Journal of Business Research最新文献

While managers were central to the founding contributions to strategic management, much later strategy thinking minimized the role of managers. We call for moving beyond perspectives that either conflate managers with the firm itself or treat managers as isolated entities. Recent developments such as microfoundations, strategic human capital, and behavioral strategy have gone some way toward making room for managers. However, we argue that more needs to be done, and drawing on recent research sketch a nuanced approach that centers on the dynamic social interactions between managers, at different levels, and other key actors within the organization. We build on the concept of interfaces to elucidate and introduce mechanisms that capture social influence at the interface and implications for proximate and distal organization-level outcomes and link this concept to the notion of dynamic managerial capabilities to add microfoundational insight to the explanation of competitive advantage.

While firms often engage with multiple suppliers, prior research has paid limited attention to the performance consequences of supplier concentration. Drawing on transaction cost economics and the knowledge-based view, we propose differential influences of supplier concentration on different facets of firm performance. Based on a sample of listed manufacturing firms from 2012 to 2017 in China, our findings reveal that, whereas supplier concentration enhances the buyer firm’s financial performance, it decreases the innovation performance. Further, organizational slack strengthens the effect of supplier concentration on financial performance and mitigates its negative impact on innovation performance. In addition, industry competition amplifies the effects of supplier concentration on financial and innovation performance. Overall, our study demonstrates the double-edged sword effects of supplier concentration and provides a holistic understanding of its performance implications.

Existing studies have yielded inconsistent findings regarding whether employees’ perceptions of organizational politics (POP) inhibit or promote their voice behaviors. These controversies highlight the premature nature of reaching a definitive conclusion regarding the influence of POP on voice. Adopting an expansive view of voice behavior, this study considers the foci of voice and, through the lens of the conservation of resources, proposes that POP has distinct indirect effects on two types of voice behaviors (organization-targeted voice and self-targeted voice) via ego depletion. Moreover, perceived managerial openness serves as a moderator in these indirect effects, specifically moderating the relationship between ego depletion and voice behaviors. The hypotheses are supported by a three-wave time-lagged survey involving 247 employees. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

This paper explores the decision-making process of entrepreneurs aiming to exit their business using stewardship exit strategies. We explore this process through the causation and effectuation mode of action. To do so, we developed causal and effectual exit behavior indicators and analyzed 15 Canadian SME cases based on interviews. Our results show that entrepreneurs used both modes of action in their exit process, but effectual behaviors prevailed. Our study first contributes to the entrepreneurial exit literature by employing a process-based approach. In doing so, we propose an iterative model that considers the interplay between causation and effectuation in the stewardship-exit decision process. Thus, we also add to the limited discussion about exit in the effectuation literature. Second, we developed behavior indicators to observe and analyze during the exit process and to explore other entrepreneurial exit strategies. Third, we show entrepreneurs different pathways to achieve their exit.

Bringing vital benefits or credit to ideators is the key to attracting them. The literature ignores the impact of supervisors’ allocation of idea credit on ideators. Based on the appraisal theory of emotion and the exploitation literature, we propose and validate the construct of idea credit taking. We examine how and when idea credit taking influences ideators’ reactions. The results show that idea credit taking is positively associated with exploitative perception. Exploitative perception is positively associated with anger toward the supervisor and regret toward the idea-proposing decision, which, in turn, are related to less creativity. Risk-taking attribution moderates the relationship between idea credit taking and exploitative perception.

AI-powered virtual assistants (VAs), such as Amazon’s Alexa, have transformed consumers’ interactions with technology. Consumers develop relationships with VAs, a phenomenon that has proven beneficial to firms. By employing the “computers are social actors” (CASA) paradigm, we examine a potential vulnerability in the consumer–VA relationship. Users’ relationships with VAs may expose firms to negative consequences when consumers perceive that their VA has betrayed them. Across three studies, we demonstrate that VA betrayal reduces consumers’ purchase intentions for products later recommended by their VA. The VA’s betrayal generates psychological discomfort for the user, which amplifies the user’s perceptions of betrayal and reduces their feelings of closeness to their VA. This process reduces users’ purchase intentions toward products recommended by their VA. VA developers should consider design features that recognize and repair the user–VA relationship after a perceived betrayal.

Despite the proliferation of scholarship on family firms the relationship between family ownership and internationalization is far from clear. Drawing on the mixed gamble logic and restricted versus extended socioemotional wealth (SEW) priority of family firms we propose an S-curve relationship. We hypothesize that internationalization decreases at a low level of family ownership, increases at a moderate level of family ownership, and decreases again at a high level of family ownership. This S-shaped relationship is the outcome of family owners’ assessment of different gains and losses associated with internationalization (mixed gamble) and their subsequent decision to support or oppose internationalization. Our analyses of 200 Indian firms from 2006 to 2020 time-period support our predictions and demonstrate that the inflection points in the S-curve appear at family ownership levels of 52% and 76%.

Internationalization literature uncritically treats different networks and knowledge as having the same impact on strategy and performance. Recognizing the need to approach these concepts in a more sophisticated way and inspired by Effectuation’s Bird-in-hand principle, we posit that internationalization knowledge, customer network knowledge, and supplier network knowledge influence performance while mediated by a non-predictive strategy. We combine six hypotheses in a structural model that we test on a sample of 851 SMEs from Brazil, China, Italy, Poland, and Sweden. The analysis supports the idea that non-predictive strategy mediates positive relationships between internationalization knowledge and supplier network knowledge, on the one side, and performance, on the other. The indirect relationship involving internationalization knowledge is stronger for SMEs in developed countries, but supplier network knowledge does not differ across groups. The analysis does not support the importance of customer network knowledge. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications of these findings.

Perception of social irresponsibility from negative media coverage may affect a firm’s payout in two opposite ways. Firms may lower dividends in anticipation of greater financial constraints or pay higher dividends to signal that potential damage to their reputation and future cash flows is expected to be limited. Using data from RepRisk for a sample of US firms, we find compelling evidence supporting the second outcome, i.e., firms perceived as socially irresponsible pay higher dividends. This result remains valid for different payout measures and after controlling for endogeneity using instrumental variables, entropy balancing, and a difference-in-differences approach. Furthermore, the relationship is stronger for high-growth firms, consistent with their greater needs for external finance. The signaling motive is further supported by the stronger valuation effect of dividends for firms perceived as socially irresponsible, as well as the subsequent decrease in the perception of their irresponsibility and higher sales growth. Overall, the results suggest that firms use dividend policy to mitigate the potential damage due to the perception of their social irresponsibility.

Based on the growing prospects of social media advertising, this research examined the interplay between product attributes and ad appeals in sponsored ads on Instagram (Study 1). The findings revealed that congruence between the two variables significantly enhanced consumer responses (ad and product attitudes, purchase intentions). These insights were expanded in an investigation of the underlying mechanism of the congruence effect, for which we determined how perceived ad intrusiveness mediates such an effect (Study 2). The results demonstrated that congruence reduced perceived intrusiveness, which subsequently generated favorable consumer responses. The mediation effect was moderated by consumers’ critical processing levels. The impact of incongruence on perceived ad intrusiveness was more pronounced at high critical processing than at low critical processing. The findings clarify the mechanisms involved in the crucial characteristics of sponsored ads on social media. This research also provides practitioners with insights into how to communicate with potential consumers via sponsored ads on social media platforms.