Focal Relationship Research Articles

Does childhood adversity make adolescents more morally disengaged? The effect of life history strategy and self-compassion

Childhood adversity may place adolescents at risk for moral disengagement. Drawing on evolutionary life history theory, this study aims to examine the underexplored relationship between childhood adversity and moral disengagement in Chinese adolescents as well as to explore the mediating role of life history strategy and the moderating role of self-compassion in the focal relationship. In Study 1, a total of 5089 adolescents were recruited and they finished a set of questionnaires concerning childhood adversity, life history strategy, self-compassion, and moral disengagement. A positive association was found between childhood adversity and moral disengagement via life history strategy, and this mediation effect was much weaker for adolescents who have high self-compassion. In Study 2, a total of 1890 adolescents initially participated in a three-wave longitudinal survey to validate the model obtained in Study 1. Childhood adversity increased adolescents' subsequent moral disengagement by accelerating their life history strategies, and self-compassion buffered the relatively long-lasting detrimental effects of childhood adversity. This work not only advances our understanding of the significant role of childhood adversity in causing moral disengagement among adolescents but also offers valuable insights into implementing appropriate preventions and interventions to reduce moral disengagement in adolescents and promote their positive development.

A Meta-Analysis of the Relations Between Achievement Goals and Internalizing Problems

This systematic meta-analytic review investigated the relations between achievement goals and internalizing symptoms and disorders, namely, anxiety and depression. The number of samples for each focal relationship ranged from 3 to 36. The results indicated significant effect sizes for the relations between mastery-approach goals and anxiety (r = − .10) and depression (r = − .18), as well as performance-avoidance goals and anxiety (r = .25) and depression (r = .16). A significant effect size was also found for the relation between performance-approach goals and anxiety (r = .15), and a non-significant effect size was observed for the relation between performance-approach goals and depression (r = .05). Mastery-avoidance goals were not significantly related to either anxiety (r = .08) or depression (r = − .13). Several moderators representing the conceptualization of achievement goals (e.g., theoretical model), sample characteristics (e.g., education level), and methodology- and publication-based characteristics (e.g., year of publication) were significant, and suggested avenues for future research. These findings herein have implications for intervention programs that could focus on reducing the links between achievement goals and internalizing problems.

Economic insecurity decreases cute product choice preference via other‐focused concern and the need to connect with others

AbstractThere are plenty of cute products in the marketplace even in difficult times. Yet, cute products do not always capture people's attention. Does insecure economic perception affect people's choice of cute products? To address this unexamined research gap, we propose that economic insecurity negatively influences cute product choice preference via the serial mediation effects of other‐focused concern and the need to connect with others. Desire for emotional support is proposed to moderate the focal relationship. We demonstrate these effects using four studies. Studies 1a and 1b tested the causal relationship between primed economic insecurity and choice preference towards cute products as well as ruling out several possible mechanisms (i.e., sense of control, affect, parental caring motives, risk aversion, the desire for cuteness, and the need for protection). Study 2 demonstrated that other‐focused concern and the need to connect with others serially mediated the above effect. Study 3 explored the moderating effect of desire for emotional support. Companies that manufacture cute products can benefit from our findings on how to communicate with consumers in times of economic downturn.

Linking green marketing and SMEs performance: A psychometric meta-analysis

ABSTRACT Drawing on the resource-based theory of the firm, contingency theory, and consumer behavioral theories, we investigate the extent to which green marketing—green products, green pricing, green distribution, and green promotion—influences the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and how contextual factors (for example, economic sector, economic development, national global sustainable competitiveness, and culture) influence this focal relationship. We analyzed 106 studies with 47,661 observations and 195 study effect sizes using a psychometric meta-analysis approach via subgroup and meta-regression analyses. Our results reveal that green marketing has a positive, moderate effect on the overall firm performance of SMEs and that the most critical antecedent is green promotion, while the performance indicator largely influenced by green marketing is innovation performance. Our moderator analysis shows that contextual factors significantly moderate green marketing/SME performance relationships. The study concludes with the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings.

Evaluation of the risk relationship between average alcohol volume consumed and suicide in the USA: an analysis of mortality linked cohort data

ObjectiveAlcohol use disorder is an established risk factor for suicide; however, it is largely unknown whether subclinical levels of drinking may also contribute to the risk of suicide. The objective...

High-performance work systems and individual performance: a longitudinal study of the differential roles of happiness and health well-being.

As a part of the growing strand of employee-centered HRM research, employee well-being is suggested to be a key mechanism that may help to explain the relationship between HRM and performance. To investigate how an employee's well-being mediates the HRM-performance relationship, we distinguish between two types of well-being identified in prior work, happiness well-being and health well-being, and present arguments for differences in their effects on individual performance. Building on Job Demands-Resources (JDR) theory, we propose that happiness well-being positively mediates the relationship between perceived High-Performance Work Systems (HPWS) and individual task performance, while health well-being negatively mediates this focal relationship. Thus, happiness well-being fits the "mutual gains" perspective. In contrast, health well-being fits the "conflicting outcomes" perspective, and thus may be harmed by the HPWS to enhance the performance. We find partial support for our arguments in an analysis of longitudinal survey data of 420 participants spanning a total of four waves of data collection.

The relationship between entrepreneurial intention and behavior: A meta-analytic review

A vibrant literature studying antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions is largely motivated by an often implicit assumption that they will be followed by subsequent entrepreneurial behaviors or actions. A much smaller number of studies actually test this assumption. Their results suggest that while the entrepreneurial intention–behavior relationship is usually present, its strength turns out highly contextual. This meta-analysis intends to integrate and summarize the available research base on the entrepreneurial intention–behavior relationship, assessing the moderating impacts of environmental, demographic and methodological factors. Data from 75 studies (150,703 individuals) were included in the analysis. Our results indicate that the focal relationship is robust across environmental contexts, populations, and methodologies except for the measures used for entrepreneurial behavior, the use of a database compared to collecting new data, and the duration of time between intention and behavior. Additionally, entrepreneurial intentions were found to account for only 17% of the variance in entrepreneurial behaviors as opposed to the commonly expected and cited 37%. Our findings suggest theoretical and methodological considerations for future work aimed at exploring and overcoming the non-trivial intention–behavior gap and we encourage the discovery of cognitive and behavioral factors reinforcing the intention–action translation at different levels of analysis and over time.

CEO overconfidence and firm performance: A meta-analytic review and future research agenda

Abstract We provide a meta-analytic examination of the CEO overconfidence–firm performance relationship. Our results support a positive relationship between these focal variables. Drawing from trait activation theory and national cultural differences literatures, we find that cross-cultural effects moderate the focal relationship. More specifically, we find that the CEO overconfidence–firm performance relationship is stronger in high assertive, low institutional collectivistic, low in-group collectivistic, high future-oriented, high gender egalitarian, high performance-oriented, low power distance, and low uncertainty avoidance cultures. Consistent with the resource orchestration literature, we also find that entrepreneurial orientation mediates the focal relationship between CEO overconfidence and firm performance. Taken together, our results present a more nuanced picture of the CEO trait–firm performance relationship. In the future, researchers may consider examining additional CEO traits as well as additional contextual factors including internal, as well as environmental, factors.

A Cyclical Model of Passion and Performance in New Venture Teams: Cross-Level Interactions With a Lead Entrepreneur’s Passion and Passion Diversity

Recent studies indicate that a team with entrepreneurial passion performs positively. To understand the dynamics of new venture teams (NVTs), however, more research is needed on cross-level interactions and the cyclical relationship between passion and performance. We hypothesize that the perception of a lead entrepreneur’s passion and entrepreneurial passion diversity are team-level constructs that influence the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and performance. Furthermore, utilizing the input-mediator-output-input (IMOI) model, we investigate whether the performance of NVTs affects members’ pre- and post-entrepreneurial passions while developing their businesses. We collected and analyzed multi-wave data from 160 individuals nested in 53 NVTs. The results indicate that entrepreneurial passion predicts perceptions of performance in general. However, the focal relationship is moderated by how NVT members perceive the lead entrepreneur’s passion. Our findings also suggest that entrepreneurial passion diversity directly hinders performance perception, although it does not influence the passion-performance link. Moreover, this study reveals that the perception of NVT performance mediates the effect of prior passion on subsequent passion, supporting the cyclic nature of the passion-performance relationship in NVTs. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.

The relationship between entrepreneurial energy efficiency orientation and carbon footprint reduction: The mediating role of green networking and identification of barriers to green practices

Motivated by the growing attention to climate change and the crucial role businesses could play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, this study investigates entrepreneurial energy efficiency orientation in the context of carbon footprint reduction initiatives of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We enhance understanding of the climate change action of SMEs by taking into account the mediating mechanisms (i.e., identification of green barriers and green networking) through which firm entrepreneurial energy efficiency orientation leads to superior carbon footprint reduction initiatives by overcoming barriers to green practices. A survey of 252 SME owners and top managers in the Tees Valley region, Northeast England, supported the direct impact of entrepreneurial energy efficiency orientation on overcoming barriers to green practices and the mediating role of identification of green barriers and green networking in this focal relationship. These findings reveal the importance of entrepreneurial energy efficiency orientation, identification of green barriers and green networking in helping SMEs overcome barriers to green practices and improving carbon footprint reduction initiatives.

Environmental regulation and stock price synchronicity: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

Prior literature under-theorizes the effect of environmental regulation on firms' stock market outcomes. Our study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of environmental regulation on stock price synchronicity using the promulgation of China's new Environmental Protection Law (EPL) as a quasi-natural experimental setting. Integrating the institution- and resource-based views, our findings show that the new EPL has significantly mitigated high-polluting firms' stock price synchronicity, with this effect being more pronounced for financially constrained firms and less significant for politically connected ones. Our findings also confirm that enhanced environmental and accounting information disclosure serve as underlying mechanisms of the focal relationship. Our study contributes to a finer-grained understanding of the consequences of environmental regulation and presents a more complete account of the determinants of stock price synchronicity.

Perceived descriptive norms strengthen the global human identification—general pro-environmental behavior association: Empirical evidence from survey studies

Limiting climate change requires the concerted efforts of all human beings, and thus focusing on global human identification, numerous studies identified a positive association between such a personal identity and pro-environmental behavior. However, the effect sizes of their association varied widely among previous studies, making it difficult to utilize global human identification to improve pro-environmental behavior. The variations in effect sizes indicate that some situational boundary conditions are likely to fluctuate the strength of the association between global human identification and pro-environmental behavior. In order to shed light on the situational factor that may boost the positive effect of global human identification on pro-environmental behaviors, the current research systematically examined the moderating role of perceived descriptive norms in the focal relationship, drawing on the theories regarding social identity and social norms. Specifically, we conducted an online questionnaire survey to measure all the core variables (Study 1) as well as an online survey experimental study to manipulate perceived descriptive norms (Study 2). The results of two studies consistently showed that participants with high global human identification demonstrated more general pro-environmental behavior only when they perceived that others were also behaving in an eco-friendly way. By uncovering the potential of perceived descriptive norms to amplify the facilitating effect of global human identification on general pro-environmental behavior, our findings provide empirical evidence for the social identity model of pro-environmental action and highlight the joint impact of personal and situational factors on eco-friendly behaviors.

From Industry 4.0 adoption to innovation ambidexterity to firm performance: a MASEM analysis

PurposeInformed by the resource-based view of the firm, dynamic capabilities theory and contingency theory, this study examines the impact of Industry 4.0 (IR4.0) technologies adoption on firm performance (FP) while accounting for the mediating role of innovation ambidexterity (IA) and moderating roles of contextual and methodological factors that drive the performance gains of the phenomenon.Design/methodology/approachA random-effect model in comprehensive meta-analysis (CMA) is used to synthesize 113 studies in 115 independent samples with 192,188 observations.FindingsThis analysis demonstrates that IR4.0 digital technologies are directly related to financial and non-financial performance, disclosing that the performance effect on non-financial is the largest. Moreover, there is a complementary partial mediation role of the impacts of IR4.0 on FP by IA. Furthermore, this focal relationship is moderated by boundary-spanning conditions: contextual factors – firm size, business type, economic development, industry sector and methodological factors – proxy of FP, sample size and study type.Practical implicationsThe results imply that IR4.0 produces financial and non-financial benefits by enabling firms to develop dynamic capabilities like innovation ambidexterity, which informs managers and practitioners that unless IR4.0 technologies and IA strategies are combined together to generate superior FP, IR4.0, in and of itself, would produce a less positive impact on FP than the combined impact of IR4.0 and IA. Therefore, managers should focus on converting IR4.0 resources to dynamic capabilities like IA by leveraging open innovation strategies or building IR4.0-based coordination mechanisms by creating cross-unit business synergies.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, per the literature review, this is the first meta-analysis structural equation modeling study on the interplay between IR4.0, innovation ambidexterity and firm performance.

Social Conflict and Outgroup Sentiment in South Korea: Evidence from the Yemeni Anti-Refugee Campaign

AbstractResearch on attitudes toward immigrants and refugees largely focuses on intergroup conflict and related threats imposed by outgroup members. This study shifts the analytic focus to intragroup conflict: a domestic struggle among natives over how to handle recently arrived refugees and on their perception of foreign workers in general and Muslims in particular. By exploiting an exogenous variation in the interview timing of a nationally representative survey conducted in South Korea, a “new immigration destination,” this study offers a causal estimate (local average treatment effect) of domestic societal conflict on outgroup attitudes. Results from regression discontinuity (RD) analysis show that in its aftermath—immediately following the completion of a controversial e-petition sponsored by the anti-refugee group demanding that the government extradite asylum seekers—the public opinion of Korean adults toward foreign workers and Muslims became more, not less, favorable. Heterogeneous treatment effects are also found across two respondent-level characteristics: cosmopolitan identity and relative deprivation. Specifically, the focal relationship is more pronounced among individuals who identify less with cosmopolitan citizenship and among those who are more relatively deprived.

Network Ties, Upward Status Heterophily, and Unanticipated Health Consequences.

Using cross-national data containing information on the status rank of network alters, this study investigates the potential negative effects of "upward status heterophily," ties to and perceived interaction with higher status others. According to our main finding, upward status heterophily is associated with poor physical health and lower subjective well-being. We also find that this focal relationship varies across individual and contextual moderators. For subjective well-being only, it is weaker among people who are better educated, have larger nonkin network, and possess greater self-efficacy. Moreover, there is a significant cross-level interaction: For both health outcomes, the relationship is more pronounced in subnational regions that are economically more unequal. Our findings shed light on the mechanisms of the "dark side of social capital" by operationalizing perceived status differential as a proxy for upward social comparison and showing its deleterious consequences in the East Asian context.

Examining the Complex (Curvilinear and Contingent) Associations between Social Distancing Compliance and Subjective Health during a Global Health Crisis

This study investigated a potential curvilinear link between social distancing behavior and subjective health in later life. It also evaluated whether food insecurity and community social capital moderated the focal relationship. Data were drawn from three waves of the COVID Impact Survey (N = 19,234). Mixed-effects models were fitted. Social distancing has a non-monotonic (U-shaped) relationship with subjective health, i.e., individuals with low and high levels of social distancing show relatively better health. Moreover, the negative linear relationship between social distancing and health is weaker among people suffering from food insecurity as well as those living in communities with lower stocks of social capital. This study sheds new light on the health implications of social distancing during the pandemic. Our findings dovetail with the steeling hypothesis, i.e., that social distancing is less harmful for U.S. older adults exposed to prior stressful or vulnerable conditions.

The moderating role of national philanthropic environment in the relationship between advertising intensity and corporate social responsibility

Research concerning the relationship between advertising intensity and corporate social responsibility has yielded mixed results. Some scholars have found a positive link, supporting a complementary perspective, while others have found a negative link, supporting a substitute perspective. The authors of this current study employ a contingency perspective to propose that the focal relationship is moderated by national philanthropic environments, which reflects the propensity of a nation to be philanthropic. With a sample of 271 firms from 13 countries, a hierarchical linear model analysis was conducted, and the findings support the contingency perspective. Specifically, the results showed that in countries with high levels of national philanthropic environments there is a positive link between advertising intensity and corporate social responsibility, while in countries with lower national philanthropic environments, there is a negative link.

Home Sweet Home: Do Local CEOs Curb Stock Price Crash Risk?

Motivated by understanding of the under-studied issue of how non-cultural informal institutions influence stock price, our study examines whether CEOs working in their birthplaces reduce stock price crash risk in comparison with non-local CEOs. Our results based on a sample of Chinese listed firms during the period 2007-2019 show that local CEOs significantly lower firms’ stock price crash risk. Further analyses reveal that both clan culture and social trust strengthen the focal relationship. The study advances research on the role of non-cultural informal institutions in influencing stock price crash risk and offers valuable insights for both directors and investors.

Board independence and firm internationalization: a meta-analysis

Purpose Despite agency theory and resource dependence theory suggesting that – albeit through different mechanisms – board independence positively influences firm internationalization, empirical evidence on this relationship has been mixed and inconclusive. Based on this, the purpose of the present study is twofold: first, to analyze and synthesize the existing empirical literature and, second, to develop new theoretical insights on the effect of board independence on firm internationalization. Design/methodology/approach The authors used advanced meta-analytic techniques that allowed them, first, to synthesize the existing empirical literature on the board independence–firm internationalization relationship and, second, to examine the effect of several contingencies on such relationship. This study relies on data from 87 primary studies (published and unpublished) carried out in multiple academic fields in the period 1998–2021 and covering 49 countries. Findings The results confirm the established agency and resource-dependence arguments, suggesting that higher board independence is associated with greater firm internationalization. Moreover, the results show that the focal relationship is moderated by home-country formal and informal institutional factors, and in particular, the legal protection of minority shareholders and family business legitimacy. The authors do not find evidence that CEO duality and board size moderate the focal relationship or that board independence has a stronger effect on breadth than on depth of internationalization. Originality/value This study lies at the intersection of the literatures on corporate governance and firm internationalization and on comparative corporate governance of the multinational firm, shedding further light on the role played by institutional environments in determining the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms.

The relationship between student motivation and academic performance: the mediating role of online learning behavior

PurposeThis paper aims to use a quantitative approach to explore the role of online learning behavior in students’ academic performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the authors probe its mediating effect in the relationship between student motivation (extrinsic and intrinsic) and academic performance in a blended learning context.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data were collected from 148 students taking an organizational behavior course at one Chinese university. The data were paired and analyzed through regression analysis.FindingsThe results show that students should actively engage in online learning behavior to maximize the effects of blended learning. Extrinsic motivation was found to positively influence academic performance both directly and indirectly through online learning behavior, while intrinsic motivation affected academic performance only indirectly.Originality/valueThrough paired data on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, online learning behavior and academic performance, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of how online learning behavior affects the focal relationship, and it advances research on the mechanisms underlying the focal relationship. Practitioners should enhance students’ online learning behavior to boost blended learning effects during the COVID-19 pandemic.