Coronavirus and international business: An entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective

Covid‐19 (Coronavirus) is a health pandemic that has significantly affected the global economy and fundamentally changed society. The impacts of coronavirus are most apparent at the international business level due to the restrictions on travel and mobility of labor. This has necessitated an entrepreneurial outlook for businesses in order to survive in the current market environment. The aim of this article is to discuss the implications of the coronavirus for international business by taking an entrepreneurial ecosystem point of view. This enables a reflection on how the pandemic has impacted various entities of the ecosystem in terms of stakeholder engagement. Suggestions for acting in a more dynamic and innovative manner are provided that highlight the importance of utilizing entrepreneurial ecosystems in times of crises.     

Demystifying the folklore of the accidental project manager in the public sector

Many individuals are called upon to undertake project management responsibilities with little or no preparation. Such project managers have been referred to as accidental project managers. This article examines the experiences of 46 accidental project managers within the Western Australian public sector through a questionnaire survey. Findings reveal that most project managers were selected based on their technical or managerial expertise and thus lacked the required competencies to deliver a project. There was a greater propensity for accidental project managers to act in a part‐time mode, undertake nontechnical projects, and be provided with limited training and education.     

Quality distortions in vertical relations

This paper examines how delivery tariffs and private quality standards are determined in vertical relations that are subject to asymmetric information. We consider an infinitely repeated game where an upstream firm sells a product to a downstream firm. In each period, the firms negotiate a delivery contract comprising the quality of the good as well as a non-linear tariff. Assuming asymmetric information about the actual quality of the product and focusing on incentive compatible contracts, we show that from the firms’ perspective delivery contracts lead to more efficient contracts and thus higher overall profits the lower the firms’ outside options, i.e. the higher their mutual dependency. Buyer power driven by a reduced outside option of the upstream firm enhances the efficiency of vertical relations, while buyer power due to an improved outside option of the downstream firm implies less efficient outcomes.     

Feminist Geopolitics: Unpacking (In)Security,Animating Social Change

This piece is the introduction to a special section on Feminist Geopolitics focusing specifically on securitisation. This introduction provides an overview of the field of feminist geopolitics and situates the contributions of the articles that follow. We argue that the contributions to the section push the field in two distinct ways. First, a number of the pieces draw important connections between geopolitical and geoeconomic processes. Second, the pieces continue to excavate the complex relationship between geopolitical processes and everyday life. Taken as a whole, this special section highlights the utility of feminist geopolitical approaches for gaining analytic clarity and thinking through and enacting positive social change.     

The dynamics of environmental innovations: three stylised trajectories of clean technology

In this article, we explore the dynamics of environmental innovations developed by firms to comply with environmental regulations. Our analysis is based on a micro-simulation model of industrial dynamics. The question arises: how do firms competing in the same industry deal with environmental issues without altering their productive efficiency or the performance of the product? We focus on clean technology which seeks to combine environmental and productive dimensions by way of innovation offsets. Our simulations show that an innovative strategy based on a good balance between environmental and productive dimensions takes more time to develop and needs to address a ‘competence destroying effect’. Finally, we study favourable conditions for the development of this type of clean technology and draw some policy implications.     

The effects of tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty on the appropriateness of accounting performance measures

This article examines how task uncertainty, environmental uncertainty and tolerance for ambiguity (TFA) affect managerial opinions about the appropriateness of accounting performance measures (APM). Based on accounting and psychology literature, this study argues that task uncertainty and environmental uncertainty differ in their direct effects on the appropriateness of APM, and furthermore that the relationship between uncertainty and the appropriateness of APM is moderated by managers' TFA. Hypotheses are developed, and tested with data from a survey study among 250 managers in eleven organizations, using partial least squares (PLS). Overall, the results show that the two types of uncertainty have opposite effects on managers' opinions about the appropriateness of APM, and that these effects are moderated by TFA, which confirms expectations. No direct effect of TFA on the appropriateness of APM was found. Overall, these findings provide an explanation of the inconsistencies in the extant behavioural management accounting literature that has addressed the appropriateness of APM under uncertainty.     

Firm level return-volatility analysis using dynamic panels

This paper examines “leverage” and volatility feedback effects at the firm level by considering both market and firm level effects, using 242 individual firm stock data in the US market. We adopt a panel vector autoregressive framework which allows us to control simultaneously for common business cycle effects, unobserved cross correlation effects in return and volatility via industry effects, and heterogeneity across firms. Our results suggest that volatility feedback effects at the firm level are present due to both market and firm effects, though the market volatility feedback effect is stronger than the corresponding firm level effect. We also find that the leverage effect at the firm level is persistent, significant and negative, while the effect of market return on firm volatility is persistent, significant and positive. The presence of these effects is further explored through the responses of the model's variables to market-wide return and volatility shocks.     

Firms’ location decision across asymmetric countries and employment inequality

This paper analyzes the effect of globalization (lower trade costs) on production and trade patterns if, firms are vertically linked, stages of production differ in labor-factors intensity and countries differ in labor-factors prices. In order to reflect the “Continental Europe” experience, relative wages are assumed fixed and spatial changes in production are translated into changes in relative (skilled to unskilled) employment levels. The asymmetry in factors prices across countries results in a unique agglomeration equilibrium for a broad range of trade costs. At low trade costs, firms’ location depends on production costs—vertical specialization occurs. This paper also provides a consistent explanation of the observed increase in employment inequality between skilled and unskilled workers in relatively high-unskilled wage countries.