How Does Cooperation and Competition Foster or Inhibit Creativity and Innovation?

The current article provides a brief insight into the relationship between cooperation and competition in organizational settings as they relate to the origination and proliferation of new ideas. Does cooperation stifle creativity? Does competition promote innovation? Or is it likely the answer resides in a more complex process somewhere in the middle? With a vested interest in organizational productivity, leadership should pay special attention to what social processes give rise to these phenomena.     

How Does an Individual's Innate Preferences Impact Innovation and Creativity?

Organizational leaders commonly reward innovation and creativity and many times it is the individual with the “brilliant idea” who is recognized. The current article examines the four types of innovative ideas that lead to organizational change and effectiveness and how every person on a team plays a role in achieving the idea. As a manager or leader of people being aware of individual styles and preferences will lead to increased recognition of all innovative and creative contributions that can have a positive impact on organizational culture.     

Internal Commitment or External Collaboration? The Impact of Human Resource Management Systems on Firm Innovation and Performance

Complementing previous research that showed a positive effect of general human resource management (HRM) systems on general firm performance, this article undertakes an integrative approach to compare the main effects and examine the interaction effects of two particular HRM systems on influencing firm innovation and performance. Using data from 179 organizations in China, we found that both the commitment‐oriented system, which emphasized internal cohesiveness, and the collaboration‐oriented system, which was intended to build external connections, contributed to firm innovation and, subsequently, bottom‐line performance. We also found an attenuated interaction between the two HRM systems in predicting firm innovation. We employed a mediated‐moderation path model to extricate the relationships. Results suggested that organizations that implemented both HRM systems to promote innovation might face ambidexterity challenges. Ideas for future research and practical implications are discussed.     

Does the Eco‐Management and Audit Scheme Foster Innovation in European Firms?

This paper studies whether environmental management systems can spur eco‐innovation, analyzing EMAS (Eco‐Management and Audit Scheme) adoption and patented innovations (at the European Patent Office) at firm level. It uses an original panel database of 30 439 European firms belonging to all sectors from 2003 to 2012. An original instrumental variable is implemented to control for potential endogeneity. The analysis reveals that EMAS adoption is conducive to more innovation at the firm level. The results vary across countries and sectors. In particular, EMAS is positively related to green patents for medium and low technology manufacturing. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Do Birds of a Feather Flock Higher? The Effects of Partner Similarity on Innovation in Strategic Alliances in Knowledge‐Intensive Industries

In spite of the consensus on the benefits of strategic alliances for learning and innovation, our understanding of the effects of partner similarity remains conflicted. This paper develops an integrative theoretical framework in which we propose that similar partners in a focal firm's alliance portfolio contribute to the firm's innovation up to a threshold, beyond which additional similar partners can lead to a decrease in innovation because of the trade-offs embedded in collaboration between similar partners. In this integrative framework, we also draw on organizational ecology and institutional perspectives to propose that the effect of partner similarity on innovation is positively moderated by organizational aging and the industry norm of collaboration at the firm's founding. Results from an analysis of 176 biotechnology firms between 1988 and 1999 support our arguments. This study contributes to research on strategic alliance and innovation by considering both the benefits and costs of partner similarity in the context of alliance portfolios and by exploring the multilevel contingencies for the effects of partner similarity.     

The Effect of Import Competition on Firm Productivity and Innovation: Does the Distance to Technology Frontier Matter?

How does foreign competition affect growth and innovation in China? Using our unique measures of proximity of Chinese firms and industries to the world technology frontier, we find that despite vast sectoral heterogeneity, Chinese manufacturing industries have undergone rapid technological upgrading over the period of 2000–06. The distance to the world production frontier of firms and industries plays an important role in shaping the nexus between the competition pressure from foreign imports and domestic firms' growth and innovation behaviour. Our results support the theoretical predictions of Aghion et al. (2005, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, pp. 701–728) that import competition stimulates the domestic firms' productivity growth and R&D expenditure if firms and their industries are close to the world frontier, but discourages such incentives for laggard firms and industries. The two forces highlighted by the model operate for imports under the ordinary‐trade regime, for collective and private firms, and for imports originated from high‐income countries. Our findings are robust after controlling the influence of foreign investment, the reverse causality of regressors and the short‐term business cycle fluctuations.     

Does Domestic Intimate Partner Aggression Affect Career Outcomes? The Role of Perceived Organizational Support

Drawing upon the conservation of resources theory, we developed and tested a moderated mediation model linking domestic intimate partner aggression (IPA) to job performance and career advancement. Our model posits that the indirect relationship between IPA and career advancement via in‐role performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) is moderated by perceived organizational support (POS). Overall, multisource and multiwave data obtained from two independent samples of employed women from the Philippines supported our predictions. Specifically, results suggest that: (1) IPA was negatively associated with supervisor‐rated in‐role performance and OCBs; (2) there was a stronger negative relationship between IPA and in‐role performance and OCBs for employees with low as opposed to those with high levels of POS; and (3) the conditional indirect effects of IPA in predicting supervisor‐rated promotability and actual promotion via in‐role performance and OCBs were stronger under conditions of low as opposed to high POS. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Leading Horses to Water? The Impact of Decentralization on Managerial Behaviour

This paper offers a critical examination of the assumptions about managerial behaviour which underpin the concept of decentralization. Following an attempt to elucidate the key dimensions of the concept, together with some of their variations and ambiguities, it is shown how the claimed advantages of decentralization flow from assumed changes in managerial behaviour, away from compliance with centrally imposed instruction and regulation and towards seizure of business opportunities which, in turn, rest upon assumptions about the influence of organization structure on managerial behaviour, the constraints imposed by centralized organization, the freedoms afforded by decentralization and managers' ability and willingness to take up these freedoms. These behavioural assumptions are re-examined critically and shown to be problematic. The paper concludes that little change in managerial behaviour may be expected from decentralization which entails no more than formal changes in managers' responsibilities without concomitant changes in managerial selection, development and remuneration     

Experience Matters? The Impact of Prior CEO Experience on Firm Performance

We sample CEOs of the 2005 S&P 500 corporations to look at the relationship between experience in the CEO position of a different firm and the post‐succession financial performance of the firm that they currently lead. We find that experience in the CEO position is negatively related to firm performance. CEOs who directly move to their current CEO position from the previous one and those with job‐specific experience in the same or related industry or at the helm of a previous company similar in size to the current one are associated with significantly lower post‐succession performance than those without prior CEO experience. The results contribute to the literatures on CEO succession, the performance effect of job‐specific experience, and the transferability of human capital. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Impact of high-speed railway on urban resilience in China: Does urban innovation matter?

Based on calculating the urban resilience index from five aspects of economy, society, institutions, infrastructure, and ecology by adopting the entropy method, this study applies the time-varying DID model to systematically examine HSR's impact on China's urban resilience, on basis of which its heterogeneities and the mediating effect of urban innovation are also quantified. The findings reveal that: (1) HSR can significantly promote China's urban resilience, as supported by various robustness tests. (2) HSR can significantly improve economic and institution resilience of cities, but does not play a significant role on social resilience and infrastructure resilience, and has a negative effect on ecological resilience. (3) The driving effects of HSR on the resilience of core cities, large cities, and non-resource-based cities are more significant. (4) Urban innovation is an important channel through which HSR impacts urban resilience. The conclusions of this study can offer useful insights for China's future HSR planning and resilient cities construction.     

Does Moral Leadership Conflict With Organizational Innovation?

The current article explores the concept of moral leadership and the potential for conflict with organizational innovation. After exploring the organizational prioritization of profitability with the exclusion of moral and ethical implications, the article asserts that moral leadership need not be the center of conflict with organizational innovation. Instead, research reveals that moral leadership can serve to enhance, inspire, and provide the foundation needed for innovation. For this reason, organizations must strive to make the identification of ethical leadership as a priority and stakeholders must remain flexible while upholding ethical standards. Through enhanced moral leadership, organizations can achieve greater levels of innovative excellence and competitive advantage in the global economy.     

Do Disruptive Visions Pay Off? The Impact of Disruptive Entrepreneurial Visions on Venture Funding

Entrepreneurs often articulate a vision for their venture that purports to fundamentally change, disturb, or re‐order the ways in which organizations, markets, and ecosystems operate. We call these visions disruptivevisions. Neglected in both the disruption and the impression management literature, disruptive visions are widespread in business practice. We integrate real options and impression management theories to hypothesize that articulating a disruptive vision increases the likelihood of the venture receiving funding but reduces the amount of funding obtained. A novel dataset of Israeli start‐ups shows that a standard deviation increase in disruptive vision communication increases the odds of receiving a first round of funding by 22 per cent, but reduces amounts of funds received by 24 per cent. A randomized online experiment corroborates these findings and further demonstrates that the expectation of extraordinary returns is the key mechanism driving investors’ sensemaking.     

Audit Market Segmentation – The Impact of Mid-tier Firms on Competition

This analysis’ goal is to characterise the impact of mid-tier auditors on competition and average supplied audit quality. The major result of our analysis is the following: Auditors’ flexibilities with respect to clients’ complexity determine the offered audit quality levels and thus the average supplied audit quality. Defining a model-endogenous quality measure, we show that for some instances the mid-tier auditor improves average audit quality, but for other instances fails to do so. The result could be of special interest for standard setters, for example, the European Commission, which is currently revising EU audit regulation. Further, the analysis may serve as an instrument to analyse economic consequences of future changes of regulation.     

Does Home Ownership by Parents Have an Economic Impact on Their Children?

This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to explore the impact of housing on children's productivity through educational attainment and through their housing choices as adults after they leave their parent's home. After controlling for other factors that are normally hypothesized to affect an individual's education and earnings, we find that the average child of homeowners is significantly more likely to achieve a higher level of education and, thereby, a higher level of earnings. We also find that having controlled for the factors traditionally thought to influence an individual's choice of housing tenure, as well as other parental characteristics, the housing tenure of parents plays a primary role in determining whether or not the child becomes a homeowner.     

The effect of corruption on environmental performance: Does spatial dependence play a role?

Different from previous studies that mainly focused on conventional estimation techniques, this paper explores the role of spatial dependence in the effect of corruption on environmental performance by using a spatial panel data model. Our results show that the direct effects, indirect effects and total effects of corruption on environmental performance are negative and highly significant, implying that corruption is detrimental to environmental performance. More importantly, we find that there is a significant spatial spillover effect between corruption and environmental performance, namely being surrounded by highly corrupt countries has a negative impact on the local country’s environmental performance. Our results also suggest that a larger population density will worsen the environment, while urbanization has a significant positive impact. These results provide some important implications for policymakers seeking to improve their environmental performance.     

The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Micro Enterprises: Do Banks Matter? Evidence from Indian Manufacturing

This paper looks at the impact of trade liberalization on micro enterprises with differential access to banks. I use Indian data on rural micro enterprises employing less than ten workers in the manufacturing sector to find that trade liberalization, measured by a fall in the tariff, is associated with a larger increase or a smaller decrease in output, capital–labour ratio and labour productivity in districts with a larger number of bank branches per capita. Evidence is consistent with strong complementarities between trade liberalization effects, and the economic dynamism and access to financial intermediation associated with greater bank presence in the enterprise's location. The study underscores that trade liberalization can be beneficial to micro entrepreneurs under certain conditions and emphasizes reallocation resulting from trade liberalization. The study hence highlights the role for development policy in exploiting gains from trade.