Asia Pacific Journal of Management最新文献

This study takes a managerial cognition perspective and investigates how managerial negative interpretation of the external environment influences firm engagement in environmental CSR. We also explore how ownership structure and market demand uncertainty affect this relationship. The analysis of survey data from 189 firms in China shows that when managers interpret their external environment in a negative light, they first increase their attention to firms’ environmental footprint and then decrease their environmental commitment as the assessment of the external environment becomes increasingly negative. Our results also suggest that both state ownership and market uncertainty strengthen this curvilinear relationship.

When a firm actively engages in CSR practices, does the leader always make ethical decisions? Drawing on social cognitive theory and the ethical decision-making literature, we develop a model to explain how a leader makes unethical decisions in an active CSR-practicing environment. Specifically, we argue that a firm's CSR practices do not necessarily translate into the leader's ethical decisions, and on the contrary, it may lead to the opposite. The relationship between a firm's CSR practices and its leader's unethical decisions is mediated by the leader's moral cognitive process (moral licensing and moral imagination) toward the firm's CSR practices, and this relationship is further moderated by the leader's altruistic values. Results from multi-method studies largely support our predictions.

Occupational stigma is often viewed as challenging. Though researchers have proposed several coping strategies, empirical testing on their effectiveness is still insufficient. Focusing on occupational stigma’s negative social evaluation challenges and based on compassion theory, we propose that self-compassion can prompt individuals to craft their stigmatized job cognitively. Specifically, for individuals with higher self-compassion, the negative influence of occupational stigma on cognitive crafting will be weaker. Further, cognitive crafting is positively related to job engagement. Results from a time-lagged field study with 284 employees and their paired 99 leaders supported our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This study examines how chief executive officers (CEOs) personally benefit from their firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and the contingencies in this relationship. We apply stakeholder theory and social identity theory to examine the idea that CSR contributes to CEOs’ self-perceived status. When firms obtain higher legitimacy, admiration, and respect from CSR, CEOs—as firms’ agents and representatives—are likely to associate the firms’ social worth with their own social values. Although responsible investments enhance executives’ self-satisfaction with status, we further argue that this relationship is stronger among CEOs with greater discretion. Thus, the main effect should become weaker when an executive lacks discretion, reflected by state ownership and stronger internal monitoring. We assess the aforementioned ideas by analyzing two waves of a nationwide time-lagged survey of a large sample of Chinese private firms; the empirical findings support these arguments and make important contributions to the literature on CSR, business ethics, and upper echelon theory.

Studies on workplace incivility have typically posited that the targets of incivility respond in a “tit-for-tat” manner. Moving beyond this dominant logic, we argue that in some cases, the targets may have a different response to incivility that potentially reduces its spiraling negative consequences. Drawing on attribution theory, we explored the following two aspects of the targets’ responses: psychological motivation and subsequent behavioral response. Based on 555 samples of experience sampling data collected from 61 nurses over 10 workdays at a hospital in China, we found that the nurses’ attribution of incivility to either the uncivil patient or themselves moderated the relationship between the patients’ incivility and the employees’ psychological motivation. When the nurses attributed the reason for a patient’s incivility to the patient, their experience of incivility triggered their revenge motivation. In contrast, when the nurses attributed to themselves the reason for a patient’s incivility, their experience of incivility triggered their forgiveness motivation. Furthermore, we found that the nurses’ revenge motivation positively affected their subsequent incivility toward third parties, whereas their forgiveness motivation positively promoted their subsequent helping behavior toward third parties. This study enriches the application of attribution theory to the spillover effects of incivility toward third parties.

This study provides a new behavioral explanation of corporate tax avoidance. Drawing on tax avoidance research and the insights from performance feedback literature, we identify performance above aspiration as an important antecedent of corporate tax avoidance. We also explore the contingency effect of CEO experience since it may influence how the CEO views performance above aspiration and implement tax avoidance decisions. This study considers two main aspects of CEO experience: CEO tenure (firm experience) and CEO financial experience (functional experience). Using a panel sample of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2018, we find that as performance rises above aspiration, firms increase tax avoidance at first, but, from a certain point onwards, they reduce such activities. We also find that this inverted U-shaped relationship is weakened by CEO tenure but strengthened by CEO financial experience.

Effective investment is recognized as a powerful determinant of firms’ growth and long-term advantages. However, despite long and extensive research on the upper echelons, the role of top managers’ work experiences in corporate investments remains unclear. With an investigation of the effect of CEO general managerial skills gained through lifetime work experiences on corporate overinvestment, the current study also tests boundary conditions at which this effect may be magnified or attenuated. An empirical analysis of Chinese publicly listed firms reveals that CEO general managerial skills increase corporate overinvestment: Generalist CEOs (versus specialist CEOs) are more likely to promote overinvestment. Moreover, whereas board size and economic policy uncertainty attenuate the relationship between CEO general managerial skills and corporate overinvestment, firm profitability magnifies the relationship. By examining the dark side of this managerial characteristic of CEO, this study provides important implications for literature about corporate investment and upper echelons.

The research on diversity and minorities in the Asia–Pacific region has not kept pace with the rapid politico-socio-economic development of this region. This article provides an indicative summary of extant research and emphasizes the need for more attention to addressing the research gap in the field. It outlines how the special issue contributes to advancing knowledge and suggests several future research avenues that align with the Sustainable Development Goals as a global vision.