Purpose While paradoxical leadership has been recognized as an important antecedent of employee ambidextrous behavior, existing research has explained this relationship mainly through motivational and socio-cognitive mechanisms. This study shifts attention to a knowledge-based micro-process by examining how paradoxical leadership shapes employees' knowledge resource management and, in turn, employee ambidextrous behavior. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the knowledge-based view and social cognitive theory, this study tests a serial mediation model in which knowledge resource orchestration capability and knowledge resource sharing willingness link paradoxical leadership to employee ambidextrous behavior. It also examines whether proactive personality weakens the effects of paradoxical leadership on knowledge resource orchestration capability and knowledge resource sharing willingness. Data were collected from 434 employees using a two-wave time-lagged design. Findings Paradoxical leadership was positively related to employee ambidextrous behavior. Knowledge resource orchestration capability and knowledge resource sharing willingness each mediated this relationship, and they also formed a significant sequential mediating path. In addition, proactive personality negatively moderated the relationship between paradoxical leadership and knowledge resource orchestration capability, as well as the relationship between paradoxical leadership and knowledge resource sharing willingness, such that both relationships were weaker at higher levels of proactive personality. Originality/value This study contributes to research on employee ambidextrous behavior by introducing a knowledge-based micro-process through which paradoxical leadership operates. Specifically, it highlights the sequential roles of knowledge resource orchestration capability and knowledge resource sharing willingness, and it identifies proactive personality as a boundary condition that weakens the effects of paradoxical leadership on both knowledge-related mechanisms.

Negative emotion differentiation-the capacity to make fine-grained distinctions between discrete negative emotions-plays a foundational role in adaptive emotion regulation, psychological well-being, and effective goal pursuit. Despite its theoretical and practical significance, research on this emotional competency within entrepreneurship remains nascent. Integrating an experience sampling methodology with a 2-year time-lagged design, this study investigated the antecedents and consequences of entrepreneurs' negative emotion differentiation. Results demonstrated that stressor variability-rather than mean levels of stressors-undermines negative emotion differentiation, which in turn positively predicts both work engagement and entrepreneurial orientation. These findings advance theoretical understanding of entrepreneurial emotions, stressor dynamics, and their downstream implications for well-being and performance outcomes.

Religiosity is an important source of agency-related beliefs and socially embedded support, yet its relevance to farmers’ entrepreneurial behavior remains insufficiently understood. Drawing on the rural Chinese context as an empirically meaningful setting, this study examines the relationship between religiosity and farmers’ entrepreneurial behavior and explores the proposed pathways through which this relationship may unfold. Using nationally representative data on 12,201 farmers from the 2018 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, we estimate Probit models. The results show that religiosity is positively associated with farmers’ entrepreneurial behavior, and this finding remains robust across a series of robustness checks and supplementary endogeneity analyses. Further analyses suggest that this relationship is linked to both stronger perceived control and greater social network resources. In addition, the positive association is more evident among Buddhist respondents, respondents without higher education, and respondents without political belief. By examining religiosity, perceived control, and social network resources in a rural context, this study contributes to a more fine-grained understanding of how religiosity is associated with farmers’ entrepreneurial behavior.

How and when do entrepreneurial stressors shape strategic action? Integrating Dual Information Processing Theory with the entrepreneurial Job Demands-Resources model, we advance a "stressor-as-information" perspective to develop an integrated moderated mediation framework in which entrepreneurial stressors indirectly influence strategic entrepreneurial behaviors via strategic decision comprehensiveness, with work engagement and firm performance serving as key boundary conditions. Using multi-informant, multi-wave survey data from 283 entrepreneurs and their co-founders, we find support for the proposed model. While acknowledging that cognitive processes are inferred through behavioral manifestations, our findings suggest that moving beyond purely motivational accounts of entrepreneurial stress can enrich understanding of how and when the pressures inherent to entrepreneurship translate into strategic processes and offer new insights into the micro-foundations of strategic entrepreneurship.JEL codes: L26.

Crises always have an effect on entrepreneurship and the recent COVID-19 pandemic amplified the impact. Research has provided ample evidence on influences of the COVID-19 pandemic as a socioeconomic crisis for entrepreneurs and their ventures. However, considered a highly infectious disease, COVID-19 is also a personal health crisis that has posed a health threat to entrepreneurs. This research aims to develop and test a model of how and when entrepreneurs’ psychological responses to COVID-19 can affect passion for developing based on the job demands-resources theory. Using a time-lag design, results reveal that entrepreneurs’ COVID-19 representations can thwart the components of passion for developing through arousing fear of failure. Further, entrepreneurs’ psychological resilience impact changes in these negative, indirect effects. These findings provide important implications for the literature on the linkage between entrepreneurship and crisis and the manifestation process of entrepreneurial passion from the demands-resources process perspective.

This study aims to examine the moderated mediation model of the relationship between paradoxical leadership and employee creativity through the lens of social exchange theory and role theory. Specifically, it investigates the mediating roles of work involvement and role ambiguity, as well as the moderating role of paradoxical thinking. Through analysing questionnaire data from 725 employees across 217 companies in China, our findings reveal that paradoxical leadership significantly enhances employee creativity, mediated by work involvement and role ambiguity. Our analysis also suggests that paradoxical thinking moderates the relationships between paradoxical leadership and both job involvement and role ambiguity. Specifically, employees with higher levels of paradoxical thinking experience greater work involvement and less role ambiguity under paradoxical leadership, ultimately leading to increased creativity. Our study shows that paradoxical leadership can boost employee creativity, emphasizing the beneficial impacts of cultivating paradoxical thinking among employees and providing practical recommendations for organizations to achieve this. Future studies can consider conducting longitudinal and experimental approaches to examine the causal associations between these variables.

PurposeThis study examines how hub firms in the digital innovation ecosystem utilize their digital ecosystem orientation (DEO) to drive sustainable evolution during the twin transition of digital technologies and sustainability principles. The study defines DEO and its stage-based features, with a goal of building a three-stage theoretical framework. Due to differences in samples, theoretical perspectives, and research contexts, previous studies rarely focused on DEO's dynamic development, resulting in fragmented findings that lack theoretical dialogue and knowledge accumulation.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a qualitative meta-analysis to synthesize 25 studies and 39 cases from diverse countries and industries and systematically examine DEO's dimensions and evolutionary trajectory. The antecedents-process-consequences framework is utilized to analyze hub firms' strategic adaptation mechanisms across ecosystem stages.FindingsThis study's findings reveal that a hub firm's DEO comprises three core dimensions: modular design, digital identity shaping, and ecological institutional norms. Its evolution is driven by external digital economy contexts and internal enterprise transformation needs. The results further identify a three-stage evolutionary pattern. In the first phase, hub firms adopt a dominant DEO using center empowerment to aggregate resources and build the ecosystem's foundation. In the second phase, hub firms shift to a cooperative DEO that emphasizes bilateral cooperation and resource sharing to strengthen innovation capacity. At maturity, hub firms pursue a multilateral DEO that engages multiple stakeholders to reconstruct resources, expand innovation, and establish cross-industry linkages.Originality/valueThis study is the first to systematically define core DEO attributes and develop a framework that captures the dynamic nature of digital innovation ecosystems. Furthermore, DEO expands strategic orientation and ecosystem theories, guiding enterprises to implement phased strategic actions in complex digital environments. These insights offer practical guidance for addressing both digital innovation and sustainability.

新兴经济体企业传承创新民族非遗技艺具有重要的社会经济价值.然而,当前其演进路径与作用机制尚不明确.基于战略性社会责任视角下的纵向案例研究发现:首先,管理层战略性社会责任认知中的责任意识与市场意识协同驱引了相关企业的组织学习活动,进而实现了民族非遗技艺产品的多样创新及二元价值创造;其次,新兴经济体企业对民族非遗技艺传承创新的探索是在管理层战略性社会责任认知驱动下的进阶过程,各阶段对应的组织学习和产品创新也随之演进.研究结论拓展了对民族非遗技艺传承创新及企业战略性社会责任的相关讨论.

Due to the inconsistencies in their economic priorities, family firms and non-family firms are likely to operate and invest differently. In this study, we use a sample of international public companies to investigate whether there is a difference between family firms and non-family firms regarding their investment efficiency. We find that compared to non-family firms, family firms invest inefficiently. We also investigate the moderating role of country-level regulatory quality on the level of investment efficiency. We find that the association between family firms and investment inefficiency can be ameliorated when regulatory environments are taken into consideration. In addition, we document the role family ownership and gender diversity play in the main effect between family firm involvement and investment inefficiency.

Using the superior-subordinate matching theory as a framework, this study explores how the alignment of paradoxical leadership practices with employee needs impacts creativity. We examine the mediating role of supervisor-subordinate relationships and the moderating influence of uncertainty avoidance. Key findings: (1) A strong match between paradoxical leadership and employee needs positively impacts creativity, with relationship quality as a mediator. (2) A mismatch weakens these relationships, especially when high leadership practices contrast with low employee needs. (3) Uncertainty avoidance moderates the impact on relationships from paradoxical leadership practices and needs. Employees with higher uncertainty avoidance are more sensitive to paradoxical leadership, affecting their bond with superiors. These insights deepen our understanding of leadership's intricacies and its effect on organizational creativity, emphasizing the importance of aligning leadership strategies with diverse employee needs, particularly considering individual variations in uncertainty tolerance.

This study builds and tests a model that explains entrepreneurs' emotional responses to events in their work lives while specifying the role of entrepreneurs' personality in moderating such responses. Drawing on the cognitive appraisal theory, we hypothesise that daily entrepreneurial stressors (workload and financial) exert negative influences on two discrete emotions (fear and pride) and that entrepreneurs' neuroticism and dispositional optimism can moderate the proposed relationships. We examined daily diary data of 61 entrepreneurs over a two-week period and found multilevel evidence of individual differences in entrepreneurs' emotional responses to these stressors at both the between- and within-person levels of analysis. We also found that neuroticism and optimism partially account for the examined relationships across both levels. This study contributes to the literature on stress-related emotional experiences in an entrepreneurial context by taking into account the type of stressor and the temporal framework across levels of analysis.

The collaboration of government-university-industry is vital for knowledge creation. In this study, through a qualitative research, we compared the collaboration and knowledge conversion process of two regions in Japan and examined the influence of the leading role of collaboration in knowledge transfer in a regional context. We conducted semi-structured interviews with local governments, universities, and companies; adopted the SECI model to explain the knowledge conversion process; and used time series to compare the learning spiral. We found that the leading role of collaboration influences not only the types of regional collaboration but also the knowledge transfer and conversion process directly and indirectly. Our results provide insights for local governments to encourage knowledge creation.

Emerging evidence documents that entrepreneurs’ transformational leader behaviors exert positive influences on ventures and followers. However, knowledge of antecedents of such effective leadership and associated consequences on entrepreneurs themselves is sorely lacking. Moreover, leader behaviors are considered dynamic and affected by transient factors. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study demonstrates a resource threat, loss, and gain process by exploring how transformational leader behaviors manifest across stressful contexts, thus impacting their well-being, utilizing a time-lag design. Results revealed that exposure to entrepreneurial stressors and heightened reactivity to them has negative, indirect effects on well-being by impairing leader behaviors. Further, there are individual differences regarding how experienced and nascent entrepreneurs react to stressful experiences, subsequently affecting leader behaviors and well-being. We consider the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Intermediaries were once considered to be a product of a market economy, however, in some statist industrial countries, the top-down national innovation system limited the 'redundancy' in regions (cf. Leydesdorff 2018), and the local governments have to establish intermediaries to strengthen the regional knowledge base. An innovation intermediary established by a local government is an initiator of regional collaboration and a collaboration of triple helix spaces in itself. In this study, we consider public innovation intermediaries (PIINs) as hybrid innovation agents with an institutional design at the meso level and examine the role of PIINs played in regional innovation from the framework of triple helix spaces. To render the virtual spaces qualitative, we construct a framework of activity-functions-spaces (AFS) and analyse the innovation activities of PIINs. Through the comparison of two PIINs in Japan, we find the asymmetric relationship between the triple helix spaces in PIINs and the regional triple helix, and the differentiated but intersected spaces in PIINs are most conducive to regional innovation, which provides insights for theory and practice.

Innovation investment is crucial to enterprise development and economic growth. As peer enterprises face similar market environment and development prospects, they pay attention to the innovation activities of peer enterprises in the industry because of economic rationality or the idea of seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages. This paper aims to investigate the interaction and channel of enterprise innovation behavior of peer effect based on the data of Chinese share-listed enterprises from 2010 to 2021. The results show that peer effect exists in the innovation behavior of enterprises. We also provide evidence that managerial ability is the mechanism of the peer effect of enterprise innovation. In addition, we find that small-scale enterprises are more likely to be affected by the innovation behavior of peer enterprises compared with large enterprises. More importantly, we reveal that economic policy uncertainty significantly negatively regulates the peer effect of enterprise innovation. JEL classification G30, G31, O31

接班人的有效培养是家族企业顺利传承乃至持续发展的关键.现有研究多关注接班人"向外行动"能力的提升,却忽略了其改变自己内在世界的"向内行动"能力,亦忽略了家族企业代际互动的复杂情境.鉴于此,本文基于身份理论,以形成"合格接班人身份"为培养目标,构建了"赋权－赋能"的接班人培养影响因素分析框架,用fsQCA方法对家族企业接班人培养策略的有效性进行组态研究.发现:①单一策略并不构成有效培养家族企业接班人的必要条件;②三类组态构成了"殊途同归"的家族企业接班人有效培养路径,包括双重赋能主导型、赋权主导的学习支持驱动型、赋能赋权联动型.本文引入身份理论和组态视角,探究多种培养策略耦合对接班人培养效果的影响,丰富了家族企业代际传承的理论和实践.

Emotional effects in entrepreneurial contexts have attracted broad scholarly interest. However, we still have limited knowledge concerning the antecedents to or the generation process of emotions. Drawing on affective events theory, this study focuses on the generation process of two entrepreneurial emotions (fear and pride) by linking entrepreneurial stressors (workload and financial) and personality traits (neuroticism and optimism) over a two-week period with 61 entrepreneurs. Multilevel analyses provided evidence on individual differences in entrepreneurs’ emotional reactions to stressors at between- and within-person levels. Further, neuroticism and optimism can partially account for individual differences in examined relationships across levels of analysis. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.