British Journal of Management最新文献

Do corporate communications regarding firms’ environmental performance accurately reflect their environmental actions and impacts? While substantial research has focused on greenwashing, less attention has been given to companies’ under-reporting of their environmental performance. Building on middle-status conformity theory, this study examines the relationship between organizational status and environmental disclosure and performance. We find that only middle-status firms fully disclose their environmental performance, while both high- and low-status firms under-report their achievements: high-status firms to minimize risk to their reputation, and low-status firms to avoid additional conformity costs. Firms in stakeholder-sensitive industries, with higher institutional ownership, and those with corporate social responsibility committees are less likely to under-report. Moreover, middle-status firms are particularly vulnerable to penalties for concealing environmental information. Overall, our findings suggest that organizational status plays a significant role in shaping firms’ propensity to disclose environmental achievements.

In this study, we tackle the under-explored issue of racial inclusion for Black academics in UK universities, thus exposing the harsh reality of ‘tokenism’. We amplify the voices of these academics and thereby reveal the disturbing prevalence of tokenism within UK higher education institutions. Drawing on organizational justice theory, we leverage a mixed-methods approach (24 interviews and 201 questionnaires) to examine their lived experiences, perceptions of belonging, interpretations of fairness within academia and the roadblocks hindering their career progression. We uncover evidence of covert racism, the pressure to outperform non-Black colleagues and epistemic injustice – the invalidation of their knowledge contributions. Interestingly, work prejudice and discrimination are not found to be associated with gender or work mode but rather with citizenship status. Our respondents, all British academics, report higher fairness perceptions, while non-British academics face greater discrimination. Our findings highlight the crucial role of procedural and distributive justice in mitigating prejudice in the workplace for Black academics, underlining the importance of residency status in human resources practices. This research strengthens organizational justice theory and calls for interventions promoting racial equity within UK universities. Our research demonstrates the detrimental impact of tokenism and highlights how it perpetuates racial disadvantages and prevents Black academics from achieving true equality within their institutions.

Amidst escalating global environmental challenges, the banking sector is increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance environmental sustainability performance (ESP). Our research examines the impact of AI adoption on ESP through the lenses of sustainable banking, Fintech, green finance and green innovation within China's banking institutions. We also explore the complex configurations of these factors, which collectively improve ESP. Grounded in the stimulus–organism–response and affordance theories, we employ a hybrid methodology combining structural equation modelling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to analyse data from an online survey. Our findings indicate that AI adoption significantly boosts ESP in the banking sector, primarily mediated by sustainable banking and green innovation, despite Fintech showing no significant direct impact on ESP. Additionally, we identify specific configurations of AI, sustainable banking, Fintech, green finance and innovation that synergistically enhance ESP, contributing to the ongoing discourse on technological innovation and sustainability in the banking industry. This study emphasizes the pivotal role of AI in driving sustainable outcomes and highlights the need for strategic integration of these factors to achieve higher ESP.

This study explores the relationship between institutional financial aid and undergraduate academic performance within a European context, grounded in Rational Choice Theory. Analysing data from 1776 Business Administration students at a selective European university, the research reveals that financial aid recipients achieve higher first-year grade point average (GPA) than non-recipients, with class attendance partially mediating this relationship. Unexpectedly, the study identifies a non-linear relationship between aid amount and GPA, where GPA improves with low to moderate aid levels but plateaus at higher amounts. Both merit-based and need-based aid similarly increase GPAs. These findings suggest that financial aid recipients invest more effort in college, with some interesting nuances. Given that financial aid is a significant expense for institutions, these findings have substantial policy implications. They underscore the importance of institutional financial aid, the impact of class attendance, the determination of the optimal amount of aid, and the choice between merit-based and need-based aid.

This paper explores the triggers and identity crucibles facing professional doctorate students pursuing a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA). Unlike prior research, which centres on full-time PhD students, our study examines the identity work of DBA students, many of whom do not foresee a transition to academia. Through 35 semi-structured interviews, we explore the identity work involved in ‘becoming a doctor’ and the identity crucibles that DBA students encounter. We identify the internal and external triggers that lead to identity work and identity crucibles, with their accompanying emotions, and examine how these crucibles are resolved. This research develops current thinking in critical management education, revealing how DBA students do not uniformly aspire to become practitioner-scholars or academics. Instead, they start and end their doctoral studies from various and different identity positions, highlighting the complexity of these long, intellectually challenging programmes. By exploring the triggers, identity crucibles and resolutions, this study offers a nuanced understanding of the DBA student experience and provides valuable insights into how these individuals can be supported throughout their doctoral studies. This support enhances retention and completion rates for those tasked with managing these programmes and reduces the likelihood of losing exceptional scholars/practitioners.

While artificial intelligence (AI) requires business model innovation, it simultaneously poses persistent operational, regulatory and strategic challenges, highlighting the importance of researching AI adaptation to appropriate organizational value. AI adaptation is not monolithic, and its nature and consequent value appropriation processes may vary due to external factors and an organization's strategic approach to innovation and resource management. Accordingly, a taxonomy of AI adaptation and its link with value appropriation can yield a theoretical understanding and practical implications of why and how organizations vary in leveraging strategic human resource management to shape business innovation led by AI adaptation. In this paper, we address this issue by applying adaptive structuration theory and conducting interviews with top management personnel from 51 companies based in India. Based on our findings, we develop a novel taxonomy of AI adaptation (exploitive, exploratory, emancipatory and expedient), structured within a 2 × 2 matrix and a robust model of value appropriation within a dynamic business environment.

This study examines the relationship between hierarchical political power and the value of cash holdings. To model the power structure, we utilize the hierarchical civil service system in China to distinguish between the holders of high- and low-level political power. We establish that directors with high-level political power increase the market value of cash, whereas those with low-level political power have no impact. Such effects are more pronounced in non-state-owned firms, in regions where politicians are subject to higher political pressure and in firms experiencing stronger agency conflicts. Further analysis shows that directors with high-level political power can increase the value of cash holdings through improved investment efficiency. Among directors with high-level political power, shareholders benefit most from the presence of those ranked at the Bureau-Department level. Our study provides original evidence that political hierarchy holds significance for investors’ valuation of cash holdings and emphasizes the importance of the heterogeneous nature of boards’ political capital in determining corporate value.

Integrating the diversity-as-separation perspective with the uncertainty-threat principle from the field of political psychology, we introduce the notion of ideological separation in top management teams (TMTs) and examine its effects on strategic change in an uncertainty-threat context that requires executives’ adaptive action (i.e. turnaround situations). We argue that, in turnaround situations, differences in values (i.e. political ideology) between executives activate ideological separation in the TMT, which causes decision paralysis in the executive group and lessens its ability to enact strategic change. Our research also considers the contingent role of two external environmental factors that may heighten uncertainty-threat for executives in turnaround situations and strengthen the hypothesized main effect – that is, shareholder unrest (i.e. the degree to which shareholders submit complaints against corporate leadership and proposals for remedy) and industry performance decline (i.e. the degree to which the turnaround firm's industry experiences declining performance). Data from S&P 1500 firms show that TMT ideological separation inhibits strategic change in turnaround situations. They also highlight the dark side of shareholder democracy, by showing that – in turnaround contexts – shareholder unrest intensifies this relationship. Implications for upper echelons, strategic management, TMT diversity, political ideology and turnaround research are discussed.

Little is known about how ill-being at work is produced in a post-colonial context. In this study, we explore this process through the lens of Critical Theory, examining the interplay between heteronomous obedience and the politicization of belonging in a multinational company in Pakistan. Drawing on data from 33 interviews, we trace the production of ill-being as employees navigate pressures to conform via (i) mimicking behaviours, (ii) gendering obedience and (iii) concealing their values and identities. Our findings reveal that ill-being is shaped by the hybrid dynamics of global corporate progressiveness and deeply ingrained local `Seth’ culture. This negotiation results in internal conflicts, reinforcing feelings of inadequacy, guilt and isolation, particularly as socio-cultural and gender norms complicate belonging in the workplace. By integrating our findings with the literature, we offer new insights into the production of ill-being in non-Western settings and highlight future research directions.

Universities and firms serve as key agents in the creation and transfer of knowledge, where universities primarily develop fundamental knowledge, which is later transferred across institutional boundaries and evolves into different forms for either scientific advancement or economic value creation. Although much research has examined technology transfer, the mechanisms influencing the speed and continuity of knowledge diffusion remain underexplored. Drawing upon institutional theory, this study investigates the speed and continuity of knowledge transfer from universities’ scientific outputs to patented technologies utilized by industry stakeholders. This paper disentangles the multi-level and cross-boundary dynamics of university–industry knowledge diffusion by examining the bridging role of science-linked patents (SLPs). Based on a longitudinal analysis of scientometric data, we find that universities’ academic reputations and the standard shaping of SLPs accelerate the speed of knowledge diffusion. Interestingly, academic reputation does not directly influence the long-term industrial impact of scientific knowledge. Additionally, contextual similarity between universities and patentees, as well as patents’ boundary-spanning activities, are found to reduce the speed of knowledge diffusion and diminish the subsequent industrial impact of scientific knowledge. Our findings underscore that the early emergence of SLPs is critical to the impact of scientific discoveries on the trajectory of subsequent technological innovations.