Digitalization is widely promoted as a means to enhance faculty development, yet in resource-constrained regions like Northwest China, structural inequalities persist. This qualitative case study examines how national policy, institutional capacity, and faculty agency interact to shape digital support in higher education. Drawing on institutional records and interviews with faculty from two universities, the study reveals stark disparities in funding, infrastructure, and training strategies. Research-intensive institutions benefit from policy-backed resources and expert-led programs, while regional universities rely on low-cost lectures and collaborations. Faculty report limited autonomy, disciplinary biases, and insufficient support for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. In this regional context, these findings challenge assumptions of resource neutrality and technological determinism in digital education policy. The study proposes a governance-oriented framework that emphasizes institutional responsibility, faculty empowerment, and context-sensitive digital strategies. It offers insights for policymakers and institutions seeking to advance equitable and sustainable faculty development in digitally transforming higher education systems.

In the era of digital economy, innovation in industrial chain and supply chain is an important part of industrial transformation and upgrading, and also an inevitable choice for enterprises to win competitive advantages. The competition between enterprises is not only about products and services, but also about the industry chain, supply chain, and value chain; The autonomy and controllability of the supply chain and its management level determine the quality of enterprise operation and development. This paper analyzes the characteristics of Midea Group's intelligent supply chain management, discusses the supply chain financial characteristics of Haier, Sany Group and Xiaomi, and confirms the importance of industrial chain and supply chain Financial innovation for high-quality development of manufacturing industry. Pointing out the necessity and feasibility of digital technology empowering innovation in logistics and supply chain management, smart supply chain is the guarantee for large-scale personalized customization, and supply chain finance plays an important role in the development of industrial clusters.

This paper attempts to address two questions: First, what is the relationship between a firm’s provision of incentives for its CEO and the CEO’s decision autonomy? Second, how does the CEO’s decision autonomy affect firm performance? Results from a simple principal‐agent model suggest that the relationship between CEO’s decision autonomy and incentive provision may vary across different decisions. We conduct our empirical analysis using World Bank Investment Climate Survey data from China. Our results show that: (i) firm’s use incentive compensation is negatively associated with CEO’s investment decision autonomy but positively associated with labor decision autonomy; and (ii) after controlling for the use of incentive compensation, CEO’s investment decision autonomy dampens, while labor decision autonomy boosts the firm’s performance. We conjecture that different level of agency costs associated with investment decision and labor decision might explain the above distinction.

In a series of cross-country comparisons, we show that national culture is statistically significant in differentiating countries with different corporate governance systems. Using the Schwartz cultural value model and data on corporate governance systems, we analyze the impact of national culture on six dimensions of corporate governance. Countries that have stronger emphasis on the dimensions of Embeddedness, Hierarchy and Mastery are more likely to have a bank-based system, countries with a stronger emphasis on Autonomy, Egalitarianism and Harmony tend to have market-based systems. The findings suggest several implications for the ongoing debate on convergence and divergence of corporate governance systems.