We examine board of directors’ gender diversity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of Russian firms, and test for their effects on the market valuation of these firms. The Russian context is unique because gender disparity of boards and top management remains high in Russia due to historical legacy, absence of specific diversity-promoting regulations and a lack of societal norms supporting female representation. In this institutional environment characterized by low normative and regulatory legitimacy for gender diversity, we draw on Upper Echelons Theory to conceptualize how gender-based socialization, value differences, career path disparities, and cognitive diversity shape the relationship between female board representation and firm performance, with CSR disclosure serving as a mediating factor. We use a sample of 223 Russian publicly listed companies to test our hypotheses and supplement this analysis with interview data by four Russian women board directors in different industries. By combining quantitative and qualitative data, we gained a more comprehensive understanding of the complex, mediated relationship between female board representation, CSR disclosure and performance of Russian firms.
Which dynamic capability functions become consequential for technological innovation under which environmental opportunity conditions? Dynamic capabilities are central to explanations of technological innovation under environmental change, yet we know less about how their innovation value depends on the opportunity conditions under which they are deployed. Integrating the dynamic capabilities and windows of opportunity literature, this study distinguishes among absorptive, innovative, and adaptive capabilities and links them to technological, institutional, and demand windows to examine how they jointly shape technological innovation. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of 52 listed firms in China’s communications industry, we find that high technological innovation does not depend on any single opportunity or capability. Instead, it emerges from configurational fit between environmental windows and capability functions. Specifically, this fit operates through functional alignment between the innovation tasks imposed by particular windows and the capability functions needed to convert them into technological outputs. Complementarity emerges within matched capability–opportunity pairings, whereas equifinality arises across alternative sufficient configurations. This study refines the dynamic capabilities–environment nexus by showing that capability value is both context-dependent and function-specific. It also extends window of opportunity research from macro-level window emergence to firm-level opportunity conversion and advances technological innovation research by enriching capability-centered and environment-centered explanations through a configurational fit perspective.
This paper examines the effect of managerial inherent short-term orientation on firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Unlike prior studies which have primarily focused on managers’ externally-driven short-term incentives, we utilize text-based measures of firm disclosures to capture meaningful CEO-level variation in short-term orientation. Our findings suggest that firms with short-term-oriented CEOs tend to have poorer ESG performance, particularly in the environmental and social dimensions. We further find that this negative relationship is weaker when CEOs hold higher ownership stakes and face less labor market pressure, when firms operate in regions with a higher level of community social trust, and when analyst monitoring is stronger. Our analysis based on exogenous CEO turnovers provides evidence consistent with a causal interpretation of the relationship between the measured short-term orientation and firms’ ESG performance, which helps mitigate potential endogeneity concerns. Overall, our findings support the notion that CEOs with an inherent short-term orientation may lack foresight regarding future opportunities in ESG. As a result, they may be less willing to engage in environmentally and socially responsible activities, ultimately leading to poor ESG performance.
This study investigates the dynamic relationships among safety training, safety situation awareness (SSA), safety behavior, and authoritarian leadership (AL) in new hires through a mixed-methods approach (a time-lagged field survey, a scenario-based experiment, and a multi-wave replication). To resolve theoretical conflation in the safety literature, we decouple social learning theory (SLT) and social exchange theory. Identifying SSA as the primary cognitive mechanism, we demonstrate that training functions purely as an SLT-driven catalyst to build cognitive capacity. Furthermore, we demonstrate how AL shapes the enactment of SSA by influencing trust and reciprocity norms under social exchange mechanisms. We reveal its differential moderating role: while AL may generate a baseline of externally enforced compliance, it weakens the autonomous enactment of compliance driven by SSA, and simultaneously inhibits voluntary and proactive safety participation. Our findings resolve the AL paradox by conceptualizing its phase-dependent effectiveness as a theoretically grounded interpretation supported by the observed moderation pattern, where the driver of safety behavior shifts from functional cognitive learning during initial socialization to dysfunctional social exchange during active duty.
How do perceived environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices jointly shape employee outcomes? Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, this study examines the independent and synergistic effects of ESG practices on employee psychological well-being and creativity. We argue that while each ESG dimension can partially satisfy employees’ psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, holistic ESG integration more fully fulfils these needs, thereby generating amplified motivational benefits. We test this framework using a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment with 833 Indonesian employees, in which descriptions of environmental, social, and governance practices are systematically manipulated through organizational scenarios to capture employees’ perceptions. Results show that each ESG dimension independently enhances employee psychological well-being and creativity, with governance practices exerting the strongest main effects. More importantly, organizations that simultaneously implement environmental, social, and governance practices achieved significantly higher levels of employee psychological well-being and creativity than those adopting fragmented or partial ESG approaches, indicating strong synergistic effects. These findings suggest that ESG practices function as a mutually reinforcing system rather than isolated initiatives. By demonstrating the motivational and creative advantages of integrated ESG strategies in an emerging-economy context, this study advances micro-level ESG research and highlights the importance of comprehensive ESG architectures for fostering sustainable human capital and organizational resilience in Asia-Pacific firms.
Digitalization and globalization are deeply integrating, reshaping the development paradigms of firm internationalization. Although prior research has documented what differences exist between digital and traditional firms’ internationalization, it has not documented why or how they differ. Using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) methods and a systematic literature review (SLR) of 157 articles published between 2012 and 2025 in ABS 3-star and above journals in the management, organization, strategy, and international business fields, this study constructs a “CTAPC” framework (Context characteristics, Theoretical perspectives, Antecedents, Processes, and Consequences). Based on this framework, we identify the current state, gaps, and future directions of digital and traditional firms’ digital globalization research from technological change, strategic change, and institutional change perspectives. We dissect the sources of these differences through the three lenses, offering a more granular, theory‑grounded understanding of digital globalization to advance knowledge on firms’ digital globalization.
For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), digital business model innovation (DBMI) serves as a core enabler for cultivating and maintaining sustainable competitiveness. However, the mechanisms underlying SMEs’ DBMI in the digital age remain largely unexplored in the current literature. Grounded in the organizational learning and contingency theories, our research constructs a framework to investigate the joint effects of interfirm coopetition, intellectual capital, and digital orientation on SMEs’ DBMI. Based on the structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis of data collected from 434 Chinese SMEs, the results identify that interfirm coopetition is positively associated with SMEs’ DBMI. Intellectual capital (i.e., human capital, structural capital, and relational capital) mediate the above relationship. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that digital orientation positively moderates the relations between intellectual capital (i.e., human capital, structural capital, and relational capital) and DBMI. This study advances theoretical boundaries within the extant literature bridging interfirm coopetition and digital innovation in the context of SMEs. The findings further yield managerial implications for SMEs on aligning their interfirm coopetition strategies to cultivate intellectual capital when implementing DBMI initiatives.
This study examines the impact of unrelated acquisitions on corporate social performance (CSP). We find an inverted U-shaped relationship, indicating that unrelated acquisitions initially improve CSP but eventually exert a negative effect beyond a certain point. Furthermore, we explore the moderating effects of stakeholder-related factors. Specifically, conflicts between managers and shareholders are found to flatten the inverted U-shaped curve, with extreme levels of such conflicts triggering a full shape-flip into a U-shape. In contrast, dedicated institutional investor supervision steepens the curve. Additionally, we show that resource constraints influence the relationship between unrelated acquisitions and CSP. The inverted U-shaped pattern is more pronounced among financially constrained firms and those undertaking acquisitions with greater industry distance. These findings offer novel insights into the nuanced role of unrelated acquisitions in shaping long-term, stakeholder-oriented firm performance.
Despite the recognition that firms engage in CSR to meet stakeholder expectations, the literature has paid limited attention to how these firms interpret and respond to discrepancies between their actual social performance and such expectations. Drawing on the behavioral theory of social performance, institutional logic, and the strategic CSR literature, we theorize CSR decoupling as a strategic response to these discrepancies. In this study, CSR decoupling serves as the overarching theoretical construct, while CSR-washing and CSR-hushing are conceptualized as two directional manifestations of CSR communication–implementation misalignment. Specifically, we argue that firms whose social performance exceeds expectations tend to walk CSR more than they talk it (i.e., CSR-hushing), whereas firms whose social performance falls short of expectations are more likely to talk CSR more than they walk it (i.e., CSR-washing). Moreover, we contend that these heterogeneous responses are more pronounced among firms operating in socially contested industries. Using a longitudinal sample of publicly listed Chinese firms from 2011 to 2020, we find strong empirical support for these arguments. Our study contributes to the strategic CSR literature by explaining how firms navigate deviations from social performance expectations through the decoupling of CSR communication and implementation.
Although often surrounded by mystery, competitive awareness is crucial for superior performance. We theorize that competitive awareness differs between multinational enterprises from China (CMNE) and those from the United States (USMNE). Specifically, we propose that competitive awareness is influenced by two factors: (1) information available to a focal multinational and (2) information available to its rival. Both factors can vary with a multinational’s home country and the markets in which it competes. We map the two factors into four areas of competitive awareness, each representing distinguishable challenges to a multinational’s ability to accurately perceive the competition. Leveraging an illustrative example of the Alibaba–Amazon rivalry, we portray how the four areas interact with different competitive landscapes where the CMNE and the USMNE compete, including their home countries and other emerging and developed economies. Overall, our framework lifts the veil of competitive awareness of the CMNE vs. the USMNE in different country contexts, contributing to competitive dynamics research.
Intellectual property (IP) protection is increasingly used as a policy instrument to promote green innovation, yet firms do not respond to stronger IP regimes in the same way. Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, we examine how managerial shortsightedness, subjective perception of economic policy uncertainty (SEPU), and political resources shape firms’ ability to benefit from stronger IP protection. Using data from China’s A‑share listed firms (2008–2023) and China’s Intellectual Property Pilot and Demonstration City policy as a quasi‑natural experiment, we apply a staggered difference‑in‑differences (DID) design to identify causal effects. The results show that IP protection is not a uniform catalyst: firms with less managerial shortsightedness see clear gains in both the quantity and quality of green innovation, while those focused on short‑term performance capture far fewer benefits. Firms perceiving higher SEPU gain stronger IP protection benefits, suggesting that perceived policy uncertainty increases the value of IP protection as an institutional safeguard that stabilizes expected returns and reduces appropriation risk. This research advances understanding of institutional effectiveness and offers practical guidance for managers and policymakers.
Cultural heritage entrepreneurship (CHE) often requires entrepreneurs to reconcile authenticity claims with commercial imperatives. This challenge is especially pronounced in grassroots heritage revivals where heritage meanings are contested and cultural authority is uneven, yet CHE research has largely centered on ventures operating within authorized heritage discourse (AHD). Grounded in institutional theory, we draw on institutional logics and institutional work perspective to examine Hanfu entrepreneurship in China, a community-driven revival that remains largely outside the state-led heritage system while supporting a fast-growing consumer market. Based on a qualitative multiple-case study of seven Hanfu enterprises using interviews, ethnographic observation, and archival and digital trace data, we identify a community-generated Hanfu cultural inheritance logic and a commercial logic that operate alongside a dominant AHD cultural inheritance logic, as well as professionalism-oriented legitimation practices that render grassroots claims more publicly defensible without formal endorsement. We further show that entrepreneurs’ hybrid role identities channel distinct institutional work repertoires. Businessman-inheritors translate inheritance into market-legible offerings, reframe authenticity toward lived cultural resonance, and build de facto legitimacy through diffusion and public engagement. Artisan-inheritors mobilize evidence-based reconstruction, frame historical fidelity as verifiable expertise, and pursue boundary-spanning collaborations with authoritative cultural arenas. This study advances CHE by theorizing grassroots entrepreneurship as heritage-making under contested classification and extends institutional theory by linking logics, identity configurations, and identity-shaped institutional work in fields marked by uneven cultural authority.
In business-to-business (B2B) contexts, companies increasingly rely on dyadic cross-boundary collaboration—pairing an on-site boundary spanner with a one-to-one client—to manage partnerships effectively and achieve joint payoffs. Yet, actionable strategies for individual boundary spanners to cultivate client trust remain underexplored. To address this gap, we draw on the active trust management perspective to explore trust-building tactics that boundary spanners can employ to foster successful collaboration. We identify benefit-enhancing initiative—prosocial, self-initiated behaviors by boundary spanners to promote client benefits and welfare—as a key driver of client trust, which subsequently enhances joint performance and client satisfaction with the company. We further propose cooperation length (longer vs. shorter) as a critical boundary condition. Through a multi-source, three-wave field study of 447 sales representative–client dyads, we confirmed the positive indirect effects of benefit-enhancing initiative on joint performance and client satisfaction with the company through client trust. These indirect effects were stronger when cooperation length was shorter than when it was longer. Our research advances understanding of how and when boundary spanners can strategically navigate the inherent challenges in dyadic cross-boundary collaboration to achieve both economic and relational collaborative outcomes.
Leadership plays an important role in driving digital transformation. This study explores how chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) career horizons affect firms’ digital transformation and the moderating role of the interactions between the CEO and other top management team (TMT) members. We find that CEOs with shorter career horizons (e.g., older CEOs) are more inclined to inhibit firms’ digital transformation than those with longer career horizons (e.g., younger CEOs). By integrating the career horizon problem into a CEO-TMT interface framework, we further explore how the CEO-TMT interface affects the relationship between the CEO’s career horizon and digital transformation. We find that this negative relationship is more prominent when the CEO-TMT power disparity is larger, while it is less prominent when the TMT has more digital expertise. Our study provides an overall understanding of how leadership shapes firms’ digital transformation at the CEO-TMT interface.
Successful firm digitalization could benefit firms, but this process also exposes them to various financial risks. Although research suggests that female leadership may mitigate firm financial risks, current studies ignore the paradoxical influence of female leadership in the digital context. Despite the existing stereotypes against females in taking the role of leaders and their technology-related capabilities, the impact of female leadership in influencing financial risks in the digitalization process remains under-investigated. Drawing on upper echelon theory and role congruity theory, we examined the impact of the female ratio of top managers, the power of female top managers, and gender culture in the relationship between firm digitalization and firm financial risks. Using panel data of 15,723 firm-annual observations from 2521 Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2019, most of our hypotheses are supported. Our findings indicate that the female ratio of top managers exacerbates the financial risks of firm digitalization, the power of female top managers attenuates the risks, and unequal gender culture makes the effect of the power of female top managers more pronounced. This study offers theoretical and practical insights into research on firm digitalization, risk management, and female leadership.
This editorial introduces the special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management, which focuses on the dynamic evolution and paradox management of niche leaders, with the T-Model as an effective strategic option. Niche leaders, or hidden champions, are SMEs that dominate global niche markets and have gained growing policy attention in East Asia, including China, Japan, and South Korea. While European hidden champions are pioneers, Asian niche leaders are latecomers, featured by catch-up, public listing inclination, public brand recognition, and balanced domestic-global expansion. The special issue accepts papers exploring evolutionary paths, paradoxes, and the T-Model that integrates technological focus depth and market diversification breadth. These studies collectively advance understanding of Asia-Pacific niche leaders, especially Chinese ones, and point out future directions, including cross-national comparisons, mixed methods, and integration of exaptation theory with the T-Model.
Corporate social and environmental responsibility has become a central focus in business management research. Hence, understanding the drivers of firms’ environmentally responsible behavior is both theoretically important and practically relevant. Recognizing local governments as public agents influencing firms within their jurisdictions, this study examines the impact of local governments’ political incentives on the environmental performance of local firms. Using China’s National Hygienic City campaign as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that the campaign, functioning as a political incentive for local governments, significantly reduces local firms’ pollution emissions. This effect is particularly pronounced among firms with greater institutional embeddedness (i.e., state-owned enterprises, firms receiving higher levels of government subsidies, and firms located in regions with lower levels of marketization) as well as among those facing stronger environmental legitimacy pressures. This study contributes to the literature on corporate environmental responsibility by identifying a novel determinant of firm pollution emissions and enriches the discussion of corporate governance by highlighting the pivotal role of local governments in promoting corporate environmental responsibility.
This study explores how organizations working across borders can improve knowledge sharing with their international partners. Focusing on the role of cognitive capital, i.e. shared understanding, goals and language between partners, this study examines how two key factors, the project management process (PMP) and international partnership management with external collaborators (MPIP), can help in successful knowledge transfer outcomes. Data was collected from a major emerging Asian economy, providing timely insights into a fast-changing business environment. Using structural equation modelling, we found that cognitive capital does not directly influence knowledge transfer outcomes. Instead, it works indirectly through PMP and MPIP. A shared understanding is insufficient; effective internal and external management processes are crucial. This study extends social capital theory by demonstrating that cognitive capital influences knowledge transfer outcomes only through the mediating roles of internal project management processes and external partnership management. Finally, the findings offer actionable guidance for managers by emphasizing the need to strengthen internal project systems and external collaboration practices to enhance knowledge sharing in international partnerships.
By integrating data on the internationalization of Chinese multinationals, information on digital trade barriers (DTBs) in various countries and the data intensity of different industries in China, this study empirically examines the differential relationship between firm-level DTBs and both radical and incremental innovations of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Our findings reveal a dual pattern: DTBs are negatively associated with MNEs’ incremental innovation and positively associated with radical innovation. Mechanism analyses provide evidence consistent with two complementary channels: DTBs are associated with lower incremental innovation partly linked to cost-driven constraints and with higher radical innovation partly linked to risk-driven incentives. Heterogeneity analyses show that the positive association between DTBs and radical innovation is more pronounced among state-owned and mature enterprise, while these characteristics differ in their capacity to weaken the negative association between DTBs and incremental innovation. Our study contributes to international business research by highlighting the macro-level role of DTBs and developing a “strategic rebalancing” framework that integrates transaction cost economics and resource dependence theory to explain the systematic patterns of incremental and radical innovations observed among emerging-market MNEs facing DTBs.
The growing pay gap between top executives and non-executive employees has become a key hurdle in combating income disparity, yet the proactive roles of CEOs in regulating such morally charged endemic are underexplored. Invoking the place attachment theory in sociopsychology, we propose that the pay gap would become smaller among firms located in the CEOs’ hometowns, especially in countries with strong norms of family origin and community belonging like China. By tracking a sample of Chinese public-listed firms from 2008 to 2019, we find a negative relationship between having hometown CEOs and the executive-employee pay gap. The effect of hometown attachment becomes strengthened when the CEOs possess higher social status, whereas it is weakened when their firms are headquartered in more market liberal regions. We find a more pronounced pattern for CEOs with longer tenures in hometowns and for family firms, and our findings remain robust to a series of endogeneity and robustness tests. While showcasing the special institutional characteristics of China, our study enriches the knowledge of income disparity by showcasing a CEO locality effect in regard to the executive-employee pay gap. We further unveil the effect of executives’ social status and subnational institutional differences in directing the hometown attachment effect.
