British Journal of Management最新文献

Business and human rights (BHR) scholarship examines the role of business in human rights violations as well as business responsibilities to respect human rights and to provide remedy where needed. BHR scholarship has been thriving over the last several decades, but it is at a turning point that begs for increased cross-disciplinary exchange. We argue that dealing systematically and explicitly with a human rights perspective in management and organization studies provides BHR scholarship with a new impetus as well as with alternative perspectives on how to understand and further advance human rights obligations on businesses. We advance two BHR conceptualizations that will provide guidance for integrating human rights in management with organization studies research and thereby enlarge the cross-disciplinary conversation on BHR: BHR as Global Governance and BHR as Sensemaking. This paper expands existing management and organization studies constructs, invites management and organization studies scholars to provide their insights into this important research domain, and discusses the implications of human rights for the firm.

While corporate social responsibility (CSR) research is now impressively broad, we identify fresh opportunities at the intersection of feminist and critical analysis to reframe this field as a force for good. We focus on the epistemological grounding of CSR in its potential to understand and change how managerial activity is interpreted and influenced for progressive ends. We approach this through a reading of the debate on CSR's limited practical use, to imagine a better methodological and purposeful future for CSR. This involves a different, feminist, political and ethical stance for researchers in relation to CSR as an object, to bring CSR theory and practice into alignment in order to revive its sense of purpose as a driving organizational force for good. Our change-orientated approach is based on a reading of Judith Butler's notion of critique as praxis of values; it is politically aware, reflexive, and focused on the goal of good organization to address grand, often existential, challenges. We conclude by showing how this approach to CSR brings a more transparent way of analysing practice, requiring reflexive action on the part of those working with CSR initiatives both as practitioners and as researchers to co-produce better futures.

Mergers potentially threaten employees’ organizational identities. For some, a merger could be a trigger to seek employment elsewhere, but the factors associated with increased withdrawal cognitions post-merger necessitate further research. Using a longitudinal, pre- and post-merger design, we investigated two competing predictions drawing on social identity theory: a vulnerability hypothesis (high identification with the pre-merger organization will be associated with increased withdrawal cognitions over time) versus a buffer hypothesis (high pre-merger identification will be associated with decreased withdrawal cognitions over time). Employees from two public sector organizations were surveyed two months before and 22 months after a merger (N = 869). Consistent with the buffer hypothesis, higher pre-merger identification was associated with lower pre-to-post-merger withdrawal cognitions. We found that this relationship was moderated by both pre-merger professional and workgroup identification, highlighting the importance of considering multifoci identification patterns in a merger context. Findings indicate that work-related identification plays a key buffering role through organizational-level change, with pre-merger identification potentially helping retain staff through the merger storm. Thus, our study contributes to social identity theory by showing that an abundance of pre-merger identification forms should help employees navigate the challenges faced during the change experienced with an organizational merger.

This study develops a theory concerning the ways in which firms manage knowledge search in relation to the search behaviours of competitors. While the search behaviours of competitors provide information cues regarding the possible distribution of valuable innovation opportunities in the knowledge space, a focal firm may search with competitors synchronously (i.e. searching with competitors in the same knowledge areas at the same time) or asynchronously (i.e. searching in different knowledge areas from competitors). This study examines the quest for legitimacy under institutional pressure as a key contingency that shapes firms’ propensity to search with competitors synchronously or asynchronously. Focusing on scrutiny by security analysts as a source of institutional pressure, and employing mergers and acquisitions of brokerage houses as a natural experiment that results in exogenous drops in analyst coverage, this study finds that firms are more prone to search with competitors asynchronously following an exogenous drop in analyst coverage, providing support to the theory. Additional analysis shows that the positive relationship between an exogenous drop in analyst coverage and a firm's asynchronous search behaviour is less pronounced when the firm in question has proven its ability to capture valuable innovation opportunities via high innovation performance.

Innovative search is a critical component of strategic decision making, and its different dimensions convey various levels of risk. Prior research on the behavioural theory of the firm has focused on motivation logic or capacity logic to predict the effects of performance feedback on risk taking but has paid limited attention to their joint effects. To construct a comprehensive framework in the behavioural theory of the firm, we consider both motivation and capacity logic to analyse the impact of performance feedback on risk taking. We argue that underperformance feedback positively affects innovative search scope and that overperformance feedback entails a U-shaped relationship with innovative search scope, while innovative search depth shows the opposite trend. Using a unique dataset consisting of 9,730 firm-year observations of 2,102 Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2018, we conduct fixed-effect regression analyses to test our hypotheses and find support for most theoretical predictions. We also identify the boundary roles of environmental dynamism. This study contributes to the literature on the behavioural theory of the firm by predicting innovative search strategies using a consistent and integrative framework.

This study explores the third type of agency problem concerning the tension between shareholders and stakeholders. It does so by analysing whether small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) eligible for a temporary debt suspension programme favour the short-term interests of their shareholders or stakeholders, or the firm's long-term competitiveness. Using information from an Italian debt moratorium programme aimed at alleviating the financial pressure on SMEs during the financial crisis, we built a rich database of 37,465 limited liability companies eligible for the programme between 2006 and 2015. We then used a difference-in-differences model to analyse the data. Our findings indicate that the debt suspension programme, designed to help eligible firms survive temporary financial constraints, did promote their long-term competitiveness. However, it also produced some undesirable consequences, such as benefiting shareholders in the short term at the expense of other key stakeholders.

This study investigates whether accelerators attract the highest-performing FinTech ventures. Drawing on countersignalling theory, we present a model of accelerator participation that predicts high-quality FinTech ventures will avoid accelerator programmes. Using a unique financial reporting dataset of FinTech accelerator participants and a propensity score-matched sample of comparison firms, we find support for the prediction from our countersignalling model. FinTech accelerator participants have worse performance, both before and after completing a programme, when compared to peer non-accelerator ventures. Overall, our results indicate that FinTech ventures are less suited for accelerators due to the current breadth of outside funding options available, which provides little incentive for participation from high-quality ventures. This research has important implications for entrepreneurs, accelerators and investors.

This research documents that a firm's bankruptcy risk increases with its climate change exposure. This study further investigates the underlying mechanisms and finds that this effect is stronger for firms with lower operating cash flows or tighter financial constraints. Consistent with the agency theory of debt, the evidence suggests that improving the protection of creditor rights can mitigate the adverse impact of climate change. In addition, two distinct sets of quasi-natural experiments are exploited to establish causality and eliminate alternative explanations. Specifically, the positive effect of climate change exposure on bankruptcy risk is weaker after the 2015 Paris Agreement, which raised public awareness of climate issues, and stronger for firms headquartered in countries that are more severely affected by natural disasters. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that the main effect is more pronounced among loss firms, firms with higher levels of asset tangibility, cash flow volatility or profit volatility, and firms with worse solvency performance. Overall, the collective evidence indicates that climate change has real consequences for firm financial conditions.

The purpose of this introduction and Special Issue (SI) is to offer a unique and timely opportunity to explore, revisit and critically examine key methodological debates and tensions with the purpose of advancing diversity and novel theorizing in the field. We join voices with the authors of the five papers of this SI to problematize taken-for-granted assumptions and research traditions and pave the way for inclusive and novel theorizing in management scholarship. We revisit four long-lasting debates that hinder methodological pluralism and diversity in management scholarship: (a) the quantitative-qualitative research divide, (b) the legitimacy of mixed-methods research, (c) the rigour versus relevance tension and (d) the lack of methodological innovation. We suggest that these debates are at least partly counterproductive because they create silos and opposing camps, thereby inhibiting an appreciation of different worldviews and collective learning. The dominance of functionalism and positivism in quantitative research and the inappropriate transfer of quantitative logics in qualitative research have led to a lack of diversity in empirical methodologies. The field's limited methodological diversity is further proliferated by a strict adherence to quality standards that have inadvertently promoted homogeneity. This introduction highlights the challenges and potential of mixed methods, which are gaining momentum owing to calls for methodological pluralism. We also call for a re-evaluation of quality standards to encourage more innovative and diverse research methodologies.