Firm Antecedents Research Articles

Corporate Endorsement of Controversial Nationalist Movement: Influences of Divergent Customers and Consequences

A growing body of research has revealed that firms leverage nationalism in their strategies. However, it is unclear why some firms are more likely to do so than others. This paper uses institutional theory to address this question and examines the influences of domestic and foreign customers. We study firms’ responses to nationalist movements, a type of sociopolitical mobilization arising in response to international controversies. We argue that, as firms attempt to maintain legitimacy with their customers, those with more domestic customers are more likely to endorse nationalist movements, whereas those with more foreign customers from antagonistic countries are less likely to do so. Furthermore, reputation-sensitive customers exert a stronger influence than other customers. However, when firms have foreign customers who are targets of nationalist movements, they face an urgent need to demonstrate their patriotism and hence are more likely to endorse nationalist movements. We find support for these theoretical propositions in a study of Chinese firms’ endorsements of a nationalist movement. Chinese firms that endorsed the movement obtained short-term gains in the stock market and domestic sales but no significant growth in overall sales. These findings contribute to the research on antecedents of firms’ strategic leverage of nationalism, organizational responses to institutional complexity, and corporate side-taking in sociopolitical controversies.

Does CEO emotion matter? CEO affectivity and corporate social responsibility

AbstractResearch SummaryWhile prior research has generated meaningful insights into the antecedents of firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR), little attention has been devoted to examining the influence of CEO affectivity—a relatively stable tendency to experience positive or negative emotions. This study explores how CEO positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) may be related to firms' CSR activities. Specifically, we contend that CEO PA is positively related to CSR, whereas CEO NA is negatively related to CSR. We further investigate how CEO social capital may moderate the relationship between CEO affectivity and CSR. Our results support our hypotheses, suggesting the unique role of CEO emotions in CSR research.Managerial SummaryDoes CEO emotion affect firms' CSR activities? Our study finds that CEO PA increases a firm's engagement in CSR, while CEO NA decreases a firm's engagement in CSR. The above relationships are also subject to the influence of CEO social capital. Our findings suggest that CEOs should be aware of how their affective tendencies can influence their firm's CSR strategy and consider avenues to utilize emotional influence advantageously while avoiding potential affective bias.

Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Family firms as agents of sustainable development: A normative perspective

The reasons as to why family firms engage in corporate sustainability (CS) are poorly understood. In particular, those conditions that lead to a normative CS motivation, in which firms are driven by a sense of ethical responsibility, remain a theoretical black box. By integrating different theoretical explanations from research into family firms, CS and corporate governance, this study opens the black box and explains the interplay between family and firm antecedents, and how this affects normative CS motivation and hence CS performance. We empirically tested our hypotheses using survey-based data from a sample of 356 private family firms operating in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Results of the structural equation model show that counteracting effects exist within a family firm, which influence CS motivation, thus providing a nuanced answer to the inconsistent findings of previous research, regarding the direction and magnitude of family influence on CS performance. Our findings help clarify that, as owners, family members are likely to adopt a normative CS motivation driven by socioemotional considerations. However, as managers responsible for the firm's economic success, family members become risk-averse to the introduction of CS initiatives for normative reasons, because they bear the residual risk of management decisions.

Persistent innovation underperformance and firms' R&D internationalization: The moderating effects of multidimensional TMT human capital

The antecedents of firms' R&D internationalization have attracted the attention and discussion of scholars. However, the manner and circumstances in which a firm's past innovation performance affects its R&D internationalization decisions have not yet been discussed. Based on the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF), we propose that persistent innovation underperformance might serve as a motivating factor to trigger R&D internationalization and that the top management team (TMT) determines how responsive to persistent innovation underperformance the firm is likely to be. Results from empirical analyses of panel data from 1323 listed Chinese manufacturing companies over a 9-year period indicate that a longer duration of persistent innovation underperformance increases the likelihood that firms will implement R&D internationalization. Integrating the moderating roles of multidimensional TMT human capital, we further find that TMT education level and technical background strengthen the abovementioned relationship, while TMT international experience weakens the abovementioned relationship. The contributions, implications, and limitations of this study are fully discussed.

The impact of demand-pull and technology-push policies on firms’ knowledge search

The manner in which firms search for knowledge critically affects their innovative performance as well as the evolution of technological trajectories. Previous studies provide important insights into the antecedents of firms’ knowledge search. Yet, we still know little about how such search activities are affected by public policies. Against this background, this study examines the impact of demand-pull and technology-push policies on the scope and distance of firms’ knowledge search. We hypothesize that in times of strong policy support in a technological field, firms will narrow their attention and search scope. Moreover, we argue that technology-push policies enhance search distance, while demand-pull policies reduce it, and that the influence of policies on search scope will be moderated by the breadth of firms’ existing knowledge base. We test and find broad support for our hypotheses based on the analysis of a global sample of 245 publicly listed firms in the solar photovoltaics industry from 1988 to 2012. Our findings suggest that, while innovation policies play an important role in knowledge generation and industry emergence, they may have unintended effects on firm knowledge search. We discuss the implications of these findings for the literature on organizational search, innovation policies, and technology life-cycles.

Arcs of carbon awareness in the value chain and their antecedents

AbstractThis study examines the patterns and antecedents of firms' value chain greenhouse gas emissions (VCGGE) awareness. Drawing on a sample of 1,322 firms from multiple countries and industries, we use cluster analysis to first evaluate how well firms' VCGGE awareness patterns match traditional value chain integration patterns, identified by prior literature. We then examine how well internal indicators of greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) management predict advanced VCGGE awareness. Our study indicates that VCGGE patterns partially match traditional value chain integration patterns and that firms' VCGGE awareness is much higher for their upstream than downstream activities. Moreover, our findings show that the internal adoption of GGE management is a significant predictor of advanced awareness of VCGGE. Overall, we find that most firms have limited awareness about the magnitude of their VCGGE, suggesting that many opportunities to reduce these emissions, especially in the downstream value chain, remain unexplored.

Do You See Them Coming? Attention to Nontraditional Competitors

In this paper, we investigate the antecedents of firms’ attention to nontraditional competitors (including outside-industry and entrepreneurial competitors that are not on the immediate radar of th...

Boards of directors and firms’ environmental proactivity

The present paper advances knowledge on the antecedents of firms’ environmental proactivity, assessing the explanatory power of corporate governance issues. In particular, our aim is to explore the relationship between board structure and firms’ proactive environmental strategies, within the agency theory and resource dependence theory frameworks, in order to outline if particular types of board members could represent a stimulating driver for firms’ environmental proactivity. The theoretical analysis is completed by an empirical investigation, performed by two linear regression models, on a sample of European firms, belonging to different polluting industries that were included in the Carbon Disclosure Project questionnaire 2014. The industry choice is related to the increasing pressure for better environmental performance that polluting industries are nowadays experiencing because of stakeholders and legislation requests. The results show that board structure and composition matters in firms’ environmental proactivity and have implications for managers, shareholders, and regulators who are interested in influencing firms’ environmental proactivity.

Me, myself, and I: influence of CEO narcissism on firms’ innovation strategy and the likelihood of product-harm crises

This research examines the relationship between narcissistic personality characteristics in Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and firms’ innovation outcomes. The authors argue that firms led by narcissistic CEOs are likely to exhibit a higher rate of new product introductions and a greater proportion of radical innovations in their new product portfolios, but they are also more likely to encounter product-harm crises. The impact of CEO narcissism on these innovation outcomes is partially mediated by firms’ higher competitive aggressiveness. High power of the marketing department in the top management team, however, increases firms’ customer orientation, which in turn weakens the relationship between CEO narcissism and product-harm crises. A longitudinal analysis of a sample of 395 publicly listed U.S. firms in the period 2006–2010 provides considerable support for the authors’ hypotheses. This research underscores the importance of studying CEOs’ personality traits as antecedents of firms’ innovation outcomes, highlights the positive and negative impact of CEO narcissism on firms’ innovation-related behavior, and delineates the process through which this impact takes place.

Moving to the Next Strategy Stage: Examining Firms' Awareness, Motivation and Capability Drivers in Environmental Alliances

AbstractComplementing extant studies on the antecedents of firms' environmental strategy, this article focuses on the trajectories of corporate engagement in proactive environmental alliances. Specifically, we build an awareness–motivation–capability framework and analyze factors that drive the move beyond incremental pollution prevention and facilitate firms' engagement in transformative, sustainable development strategies in their alliances. Based on 212 environmental alliance‐related observations, our test results indicate limited explanatory power of regulatory pressures, but highlight the role of firms' environmental networks to sharpen their awareness to engage in transformative alliances. Further, we elaborate on the nuances and boundary conditions of firms' risk‐taking propensity, industry concentration, financial capacity and especially prior sector‐spanning experiences as motivation and capability drivers. These insights contribute to the discourse on firms' environmental strategy and alliance formation by depicting how and to what extent environment‐specific and more general firm attributes predispose them to engage in transformative rather than incremental environmental projects. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Innovation and Information Technology Capability as Antecedents of Firms' Success

The primary aim of this article is to identify antecedents of firm's success in specific circumstances of the New economy. Many researchers have tried to answer the question Why do some firms persistently outperform others?. One of the most dominant view on this issue is a resource based view (RBV) or resource-based theory (RBT). According to this theory, sources of competitive advantage begin with the notion that differences in performance are fundamentally due to the distinctive resources and capabilities that are valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable. Information technology as a resource of the company has the increasing importance for the researches and managers. Research on the information technology (IT) value within organizations and firms' IT capabilities have expanded over the past decade. IT capability is defined as the existence of IT infrastructure, IT knowledge and IT operations within company. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the interaction impact of IT capability and firms' innovation on business performance. The study uses survey data from managers and structural equation modelling to assess the relationships between IT capability, firm's innovation and business performance. This study finds that both IT capability and innovation capability play important role in achieving greater business performance. The findings indicate that managers should focus on development of the IT function within company, taking into account importance of IT investment as well as IT knowledge, and promotion of innovativeness.

"Examining Firms’ Awareness, Motivation, and Capability Drivers in Environmental Alliances"

Empirical studies that investigated the antecedents of firms’ environmental strategy conceptualized the underlying journey as a more or less linear path towards proactive approaches. This study complements this literature by examining the trajectories among proactive strategies, especially between pollution prevention and sustainable development. Building on an awareness-motivation-capability framework, we analyze factors that may facilitate firms’ move towards more transformative, future-oriented environmental approaches. We test our framework on a sample of 168 US firms’ engagement in environmental alliances. The results stress that it is in particular firms’ boundary-spanning connections and experience that sharpen their awareness for sustainable development (especially their connections in the environmental field) and provide the capability to embrace transformative projects (especially firms’ cross-sector experience and prior management of diverse environmental issues). With regard to direct regulato...

Strategic marketing ambidexterity: antecedents and financial consequences

Strategic marketing ambidexterity (SMA), the blend of a firm’s exploitation of existing competencies and exploration of future capabilities in strategic marketing activities, represents a dynamic capability that is vital in achieving superior performance. Given its criticality, the authors examine how firm antecedents and industry contexts affect the shift in a firm’s SMA over time (movement in the blend of exploitation and exploration). In addition, the authors examine SMA’s influence on firm financial outcomes, i.e., risk and return. Using data from 1999 to 2011 on publically traded firms, the authors show that firm maturity and slack (financial and strategic) are key determinants of SMA. Specifically, increased firm maturity and strategic slack result in a shift toward exploitation, whereas increased financial slack results in a shift toward exploration. Industry competitiveness moderates these effects. In terms of the financial performance implications of SMA, the authors find that shifts in SMA toward exploitation increase return, but they also increase firm-idiosyncratic risk. The authors conclude with implications for theory and managerial practice.

Environmental turbulence, absorptive capacity and external knowledge search among Chinese SMEs

Purpose– This paper tests which theoretical perspective(s) can better explain firms’ external knowledge search behavior. Information processing and resource-based view theories propose a positive relationship between environmental turbulence and knowledge search breadth, whereas transaction cost economics and managerial attention theoretical perspectives posit that knowledge search breadth will be negatively influenced by environmental turbulence. In the context of Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this study examines the direct effect of environmental turbulence and the interactive effect of environmental turbulence and absorptive capacity (ACAP) on external knowledge search breadth.Design/methodology/approach– This study adopted firm-level data collected via questionnaires from SMEs within the manufacturing sector in China. The partial least squares method was used to explore the determinants of the external knowledge search breadth of Chinese SMEs.Findings– The results reveal that external search breadth tends to increase with an increase in a firm’s perceived environmental turbulence. In addition, the interaction between ACAP and environmental turbulence will be negatively related to external knowledge search breadth. The empirical evidence indicates information processing and resource-based view theories are more powerful in explaining the external knowledge search behavior of Chinese SMEs.Originality/value– Unlike most of the innovation search literature, which have focused on the effect on performance of external search, this study focuses on the antecedents of firms’ innovation search behavior. The study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between environmental turbulence and knowledge search breadth as well as the understanding of the influence of ACAP on external knowledge search in the context of SMEs from emerging economies.

Antecedents and outcomes of global sourcing and information technology in the US apparel supply chain

While global sourcing and information technology (IT) are critical in the performance of apparel companies, few studies have examined which firm-related factors are related to the level of global sourcing and IT and how these two practices contribute to firm performance. This study proposed a model integrating three firm antecedents (firm’s global awareness, top management commitment to global sourcing, and firm size) and outcomes of global sourcing and IT implementation (operational, strategic, and financial performance) and empirically tested it with the data collected from 111 US apparel manufacturers. This study found that the greater the firm’s global awareness and the greater the firm size, the higher the global sourcing involvement. Also, the greater the top management commitment to global sourcing and the greater the firm size, the higher the IT implementation. While global sourcing involvement increased all three levels of firm performance, IT implementation led only to higher operational performance.