British Journal of Management最新文献

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.

Dynamic capabilities are crucial for firm survival and success, but to survive and succeed firms must manage multiple higher- and lower-order dynamic capabilities that can be complementary, but also conflicting. Utilizing human resource (HR) signalling theory, we provide new theoretical insights into the conditions, mechanisms and reasons why merger and acquisition (M&A) capabilities (a lower-order dynamic capability) and organizational agility (a higher-order dynamic capability) are sometimes complementary and at other times contradictory during acquisition integration. Our theory disentangles the interaction between these capabilities and explains how they act as a double-edged sword. We test our theory development using survey data from 91 acquisitions taking place in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. Our results show that conflicting HR signals from M&A capabilities and organizational agility cause acquirer–target conflict, complicating post-merger integration and hindering knowledge transfer, while complementary signals enhance knowledge transfer. The findings provide important implications for the M&A, HR management and dynamic capabilities literature, as well as valuable insights for M&A practitioners.

This paper shifts attention from how employee status affects work performance to the role of status in performance evaluation when rewards or penalties for performance are determined. While prior studies have shown that high status enables employees to perform well, we emphasize that it may also elevate role expectations, which then become hard to meet. Building on expectation confirmation theory, we argue especially that high-status employees may be less rewarded for their performance because high expectations of them have been established. Although low-status employees are less likely to perform well, they receive greater rewards on attaining success, suggesting a potential advantage to being disadvantaged ex ante. Moreover, while prior literature highlights various benefits of having prestigious peers, we maintain that the presence of high-status teammates also raises expectations of teamwork. As such, employees will be less rewarded for team performance when they work with high-status teammates. We test our hypotheses in a sample of NBA players and find general support. Our findings highlight employees’ status as a potential liability in performance evaluation.

Ataullah, A., H. Le and G. Wood (2022). ‘Institutional investor heterogeneity and corporate response to the Covid-19 pandemic’, British Journal of Management, 33, pp. 634–656. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12601

The shading was omitted from Figure 2 in the final print form. Below is the correct version of Figure 2 (along with changes in the y-axis from 0 to 1), with the shaded areas demarcating confidence intervals.

We apologize for this error.

This paper presents a conceptual model of strategies of power in future-making, informed by a case study in the healthcare sector. In zooming out from investigating the future-making activities of an organizational innovation project team and tracing competing imagined futures enacted by medical professionals and strategic management, this study explains how and why the project struggled to realize its mandate. In this case, we identify three strategies of power, namely mobilization, discipline and discretion, and discuss their potential controversies and combinations. Moreover, we contribute to theories on discretionary power, demonstrating how it is produced by combining interdiscursivity with management control and nondecision. Strategies of discretion are productive in the realm of future-making, particularly in exploiting forces of discipline and mobilization to enable parallel imagined futures to be created and maintained over time. On the downside, this may keep competing imagined futures hostage, potentially serving non-transparent agendas.

This study examines the influence of CEO–CFO compatibility (proxied by the similarity of their personalities) on audit risk (proxied by audit fees). Relying on similarity-attraction theory, we posit that alignment between the CEO's and CFO's personalities − specifically their ‘Big Five’ traits − enhances internal communication, information sharing and decision-making processes within the organization. This alignment, in turn, reduces audit risk associated with the firm's financial reporting. We test our theory using firm fixed effects and find that greater CEO–CFO personality similarity is associated with reduced audit fees. Further, we find that the tenure of the CEO–CFO relationship partially explains the relation between their personality similarity and audit fees. Finally, we find that the effect of CEO–CFO personality similarity on audit fees is stronger when corporate governance allows greater managerial autonomy, that is, CEO–CFO compatibility is more important for reducing audit risk when corporate governance is weak. Our results are robust after controlling for many other characteristics of the CEO and CFO and potential endogeneity related to CEO turnover.

This study investigates the link between subsidy policy for patenting overseas (SPPO) and the innovation quality of emerging economy firms, focusing on the role of international imprinting. Through the theoretical lenses of institutional logics and imprinting, we hypothesize that SPPO, which embodies a rigorous intellectual property (IP) logic, enhances innovation quality, particularly in firms with international imprinting. Analysing Chinese listed firms in the computers, telecommunications and electronics sectors during 2004–2021 using matching and difference-in-differences techniques, we find that firms responding to SPPO show improved innovation quality. This effect is amplified by international imprinting at the board and organizational levels, both separately and jointly. These findings highlight that international imprinting enhances the effectiveness of government policy that embodies rigorous IP logic, offering valuable insights for managers and policymakers seeking to foster high-quality innovation in emerging economies.

This study investigates the relationship between corporate environmental performance, as captured by environmental investment, and firms’ access to trade credit. Using data from Chinese listed firms in heavy pollution industries, we find that corporate environmental performance significantly increases firms’ access to trade credit. The positive effect of environmental investment appears more pronounced for firms with stronger internal incentives to conduct eco-friendly practices, lower external regulatory pressure and located in regions with higher economic growth rates. Two factors – namely, increased information transparency and reduced exposure to environmental risk – are found to be channels through which environmental investment affects trade credit. This paper provides a nuanced understanding of how a supplier as a stakeholder plays a significant role in financing environmental sustainability. The results are robust to alternative proxies, model specifications, sample compositions and endogeneity concerns.

This study examines how social entrepreneurs contend with severe resource constraints in times of crisis. To explain entrepreneurial responses to such limitations, researchers use the concept of bricolage, which involves creatively combining scarce resources to solve problems. Although previous studies have disregarded bricolage's potential strategic connotations, this paper uses qualitative data from 44 informants in 20 Greek social enterprises to reveal the coexistence and entwinement of strategic and bricolage behaviours. The paper adopts a strategy-as-practice (SaP) lens to conceptualize this phenomenon subsequently. SaP refers to strategy as the joint actions, interactions and negotiations among actors that shape an integrated organizational whole. SaP and bricolage have fundamental commonalities (e.g. taking a practice view of inventive behaviours), making them ontologically compatible. Two reciprocal ideas emerge from this exploration: ‘formational bricolage’ can organically shape an emergent strategy, while ‘strategic bricolage’ guides and, in some instances, constrains bricolage behaviours and practices.

This paper examines the effect of unemployment risk on pension investment decisions of defined benefit pension plans. In particular, we examine whether unemployment insurance benefits affect pension investment risk. Using fixed-effects and difference-in-difference analyses, we find evidence that firms take higher pension investment risk by investing more heavily in equities after unemployment insurance benefit increases. These results are consistent with the notion that firms undertake more risk when the costs of unemployment decrease. The findings are robust to a number of sensitivity tests, including a falsification test to examine the timing of the relationship between the riskiness of the pension portfolio and unemployment insurance benefits, a 3-year window, alternative matching methods and removing firms that operate in geographically dispersed industries. Additional analyses suggests that the findings are more pronounced for firms with skilled labour and high labour intensity, while they are less pronounced when the risk of layoffs is high, in less competitive industries and highly unionized firms.