Top management team conflict and entrepreneurial strategy making in China

Linking environmental corporate social responsibility to firm performance: The role of partnership restructure

In this study, we integrate the signal institutional theory and stakeholder theory to examine partnership restructure as a critical mechanism linking environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) to corporate financial performance. Keeping in line with most prior studies, we first argue that a positive relationship exists between ECSR and firm performance. Then we propose that partnership restructure mediates the nexus between ECSR and firm performance because ECSR may motivate firms to change their partners in the better interests of the firms. In addition, we propose that the firms' industry power will exaggerate while dysfunctional competition will weaken the positive nexus between ECSR and partnership restructure. Evidence based on a survey covering 206 manufacturing firms in China offers good support for our predictions. This last section offers research contributions and implications for the managers based on the findings.

Dissecting entrepreneurial team research: a bibliometric analysis

Despite the massive volume of published articles, the pool of knowledge on entrepreneurial teams needs to be algorithmically classified and meticulously scrutinised. It is crucial for the field to be historically positioned under relevant themes, internally connected in terms of conceptual foundations, and systematically categorised in consonance with previously utilised frameworks of analysis. These concerns are resolved in this study by conducting a bibliometric analysis of 672 relevant articles. This form of analysis has not been previously employed on the topic of entrepreneurial teams. First, this study identifies eight main thematic clusters in the entrepreneurial teams field and their sub-themes. The eight main thematic clusters are: (i) Intellectual Capital, (ii) Cognition and Behaviour, (iii) Science and Technology, (iv) Finance, (v) Transformation, (vi) Internationalisation, (vii) Family, and (viii) Community and Surroundings. Second, the study reveals the clusters most needing restoration, relations between clusters, and input-mediator-output variables by their respective cluster. In addition, an implied scholarly depiction of entrepreneurial teams is articulated, which can serve as a basis for developing an entrepreneurial teams theory. Finally, promising avenues for future research are suggested for the entire field and every cluster specifically.

Reporting reliability, convergent and discriminant validity with structural equation modeling: A review and best-practice recommendations

Many constructs in management studies, such as perceptions, personalities, attitudes, and behavioral intentions, are not directly observable. Typically, empirical studies measure such constructs using established scales with multiple indicators. When the scales are used in a different population, the items are translated into other languages or revised to adapt to other populations, it is essential for researchers to report the quality of measurement scales before using them to test hypotheses. Researchers commonly report the quality of these measurement scales based on Cronbach’s alpha and confirmatory factor analysis results. However, these results are usually inadequate and sometimes inappropriate. Moreover, researchers rarely consider sampling errors for these psychometric quality measures. In this best practice paper, we first critically review the most frequently-used approaches in empirical studies to evaluate the quality of measurement scales when using structural equation modeling. Next, we recommend best practices in assessing reliability, convergent and discriminant validity based on multiple criteria and taking sampling errors into consideration. Then, we illustrate with numerical examples the application of a specifically-developed R package, measureQ, that provides a one-stop solution for implementing the recommended best practices and a template for reporting the results. measureQ is easy to implement, even for those new to R. Our overall aim is to provide a best-practice reference for future authors, reviewers, and editors in reporting and reviewing the quality of measurement scales in empirical management studies.

How to achieve entrepreneurial enterprise performance in entrepreneurial scenario? - Based on the case study of China new energy passenger car company A

Introduction

With the rapid development of China in recent decades, entrepreneurial scenarios are constantly changing, greatly promoting entrepreneurial practice. The characteristics of China's entrepreneurial scene, such as institutional differences, economic differences and cultural differences, make it unique. This research is based on a Chinese new energy vehicle start-up. Focus on how to achieve entrepreneurial enterprise performance in this unique entrepreneurial scenario.

Methods

Based on the development process from 2014 to 2021, using entrepreneurial scenario and entrepreneurial performance theory, focusing on the two themes of "what to do" and "how to do", and adopting exploratory case study methods, the performance of entrepreneurial enterprises was studied.

Results

The study found that in the context of Chinese entrepreneurship, cultural background has the most significant impact on the performance of entrepreneurial enterprises. The accurate prediction of institutional scenarios by entrepreneurial enterprises can improve enterprise performance, while economic scenarios have a negative impact on entrepreneurial enterprise performance.

Discussion

The research shows that in the development process of entrepreneurial enterprises based on China's entrepreneurial scenario, the governance mode and strategic choice of entrepreneurial enterprises should match the scenarios at different stages. At different stages of development, entrepreneurial enterprises should flexibly adapt to entrepreneurial scenarios and adopt different strategies to reflect their advantages in entrepreneurial scenarios and improve the success rate of entrepreneurship.

Gentlemen seek harmony but not uniformity: The heterogeneity of entrepreneurial team and organizational resilience

The purpose of this research is to investigate the association of the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial team with organizational Resilience. In an uncertain environment, whether new ventures can form entrepreneurial resilience at the organizational level in adverse events becomes the key to sustainable development. Based on the theory of heterogeneous advantage and identity characteristics, this manuscript constructed a research framework of "Structure-Behavior-Result" and described the mechanism and boundary conditions of the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial team affecting organizational resilience in detail. The role of Confucian traditional culture as a moderator has also been analyzed. Data has been obtained from 390 entrepreneurs in China. All hypotheses were tested using moderated mediation model. It has been found that the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial team has positive effect on organizational resilience. It has also been discovered that cross-boundary search behavior acted as a partial mediator between the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial team and organizational resilience. The Confucian traditional culture strengthens the relationship between them. The results are helpful in understanding the internal mechanism of the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial team affecting organizational resilience. Theoretical and practical implications have been highlighted and future research suggestions have been provided.

Is Education Beneficial to Environmentally Friendly Behaviors? Evidence from CEOs

Corporate environmental investment decisions play a crucial role in the protection of the public environment. As the decision-maker and executor, the environmental consciousness and social responsibility of the chief executive officer (CEO) has a long-term impact on the company's environmental protection strategy, and the CEO's level of education is a significant factor influencing the CEO's environmental protection decisions. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which CEO education influences environmental protection investment decisions. A CEO education index is constructed as a proxy for CEO education based on the CEO's educational background, using a panel sample of Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2019 and providing robust evidence supporting the notioin that firms with highly educated CEOs are likely to engage in environmental protection spending activities. However, the positive relationship between CEO education and corporate environmental protection investment is reduced when the CEO also holds the position of chairman. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive relationship between CEO education and corporate environmental investment behavior is stronger in non-manufacturing and highly monopolistic market competitive industries. Our study contributes to the sustainability literature by providing a new impetus for corporate environmental activities from the perspective of CEO education and sheds light on the impact of the internal and external factors of firms on the investment in environmental protection. It may also help decision makers to decide whether to hire highly educated CEOs and use a dual structure of CEOs in markets with different levels of competition.

Top management team heterogeneity and economic performance: a micro-foundations perspective of academic business venturing

Purpose

This research focuses on the relationship between Top Management Team heterogeneity (TMT) and University Spin-Offs (USOs) economic performance according to a micro-foundational perspective. The purpose consists in exploring whether a high academic representation in TMTs may improve USOs’ performance and how their competencies and backgrounds affect USOs’ economic success.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors employed data from the Italian platform Netval to identify the entire population of USOs in southern Italy. They selected both pure and hybrid spin-offs that had at least one academic member on the TMT. Applying these conditions to our sample selection, the authors came to a population of 136 firms. They applied a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Our main findings reveal that the USOs’ economic performance improves with more academicians in the TMT and even in the same scientific field. Our data also shows that CEO duality has a negative impact on economic performance.

Originality/value

This work takes for the first time a micro-foundational perspective to analyze individual-level factors that affect USOs’ performance. The authors tried to bridge a research gap in the USO literature, shedding light on the relationship between TMT composition and new venture performance, considering some significant interactions between team members. Our expected findings also contribute to the general literature on entrepreneurial teams in new ventures and suggest a means to reconcile some inconsistent literature results on TMT heterogeneity and USO performance.

Entrepreneurial Capability, Career Development, and Entrepreneurial Intention: Evidence From China's HR Survey Data

Based on 2018 China's Human Resource Employees Survey Data, this study uses the probit model to examine the impact of entrepreneurial ability and career development on HR's entrepreneurial intention. In terms of entrepreneurial ability, the results show that the educational background of Human Resource Management, cross-disciplinary knowledge, job-hopping experience, and the number of subordinates have significant positive impacts on HR's entrepreneurial intention. In terms of career development, lack of promotion space, skill upgrading opportunities, and lower than expected income have significant positive impacts on HR's entrepreneurial intention, and these impacts are heterogeneous among different enterprises. This study suggests that potential entrepreneurs can be identified from the explicit characteristics, which reflect HR's entrepreneurial abilities, and it is necessary to face up to the influence of career development on HR's entrepreneurial intention and encourage them to participate in on-the-job entrepreneurship. This study suggests that HR's entrepreneurial ability should be regarded as an important starting point for entrepreneurial success, and it is necessary to improve HR's career development system to create more opportunities for on-the-job entrepreneurship, and government should implement differentiated and precise entrepreneurial support policies to encourage HR's entrepreneurship.

Influence of entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership on ambidextrous innovation: An integrated model construction of ‘cognitive/affective’ composite perspective in Chinese context

BACKGROUND: China’s 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 clearly points out that it is necessary to implement innovation driven strategy, promote enterprise technological innovation, and better play the important role of entrepreneurs in enterprise technological innovation. Therefore, it is of great significance to explore the impact of entrepreneurial leadership on enterprises’ technological innovation. OBJECTIVE: From the perspective of technological innovation stream, we divide ambidextrous innovation into mainstream innovation and new stream innovation. Integrating ambidexterity theory, innovation streams theory and cognitive affective personality system theory (CAPS), we explore the mediating mechanism of entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership on ambidextrous innovation from cognitive path, affective path and cognitive-affective compound path. METHODS: Based on the data collected from 254 top managers in 12 provinces in China, we conducted descriptive statistical analysis, reliability and validity analysis, regression analysis and bootstrap mediating effect test on the sample data. RESULTS: Our empirical results revealed that: 1) entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership positively related with the ambidextrous innovation; 2) organizational paradoxical cognition plays a partly mediating role between ambidextrous leadership and ambidextrous innovation; 3) organizational affective conflict plays a partly mediating role between ambidextrous leadership and ambidextrous innovation; 4) organizational paradoxical cognition negatively related with organizational affective conflict; 5) organizational paradoxical cognition and organizational affective conflict play a chain mediating role between entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership and ambidextrous innovation. CONCLUSIONS: Combined with the cognitive affective personality system theory, our research explores the mediating mechanism of entrepreneurial ambidextrous leadership on ambidextrous innovation from cognitive path and affective path and “cognitive-affective” compound path, which not only have great theoretical contributions, but also have important significance in enterprise management practice.

CEO Leadership, Strategic Decision Comprehensiveness, and Firm Performance: The Moderating Role of TMT Cognitive Conflict

Managers make comprehensive strategic decisions to cope with environmental challenges. Questions remain regarding how different types of leadership styles influence top management team (TMT) strategic decision comprehensiveness (SDC) and firm performance. This study explores the impact of two different CEO leadership styles on TMT SDC and subsequent firm performance, considering the moderating role of TMT cognitive conflict. Based on data from 357 questionnaires of 126 firms in China, we found that 1) CEO empowering leadership positively affects SDC; 2) CEO directive leadership generates an inverted U-shaped effect on SDC; 3) the effect of SDC on firm performance is positive; and 4) TMT cognitive conflict weakens the relationship between CEO empowering leadership and SDC. This study takes a systematic approach by integrating CEO-TMT dynamics into SDC, which in turn affects firm performance, and thus offers a holistic view of how upper echelons influence firm performance.

Are Chinese Teams Like Western Teams? Indigenous Management Theory to Leapfrog Essentialist Team Myths

Our study analyzes a gap in research on Chinese and Western management teams, based on a broad literature review. We claim that prevalent theoretical perspectives in the management team literature might be biased toward a Western-centric view of team dynamics. This obscures alternative ways of understanding top teams encompassing Chinese cultural traditions. We outline how an essentialist team conceptualization leads to a paradox consisting of three mutually contradicting myths. Myth 1 implies that Western groups of managers comply with theoretically “ideal” team processes and characteristics. Myth 2 derives from research literature on Chinese teams claiming that team features are assumed absent or weak in China due to cultural particularities. Paradoxically, the same research tradition constructs another third myth by reporting that Chinese teams successfully comply with the Western ideal team model. The three coexisting myths point to a theoretical confounding of contextual mediators in team processes. We discuss how indigenous Chinese leadership theory and Chinese systems of philosophy give Chinese teams access to distinct and effective team processes to reach high-performance outcomes. This paper aims to open the rich possibilities of Chinese management and team practices to the cross-cultural context, and on return to novel understanding of Western teams beyond traditional essentialist theory anchors.

Do Hierarchical Jumps in CEO Succession Invigorate Innovation? Evidence from Chinese Economy

The objective of this study is to analyze Chief executive officer (CEO) succession via hierarchical jumps in Chinese listed firms which orientate towards innovative activity. Good corporate governance is a vehicle to attain the competitive advantage which ultimately makes the organizational sustainability undeterred. The current study will test not only low hierarchical jumps but also medium hierarchical jumps in CEO succession. The study will identify the relationship between specific attributes like education, age and the duality of CEO successors via hierarchical jumps with innovation. We have analysed the data of Chinese listed firms on Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges for the years 2012–2016. Significantly, it has been observed that CEO successors via hierarchical jumps orientate towards innovative activity amongst Chinese listed firms. Conclusively, empirical results have unveiled that hierarchical CEO succession escalates the firms’ innovation. It has also been contemplated that not only the low hierarchical jumps but also medium hierarchical jumps in CEO succession invigorate the organizational innovation. Mature firms with a substantial return on assets or earning per share and having less loan burden concentrate on innovative activity decisively. It has been demonstrated that specific attributes like education, age and the duality of hierarchical CEO successors have no relationship with innovation. The study results are robust via confirmation of 2SLS instrumental regression.

Conflict Management, Team Coordination, and Performance Within Multicultural Temporary Projects: Evidence From the Construction Industry

The purpose of our study is to enhance the understanding of relationships between conflict management style, team coordination, and performance in multicultural project team contexts. We investigate how conflict management can contribute to team effectiveness through the mediation of the level of team coordination by collecting data from 126 team leaders and supervisors and 378 members nested in different multicultural projects in the construction industry. Our results show that, contrary to the findings from prior research in other team contexts, an avoiding style of conflict management can have a positive impact on the performance of multicultural project teams.

Empirical Research on Corporate Governance in China: A Review and New Directions for the Future

The ownership structure of Chinese firms has experienced significant changes over the last three decades, including the development of a fast growing stock market through which a large number of domestic firms have become publicly traded corporations. These changes have drawn increasing attention from researchers of corporate governance. In this article, we review the empirical research on corporate governance in China, with a focus on the internal and external governance mechanisms that have been investigated and the findings about the effectiveness of these mechanisms. On the basis of our review of 132 studies, we summarize the major findings and discuss the limitation of agency theory in understanding the governance issue in Chinese firms. We offer several ideas (e.g., the importance of the social context, new conceptualization of governance, different outcomes of governance, and data/method issues) for a new agenda to guide future research in the corporate governance of firms operating in the Chinese and other emerging economy contexts.

Institutional influence, cognition and competence of top managers and innovative firms

Purpose

– This paper aims to explore the relationship between the role of entrepreneurs and the innovation investment propensity of Chinese firms. This study is expected to enhance our understanding about the competence building of top management team for innovative development.

Design/methodology/approach

– The analytical framework draws upon the recent theoretical progress about innovative firms, cognition and competence building of top managers. A horizontal data comparison and four longitudinal case studies of representative firms in the Chinese power equipment industry are implemented.

Findings

– The cognitive backgrounds of top managers, which have a significant role in directing strategic resource allocation, are found to be influenced by institutional environments. Because the institutional environments which are under the Chinese transition impact different groups of firms in different ways, the relevant practices of these firms lead to dissimilar competence building of top managers.

Originality/value

– This paper establishes a nexus of “institutional influence–cognition–resource allocation”. Such a nexus highlights the role of cognition of top managers in influencing the strategy-making of firms. So it helps in explaining the conditions for competence building in firms.

Constructively Managing Conflicts in Organizations

Researchers have used various concepts to understand the conditions and dynamics by which conflict can be managed constructively. This review proposes that the variety of terms obscures consistent findings that open-minded discussions in which protagonists freely express their own views, listen and understand opposing ones, and then integrate them promote constructive conflict. Studies from several traditions also suggest that mutual benefit relationships are critical antecedents for open-minded discussion. This integration of research findings identifies the skills and relationships that can help managers and employees deal with their increasingly complex conflicts. Research is needed to deepen our understanding of the dynamics of open-minded discussion and the conditions that promote it as well as when open-mindedness is inappropriate. Training studies can test and show how the model of open-minded discussion supported by mutual benefit relationships can be applied in cross-cultural and other challenging settings.