Ruichao Yu

Digital talent has emerged as a pivotal resource for advancing artificial intelligence (AI) within enterprises, and it constitutes a critical digital asset that firms prioritize in their AI development strategies, aiming to attract and retain such talent. To elucidate the interconnections and mechanisms linking the digital backgrounds of executives with the level of AI utilization in enterprises, this study undertakes an examination of the relationship between these two variables, drawing on a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies spanning from 2012 to 2022. The research findings are as follows: (1) The presence of a substantial number of executives with digital backgrounds within a company significantly enhances the development of AI utilization within the enterprise. (2) The influence of executives’ digital backgrounds on the level of AI utilization in enterprises is modulated through the enhancement of the enterprise’s total factor productivity. (3) Executives’ digital backgrounds elevate the level of AI utilization by bolstering their proficiency in applying digital technology. (4) Heterogeneity analysis, conducted based on the nature of enterprise property rights, geographical regions, and technological proficiency, reveals that the positive effect of executives’ digital backgrounds on AI utilization is more pronounced in private enterprises compared to state-owned enterprises. Regionally, the impact of executives’ digital backgrounds on AI utilization diminishes progressively from the eastern to the central and western regions. Robustness checks, including the substitution of key variables, model alteration, the application of the instrumental variable method, and the Heckman two-stage method, confirm the persistence of these findings. This article contributes to the understanding of the impact and pathways through which executives’ digital backgrounds influence AI utilization in enterprises against the backdrop of high-quality economic development. It enriches the scholarly discourse on executives’ digital backgrounds and AI utilization in enterprises, offering both theoretical support and practical insights for the advancement of AI within enterprises.

E-commerce (EC) promotes the effective connection between enterprises and the market, and provides a platform and application scenario for the value conversion of enterprise ESG information. In order to clarify the linkage characteristics between EC and enterprise ESG performance and the function mechanism, this paper examines the relationship between EC on enterprise ESG performance in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2023. Research found that: (1) EC significantly suppresses corporate greenwashing (GW) behavior. (2) EC suppresses corporate GW behavior by strengthening ESG information disclosure. After parallel trend testing, multi period DID, and placebo testing, the above results remain robust. Further analysis shows that: (1) EC significantly promotes ESG performance. (2) In enterprises with high levels of green innovation, EC has a significant impact on their ESG performance; On the contrary, in companies with low levels of green innovation, EC has no significant impact on their ESG performance. It reveals the influence and ways of EC on the ESG performance of enterprises under the background of high-quality sustainable development of economy, enriches the research on EC and the ESG performance of enterprises, and provides certain theoretical support and practical enlightenment for the sustainable development of enterprises.

The green innovation strategy has gradually become the key for enterprises as microeconomic entities to gain competitive advantages and adapt to complex changes in the external environment. Using the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2020, this paper empirically explores the impact and specific mechanism of the ownership structure of multiple major shareholders on the green innovation of enterprises. The results show that, compared with the shareholding structure of a single major shareholder, a publicly traded company with a multi-stakeholder ownership structure has a higher level of green innovation. The mechanism test shows that the equity arrangement of multiple major shareholders promotes green innovation by alleviating the fluctuation in the cash flow of the enterprise. This paper further examines the effect of regulation of multiple major shareholders on corporate green innovation and finds that green finance and the protection of intellectual property can form an effective complementary mechanism with the equity arrangement of multiple major shareholders, thereby strengthening the green innovation of enterprises. After the robustness test is carried out by the double-difference method, the two-stage instrumental variable method, and the substitution variable method, the empirical results of this paper are still valid.