Firm-level Antecedents Research Articles

Antecedents of effectuation and causation in SMEs from emerging markets: the role of CEO temporal focus

Purpose Previous studies considered effectuation and causation as alternative decision-making strategies used by entrepreneurs to navigate uncertainty, having various individual- and firm-level antecedents. This study aims to broaden our understanding of individual-level antecedents by examining the role of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) temporal focus in decision-making processes in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach Based on a multiple case study research design, the authors empirically analyse 16 Russian SMEs to uncover how the CEO temporal focus relates to the choice of effectuation/causation strategies under uncertainty. Findings CEOs with past orientation tend to adopt causation, future-oriented CEOs adhere to effectuation, while present-focused CEOs rely on both decision-making strategies (i.e. ambidexterity). Prior crisis-related experience is the underlying mechanism behind the relationship between CEO temporal orientation and effectuation/causation strategies. The authors formulate several propositions that may be tested in future studies in the field. Originality/value The contribution of this study consists in uncovering a new individual-level antecedent of effectuation/causation under uncertainty (i.e. CEO temporal focus) and suggesting that prior crisis experience acts as a mechanism underlying this relationship. The authors advance the strategic leadership theory by underscoring the CEO’s role in decision-making processes in SMEs.

Foreign divestment from emerging markets: A systematic literature review, integrative framework, and research agenda

Despite the significance of context in international business studies, existing reviews on foreign divestment have combined findings from developed and emerging markets, obscuring context-specific antecedents, decisions, and outcomes. In this review, we systematically identify and synthesize theoretical and empirical research on foreign divestment from emerging markets based on 60 articles in reputed academic journals. We develop a conceptual framework that integrates the antecedents, decisions, moderating mechanisms, and outcomes of foreign divestment in emerging markets. While firm-level antecedents of foreign divestment are well-researched, external antecedents, decisions, moderating mechanisms, and outcomes are understudied. Additionally, we highlight that foreign divestment from emerging markets has positive and negative consequences for the firm and the host country. Drawing insights from our review, we delve into prospective research agendas, forging connections between contemporary research themes, divestment, and emerging markets. We propose that a multi-level approach to studying the antecedents and outcomes of foreign divestment will enhance our understanding of international business dynamics within an increasingly volatile global environment.

Meta-analytic review, synthesis, and directions for the future of entrepreneurial passion research

Entrepreneurial passion has gained increasing scholarly attention in recent years. The various constructs and contexts that have been studied present a need for the entrepreneurial passion literature to be effectively analyzed. Using meta-analytic techniques, we systematically review constructs that have been investigated as antecedents and outcomes of entrepreneurial passion and its inherent domains (i.e., passion for inventing, founding, and developing). Our results, based on a sample of 54 studies containing 332 effect sizes, provide empirical insights into the impact of individual-level antecedents (e.g., age, gender, human capital, self-efficacy, entrepreneurial alertness), firm-level antecedents (e.g., firm age, firm size), and macro-level antecedents (e.g., environmental dynamism) on entrepreneurial passion and its domains. Furthermore, our results show the implications of entrepreneurial passion and its domains for individual-level outcomes (e.g., entrepreneurial intention, opportunity recognition) and firm-level outcomes (e.g., firm performance). We also conduct post-hoc meta-analyses regarding team-level entrepreneurial passion and build theory around the entrepreneurial passion construct to inform future research.

Multinationals from emerging economies: Strategies, challenges, and the way forward

AbstractMultinationals from emerging economies are relatively new players in the global economy. This Special Issue includes five articles that cover several important aspects of the market and nonmarket strategies pursued by emerging market multinational corporations (EMNCs). Given that only a few firms from emerging markets embrace the possibilities and challenges of going global, we highlight the need to examine country, industry, and firm level antecedents of the emergence of EMNCs. We also draw attention to the need to study the role played by immigrant populations in EMNC internationalization.

Antecedents of Business-Government Relationship: Evidence from 13 African Countries

A strong Business-government relationship is one method of rent-seeking activity of firms. Using novel proxies of political connectivity from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES), we study the relationship behavior of 7733 firms from 13 African countries with their government. According to the results of the baseline estimation and subgroup analysis using robust Tobit and Probit models, we find business regulations and policies trigger the relationship introspects of a firm’s strategic choices. The result further indicates that the strength and magnitude of the business-government relationship are subjected to specific country-level characteristics including, corruption level, regulatory quality, economic development, duration of government tenure, and the level of the bureaucracy of countries. Moreover, firm-specific characteristics including firm size, age, government dependency, extensive exporters, and the existence of informal market competition are among the firm-level antecedents of the Business-government relationship. Our separate analysis further provides that old, big, and manufacturing firms have more likely to form a strong relationship than others. Keywords: Business-Government Relationship; Corporate Political Connectivity; Institutional Qualities; Small and medium firms, censored data. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/14-20-02 Publication date: October 31 st 2022

Entrepreneurial exit intentions in emerging economies: a neoinstitutional perspective

Current research has shown that entrepreneurial exit is driven by individual- and firm-level antecedents. We draw from neoinstitutional theory and propose that contextual factors affect family succession intentions as opposed to family-external exit intentions and theorize how regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive institutional pillars affect exit intentions in the context of transition economies—a special case of emerging economies with no path dependence related to an entrepreneurial exit—characterized by institutional voids, which are filled in by the national culture. We argue and find—analyzing a sample of 222 Polish SME founders’ survey responses—that labor market development decreases, normative pressure of reference groups increases, and paternalistic leadership style decreases family succession intentions. This study contributes to the literature about entrepreneurial exit, family firm succession, and neoinstitutional theory.

Firm-level antecedents and consequences of knowledge hiding climate

Knowledge hiding at the firm-level has received limited empirical attention. We address this gap by examining the antecedents and consequences of knowledge hiding climate using two studies. We explore the role that human resource (HR) practices play as an antecedent of firm knowledge hiding, and the influence knowledge hiding has on innovation and firm performance. We find HR practices contribute to a lower climate of knowledge hiding and leadership trust interacts to discourage knowledge hiding further. We also find that knowledge hiding climate has a detrimental effect on product innovation and firm performance, and product innovation partially mediates the direct effect of knowledge hiding climate. Taken together, our two foci on knowledge hiding at the heretofore-neglected firm-level provide nuanced insights on important antecedents and performance outcomes of knowledge hiding climates within firms. We detail the practical implications of our findings and offer some recommendation on how firms can avoid such detrimental organizational climates emerging.

Does size matter? Non-market social and political engagement by accounting firms in the #Brexit discourse on Twitter

ABSTRACT Social media is widely used by accounting firms to achieve a variety of business objectives and is a key enabler of non-market strategies. Socio-political involvement (SPI) involves firms taking positions on issues that lack societal consensus, have low information rationality, evolving viewpoints and issue salience, with no clear performance outcomes for firms. SPI may result in firms alienating stakeholders with opposing views, resulting in no or adverse performance outcomes. Accounting firms traditionally may not engage with such issues due to the associated reputational risk. Further, research suggests firm size is one of the most prominent firm-level antecedents of socio-political engagement. As the empirical context for this paper, we choose the Brexit referendum, a significant historical but divisive event with contested social norms. This paper explores the engagement of accounting firms on Twitter with the #Brexit discourse from the referendum announcement to one month after the vote. The objectives of the study are to understand the nature of non-market socio-political engagement by accounting firms in the #Brexit discourse on Twitter, and explore the differences between accounting firms of different size in this context. Our findings suggest that accounting firms engaged in the #Brexit Twitter discourse through a variety of non-market socio-political engagement activities, and that smaller firms tended to engage more than larger firms, most likely reflecting the ideological inclination of firm management. The engagement of accounting firms in socio-political discourse extends our understanding of how accounting firms of all sizes use social media and supports critical accounting and institutional perspectives.

Exploring the antecedents of organizational resilience practices – A transactive memory systems approach

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to explore individual- and firm-level antecedents of the ability of a manufacturing firm's personnel to collaborate and integrate knowledge for organizational resilience practices.Design/methodology/approachThe authors apply hierarchical regression analysis to study a sample of 192 European industrial equipment manufacturers. Data for each firm are collected from surveys of two key informants in each firm, as well as from public sources.FindingsFirms' personnel’s ability to integrate information and knowledge for organizational resilience practices was positively related with the extent of the head of manufacturing's network of personal contacts inside the firm. This effect was stronger in firms with more formalized job descriptions and clearly defined roles. The head of manufacturing's orientation to teamwork and cooperation impacted this ability only in firms that did not financially incentivize cooperation. The authors also found that cooperation incentives and role formalization directly relate to firms' personnel’s ability to integrate information and knowledge for organizational resilience practices.Originality/valueThe study proposes to study organizational resilience practices through a transactive memory systems lens. The study is also the first to link characteristics of individual managers to firm-level resilience practices by examining the antecedents of firms' ability to integrate information and knowledge to recover from operational disruptions. Furthermore, the study serves to enhance the knowledge of resilience practices by examining the role of firm-level antecedents and their interplay with characteristics of individual managers.

Exploring Firm-Level Antecedents that Drive Motives of Internationalization: A Study of Knowledge Intensive Indian Firms

ABSTRACTWe study firm level antecedents that drive different motives of internationalization of emerging economy firms. Based on firm's resource based considerations of asset exploitation versus asset augmentation and locational advantages of host countries, we provide a framework to classify the motives of internationalization of emerging economy firms belonging to knowledge intensive industries. Motives of internationalization have been classified into three broad categories – market-seeking, opportunity-seeking, and strategic asset-seeking. We determine motives behind different modes of internationalization – alliances, acquisitions, and greenfield ventures. Drawing upon the adaptability, amalgamation, and ambidexterity (AAA) advantages from the springboard perspective, we find that firm characteristics like R&D investments, availability of financial slack, firm's ownership structure, and family control shape up its motive of internationalization.

What explains the resilience of SMEs? Ambidexterity capability and strategic consistency

The ability to be resilient, to recover and bounce back when confronted with a threatening and stressful external event, such as the most recent global economic crisis, is an important issue for strategic management research, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Research studies on firm level antecedents of resilience offer contradictory propositions, some of which stress the need for experimentation, while others suggest focusing on reliability. To disentangle this controversy and face this gap, our study proposes that for SMEs to achieve resilience, it is necessary that these companies are able to efficiently respond to the changing environments through ambidexterity and strategic consistency. We test our hypotheses on a dataset of 2765 manufacturing SMEs and provide strong evidence for our model of antecedents of SMEs’ resilience.

Antecedents, mediation effects and outcomes of hotel eco-innovation practice

Eco-innovation is essential if we are to improve the environmental impacts of tourism firms. Building on the natural-resource-based view (NRBV) of the firm, we hypothesize that eco-innovation is the mediating factor between four firm-level antecedents (opportunity-recognizing and opportunity-capitalizing capabilities, top managers’ attitudes and stakeholder pressures) and three outcomes (cost and differentiation, with respect to a firm’s competitive advantage, and its resulting organizational performance). Partial least squares structural equation modelling is applied to the data from a survey with hotel managers in China, and confirms all of the hypotheses, except two, namely: i) that cost competitive advantage is positively related to hotel performance, and ii) that eco-innovation fully mediates the relationships between opportunity-recognizing capability and both dimensions of competitive advantage. Our contribution to the NRBV theory with a novel, integrated model to predict the mediating role that eco-innovation plays between firm-level resources and capabilities, and competitive advantages.

The Role of Managers in Supply Chain Resilience: A Dynamic Managerial Capabilities Perspective

Extant research on supply chain resilience has successfully identified a set of firm-level antecedents that contribute to supply chain resilience. However, little is known about the mechanisms by w...

DETERMINANTS OF DEFENCE INDUSTRY CORRUPTION RISK: FIRM LEVEL EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE USING TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL’S ANTI-CORRUPTION INDEX

Since there is a general perception that the defence industry is more susceptible to corruption compared to other sectors, using a unique database provided by Transparency International (TI), we examine the role of firm level antecedents on firm level corruption risk in the defence industry. We find that larger firms have lower levels of firm level corruption risk. Managerial shareholding is associated with higher levels of corruption risk. Firms that voluntarily disclose more information regarding their corruption control systems tend to have lower levels of corruption risk. Finally, listed firms also have lower levels of firm level corruption risk. We find that the “listing effect” is stronger among firms in financially developed countries ostensibly due to the better scrutiny and monitoring by market participants. In our analysis, we control for country level variables such as a composite index of government effectiveness in controlling defence industry corruption.

Making the foreign familiar: The influence of top management team and board of directors characteristics on the adoption of foreign practices

This paper examines the firm-level antecedents of Six Sigma adoption in Korea. Our results indicate that firms with top executives and board members having work experience in the foreign country where the focal management practice originated and was popularized are more likely to adopt this practice. Furthermore, firms’ exposure to foreign investors exerts a direct effect and also moderates the impact of foreign work experience on adoption. Prior work experience in the country of practice origin reduces the uncertainty inherent in cross-border adoption by providing executives and board members with greater insight into the presumed benefits of the focal practice.

An exploration of the strategic antecedents of firm supply chain agility: The role of a firm's orientations

Agility has been identified as one of the most salient issues of contemporary supply chain management (Lee, 2004). Despite its importance, there has been limited theory development in supply chain agility at the firm level. The antecedents of firm supply chain agility are understood even less as they have been primarily addressed at an operational level. Gligor and Holcomb (2012b) emphasized that more research is needed to identify the firm supply chain agility strategic level antecedents. Gligor et al. (2015) specifically called for future research to investigate the role of market orientation and supply chain orientation in achieving supply chain agility. We address this call and expand on the work of Braunscheidel and Suresh (2009) who explored the role of different managerial orientations in achieving supply chain agility. The current research hypothesizes that market orientation has a direct impact on firm supply chain agility. Further, it is not enough to be market oriented to achieve a high level of supply chain agility; rather, a supply chain orientation also needs to be developed. In order to increase the explanatory power of our model we account for the impact of environmental uncertainty (Dess and Beard, 1984). Important theoretical and managerial implications are put forth as well.

The appointment of chief supply chain officers to top management teams: A contingency model of firm-level antecedents and consequences

This study investigates the recent emergence of Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs). Drawing on contingency theory, we analyze firm-level antecedents and consequences associated with CSCOs being appointed to top management teams (TMTs). We conceptually develop the role of CSCOs and hypothesize that CSCOs are most likely to be appointed to TMTs at firms where supply chain-related integration and differentiation pressures are high. The results from a matched sample of S&P 1500 firms over a 21-year period reveal that financial leverage, internationalization, and diversification all predict CSCO appointment to the TMT. Our results also suggest that these same contingencies positively moderate the effect of CSCO presence on firm performance, with CSCOs proving beneficial when leverage, internationalization, and diversification levels are high, but detrimental when leverage, internationalization, and diversification are low. In addition, we find post-hoc evidence that suggests institutional forces may also be a factor in CSCO appointments. Our results reveal that most of the contingency performance effects manifest only for early adopters of the CSCO role, suggesting that late-mover elevation of the supply chain function to the TMT is a form of mimetic isomorphism. This study extends research on CSCOs and their emergence in TMTs, as well as the role of operations management in corporate strategy.

Should the MSMEs be Governed the Corporate Way?

This article makes a case for micro small and medium enterprises (MSME) governance as distinct from corporate governance even in instances where MSME firms are organised as bodies corporate.The credence for the suggestion for a separate framework for the governance of the MSME sector comes from (a) the contribution of the MSMEs to the economic and social development in their respective settings, (b) systemic nature of their ailments, (c) institutional and organisational contingency theory of corporate governance and (d) the theory of articulation (upward delegation) of decision making.The model of articulation of governance for the MSME sector (MAG_MSME) developed in the article provides for sharing of the costs and responsibility of governance by the participants in the articulation. Besides, it also addresses to the firm-level antecedents of governance and examines the roles of the entrepreneurs and their families in the MSME governance.

Foreign executive appointments: A multilevel examination

As multinational enterprises (MNE) expand, their attachment to the country of origin is challenged by the need to adapt to an increasingly diverse geographical posture. We examine how these countervailing forces affect top management team (TMT) composition and test a model that associates foreign executive appointments with individual- and firm-level antecedents. Using multilevel data comprising 1446 TMT appointments at 360 large European firms between 2001 and 2005, we show that individual experiential characteristics, the type of TMT function, prior performance of the MNE, and the MNE's overall degree of internationalization are associated with foreign TMT appointments. We discuss how our findings contribute to the international business literature and complement recent research on the internationalization of TMTs.

An Inductive Study of Foreign CEOs of Japanese Firms

We use multiple case study methodology to examine firm-level antecedents and consequences of foreign CEO hiring decisions in Japan. We also examine foreign CEO attributes and the strategic initiatives launched by the foreign CEOs to understand differences in consequences. Study findings suggest that foreign CEOs in Japan are not all “complete outsiders” to the organization and the nation—most Japanese firms prefer to hire a CEO with prior work experience in Japan. Overall, foreign-born CEOs are successful in Japan only if they have a vision and the executive clout to transform the organization.