Which Resources Matter How and Where? A Meta‐Analysis on Firms’ Foreign Establishment Mode Choice

Firm resources play an important role in explaining the foreign establishment mode choice. However, a theoretical framework that simultaneously a) differentiates between heterogeneous types of resources, b) provides a rationale that consistently explains how firms adapt their establishment mode choice to their resource base, and c) reflects on contextual factors that intervene in the consistency of the direct relationships is largely missing. The present paper draws on the resource‐based view (RBV) to develop such a framework. More specifically, we study the effect of knowledge‐based and experience‐based resources on a firm's establishment mode choice and the moderating impact of cultural distance on these relationships. We validate our theoretical framework by a meta‐analysis (integrating 31 studies with 13,559 establishment mode choices) and find that knowledge‐based resources enhance a firm's propensity for greenfield investments, while experience‐based resources more likely lead to acquisitions. Further, cultural distance increases knowledge‐intensive firms’ preference for greenfield investments.     

Multinational Firm Knowledge,Use of Expatriates,and Foreign Subsidiary Performance

The impact of knowledge transfer on foreign subsidiary performance has been a major focus of research on knowledge management in multinational enterprises (MNEs). By integrating the knowledge‐based view and the expatriation literature, this study examines the relationship between a multinational firm's knowledge (i.e. marketing and technological knowledge), its use of expatriates, and the performance of its foreign subsidiaries. We conceptualize that expatriates play a contingent role in facilitating the transfer and redeployment of a parent firm's knowledge to its subsidiary, depending on the location specificity of the organizational knowledge being transferred and the time of transfer. Our analysis of 1660 foreign subsidiaries of Japanese firms over a 15‐year period indicates that the number of expatriates relative to the total number of subsidiary employees (1) strengthened the effect of a parent firm's technological knowledge (with low location specificity) on subsidiary performance in the short term, but (2) weakened the impact of the parent firm's marketing knowledge (with high location specificity) on subsidiary performance in the long term. We also found that the expatriates' influence on knowledge transfer eventually disappeared. The implications for knowledge transfer research and the expatriate management literature are discussed.     

Talent management,absorptive capacity,and firm performance: Does it work in China and Russia?

This article investigates the relationship between talent management (TM), absorptive capacity (AC), and firm performance. We build a theoretical framework and examine the mediating role of a firm's AC in TM–performance relationships in the contexts of China and Russia. We use a sample of 120 Chinese and Russian firms to provide empirical evidence of our hypotheses. Our results show for both Chinese and Russian firms, a well‐developed TM system positively influences a firm's ability to acquire, assimilate, and exploit knowledge as well as increase the overall level of a firm's AC. We also found support for the argument that TM has an indirect positive effect on firm performance through its AC; moreover, the effect is stronger for Chinese firms, specifically, within the link between AC and performance.     

The Economic Relevance of Environmental Disclosure and its Impact on Corporate Legitimacy: An Empirical Investigation

In determining its environmental disclosure strategy, a firm's management faces a tension between responding to the information needs of financial markets and maintaining its legitimacy within the community. In this paper, relying on information economics and legitimacy theory, we explore how firms resolve this tension. Results show that a firm's environmental disclosure enhances the quality of analysts' information context, which ultimately allows them to make better forecasts. Moreover, financial analysts seem to be able to decipher environmental information, discounting discourses that are inconsistent with a firm's underlying environmental performance. We find also that a firm's environmental disclosure serves another purpose, as it influences how its other stakeholders (beyond financial ones) perceive its legitimacy. Such enhanced legitimacy reduces the information uncertainty faced by financial analysts. Our results suggest also that both economic‐based environmental disclosure and sustainable development and environmental disclosure are useful to analysts in making their forecasts and enhance a firm's legitimacy. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The role of cultural values on a firm's strategic human resource management development: a comparative case study of Spanish firms in China

This paper attempts to better understand the role of cultural values as a human resource contributor to a firm's strategic development. Comparative case studies of two Spanish subsidiaries in China were made using on-site, in-depth qualitative research in both Spain and China. We then examine how this difference in management affects the firm's overall strategic development and, hence, its performance. The results of the study suggest that cultural values, as a human resource contributor, do indeed affect a firm's overall strategic development and, hence, the firm's resulting success or failure. Throughout the paper, the management by values (MBV) framework is used as a lens to further examine and better understand this process.     

Optimal Two‐part Pricing under Cost Uncertainty

This paper examines the optimal two‐part pricing under cost uncertainty. We consider a risk‐averse monopolistic firm that is subject to a cost shock to its constant marginal cost of production. The firm uses two‐part pricing to sell its output to a continuum of heterogeneous consumers. We show that the global and marginal effects of risk aversion on the firm's optimal two‐part pricing are to raise the unit price and lower the fixed payment. We further show that an increase in the fixed cost of production induces the firm to raise (lower) the unit price and lower (raise) the fixed payment under decreasing (increasing) absolute risk aversion. The firm's optimal two‐part pricing is unaffected by changes in the fixed cost under constant absolute risk aversion. Finally, we show that a mean‐preserving spread increase in cost uncertainty induces the firm to raise the unit price and lower the fixed payment under either decreasing or constant absolute risk aversion. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Management of Creative Vision and the Economics of Creative Cycles

This paper proposes a new theory of variability in innovation performance in managerial firms that contract ‘creative vision’. We argue that such firms are prone to ‘creative cycles’ that arise from uncertainty‐induced systemic overshooting that can threaten the firm's financial viability, requiring managers to shift control back to risk‐averse financial controllers. But this creates opportunities for competing firms to engage in bold creative visions, threatening the firm's market viability and inducing control to shift back to newly contracted suppliers of ‘creative vision’. We discuss how this ‘principal‐agent‐agent’ mechanism plays out, the types of uncertainty that drive it, and consider the industry‐level externalities it induces. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Human Resource Systems and Ethical Climates: A Resource‐Based Perspective

We know very little about how ethical climates are built and the potential role of a firm's HR system in facilitating the development of this resource. The resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm suggests that human resource systems directly influence a firm's performance through the development of resources that are deeply woven in a firm's history and culture. How this occurs though has not been thoroughly considered in the research literature. Drawing on the theoretical insights from the resource‐based view of the firm, this article explores how HR systems can foster the development and maintenance of five types of ethical climates. In so doing, this article improves our conceptual understanding of why ethical climates may be seen as having strategic value for firms and how HR systems may influence that value. In addition, it contributes to theory by extending the domain of the resource‐based view of the firm by exploring its integration with the varied types of ethical climates. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Entry into Insular Domains: A Longitudinal Study of Knowledge Structuration and Innovation in Biotechnology Firms

We focus on the firm's decision to enter insular technology domains and its effect on the impact that its subsequent innovation has on the field. Insular domains are technical domains that rely heavily on prior innovations within the same domain for subsequent innovations. We show that the returns to entering insular domains vary with the firm's depth and breadth of knowledge. By analysing data from 128 biotechnology firms over a 20‐year period, we find that the relationship between depth of technological capabilities and technology impact is nuanced: depth is necessary but not sufficient for high impact innovation. Firms whose knowledge is spread over disparate domains have negative returns from entering insular domains. The implications of these findings for theories of innovation and the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities are discussed.     

The relationship between high performance work systems and employee proactive behaviour: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation as mediating mechanisms

Drawing on the contextual perspective, this study provides novel empirical evidence on how the organisational context (specifically, the firm's human resource strategy) has an effect on employee proactivity. We use matched data from managers and employees in 102 Spanish professional service firms to examine how high performance work systems contribute to enhance employee proactive behaviours through two motivational variables: role breadth self‐efficacy and flexible role orientation. Results of a multilevel study demonstrate that role breadth self‐efficacy mediates between HPWS and employee proactivity, but flexible role orientation does not mediate this relationship.     

Board Effectiveness and the Voluntary Disclosure of Climate Change Information

This paper examines the relationship between board of directors' effectiveness and voluntary climate change disclosures. Since risk management and reporting fall under the board's responsibility, we relate board effectiveness to the firm's decision to voluntarily respond to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) annual questionnaire as well as the quality of disclosures about climate‐change‐related risks and strategies to mitigate them. Our results show a positive association between board effectiveness and the firm's decision to answer the CDP questionnaire as well as its carbon disclosure quality. The paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the determinants of voluntary climate change disclosures. Our findings highlight the importance of the board of directors' role in enhancing the transparency and relevance of voluntary disclosures of climate change business impacts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Environmental transparency and investors' risk perception: Cross-country evidence on multinational corporations' sustainability practices and cost of equity

We explore whether a greater amount of environmental disclosure can reduce a firm's ex ante cost of equity. This could occur because the quantity of environmental information changes investors' risk perception of the company, thereby influencing its ex ante cost of equity. Our study is a cross-country analysis of 1481 multinational corporations (MNCs) across 43 countries and territories from 2013 to 2019. Firstly, we measure investors' risk perception as a firm's ex ante cost of equity by employing five different valuation models, all based on equity analysts' forecasted data. We then investigate whether large quantities of environmental information disclosed by an MNC affect its ex ante cost of equity. We find evidence that investors price the amount of environmental disclosure. More environmental disclosure decreases a firm's ex ante cost of equity because it lessens investors' information asymmetry. However, this relationship is non-linear. Once the amount of environmental disclosure data exceeds a certain threshold level, a firm's ex ante cost of equity will rise again. Our empirical results also suggest that non-financial factors at the country level play a role in shaping how investors perceive a firm's riskiness. Locating the firm in a country with better environmental performance and a higher score of the human development index can reduce investors' risk perception and result in a lower ex ante cost of equity. A policy implication of our findings is that a global standardised and effective corporate sustainability reporting is needed to provide investors a more holistic view for evaluating the riskiness of their investments.     

Do institutional investors monitor management? Evidence from the relationship between institutional ownership and capital structure

We examine the dynamic relations between institutional ownership and a firm's capital structure. We find that a firm's leverage decreases when institutional ownership increases. This result implies that a firm reduces its debt level as institutional investors substitute for the monitoring role of debt. More importantly, we find that a firm's suboptimal leverage decreases when the institutional ownership increases, and institutional ownership decreases when a firm's suboptimal leverage increases. This finding shows that institutions not only effectively monitor a firm's capital structure but they also passively sell their shares when dissatisfied with it. In addition, we find that the monitoring evidence on a firm's leverage and suboptimal leverage are more pronounced when the institutional investors are less likely to have business relationships with a firm or the information asymmetry is high in the market.     

Toward A Place‐Based Understanding of Business Sustainability: The Role of Green Competitors and Green Locales in Firms' Voluntary Environmental Engagement

Management research has extensively considered who, what, when, why, which and how aspects pertaining to firms' voluntary environmental practices, yet the where aspect, which would consider the role of a firm's location on its environmental practices, has received remarkably less attention. We explore three research questions relating social and physical attributes of a firm's location with its engagement in a voluntary environmental program (VEP). Drawing on a sample of hotels participating in a Costa Rican VEP, we find that the number of VEP certified competitors (i.e. green competitors) and firm proximity to a sacrosanct environment (i.e. a green locale) are positively related to a firm's level of VEP engagement. We also find an interaction effect such that the relationship between the number of VEP certified competitors and the level of VEP engagement is positively moderated by firm proximity to a green locale. We argue that firms' voluntary environmental engagement can be enhanced by developing green clusters amid green corridors. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The influence of supply network structure on firm innovation

In this study, we examine the structural characteristics of supply networks and investigate the relationship between a firm's supply network accessibility and interconnectedness and its innovation output. We also examine potential moderating effects of absorptive capacity and supply network partner innovativeness on innovation output. We hypothesize that firms will experience greater innovation output from (1) higher levels of supply network accessibility and supply network interconnectedness, (2) the interaction between the levels of these two structural characteristics, (3) the moderating role of absorptive capacity on supply network accessibility and the moderating role of supply network partner innovativeness on supply network interconnectedness. Supply network partner relationships are drawn in the context of the electronics industry using data from multiple sources. We use social network analysis to create measures for each supply network structural characteristic. Using regression techniques to test the relationship between these structural characteristics and firm innovation for a sample of 390 firms, our findings suggest that supply network accessibility has a significant association with a firm's innovation output. The results also indicate that interconnected supply networks strengthen the association between supply network accessibility and innovation output. Moreover, the influence of the two structural characteristics on innovation output can be enhanced by a firm's absorptive capacity and level of supply network partner innovativeness. By addressing the need for deeper structural analysis, this study contributes to supply chain research by accounting for the embedded nature of ties in supply networks, and showing how these structural characteristics influence the knowledge and information flows residing within a firm's supply network.     

The Seller's Perspective on Determinants of Acquisition Likelihood: Insights from China's Beer Industry

This study investigates acquisition antecedents during China's transition from a planned to a market‐based economic system. Because of contextual realities such as a lack of freely tradable targets for buyers, the seller's willingness to sell is critical for acquisition occurrence in transition economies. We therefore take the seller's perspective and examine factors underlying firms' willingness to sell. We posit that selling is a decision based on the evaluation of a firm's prospects determined by its embeddedness within the planned system, organizational changes it undertook during the transition, and its ability to adjust its strategy according to the evolving strengths of the planning and marketing institutions. Data from the Chinese beer industry from 1995 to 2004 show that acquisition likelihood is high for firms founded as SOEs, low for firms having attracted more private investment or undertaken multiple changes, and has a U‐shaped relationship with firms' relative investment in marketing resources.     

Media Content,Accounting Quality,and Liquidity Volatility

We examine how the linguistic content of news items affects the volatility of a firm's liquidity, and we consider whether accounting quality moderates the media content-liquidity volatility relation. Regarding the unconditional relation between media content and liquidity volatility, one view is media content could reduce liquidity volatility by providing additional information about fundamental values; another view is it could increase liquidity volatility by increasing investor uncertainty, particularly for negative news. Using data from Thomson Reuters News Analytics, we find evidence supporting the view that media content, positive and negative, has incremental information. Regarding the moderating role of accounting quality, pre-existing accounting information of higher quality could enhance investors' reactions to media content by providing a more precise baseline, or it could reduce investors' reactions to the news if investors anchor on higher quality financial statements. Our findings are consistent with more credible accounting information serving an anchor role, and suggest that investors condition their reaction to media content based on the quality of a firm's pre-existing accounting information.     

Intellectual Capital–Enhancing HR,Absorptive Capacity,and Innovation

This study investigates the role of intellectual capital (i.e., human, social, and organization capital)–enhancing human resource (HR) practices in the development of a firm's absorptive capacity, as well as the mediating role of absorptive capacity in its relationship to the firm's innovation performance. Results show that while human capital–enhancing HR (acquisition and developmental HR) is positively related to absorptive capacity, social capital–enhancing HR affects absorptive capacity through egalitarian HR practices. Organization capital–enhancing HR practices contribute to absorptive capacity through effective information systems. Finally, our findings confirm that the various intellectual capital–enhancing HR practices affect innovation performance through their impact on the firm's absorptive capacity. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Boards and Sustainability: the Contingent Influence of Director Interlocks on Corporate Environmental Performance

This paper highlights the importance of a firm's board with respect to sustainability issues by analysing the relationship between director interlocks, i.e. directors who simultaneously belong to the boards of directors of several companies, and a firm's environmental performance. The previous literature has focused on the influence of firm‐level resources on corporate environmental performance. This study utilizes insights from a resource‐based view and research on social capital to demonstrate that the environmental performance of a firm is also influenced by the difficult‐to‐imitate capabilities that are embedded in the network relationships of its directors. Our results support a contingency perspective of the social capital theory that finds that director interlocks are positively connected with the environmental performance of a firm in two specific situations: (1) when the firm is linked to a larger parent company and (2) in cases of low and high levels of interlock diversity. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

International tenders and futures hedging

This paper examines the optimal bidding and hedging decisions of a risk‐averse firm that takes part in an international tender. The firm faces multiple sources of uncertainty: exchange rate risk, risk of an unsuccessful tender, and business risk. The firm is allowed to trade unbiased currency futures contracts to imperfectly hedge its contingent foreign exchange risk exposure. We show that the firm shorts less (more) of the unbiased futures contracts when its marginal utility function is convex (concave) as compared with the case that the marginal utility function is linear. We further show that the curvature of the marginal utility function plays a decisive role in determining the impact of currency futures hedging on the firm's bidding behavior. Sufficient conditions that ensure the firm bids more or less aggressively than in the case without hedging opportunities are derived. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.