. It suggests that democratic management has the potential value of creating a harmonious labour relationship. However, the success of such management is subject primarily to the commitment of top managers. The triality of motives for top management to conduct democratic management may undermine employees' organizational commitment when employees perceive that top managers are more committed to an exchange relationship with the higher authorities than one with employees. Key points1 Democratic management has the potential to bring about mutually beneficial labour relations in Chinese companies. 2 To build a harmonious labour relationship, democratic management should focus on the exchange relationship between the organization and the workers. 3 To increase employee satisfaction with HR practices and their commitment, companies should incorporate democratic management into their organizational decision-making processes rather than treating it as a 'rubber stamp' .

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This article explores how different challenges potentially inspire those deemed impaired to engage with entrepreneurship and how they overcome such challenges through different adaptive mechanisms. Taking an interpretive perspective, we undertook semi-structured interviews with 13 entrepreneurs with impairments, providing an understanding of the relationship between challenges and the adaptive mechanisms that led to business and personal attainments. Based on our empirical findings, we propose a new challenges-adaptive mechanisms-results (CARE) model contributing to the literature on disabled entrepreneurship among those with impairments and also provide insights into the entrepreneurial endeavours of the disabled population.

PurposeThis study examines whether relational capital influences self-disclosure behavior through the mechanism of needs-based motivation in virtual communities.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts hierarchical linear model (HLM) to differentiate between the relationships at different levels, with 378 online questionnaires recovered from 42 virtual communities.FindingsThe results show that group-level relational capital is positively related to self-disclosure and affects it through the partially mediating mechanism of motivation. Relational capital also strengthens the positive influence of the need to be on trend on individual self-disclosure behavior.Originality/valueThis study makes four research contributions. Firstly, we identify the means by which relational capital established within a virtual community influences user disclosure behavior. This focus differs from those of previous studies, which have emphasized privacy and security of information systems, cost–benefit considerations, and/or adopted personality traits as the research basis. Secondly, this study examines and verifies the mediating mechanism of motivation, establishing an alternative perspective for theoretical studies, and providing future studies with a reference for investigating the self-disclosure behavior of members. Thirdly, this research introduces and verifies the moderating effects of relational capital based on member relationships, thus making further theoretical and empirical contributions. Finally, we adopt HLM to conduct our analyses, thereby ensuring higher precision regarding the explanatory power of group-level explanatory variables for individual-level dependent variables.

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