While prior research shows that pressure from corporate constituents can improve board gender diversity, it often treats external pressures as equivalent and offers limited explanation of when female board appointments represent substantive governance change rather than symbolic compliance. We extend resource dependence theory’s explanatory reach in governance reform by arguing that external pressures vary in their configurations of governance relevance and enforceability, which shape the depth of firms’ responses to external pressure. We contrast two forms of international pressure that represent different ideal–typical configurations. We argue that international shareholder pressure, characterized by greater governance relevance and enforceability, is more likely to induce substantive female appointments. By contrast, international stakeholder pressure, driven more strongly by societal expectations and characterized by lower governance relevance and enforceability, is more likely to elicit appointments exhibiting patterns of symbolic management. Using a sample of Japanese public firms from 2005 to 2021, we find that international shareholder pressure is more strongly associated with appointing women to more influential board positions, whereas international stakeholder pressure is more strongly associated with appointments to less influential roles. Moreover, the effect of international stakeholder pressure weakens at higher levels of existing female board representation, whereas this attenuating effect is less pronounced for international shareholder pressure. These findings highlight the role of international pressures in advancing board gender diversity and reveal how the configuration of governance relevance and enforceability shapes the extent of symbolic compliance in firms’ responses to external pressure.
Firms increasingly pursue artificial intelligence (AI) transformation to achieve efficiency and productivity goals. However, the deployment of AI technologies has also led to an ethical dilemma arising from the unequal distribution of benefits among stakeholders, particularly the displacement and marginalization of low-skilled employees. We thus adopt an ethical perspective to examine how and when ethical pressures rooted in Confucian culture influence firms’ prioritization of disadvantaged stakeholders and, in turn, their AI transformation. Our model also accounts for the roles of market-oriented and society-oriented stakeholders, who may shape the internal motivations and external expectations that influence firms’ prioritization of either efficiency or ethical considerations. We find support for our theoretical predictions based on a sample of 4,704 Chinese listed firms and online recruitment data. The results reveal that firms deeply influenced by Confucian culture are significantly less likely to implement AI transformation. The presence of market-oriented foreign shareholders weakens this effect, whereas state ownership strengthens it. This study extends the understanding of the determinants of corporate AI transformation from an ethical perspective and delineates the trade-offs associated with the competing demands of multiple stakeholders.
A politically induced short-termism perspective was applied to examine how politically-appointed CEOs manage firm innovation. This study highlights the importance of distinguishing between politically-appointed CEOs (ignored as a distinct group in most past research) and other types of CEOs like politically-connected CEOs. This distinction offers a potential resolution to the conflicting findings from extant politically-connected CEOs–innovation research. The politically-induced short-termism perspective acknowledges that all CEOs have economic incentives to promote innovation to demonstrate good management and promote their career, but suggests that a CEO who has been politically-appointed has another incentive which is dominant over his or her economic incentives. That incentive is that the CEO must please the authorities who appointed and are evaluating him or her. This creates an incentive for such CEOs to favor initiatives that produce short-term outcomes, like rapid economic development, over longer-term initiatives like innovation with uncertain outcomes, since promotion decisions will be made in the short term. Data on the appointment of CEOs in Chinese publicly listed firms were analyzed to demonstrate a negative relationship between having a politically-appointed CEO and a firm’s innovation. The relationship is shown to be stronger for politically-appointed CEOs brought in from government institutions and those with brighter career advancement prospects. The findings highlight how innovation output may be unfavourably affected by a politically-appointed CEO’s decision-making biases. Firms should thus ensure vigilant boards or independent oversight committees to check CEO decisions and safeguard against neglect of essential long-term initiatives such as innovation.
While existing research on technological upgrading focuses on overseas strategies, this study examines how local stakeholder-oriented corporate social responsibility at headquarters (local CSR) serves as an alternative mechanism for Chinese manufacturers’ technological upgrading. Compared to general CSR, local CSR is local-stakeholder-specific and geographically proximate. We argue that engaging in local CSR enables Chinese manufacturers to attract technological resources from local stakeholders at headquarters, thereby fostering technological upgrading. Our analysis of 3,520 Chinese listed manufacturers from 2007 to 2024 shows that local CSR significantly promotes technological upgrading, with stronger effects in cities with higher government S T spending and more universities. Our test of the mediation effect of technological resources further supports our arguments. These findings highlight local CSR as a strategic approach for technological upgrading in the Chinese innovation ecosystem.
Prior research has examined how environmental justice shapes a firm’s green technological innovation (GTI) performance, primarily focusing on institutional arrangements. However, far less attention has been paid to environmental litigation pressure, which is typically exerted by public stakeholders. Whether and how such an exogenous force translates into a firm’s incentives to engage in GTI remains unclear. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms during 2012–2022, we measure firm-level environmental litigation pressure by identifying environmental litigation judgements brought against each firm via a content analysis of more than 84 million judgements obtained from the China Judgements Online. We then examine the impacts of a firm’s environmental litigation pressure on its exploratory and exploitative GTI performance. Grounded in organisational legitimacy theory, the empirical results show that environmental litigation pressure motivates a firm to restore environmental legitimacy, thereby facilitating its GTI engagement. However, this response reflects a “ceremonial conformity”: the influence is confined to exploitative GTI—a relatively cost-efficient GTI form—while no significant effect is observed for exploratory GTI. Economically, a one-standard-deviation increase in environmental litigation pressure results in a 4.18
