European Research on Management and Business Economics最新文献

Drawing upon a genealogy density of chairpersons’ native places for Chinese family firms to measure the intensity of clan culture, this study uses regression analysis and chooses the fixed model with firm clusters to examine the impact of regional clan culture on firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR). The findings suggest that family firms’ CSR performance increases with greater clan cultural intensity; specifically, firms characterized by a robust clan culture tend to engage more in socially responsible activities, prioritizing internal CSR over external initiatives. Drawing on imprinting theory, the results illustrate that clan culture shapes CSR activities by influencing chairpersons’ ethics and fostering a sense of mutual assistance. Further insights indicate that the influence of clan culture is particularly pronounced when entrepreneurs operate within their local environments or hail from large clans. However, factors such as population mobility, formal institution development, and the gender of the chairperson serve to weaken the impact of clan culture. In general, this study contributes evidence toward understanding the drivers behind family firms’ CSR behaviors from the vantage point of traditional culture.

Auditors fulfill a crucial societal role by increasing the credibility of financial reports, which requires that appropriate audit quality be provided and auditors are factually independent and perceived as such. So far, regulators and researchers have focused on a few measures for improving independence, namely the prohibition of non-audit services (NAS), audit firm and audit partner rotation, and joint audits. Despite these regulatory initiatives, accounting scandals still happen, and the independence of the auditors involved is questioned. Therefore, this explorative study aims to identify alternative measures that may strengthen auditor independence. Non-professional investors and auditors participated in a survey to identify promising independence-enhancing measures.

Surprisingly, not only non-professional investors but also auditors support the implementation of many instruments. Non-professional investors rate measures related to oversight, controls, and sanctions as particularly useful. Likewise, auditors perceive measures for oversight and control as helpful but rank most sanctions lower than non-professional investors. They also support a stricter civil liability and rank some direct independence-improving measures as highly useful. Overall, the participants perceive a greater need for improving the independence of public interest entity (PIE) auditors.

This explorative study widens the research horizon by adding alternative measures for improving independence in appearance. Thus, researchers may identify promising avenues for future research. Also, the paper is of interest to regulators and potentially helps in setting independence standards. Auditors and audit committees can identify opportunities for taking voluntary actions to ensure factual and perceived auditor independence.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the potential of organisational design as a potent approach to supply chain risk management (SCRM). Using contingency theory, the current research distinguishes between two design options: organic and mechanistic organisations, both at the structural and cultural levels. The authors predict a positive relationship between the organic nature of structural and cultural elements and the level of supply chain risk mitigation. They also predict a positive interaction effect between structural and cultural elements. To test hypotheses, multiple and moderated regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 213 small and medium-sized enterprises in the Spanish agri-food supply chain. The results confirmed the proposed hypotheses. This research contributes to the literature on SCRM by opening a discussion on the impact of organisational design as means of managing supply chain risk. In particular, it draws attention to the positive combined effects of the different design characteristics (structural and cultural). Furthermore, this study provides managers with insights into the use of organisational design as an additional tool for managing supply chain risk.

The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is progressing rapidly, compelling companies to integrate it within their operational frameworks to sustain competitiveness, primarily driven by its impact on organizational agility (OA). Nevertheless, the absence of a robust theoretical framework underscores the limited understanding of the relationship between AI and OA. Within this context, the research aims to establish foundational knowledge, delineate the evolutionary trajectory of the topic, and identify prospective avenues for inquiry. To achieve this objective, bibliometric analysis is employed to gain comprehensive insights into the interplay between these variables and discern trends within this research domain. The utilization of the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases up to January 2024 facilitates data collection, while Bibliometrix and Visme are instrumental in crafting a scientific production map. The analysis corroborates the novelty and growth potential of the subject matter, underscoring heightened author interest, particularly evident in 2023, against a backdrop of sparse and temporally dispersed publications until 2017. Notably, the prevalence of conference papers on this topic stands significantly high at 26.98 % in comparison to the total contributions, indicative of the research community's engagement. Furthermore, the findings underscore a robust association between the keywords AI and OA, delineating a burgeoning research domain that converges with the digital transformation of enterprises and the Theory of Standardization Process. The effective integration of AI into corporate operational frameworks marks the zenith of this transformative process, ushering in the genesis and overhaul of organizational routines. This study represents a pioneering endeavour within the literature, as it constitutes the inaugural bibliometric exploration of this subject matter. Moreover, it serves to underpin the establishment of theoretical underpinnings for future research endeavours as it outlines current trends and emerging future research trajectories, concerning the role of AI in OA.

The rapid development of the new generation of digital technology has injected new vitality into the digital transformation (DT) and continued growth of enterprises. This paper selects data from China's A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019 and uses transaction cost theory to empirically test the effect of enterprise digital transformation (EDT) on enterprise growth and its mechanism. Research has found that DT can significantly promote enterprise growth. The reduction of supply chain collaboration costs plays an important role as an intermediary mechanism in this process. At the same time, industry competition intensity, regional marketization level, and digital infrastructure level have played positive regulatory roles. In addition, when the enterprise's level of financing constraints is low and it is a manufacturing enterprise or state-owned enterprise, the promotion effect of EDT on enterprise growth is more significant. While expanding the research perspective and measurement methods of EDT, this paper integrates the strategic actions of EDT and the inter-enterprise collaboration costs of the supply chain into a unified theoretical framework, revealing a new theoretical mechanism for DT to promote enterprise growth. It also provides practical inspiration for relevant policy formulation and enterprise transformation and upgrading.

Investment and financing decisions are especially important in a family firm context, as family and business dynamics interact to produce unique behaviors that may affect these decisions. However, research on how the family nature of these firms shapes their investment and financing preferences is still lacking. To help fill this gap, this study aims to provide a robust picture of the literature to identify key questions that can help guide future research. Using a systematic approach based on bibliometrics and network analysis of 891 papers published in the Web of Science database between 1992 and 2023, we show the evolution of research in terms of publications and identify the most active and influential articles, authors, and journals. Using bibliographic coupling analysis, the paper reveals the thematic structure and trends of the research. This study provides valuable insights into the future by identifying knowledge gaps and offering guidance to both researchers and practitioners seeking to understand the specific needs and challenges faced by family firms in their investment and financing endeavors.

Crowdfunding is an Internet-based fundraising method that relies on contributions from a large crowd of investors to fund innovative and risky projects. The aim of this paper is to analyse which combinations of signals commonly studied for crowdfunding success lead to overfunding. Based on the information asymmetries between fund-seeking entrepreneurs and the crowd, this paper draws on signalling theory to explore the elements of campaign design that contribute to overfunding (i.e. raising at least 10 % above the funding target). The paper focuses on the entrepreneur's identity as an individual or corporation, pitch video length, budget explanation length, number of images, project abstract length, and number of updates by the entrepreneur. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is performed using publicly available data sourced from 257 socially oriented projects from a reward-based crowdfunding platform. The results show the importance for entrepreneurs of using images and constantly communicating with the crowd. The results also reveal a series of configurations of design features that result in overfunding. These findings have practical implications for the design of reward-based crowdfunding campaigns and contribute to a better understanding of how economic agents interact within crowdfunding.

Ethnocentric conduct among employees is observed in multicultural work environments characterised by the presence of individuals from diverse origins. The existence of ethnocentrism inside the workplace has been observed to have repercussions for colleagues. Nevertheless, despite the significance of the aforementioned factors, there hasn't been a considerable pertinent scholarly study on how these aspects affect the localisation of human resources. This research closes the gap in the literature by integrating ethnocentrism and human resource localisation variables. We used Andrew F. Hayes PROCESS V4.0 to assess the hypothesised relationship between employees' ethnocentric behaviour and human resource localisation success. In addition, employee knowledge-sharing tendency works as a mediator, and employee cultural intelligence (CQ) is a moderated mediator. From the analysis of 361 respondents from multinational Company (MNC) workers, we found that ethnocentric behaviour reduces employee knowledge-sharing tendency among workers and, in return, reduces human resource localisation success. However, CQ moderates the mediated relationship between employee knowledge-sharing direction and localisation success. We also found that when employees have high CQ, the negative effect of ethnocentrism on localisation success weakens. Managers of multicultural organisations should reduce ethnocentrism to ensure the success of human resource localisation. MNCs can consider employing culturally intelligent individuals and giving them sensitivity training. Future research can integrate other variables, such as the firm's cultural characteristics, to continue this research domain. Further research can also consider collecting data from nations with high cultural distances; comparative studies between two countries are also encouraged.

This paper studies the effect of financial constraints and financial distress on accounting restatements; specifically, we empirically analyse whether several firm-specific characteristics—namely, the level of leverage, the cost of debt, and the interest coverage ratio—influence the likelihood of an accounting restatement. To do so, we use a sample of Spanish listed companies in the period from 2000 to 2017. The results show that the level and cost of debt and financial distress are associated with a higher incidence of accounting restatements. Our evidence is consistent with the argument that financially constrained firms—that is, firms with higher levels of leverage, especially in the short-term, facing a higher cost of debt—and financially distressed firms probably engage in more aggressive accounting practices or opportunistic reporting to clean up their financial statements, leading to an increase in accounting restatements. Financially constrained firms could be motivated to manage financial statements in order to prevent a debt covenant violation, obtain new financing or obtain financing at a lower cost. In the case of financially distressed firms, the motivation could be to prevent bankruptcy costs. The findings are consistent with previous literature, which has shown that firms employ accounting restatement as an instrument for earnings management.

In the innovation literature, little attention has been paid to technical efficiency as a measure of performance, despite the fact that technical efficiency is key to explaining firm productivity. In this study we analyze the influence of internal R&D, external R&D and R&D cooperation on the technical efficiency of the firm. The data used come from the Panel de Innovación Tecnológica 2016 for Spanish companies, from whose database we have selected the set of innovative manufacturing firms. To estimate the coefficients of interest we have constructed a knowledge production function, estimated using Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and the Heckman correction. The results indicate that both internal R&D and R&D cooperation have a positive and significant influence on technical efficiency, while external R&D has a significant negative relationship. Knowing this type of information in advance is very important for business managers and policy makers, since it facilitates decision-making on innovation strategies, as well as the formulation of public policies to support innovation leading to an efficient allocation of public resources.