British Journal of Management最新文献

This study contributes to understanding the human side of open innovation (OI) by reconceptualizing leadership as an emergent and dynamic process. Drawing upon extensive research in leadership theory and insights from emerging studies on non-traditional organizational structures such as online communities and technology collaborations, the study introduces a dynamic process model of leadership within OI environments. Central to this model are two pivotal dimensions: the foundation of leadership authority (formal vs. informal) and the leader's orientation to engaging followers (democratic/participative vs. autocratic/hierarchical). The model is empirically validated by means of a longitudinal case study of co-creation initiatives – a type of OI – within the cultural heritage sector. Three theoretical implications are derived from the analysis. First, we observe a dynamic interplay among various informal sources of authority – technical expertise and interpersonal trust – across the duration of OI projects. Second, the leader's orientation to followers constitutes a skill and an adaptive capability rather than a fixed personal trait. Third, we underscore the significance of physical proximity as a crucial determinant of leadership effectiveness in OI settings, influencing a leader's comprehension and interpretation of the contextual landscape. In doing so the study advances and enriches the theoretical underpinnings of OI leadership, moving beyond conventional models rooted in closed-innovation paradigms. Our research underscores the necessity of embracing the dynamic nature of leadership within OI projects, offering valuable insights for practitioners and scholars alike.

Past research shows that firms with constrained access to debt are more likely to withdraw from exporting. We argue that firms’ debt maturity structure – that is their use of short-term versus long-term debt – also matters, because different debt maturities entail different risks (i.e. liquidity risk versus underinvestment risk). Using data from Belgian international new ventures (INVs), and controlling for self-selection into exporting, we find that INVs relying primarily on either short-term debt or long-term debt are more likely to subsequently withdraw from exporting than INVs with a balanced debt maturity structure (i.e. comprising an optimal mixture of short- and long-term debts). This U-shaped relationship is weaker for INVs with more financial slack and stronger for those with higher growth opportunities. Overall, while past research emphasizes the impact of financial resource levels on export withdrawal, our study underscores the role of the structure of these resources. Our study contributes to the international entrepreneurship literature and resource mobilization literature in management.

The lead investor nominee structure in equity crowdfunding (ECF) integrates the strengths of the pure ECF and angel ECF models. By committing their own capital, lead investors address two key challenges: mitigating adverse selection through thorough due diligence and reducing moral hazard by monitoring the firm post-campaign to secure returns. The digital nominee governance structure ensures equal ownership and voting rights for all investors, resolving potential conflicts between angels, accredited investors and the crowd. This model fosters collaboration between professional investors and the crowd, leveraging their respective strengths. Analysis of extensive UK data shows that nominee ECF campaigns outperform direct ownership campaigns in both the short and long term. These findings provide valuable governance insights for platform managers and policymakers.

The ubiquitous entanglement of digital, social and mobile media – and increasingly generative artificial intelligence – in everyday life is reconstituting us (and our methodologies) as cyborg. This paper sets out to explore how cyborg methodologies can positively impact research practice and outcomes. In doing so, we reveal the mediating effects of digital technologies, the promissory and performative knowledge they co-produce and the new temporal-spatial ways of seeing this process affords: the generation of new, long chains of data that engender new ways of seeing and knowing in situ (in Rocinha) and at large (from Northwest England). Using examples from our own cyborg methodologies we illustrate how WhatsApp and Facebook acted as a constitutive and transformative digital technology, helping to (re)frame the site of inquiry, (re)assemble the methodological tools at hand and (re)form the knowledge produced in a dynamic process of unfolding understanding in a favela-based market study, in Brazil. Consequently, we argue the need to (re)write accounts of research practice, to provide additional transparency of the co-production of knowledge between human researchers and digital technologies and suggest that doing so will empower scholars to perform new realities and promissories, future-oriented imaginaries with the power to enact real-world impact.

Due to information asymmetries in financial markets, investors tend to share information with their coinvestors to avoid adverse selection. Equity crowdfunding platforms enable coinvestment without direct communication between investors, leading to homophily-driven coinvestments – that is, coinvestments that result from similarities between crowdfunders. These confounding mechanisms in coinvestment patterns give rise to empirical challenges in identifying the influence of investor networks on equity crowdfunders’ decision-making. We addressed this by conducting a mixed-methods study. We quantitatively analysed campaign-level investor-pair data and found that after a focal investor pledges to a campaign, a subsequent investor's funding propensity increases with the number of previous coinvestments between them. Social networks between coinvestors matter in such relationships because their time intervals are shorter than those of other investor pairs. These intervals become even shorter when a campaign raises little funding. Our complementary qualitative findings confirm the role of social networks but suggest that only offline networks affect investors’ decision-making. Our research has important implications for entrepreneurs’ fundraising strategies, platform governance and policy.

Ethnic issues have been creating complex sociopolitical realities and grand challenges for economic activities in many countries, yet much less is known about their micro-level effects on international business. This study explores the impact of ethnic polarization in target countries on equity ownership in cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) by emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs). Drawing upon real options theory (ROT) and the concept of uncertainty, we construct a theoretical framework to investigate this impact and explore how the impact varies based on situational conditions. By analysing data on country-level ethnic polarization and CBAs by EMNEs from 23 acquirer countries in 107 target countries during 1996–2020, we found evidence of a negative relationship between ethnic polarization in the target countries and equity ownership, conditional on the levels of democracy in target countries, the degrees of ethnic polarization in acquirer countries and acquirers’ local experiences. Managers in EMNEs should strategically assess equity ownership levels by considering these connections to mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities in CBAs.

This paper examines how China's infrastructure investment influences African exports to China. We analyse data from 46 African countries and 14 industries that have received China's infrastructure investment from 2005 to 2019. Our results show that China's infrastructure investment in the primary sector has led to more African exports to China (i.e. resource-seeking). In contrast, investment in the non-primary sector has had a substitution effect on African exports to China (i.e. market-seeking). We find that China's infrastructure investment in Africa is driven mainly by resource-seeking. We further document that both the host country's endowment of natural resources and the resources for infrastructure arrangement moderate the positive impact of China's infrastructure investment on African exports to China. These results consistently confirm that China's infrastructure investment in Africa has facilitated China's access to African natural resources.

In this paper we test whether innovation allows entrepreneurs to navigate their way out of highly competitive markets into calmer waters where competitive pressures are reduced. In doing so, we establish three key findings: first, in line with the Schumpeterian creative destruction theory, our results document a decreasing marginal effect of prior innovation on consecutive perceived competition, an effect that is stronger for small firms operating in more competitive markets; then, we highlight the different synergistic effects generated by the complementarity between tangible and intangible innovation activities in competitive and oligopolistic markets that support the Schumpeterian view; finally, we establish that such synergies have proven crucial in navigating out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study investigated how employment stability affects firm performance over time. While some scholars have identified the strategic benefits of employment stability, others have emphasized its associated costs. We theorized a temporal perspective to reconcile these contrasting views. Using publicly traded firms in Compustat North America from 1985 to 2018, we found that employment stability negatively impacts current firm performance but benefits a firm's long-term performance. Additionally, we found that the dynamic effects of employment stability on firm performance become more pronounced when a firm's industry faces higher volatility. Our study provides an important theoretical framework for reconciling seemingly conflicting arguments regarding the impact of employment stability on firm performance. Empirically, we demonstrate the contrasting effects of employment stability on firms’ current and long-term performance and highlight the boundary conditions of industry volatility in these relationships.