European Management Review最新文献

Previous research on co-existing paths has usually revolved around the development of a novel path that finally supersedes an existing path. In contrast, this study introduces an empirically grounded conception of the dynamic interplay between two intentionally co-existing organisational paths, one path persisting although in decline and one emergent path, where parallelism between the paths prevails. Our research is based upon a longitudinal, explorative case study at a large-scale telecommunications corporation, which tackles the challenge of introducing a new organisational path (i.e. an agile approach) while at the same time—intentionally and for good reasons—sticking to an older, well-established organisational path for some of its operations (i.e. a traditional management approach), leading to a fadeaway from the old path. We contribute to the literature by elucidating the evolving interaction dynamics of two parallel paths and how they give rise to a phenomenon we term paralysing parallelism in organisational paths. Towards this end, we elucidate the role of endogenous and exogenous self-reinforcing mechanisms.

Whether corporate political activity (CPA) benefits firm performance is contested in the literature. However, the CPA-performance relationship has been less explored in the international business context or in the context of macroeconomic shocks—notably the global financial crisis—during which multinational enterprises (MNEs) may be forced to revisit their market and non-market strategies. In this study, we draw upon insights from the institutional theory and legitimacy perspectives to argue that the performance consequences of MNEs' lobbying in a host market are contingent upon the MNE's experience of operating in the host market, their lobbying frequency, and the subsidiary's technological intensity. The empirical analysis used to test our hypotheses is based on a panel dataset of 224 subsidiaries of foreign MNEs operating in the United States, spanning the 8-year period 2005–2013, covering the years of the financial crisis. We find support for most of our hypotheses and contribute to the performance implications of CPA in international business contexts.

Following on from reviews about social networks and entrepreneurship published more than 10 years ago, this article updates our knowledge by reviewing and grouping representative studies among 693 articles selected from the Web of Science. This review identifies research patterns in major subrealms, examines research achievements in the light of earlier reviews' suggestions discusses directions for further research, and develops an integrative framework to advance theory and empirical knowledge of social networks and entrepreneurship.

Family firms increasingly opt for an external succession route and sell shares to financial investors. Yet, not all family-firm takeovers by financial investors are financially successful. To date, however, we lack a nuanced understanding of the conditions under which financial investors' family-firm takeovers will succeed financially. Our fsQCA study builds on 52 interviews to reveal the interplay of three typical levers that financial investors use (i.e., operational, strategic, and governance measures), the market situation, and investor type. We identify three distinct roles (i.e., incentivizers, optimizers, and adjacent investors) that financial investors take in successful family-firm takeover cases. We situate our findings in the literature on resources and their orchestration to explain how investors create value in each of the identified paths, and we contribute to the literature on family-firm succession and the interplay of family firms and financial investors.

Some companies invest in fundamental research, but many struggle when developing novel in-house scientific knowledge and integrating it into their new inventions. While the literature advocates revised approaches to better understand this phenomenon, we investigate the processes that lead to Simultaneous Discovery–Invention (SDI). By adopting an abductive process, we propose a model that highlights the mechanisms of SDI. Notably, we reveal that teams must preserve independence in creative exploration during scientific knowledge creation and invention generation while maintaining intensive original knowledge exchange among them. We also demonstrate that anomaly detection and peer validation mechanisms are mandatory for SDI. We evaluate our model with a case study in the food industry: the discovery that CRISPR–Cas9 is an adaptative defense immune system of bacteria and the associated innovations in this industry. Finally, we discuss the insights provided by our model and the implications of our case study.

In this paper, we examine the role played by compassion in leadership in intercultural situations. Focusing on the growing and important economic context of Indo-Japanese business, we develop a model that identifies contingent factors that affect Japanese leaders' expressions of compassion in intercultural organizational contexts. We engage with the spiritual capital construct and analyse leaders' lived experiences leading to a novel extension of the well-established Nested Spheres Model of Culture. By adopting an inductivist and social constructivist approach, semistructured interviews with Japanese business leaders operating in India are employed to generate data. The empirical data show how changes in time and place cause deeply embedded cultural values (such as compassion) to surface and become more explicit in leadership. The study also underlines the need to explore the wider spatial, temporal, and economic contingencies that affect both the dynamics of compassion in “intercultural” business situations and spiritual leadership in intercultural contexts.

Business research shows the growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, more recently, in its counterpart, corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). Yet existing literature on how these two concepts relate to each other is fragmented and sometimes contradictory, leaving an unanswered fundamental question about their dynamic relationship. We narrow this gap by systematically synthesizing and narratively analyzing 34 relevant studies. We uncover three core mechanisms underlying the connection between CSR and CSI: insurance, penance, and trade-off. Our integrative framework on these mechanisms can benefit future studies on this emerging research topic.

Building on the institutional voids (IVs) and resource-dependence perspectives, this study examines the moderating impact of new business founders' political ties on the relationship between IVs and new venture performance (NVP). We developed and tested a unique model using data obtained from 309 new ventures in the MENA region, specifically Egypt. The results demonstrate that founders' political ties enhance firms' complementary assets and mitigate the negative effects of IVs on NVP in developing markets. The theoretical and practical implications concerning NVP in a developing market environment are examined.

Worries about leadership (WAL) play a key role in explaining why so many individuals are not interested in pursuing leadership positions. However, less is known about how WAL evolves throughout one's career. We address this issue by examining individuals' worries about failure (WF) and worries about work–life imbalance (WWLI)—two dimensions of WAL—at different career stages and the role of perceived lack of personal resources relevant for leadership in increasing WAL. Moreover, we explore the moderating effect of gender on the relationship among career stage, personal resources, and WAL. Using a heterogeneous sample of professionals from different hierarchical levels (n = 487), our results show a decline in WF as individuals advance in their careers, whereas WWLI remains consistently higher. Importantly, WWLI becomes remarkably high for women in mid-to-late career stages compared to men. Furthermore, having fewer personal resources is associated with greater WAL, particularly affecting women.

Our paper investigates vertical agency conflicts¹ that result from the separation of ownership and control in privately held firms. Vertical agency conflicts can lead to vertical agency costs resulting from bonding costs, monitoring costs, and residual losses. More specifically, we focus on the roles of firm size and corporate reporting requirements in the level of these costs. We demonstrate that vertical agency costs are higher in smaller, privately held firms because shareholders have less monitoring capacity and limited access to the labor market. Furthermore, vertical agency costs in smaller firms are amplified in countries characterized by relatively weaker reporting requirements because shareholders have less information available to assess managers' actions. We suggest for the first time that firm size and strength of auditing and reporting requirements are essential to understanding agency costs' magnitude in privately held firms. Our analysis also offers a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that explain agency costs in privately held firms. Thus, this study poses important implications for public policy, as disclosure requirements are a major issue for many countries.