This study juxtaposes agency theoretic concepts with the stakeholder management and political marketplace perspectives to explore how corporate political transparency alters the targeting of corporate political activity expenditures and the performance benefits of corporate political activity to the firm. We examine the alignment of CEO political ideology and political action campaign expenditures, showcasing they are a potential agency cost to the firm and stakeholders. Next, we hypothesize that corporate political transparency reduces this alignment. We then explore how corporate political transparency helps firms accrue value from lobbying expenditures by showcasing that firms elicit greater firm performance from lobbying expenditures at higher levels of corporate political transparency. As such, we demonstrate that agency costs at least partially influence the relationship between corporate political activity and firm performance and that corporate political transparency is critical to reducing it. Thus, corporate political transparency provides some benefits and has practical applications for firm performance.

We develop and test theory regarding the effect of CEO paranoia, defined as stable tendencies toward suspicion, feelings of ill will or resentment, mistrust, and belief in external control or influence, on firm stakeholder engagement. We theorize that because CEOs higher in paranoia have tendencies toward hypervigilance and the biases of self-as-target and sinister attributions they typically avoid engagement with external stakeholders. Further, we argue that CEOs higher in paranoia are subject to paranoid activation when confronted with trait-relevant cues that confirm suspicions of being targeted by a malevolent external entity (here, regulatory rulings or rival attacks), thus eliciting a shift away from avoidance to a more aggressive engagement with those stakeholders. To do so, we develop a content-analytic measure of CEO paranoia following both theory and evidence in psychology and methodological best practices, finding evidence that broadly supports our premise. In total, our study draws attention to how the manifestation of CEO paranoia changes the way CEOs engage stakeholders over time, contributing to understanding in multiple ways.

Given limited attention to the individual-level antecedents of entrepreneurial orientation in small business ventures, this study explores two antecedents, core self-evaluation and entrepreneurial domain-specific self-efficacy, and links a disposition with a cognition in predicting small business owner-managers' choice of entrepreneurial orientation. We specify and test a partially mediated model with a large sample of owners who are the principal decision-makers in their ventures. The results demonstrate that there is no significant direct relationship between owner-managers' core self-evaluations and their choice of entrepreneurial orientation in the venture, but that entrepreneurial domain-specific self-efficacy significantly mediates the relationship, extending the discussion about the development of entrepreneurial orientations.

ABSTRACT Recognizing the need for organizational change in a transition setting, we specify a research model entailing the effects of two important workplace variables on the relationship between dispositional resistance to change and organizational commitment. Organizational commitment is important because of its relationship with a host of considerations relevant to successful organizational change and development. We test the model with samples from four Ukrainian firms undergoing comparable substantive change, including in their human resource systems. The results indicate that the negative relationship between resistance to change and organization commitment is moderated by trust in management. Specifically, it is the lack of trust that exacerbates the negative influence of resistance to change on commitment. Also, high procedural justice strengthens the negative relationship, thereby reducing organizational commitment, an interesting divergence from the Western literature. These indigenous findings in a markedly different context from the West hold potential for theory that is richer and more comprehensive in its explanatory reach. The findings also provide useful insights for managers in Ukraine in their efforts to change organizational practices.

Objectives/HypothesisEvaluate technical success, tolerability, and safety of lidocaine iontophoresis and tympanostomy tube placement for children in an office setting.Study DesignProspective individual cohort study.MethodsThis prospective multicenter study evaluated in‐office tube placement in children ages 6 months through 12 years of age. Anesthesia was achieved via lidocaine/epinephrine iontophoresis. Tube placement was conducted using an integrated and automated myringotomy and tube delivery system. Anxiolytics, sedation, and papoose board were not used. Technical success and safety were evaluated. Patients 5 to 12 years old self‐reported tube placement pain using the Faces Pain Scale–Revised (FPS‐R) instrument, which ranges from 0 (no pain) to 10 (very much pain).ResultsChildren were enrolled into three cohorts with 68, 47, and 222 children in the Operating Room (OR) Lead‐In, Office Lead‐In, and Pivotal cohorts, respectively. In the Pivotal cohort, there were 120 and 102 children in the <5 and 5‐ to 12‐year‐old age groups, respectively, with a mean age of 2.3 and 7.6 years, respectively. Bilateral tube placement was indicated for 94.2% of children <5 and 88.2% of children 5 to 12 years old. Tubes were successfully placed in all indicated ears in 85.8% (103/120) of children <5 and 89.2% (91/102) of children 5 to 12 years old. Mean FPS‐R score was 3.30 (standard deviation [SD] = 3.39) for tube placement and 1.69 (SD = 2.43) at 5 minutes postprocedure. There were no serious adverse events. Nonserious adverse events occurred at rates similar to standard tympanostomy procedures.ConclusionsIn‐office tube placement in selected patients can be successfully achieved without requiring sedatives, anxiolytics, or papoose restraints via lidocaine iontophoresis local anesthesia and an automated myringotomy and tube delivery system.Level of Evidence2b Laryngoscope, 130:S1–S9, 2020

Research Summary We argue that because influence in the political arena can net benefits for firms, investors will respond favorably to indications of firm political influence. We focus on testimony before Congress because it is one of the most highly sought after and influential points of governmental access. Our findings indicate that firms reap positive abnormal returns surrounding Congressional testimony and that investors respond more favorably to aspects of testimony that indicate additional political influence (i.e., witness status, testimony length, and committee jurisdiction). Further, we find regulatory risk strengthens the effect of witness status and testimony length while Congressional negativity strengthens the effect of witness status. Taken together, our results suggest that investors respond favorably to indications that firms have influence in the political arena. Managerial Summary Our findings showcase that investors react positively to firm Congressional testimonies and their attributes, such as the status of a firm representative, the length of the testimony, and the committee industry jurisdiction. Further, we also find that investors will respond even more positively to these Congressional testimony attributes when a firm is facing high regulatory risk and when the Congressional representative's tone is negative. In general, our findings suggest that firms may gain market returns through obtaining public access to Congressional committees.

Language is increasingly recognized as having the ability to shape strategic outcomes. To understand language's impact in entrepreneurial settings, we study language in the context of foreign initial public offerings, a setting where organizations may suffer from both the liabilities of newness and foreignness. Our sample consists of the population of foreign initial public offerings debuting in the United States between 2001 and 2014, which collectively raised over US$60 billion in capital. We find that both new ventures' and the media's language impact investors by influencing the level of interest in the foreign initial public offerings. We also reveal that the media's use of analogies plays a pivotal role in familiarizing and legitimizing unfamiliar organizations. Overall, our study offers insights into the power of words in managing the challenges associated with the liabilities of newness and foreignness.

Scholars note the importance of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in promoting new venture activity. Yet to date, limited focus has been given to its impact on female venturing. Accordingly, our study investigates if the entrepreneurial ecosystem influences the prevalence of male and female entrepreneurship over time. We analyze the effect of entrepreneurial ecosystems in 75 countries between 2001 and 2014 on the rates of entrepreneurship for men and women using aggregate data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Adult Population Survey and National Expert Survey. Findings indicate that the prevalence in entrepreneurship is highest for women when the entrepreneurial ecosystem features low barriers to entry, supportive government policy towards entrepreneurship, minimal commercial and legal infrastructure, and a normative culture that supports entrepreneurship. Conversely, we find that prevalence rates for men are highest when there is supportive government policy but weak government programs aimed towards business creation.

Scholars emphasize the importance of emotion in entrepreneurship and the potential of emotional intelligence, but research is sparse in the field. We develop and test a novel partial mediation model of emotional intelligence, interpersonal processes, and venture performance. The results indicate that interpersonal emotional skills, which entail the recognition and management of emotions in others, has a direct effect on venture performance, but intrapersonal emotional skills pertaining to self-awareness and regulation of emotions do not. Additionally, both the intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions of emotional intelligence have an indirect influence on firm performance via interpersonal processes that entail functioning in key activities within the firm. We discuss the implications and address potential avenues for future research on this important topic.

Front-end new product development (NPD) is fraught with tensions that fuel and inhibit innovation. According to paradox theory, tensions pose a double-edged sword, sparking learning and creativity or anxiety and counterproductive responses. NPD teams' shared understandingshow they think about (cognition) and approach (motivation) tensionsturn the sword. Existing literature examines innovation tensions and their management. Yet scholars call for deeper dives, seeking research that unpacks cognitive and motivational drivers underlying how NPD teams cope with tensions. This paper responds, presenting a four-year inductive study of five NPD consultancies. Across cases, findings explicate the roles of paradoxical cognitive frames and regulatory motivational focus. Across firms, the front-end NPD teams framed tensions paradoxically. Three framesguided freefall, benevolent dictatorship, and cohesive diversityhelped teams develop shared understandings of tensions as paradoxical, posing competing yet interdependent demands. Teams varied, however, in their regulatory focus, influencing how they applied the frames to approach tensions. In the most innovative case, teams applied a promotion focus, energized to explore tensions in search of more creative alternatives and synergies. In less innovative cases, teams applied a prevention focus, motivated to avoid risk and loss. Together, paradoxical frames and regulatory focus shaped teams' coping behaviors and resulting innovation. Resulting theory posits the interplay among cognitive, motivational, and behavioral drivers of innovation. Results offer three contributions. First, this study extends understanding of antecedents to team innovation and front-end NPD. Second, findings deepen insights into team cognition and paradoxical frames. Last, the theoretical framework explicates how cognitive-motivational interactions enable coping behaviors that foster innovation. The conclusion poses managerial and research implications. Building from paradox theory this study suggests means to foster shared paradoxical frames and promotion focus in NPD teams. Further, study limitations highlight opportunities to extend its generalizability and elaborate underlying drivers of innovation.

Adopting a signaling theory perspective, we argue that politician stock ownership sends signals of positive predispositions to firms, thereby alleviating some necessity for firms to emphasize lobbying expenditures to influence political action. Using data on congressional stock ownership, we find support for our arguments. We find that as the proportion of Congress owning stock in a firm increases, the firm decreases the intensity of lobbying. Furthermore, we find that the signals associated with stock-holding politicians with greater ability to affect the legislative agenda (i.e., affiliation with the majority party) relates to lobbying intensity. Our findings add to the literature on lobbying while also offering implications for practice and avenues for future research.

We examine entrepreneurs’ economic, social, and environmental goals for value creation for their new ventures. Drawing on ethics of care and theories of societal post-materialism, we develop a set of hypotheses predicting patterns of value creation across gender and countries. Using a sample of 15,141 entrepreneurs in 48 countries from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, we find that gender and cultural values of post-materialism significantly impact the kinds of value creation emphasized by entrepreneurs. Specifically, women entrepreneurs are more likely than men to emphasize social value goals over economic value creation goals. Individuals who start ventures in strong post-materialist societies are more likely to have social and environmental value creation goals and less likely to have economic value creation goals. Furthermore, as levels of post-materialism rise among societies, the relationship between value creation goals and gender changes, intensifying both the negative effect of being female on economic value goals and the positive effect on social value goals. In other words, post-materialism further widens the gender gap in value creation goals.

Competing tensions and demands pervade our work lives, and accumulating research examines organizational and leadership approaches to leveraging these tensions. But what about individuals within firms? Although early paradox theory built upon micro-level insights from psychology and philosophy to understand the nature and management of varied competing demands, corresponding empirical studies are rare, offering scarce insights into why some individuals thrive with tensions while others struggle. In response, we contribute to the microfoundations of organizational paradox with a theoretical model and robust measures that help us to begin to unpack individuals’ varied approaches to tensions. Following rigorous scale development in Study 1, including samples from the US, UK, Israel, and China, we test our model in a large firm in the US using quantitative and qualitative methods. We identify resource scarcity (i.e. limited time and funding) as a possible source of tensions. We also demonstrate that a paradox mindset – the extent to which one is accepting of and energized by tensions – can help individuals leverage them to improve job performance and innovation. Our results highlight paradox mindset as a key to unlocking the potential of everyday tensions.

The extant lobbying literature largely focuses on the effects of firm aggregate lobbying expenditures, suggesting that more lobbying expenditures fuel positive firm benefits. We argue the focus on aggregate expenditures overlooks how expenditures are targeted and the influence of those targeting the expenditures; as such, exploring such factors will both add insight to our understanding of the theoretical mechanisms underlying lobbying and clarify contradictory findings. Specifically, we argue a successful lobbying strategy consists of both the breadth of government targeted and the political connectedness of the firm. Empirical results support our contentions that lobbying breadth and political connectedness affect the benefits firms receive from lobbying, which we operationalize both using government contracts and firm economic performance. Our analyses imply that more is not always better in the case of lobbying breadth, as the benefits accrued via dispersing lobbying across more governmental entities reaches a point of diminishing returns when lobbying breadth reaches high levels. Further, political connectedness has a moderating effect on the outcomes of lobbying breadth. We conclude the article with a discussion of the theoretical and practical relevance of this research and offer avenues forward for future research.

Competing tensions and demands pervade our work lives. Accumulating research examines organizational and leadership approaches to leveraging these tensions. But what about individuals within firms? Although early paradox theory built upon micro-level insights from psychology and philosophy to understand the nature and management of varied competing demands, corresponding empirical studies are rare, offering scarce insights into why some individuals thrive with tensions while others struggle. In response, we contribute to the microfoundations of organizational paradox with a theoretical model and robust measures that help unpack individuals' varied approaches to tensions. Following rigorous scale development in Study 1, including samples from the U.S., UK, Israel, and China, we test our model in a large firm in the U.S. using quantitative and qualitative methods. We identify resource scarcity (i.e., limited time and funding) as a source of tensions. We also demonstrate that a paradox mindset-the extent to which one is accepting of and energized by tensions-can help individuals leverage them to improve in-role job performance and innovation. Our results highlight paradox mindset as a key to unlocking the potential of everyday tensions.