Enhancing Engineering Ethics: Role Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility

How COVID-19 pandemic has shaped buyer-supplier relationships in engineering companies with ethical perception considerations: A multi-methodological study

In business-to-business (B2B) operations, prior studies have mainly explored transaction-based relationships with both buyers and suppliers opportunistic behaviors, driven largely by their intent to maximize their own benefits. These studies have also found that dependency on partners increases when supply materials are scarce. However, research is scant on how this relationship changes in the face of exogenous forces such as the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping in mind the ethical perception considerations. This study aims to bridge this gap in the literature by studying how buyers and sellers leverage collaboration and resource-sharing to tide over pandemic-like situations similar to the current COVID-19 pandemic while considering their ethical perceptions. We conduct a multi-methodological study consisting of an industrial survey and an interview-based thematic analysis. In the first phase, we collect primary data using a structured questionnaire and conduct a covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) analysis. In the second phase, we conduct a post-hoc test. We find that non-regular suppliers will share strategic resources with buyers during uncertain times (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic) if they have a high ethical perception of the buying firm and share a candid relationship despite being their irregular customers. Our findings propose that B2B firms should maintain healthy relationships with alternative suppliers to build trust and avoid supply crises in times of disruptions.

Assessing the impact of digital education and the role of the big data analytics course to enhance the skills and employability of engineering students

This study aims to explore the role of digital education in the development of skills and employability for engineering students through researching the role of big data analytics courses. The empirical study proposes the hypothesis that both soft and hard skills have positive effects on human capital, individual attributes, and the career development dimensions of engineering students. This is achieved through constructing a framework of three dimensions of engineering students’ employability and two competency development dimensions of big data analytics courses. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 155 college engineering students and a structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. The results found that courses on big data analytics have a positive impact on engineering students’ abilities in both hard skills (p < 0.01) and soft skills (p < 0.001) dimensions, while soft skills have a more significant impact on engineering students’ employability. The study has practical and theoretical implications that further enriches the knowledge base on engineering education and broadens our understanding of the role of digitalization in enhancing the skills and employability of engineering students.

The Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Sustainable Innovation: A Case in China’s Heavy Pollution Industry

Exploring the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) fulfillment and disclosure on enterprises’ sustainable innovation capacity can not only expand the research boundary of factors of sustainable innovation and the impact of CSR, but it can also serve as a reference for the decision-making of listed companies in increasing pollution problems. Using a sample of 224 Chinese A-share businesses in the heavy pollution industry listed between 2016 and 2020 and employing an ordinary least square regression, the results provide empirical evidence that CSR is positively associated with sustainable innovation. Second, the business environment can serve as a moderator of the relationship between CSR and sustainable innovation, and the positive relationship between CSR and sustainable innovation is more pronounced in regions with better macroeconomic conditions. Additionally, the improvement of CSR for sustainable innovation is more clear in state-owned firms than in non-state-owned enterprises. After a series of robustness tests that eliminate marketization, law enforcement, and macro-political unpredictability, the results still hold. This study broadens the scope of CSR and sustainable innovation research. In addition, the theoretical and practical significance of this study’s findings is referenced in this paper.