British Journal of Management最新文献

The relationship between customization and innovation remains unclear in existing research. Customization requires firms to gain in-depth knowledge of clients and the product attributes they need, and such knowledge is typically seen as vital for successful innovation. However, close attention to current clients' requirements may limit awareness of broader market needs and innovation opportunities. This study develops hypotheses about the customization–innovation link on the basis of an attention-based perspective on innovation. We test our predictions using data from an original survey of UK and US knowledge-intensive business services firms, and employing a novel measure of customization (capturing the degree of customization as displayed through firms’ portfolio of services). The results reveal a clear positive association between a firm's service customization and its innovative activity. This relationship, however, is weakened as the firm's intensity of collaboration with current clients increases – unless the firm has also developed deliberate learning processes. We advance understanding of how customization can spark innovation, by showing that while firms must understand current clients' needs, they should remain mindful of broader market opportunities and develop deliberate learning practices to transform client-specific knowledge into innovation for the wider market.

Are future managers well equipped to drive the transformation towards more inclusive and just societies? This paper presents the perspectives of business school students on integrating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles into management education. We engage students as participants, co-researchers and consultants in a student voice-informed, multi-method qualitative study taking place in the United Kingdom (East and West Midlands, South East and West and North regions) and in the United States (Midwest region), focusing on marketing as a case discipline. Findings illuminate student critiques of the prevalent normative coverage of DEI, to the detriment of applied knowledge and action-oriented learning. We draw on the concept of empathy as a foundational lens for understanding and conceptualizing student expectations and develop a theoretical framework for holistically integrating DEI into management education. Our framework offers a theoretical understanding of shortcomings in current DEI learning in business schools and advances empathy as integral to both DEI and responsible management education. It proposes a novel direction for pedagogical innovations addressing social justice broadly and DEI specifically and showcases the value of student-voice-informed methodologies in education research for curriculum change.

We explore the risk–return trade-off in international regulation of cryptocurrency markets using a unique sample of regulations implemented between July 2018 and April 2023. Various regulation types have reduced risk in cryptocurrency markets while having differential impacts on raw and risk-adjusted returns. Given the legal challenges for national jurisdictions in regulating international markets, we develop a digital asset regulatory strength index (DARSI) and study the impacts of national regulatory enforcement quality on the risk and return effects of cryptocurrency regulations. We find that strong enforcement quality, measured based on the strength of formal institutions, amplified the regulations' intended effects. The amplification effect is more pronounced for regulations announced by a financial regulator and for more liquid tokens. Consistent with the view that normative compliance-seeking facilitates the adoption of norms, we also find that cultural uncertainty avoidance amplifies regulations' intended effects.

We test for relations among executive compensation premia and firm carbon performance under varying degrees of institutional investor monitoring. Using US data for 2010–2023 (15,836 firm-years), we find that low carbon emissions firms remunerate more excessively than high emitters, indicating greater rent extraction. Excess pay to carbon performance sensitivity relates non-linearly to institutional investors’ ownership. Although outside monitors initially discipline against overcompensating managers, carbon performance leads to more excessive pay when powerful institutional blockholders hold a controlling stake. Drawing on agency and institutional perspectives, we assert that pressure on US firms and financial institutions to decarbonize has benefitted managers of low emitting firms with a relatively stronger hand in pay bargaining.

The brand is often the most prized asset a company owns. While this intangible asset may be examined from different stakeholders’ perspectives, most research on brand equity has focused primarily on customers and the firm, thus often neglecting the importance of employees. This research draws on three studies to advance a dynamic model, which appreciates the complexity of employee-based brand equity (EBBE) by focusing on its development process and outcomes. Study 1, based on 21 interviews with employees and the pertinent literature, proposes that EBBE consists of four sequential and interdependent blocks: brand-building, brand assimilation, brand affinity and brand enactment. Study 2 uses survey data from 420 employees and leverages the advantages of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to support the EBBE development model and its propositions, demonstrating its effects on key outcomes such as employee performance and customer feedback. Finally, Study 3 validates the EBBE model and its dynamic nature on a new sample of US employees and resampled datasets based on employment duration to validate its structural power, dynamic nature and explanatory capacity. This is the first research to examine EBBE as a complex, dynamic process, shedding light on its development and guiding organizations in managing brands by emphasizing employees as key stakeholders.

Shareholder activism is a key driver of corporate change. Although it has become a prominent organizational phenomenon, most research has only looked at the relationships between activists and firms, providing a limited understanding of the overall process and its actors. This study takes a more comprehensive system-level approach of shareholder activism, examining the connections between shareholder activists, firms and stakeholders. In the context of European shareholder activism on climate issues, we explore how shareholder activists collaborate with stakeholder systems, including organizational stakeholders, stewardship and climate experts to frame and align their collective actions within coalitions. We conceptualize shareholder activism as a dynamic process structured around three mutually inclusive frames: disclosure-seeking, financial materiality and double materiality. The disclosure-seeking frame is motivational, whereas the financial and the double materiality frames are diagnostic and prognostic, respectively. Our findings show that collective actions of shareholder activists produce ripple effects between frames at the systems level. We observe a clear shift towards the financial and double materiality frames, indicating a growing alignment between financial interests and environmental impact. These results support the need for a broader system-level view of shareholder activism that can be applied to other environmental issues.

This paper examines the impact of the simultaneous management of private equity on hedge fund performance. We derive theoretical predictions based on bounded rationality theory and agency theory. We first examine the firm characteristics driving the side-by-side decision. We show that the ‘side-by-side’ managed hedge funds underperform their peers. The underperformance is more pronounced when the side-by-side managed funds have different styles, when they perform worse in the previous year and when they are younger and have a smaller size. To establish causal interpretation, we conduct a full sample regression analysis, a Heckman selection model, a PSM analysis, entropy-balanced matching and a set of placebo tests. Overall, our results suggest that side-by-side management distracts firm-level fund managers’ time and attention, weakens advising and monitoring and distorts the fund performance. Diversification beyond expertise may not always benefit investors.

Social media is an important communication medium. It enables subordinates to follow their managers’ activities outside of formal work spaces. However, knowledge about the effects of managers’ social media posts on subordinates is rather limited. Drawing on social information processing theory, we propose that manager positive information disclosures on social media affect subordinates’ work behaviour and relationship with their manager. We distinguish manager work-related from life-related information disclosure on social media in a pilot study. Results from the main study (a multi-time survey study) suggest that manager positive work-related information disclosure on social media has a positive effect on subordinate proactive behaviour through subordinate organizational identification, and that manager positive life-related information disclosure on social media has a positive effect on manager–subordinate relationship through perceived manager friendliness. Moreover, subordinate attention to social media strengthens the positive effects of manager positive information disclosures. Study implications and limitations and future research directions are discussed.

This study examines how variations in the speed of institutional reforms across emerging economies shape the strategic internationalization responses of domestic firms, particularly through cross-border acquisitions (CBAs). We argue that a faster pace of reforms intensifies competitive pressures – both from global entrants and domestic challengers – prompting incumbent firms to pursue CBAs as a means of adapting to heightened uncertainty and preserving strategic advantage. Building on the awareness–motivation–capability framework, we further theorize how firm-level factors moderate this baseline relationship. Specifically, we find that negative performance feedback, higher levels of technological and marketing resources, and greater financial slack amplify the likelihood of CBAs in the face of rapid reforms. Our findings, based on a large multi-country dataset of 12,251 unique firms from 35 emerging economies between 1995 and 2021, support these predictions. This research presents an integrative impact of the institutional and firm-level factors as antecedents of aggressive internationalization by firms in emerging economies.

Corporate elites are expected to be favourable towards skilled migrant hiring due to their comfort with the profit motive. Theoretical and empirical evidence, on the other hand, shows that employers engage in discriminatory hiring practices against foreign workers due to their personal biases and preferences. As the level of macro-political conservatism increases, it is important to further explore the relevance and importance of corporate leaders’ political ideology with regard to skilled migrant hiring. We investigate the impact of top management teams’ ideology on skilled migrant hiring, moderated by their international work experience and a macro-political shift. Using a dataset of S&P 1500 firms and their H-1B visa sponsorships between 2009 and 2021, we find that top management teams’ political conservatism negatively affects skilled migrant hiring. Such a negative impact is positively moderated by top management teams’ international work experience and negatively by a conservative national political climate. This paper contributes to the upper echelons literature by examining how top management team characteristics interfere with important managerial actions such as hiring in response to macro-environmental changes.