Asia Pacific Journal of Management最新文献

As the business landscape escalates the level of uncertainty and thus profoundly disrupts entrepreneurship, it is crucial to understand risk-taking as a coping strategy for entrepreneurs with limited resources. Past studies have been fragmented: Some researchers have focused on creative risk-taking, whereas others have looked at unethical risk-taking. Little is known about how and when entrepreneurs respond to adversity in either a creative or an expedient manner. We posit that entrepreneurs respond to adversity by using either entrepreneurial bricolage behavior (EBB) or unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). Drawing from the emotivational account, we develop each theoretical model of bricolage and UPB to better understand how entrepreneurs’ emotional states play a critical role in their reactions to adversity. We theorize that, and test whether, entrepreneurial adversity is positively related to EBB and increase in EBB over time through increased interest when trait resilience is high. Also, we conceptualize and examine whether entrepreneurial adversity is positively related to UPB and increase in UPB over time through increased anger when trait resilience is low. We conducted a five-month longitudinal study of 100 entrepreneurs (482 observations). Our findings largely corroborated the hypotheses. Our study advances our understanding of entrepreneurs’ risk-taking by showing when and how they respond creatively or unethically.

Digital transformation is crucial for companies to stay competitive in the modern business landscape. However, many organizations face obstacles such as organizational inertia, lack of unified transformation cognition, and weak top leadership. In this context, this study explores the impact of management power on digital transformation, based on the approach-inhibition theory of power. The study focuses on Chinese listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share manufacturing industries from 2010 to 2020. The study reveals that concentrated equity weakens management’s power stability, constrains their residual control, suppresses power, and undermines the effect of management’s power level on driving corporate digital transformation. Furthermore, the study finds that supervision mechanisms have a positive impact on management power. Specifically, the external audit system proves to be an effective regulatory mechanism, while the independent director system appears somewhat formalistic and lacks effectiveness in promoting digital transformation. This study contributes to the micro-foundations of corporate-level behavior, deepening our understanding of management power and providing guidance for digital transformation practices in corporations. By shedding light on the role of management power in digital transformation, this study highlights the need for companies to cultivate strong and stable leadership, ensure equity distribution, and establish effective supervision mechanisms to facilitate successful digital transformation.

The extant literature on corporate political activities has extensively examined whether and how political connections help in improving performance. We extend this literature by examining whether and how political connections help in profit persistence, a fundamental concern for firms. Using a unique panel dataset of politicians who were elected at either the national or state level in India and examining their membership on the board of directors of firms, we find that firms with political connections demonstrate higher profit persistence. Further, we report that connections with state-level politicians have a larger effect on persistence compared to connections with national-level politicians. This finding emphasizes the importance of micro and recurring benefits in emerging economies such as India, in the form of help with acquiring licenses, permits, land and infrastructure, which are usually provided by state-level politicians relative to policy-related benefits, which are typically provided by national-level politicians. Our results also show that political connections have a greater effect on profit persistence for firms that are affiliated to business groups. Our results suggest that political connections seem to operate as higher-order resources, defined as resources that do not contribute to profits directly but can affect other resources that in turn affect profits over time.

Social sustainability practices (SSP) have gained global recognition as management innovations for improving organizational performance, thus promoting sustainable development of individual companies and across supply chains. However, the literature on the diffusion mechanisms of SSP, particularly in developing countries, remains ambiguous. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring SSP adoption in the Vietnamese handicraft industry. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach was employed, beginning with a survey of 310 Vietnamese handicraft companies. This was complemented by 12 in-depth case studies, providing a comprehensive view of the SSP diffusion process. The survey identified five distinct patterns of SSP adoption: innovative adopters, early adopters, early followers, late followers, and laggards. A deeper analysis revealed that companies with a proactive SSP approach, particularly the first three categories (innovative adopters, early adopters, and early followers), focus on supply chain responsibility-based and employee-oriented practices, leading to superior performance improvements compared to their reactive counterparts. These findings enhance stakeholder theory by illustrating its integration with the diffusion of innovation framework, offering an insightful diffusion mechanism toward full-scale SSP adoption in Vietnamese handicraft companies. Practically, the research outcomes provide valuable insights for managers, policymakers, and sustainability practitioners. They offer guidance on benchmarking SSP adoption and enhancing performance, with the identified adoption patterns serving as milestones for companies to achieve different levels of social sustainability.

This study develops a comprehensive four-factor model to analyze the factors that influence knowledge agglomeration. To test the model empirically, we use a dataset from firms in China’s digital industry and employ the structural equation model and RM-DEMATEL method to determine the relationship between these factors and their impact on knowledge agglomeration. We find that effectiveness, coupling, and talent synergy have significant positive impact on knowledge agglomeration. Instead, knowledge concentration has an inverted U-shaped relationship with knowledge agglomeration. In addition, knowledge concentration moderates the relationship between knowledge effectiveness, coupling, talent synergy, and knowledge agglomeration. Based on these findings, we construct a multi-dimensional indicator system that allows us to assess more extensively the roles of those factors, we find that knowledge concentration is a fundamental factor in this system. The density and speed of concentration and knowledge causality also play important roles. Our findings offer a theoretical framework for firms in developing their knowledge management strategies.

The positive effect of informal leadership has been well established, whereas our understanding of its potential negative effect in interpersonal interaction is still limited. This study explores the influence of individual informal leadership on helping received from peers from an interpersonal interaction perspective. Drawing upon social comparison theory, we posit that a focal employee’s moderate level of informal leadership in a team can pose a threat to peers, which inhibits the helping behavior from peers to the focal employee. To test our hypothesis, we conducted an experiment in Study 1 and a field survey in Study 2. The results revealed that individual informal leadership had a curvilinear relationship with helping behavior from peers via threat to peers. Furthermore, the focal employee’s political skill mitigated this curvilinear effect. Theoretical and future research implications are discussed.

The topic of entrepreneurial team faultlines has been gaining ground in entrepreneurship research, as it provides novel insights into the entrepreneurial team composition. However, our understanding of how entrepreneurial team faultlines affect new venture performance remains underdeveloped, especially concerning the different effects between informational and social category faultlines. Drawing on the challenge-hindrance stress framework and conservation of resources theory, we develop and test a model to explore the mechanisms underlying the effects of the two types of faultlines on new venture performance. On the one hand, informational faultlines, serving as initial resource gains, are positively associated with team-shared challenge stress, which in turn increases new venture performance in a sort of gain spiral. On the other hand, social category faultlines, serving as initial resource losses, are positively associated with team-shared hindrance stress, which in turn decreases new venture performance in a loss spiral. The results from 102 Chinese entrepreneurial teams comprising 399 members support our hypotheses. By clarifying the contrasting impacts of informational and social category faultlines within entrepreneurial teams and by revealing the mediating effects of team-shared stress, this study contributes to a better understanding of how entrepreneurial team composition and stress influence new venture performance.

Research on pro-environmental behavior (PEB) in the workplace is increasing. However, the prevailing research is typically based on the assumption that PEB are relatively stable, suggesting that employees consistently engage in PEB over time. In contrast to viewing employees as being consistently green or not, we focus on investigating within-person fluctuations in PEB over short periods. Given that PEB can be influenced by dynamic contextual factors such as daily work experiences, we investigate a key work-related experience—performance pressure—and its underlying mechanisms. Drawing on threat rigidity theory, we propose a dual pathway model in which daily performance pressure exerts parallel negative effects on PEB through two distinct cognitive information processing tendencies. Using an experience sampling method involving 114 employees across 10 consecutive workdays, we reveal that daily performance pressure diminishes PEB by fostering an increase in self-focused information processing and a reduction in other-focused information processing. Additionally, this negative indirect effect is more pronounced among employees with high psychological entitlement. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, we examine how and when stretch goals affect work effort and cheating behavior. We conduct an online experimental study (Study 1, N = 194) and a three-wave field study (Study 2, N = 298) to test our hypotheses. Results show that trait resilience moderates the relationship between stretch goals and work meaningfulness. When trait resilience of employees is high, stretch goals generate work meaningfulness, which in turn promotes work effort. Meanwhile, stretch goals are indirectly related to cheating behavior through emotional exhaustion. Moreover, trait resilience alleviates the link between stretch goals and emotional exhaustion and the indirect effect of stretch goals on cheating behavior through emotional exhaustion. The present study provides important theoretical and practical implications.

Although many studies have explored the benefits of empowering leadership for followers, the beneficial effect of such behavior for actors who demonstrate empowering leadership has been overlooked. Applying conservation of resources theory, we propose and test a model that determines why and when empowering leadership benefits actors. We use an experience sampling survey to examine the effect of empowering leadership on actors’ daily work engagement. In particular, we focus on the moderating role of power distance orientation and the mediating roles of negative affect and sleep quality, which operate sequentially. The results based on responses from 160 supervisors in two Chinese organizations indicated that empowering leadership in the morning was negatively related to negative affect in the afternoon and positively related to sleep quality at night and next-day work engagement. The strength of this beneficial effect was moderated by power distance orientation, such that supervisors with a high degree of power distance orientation obtained fewer benefits from empowering leadership than those with a low degree of power distance orientation. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the leadership, affect, sleep, power distance, and conservation of resources literatures are discussed.