“Should I stay or should I go?”—Why the future of global work may be less binary: Lessons on approaches to global crises from the experiences of expatriates during the COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 has significantly impacted expatriates, affecting their ability to work effectively and their personal and family lives. This study explores their experiences in different phases of the pandemic, and their perspectives on the future of international living in light of such global disruption. Involving over 600 expatriates in 48 countries, the research shows shifts in motivation and priorities as a result of the crisis and reveals how family (extended and immediate) topped expatriates' concerns. The study examines if and how support systems worked and looks at coping mechanisms, skills, traits, previous experience, and attitudes which participants found useful. A common theme was “falling between two stools”—where expatriates were ineligible for support in either their home country or in their host country. Others described being “pulled in different directions” or “torn by a dilemma” with pros and cons in either choice. The study contributes to the questions about the future of global work with results of the survey revealing changing norms for expatriation and global mobility raising the possibility of more nuanced approaches to global projects and less binary options for global professionals and their families.     

Screening: Value enhancing or diminishing?

Using an international sample of environmental and social firm-level ratings between 2007 and 2019, we form synthetic overlapping region-based equity portfolios to examine the impact of screening stringency on abnormal returns and specific risk. While previous literature analyzes this relationship in a bidimensional setting, inferences made in this study are additionally robust to regional levels of market efficiency. Our results suggest that (1) screening stringency displays an inverted curvilinear relationship with risk-adjusted returns and (2) the impact on specific risk is strictly increasing. Thus, portfolios that employ marginal and substantial screening incur the cost of responsible investing. However, moderate screening has the benefit of increasing performance without the burden of financing the least responsible corporations.     

Firm-level political risk and implied cost of equity capital

I find a strong positive association between firms' implied cost of equity capital and firm-level political risk. This effect is above and beyond the firm-level cost of equity implications of economywide political risk. Firm-level political risk contributes to elevating stock illiquidity, increases dispersion of analyst forecasts and dampens analyst coverage and these attributes, in turn, have positive cost of equity capital implications. Overall, the findings of this study suggest firm-level political risk has a non-trivial effect on increasing equity market illiquidity, increasing dispersion of earnings forecasts and decreasing analyst coverage thus increasing financing costs.     

The interplay between home and host institutions on CBA ownership decision

Cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) are one of the key strategies for internationalization. However, most of what is known about CBA strategies relies on the effects of the host country's environment or the home country's conditions. In this article, we analyze the interplay between these two important factors. We show that companies from less institutionally developed countries are more influenced by poor institutional conditions found in host countries. We analyzed a dataset of 1,390 cross-border acquisitions performed by Latin American firms. The literature on the subject points out that less developed host environments lead to fewer shares of ownership acquired in CBAs. However, we confirmed that the quality of the home country's institutional environment positively moderates the effects of the host environment over ownership choice in the acquisition. This effect is due to companies from less developed environments being able to use their embedded capabilities to better navigate faulty institutional environments abroad.     

Sense of belonging,international migrants’ spending,and implications for their subjective well-being

A lack of a sense of belonging in the host country has become one of the most common challenges facing international migrants in today's sociopolitical environment. Our two online experiments with 881 international migrant workers in the United States jointly demonstrate that, to cope with their lack of a sense of belonging in the host country, international migrants may spend money suboptimally: more on material purchases but less on experiential and prosocial purchases. More importantly, our studies suggest that prosocial purchases are more effective than experiential purchases in increasing international migrants’ subjective well-being. This is because prosocial purchases can lead to both relatedness need satisfaction and beneficence, with each independently contributing to international migrants’ subjective well-being. Our research suggests that public policymakers should address the social exclusion international migrants experience when moving to a new country because it can have a negative impact on their subjective well-being. Our research further suggests that one way to mitigate social exclusion is to encourage international migrants to spend money on others rather than themselves.     

Give your hunger a new option: Understanding consumers' continuous intention to use online food delivery apps using trust transfer theory

The recent growth of online food delivery apps (OFDAs) centralized the restaurant's business in electronic distribution platforms. Recently, a few researchers have attempted to understand consumer behaviour towards using OFDAs. However, various aspects related to the usage of OFDAs have not been explored. Drawing from trust transfer theory, the purpose of this study is to fill this gap by investigating the trust transfer from OFDAs to restaurants and to address the boundary condition of trust transfer by examining the moderating effect of perceived effectiveness of dispute resolution (PEDR) between trust in OFDAs and trust in a restaurant. The model was tested via structural equation modelling (SEM) using data obtained from 836 users of OFDAs through structured questionnaire. The results show that trust in OFDAs positively influence the trust in restaurant, which ultimately leads to the consumers' continuous purchase intention. Further, PEDR positively moderates the relationship between trust in OFDAs and trust in a restaurant. Additionally, disposition to trust and online reviews significantly develops consumer trust in OFDAs. The present research makes substantial theoretical and practical contributions as it develops a trust transfer mechanism by considering an emerging mobile-commerce field. The study provides a first theoretical outlook on consumers' continuous intention to use OFDAs, using trust transfer theory, which has not been considered so far. The findings provide information for food delivery platforms on how to manage conflict resolution to succeed in the market and help restaurants in selecting the most effective food delivery platforms with which to collaborate.     

Predicting the antecedents of consumers' intention toward purchase of mutual funds: A hybrid PLS-SEM-neural network approach

The current study intends to identify the behavioural antecedents of investors' attitude and investment intention toward mutual funds using a robust SEM-ANN approach. It focuses on novel factors in the purview of the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing digitalization and social media usage. The research outcome indicates that attitude (ATB), awareness (AW) and investment decision involvement (IDI) have a significant positive relation with investment intention (BI). In contrast, perceived barrier (PBR) negatively relates to investment intention. Herd behaviour (HB) and social media influence (SMI) do not influence investment intention toward mutual funds. Moreover, all the tested predictors share direct relation with the attitude toward mutual fund investment, barring perceived risk (PR), which has an inverse relationship. As per the outcome of ANN sensitivity analysis, attitude is the most crucial determinant of investment intention. It is followed by awareness (AW), perceived barriers (PBR) and investment decision involvement (IDI). Among the significant determinants of attitude, self-efficacy (SE) is the most important determinant, followed by perceived usefulness (PU), perceived emergency (PEMER), subjective norms (SN) and perceived risk (PR).     

Gradual stimulation of respondents' reflexivity: A research design for studying unreflexive consumers

In interpretive research accounts, reflexivity has been understood primarily in terms of the researcher's reflexivity, while the respondent's reflexivity has been considered only marginally. We regard this gap as critical and therefore introduce a research design for the gradual stimulation of respondents' reflexivity (GSRR), which we propose as a methodological tool for strengthening research validity. First, to frame our argumentation in the contemporary socio-technological context, we emphasize the need to focus on the respondent's reflexivity in the onto-epistemological conditions of the hybrid space and posthuman consumer culture, which unprecedentedly eliminate actors' abilities to monitor their actions reflexively. Second, we present and methodologically examine the GSRR as a 3-phase sequential mixed-method research design for stimulating respondents' reflexivity. GSRR's logic is as follows: the questionnaire captures what respondents think they are doing; the digital self-tracking diary captures what they are doing and what they often do not acknowledge (unreflexivity); the interviews use the previous phases' data to elicit respondents' reflexivity. Third, we present examples from our research practice to demonstrate the strengthening of data validity elicited from respondents by stimulating their reflexivity. We conclude by outlining the GSRR's possible future applications and directions.     

Outward foreign investment by transnational entrepreneurs: Insights from emerging economies

This research considers how transnational entrepreneurs in emerging economies identify and develop opportunities for investment into international ventures. Specifically, this study seeks to identify common drivers for outward investment by transnational entrepreneurs from their country of origin (Brazil and India) to their adopted country (the US). Findings indicate three common drivers of this type of internationalization: formal education, effectual logic, and the leveraging of perceived market differences. Furthermore, the data show that entrepreneurs prefer a gradual process of investment rather than a large-scale initial investment during the exploitation of international opportunities in the adopted country. The results of this study have important practical implications and are valuable additions to the scholarly understanding of the growing field of transnational entrepreneurship.     

Integrating strength-weakness analysis into strategic planning

Strength-weakness assessment, which must be performed as a part of any strategic planning process, is presented in terms of a process, termed SWA, that involves managers in making the critical informational choices that are implicit in strategic assessments of strengths and weaknesses. The process is illustrated in terms of its underlying premises, their implications, its benefits, and an illustrative substantive framework that can be used to guide the process.