Role of traditional Chinese philosophies and new product development under circular economy in private manufacturing enterprise performance

Abstract

The new product development (NPD) process–performance link has been sufficiently studied in academic research. However, recent NPD process is significantly different from the conventional NPD specifically with the inclusion of sustainability considerations under circular economy (CE) context. In theory, NPD with CE considerations (CE-NPD), compared with the conventional NPD, is associated with higher costs and longer development times. This study empirically examines the effect of the CE-NPD process on both time-to-market (TTM) and profit performance in the context of Chinese private enterprises. In addition, the role of traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism in influencing the CE-NPD process–performance link is also investigated. We find that Confucianism positively moderates the relationship between the CE-NPD process and TTM performance. However, it negatively moderates the CE-NPD-profit link. On the other hand, the moderating effect of Taoism is negative on both the CE-NPD-TTM and CE-NPD-profit links. An interesting finding of this study is that the coexistence of Confucian and Taoist values in NPD workers has the strongest positive impact on the relationship between the CE-NPD process and performance. Our study provides insights on the way in which companies should plan to apply Chinese philosophies during the CE-NPD process to maximise the benefits.

The Entrepreneur’s Psychological Capital, Creative Innovation Behavior, and Enterprise Performance

“…In this study, it is found that entrepreneurs' technological creative innovation behavior, business creative innovation behavior, and organizational performance have extremely significant positive correlation (p < 0.001), while the standardized regression coefficient of entrepreneurial relationship acquisition behavior and organizational performance is 0.632, showing a significant positive correlation (p < 0.05). This is consistent with the research results of Subramanian et al (2019), which shows that each dimension of entrepreneur's creative innovation behavior has a positive promoting effect on enterprise performance, but entrepreneur's technological creative innovation behavior and business creative innovation behavior have higher influence than entrepreneur's relationship acquisition behavior. This may be because although entrepreneurs can make use of divergent thinking to obtain a broader knowledge space in relation degree and complete the integration of various resources, they cannot directly promote innovation activities (Obschonka et al, 2018).…”

Who is in charge? A review and a research agenda on the ‘human side’ of the circular economy

“…The CE can have a positive effect on firms' performance because it can promote innovation (Pieroni et al, 2019), better use of resources (Steinmann et al, 2019;Smart et al, 2019) and more efficient operations management (Batista et al, 2018;Govindan and Hasanagic, 2018). This is because proactive environmental attitudes among employees, triggered by GHRM initiatives (Paillé et al, 2014;Pham et al, 2019;Subramanian et al, 2019), can lead to more successful implementation of CE business models, which, in turn, will affect the relationship between GHRM and firms' sustainability performance (Subramanian et al, 2018). Accordingly, our third proposition is as follows:…”

“…The focus of CE research so far has been on operations management (Koh et al, 2017), technology (Masi et al, 2018;Batista et al, 2018), historical factors (Smart et al, 2017), methodology (Tse et al, 2016), resource management (Steinmann et al, 2019;Fischer and Pascucci, 2017), innovation (Pieroni et al, 2019), CE indicators (Howard et al, 2018), limitations of the concept (Korhonen et al, 2018) and economic aspects of the CE (Subramanian et al, 2018). Issues concerning HRM, and the human side of the CE in general, have largely gone unnoticed in the literature (Esposito et al 2015), and explorations of the role of HRM dimensions in the CE have been only recently begun.…”

Guest editorial

“…Studies documented the influence of Confucian values on work ethics (Yoo and Donthu, 2002;Baumann et al, 2016). Additionally, research has found an impact on marketing processes such as new product development processes (Subramanian et al, 2019), marketing communications (Hsieh, 2010;Zhu, 2009), customer relationship management (Jia and Wang, 2013;Liu et al, 2009;Murphy and Wang, 2006), negotiation (Warden and Chen, 2009;Eng and Jin Kim, 2006) and sales management (Lee et al, 2009;Lu et al, 1999). During negotiations, Chinese managers are found to be more culturally sensitive to distant cultures whilst practicing self-interest sacrifice and face-saving to the benefit of the other party (Warden and Chen, 2009).…”