Search

The impact of leader characteristics on international activities has been identified in the literature, but leader narcissism, as a psychological feature, has long been neglected, especially in the field of international business. Based on an empirical study of Chinese construction firms over the period between 2006 and 2016, this paper discusses the positive relationships between leaders’ narcissism and firms’ pace of internationalization, as well as the tendency to choose developing countries as destinations. The data also raise strong support for the argument that firm internal factor-foreign listing and external factor-institutional environment (anticorruption) weaken the effects of leader narcissism on international patterns. These research results indicate the effects of leaders’ personality on international management under different internal and external environments and contribute to upper echelons theory. Meanwhile, it is emphasized that leaders’ personal decision-making plays an important role in the strategy and performance of construction firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information systems (IS) investments fail largely because a newly implemented system is not fully infused into its users’ everyday life at work. IS infusion beyond an organization's mandated usage requires that users are actively motivated to use it and that they hold authority over usage of the system. Psychological empowerment represents one's motivational orientation, as well as one's authority to tap into a system's maximum potential. This empowerment is likely an important mechanism underlying successful IS infusion. The main objectives of this study are to: 1) understand the antecedents of empowerment; and 2) examine the effect of empowerment on IS infusion. We developed a theoretical model that was empirically tested through a field study, which focused upon individuals’ use of a customer relationship management system. The results strongly support our theoretical model and reveal that the design of a work environment (i.e., IS, job, and social structure) affects the development of user empowerment. User empowerment in-turn plays a prominent role in regulating various aspects of IS infusion (i.e., extended use, integrative use, and emergent use). Overall, this paper contributes to postadoption research by introducing the concept of user empowerment and demonstrating its critical role in regulating IS infusion. It also helps managers promote user empowerment and eventually achieve IS infusion in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In construction companies, employee burnout rates and negative socioemotional behaviors (NSEBs) are severe problems for the management. Work-related problems are then visible in the employee's psychological behaviors and consequent outcomes. The literature on organizational behavior argues that moral leadership can evade burnout and NSEB. Following the arguments, this article attempts to examine the impact of moral leadership on the employee's burnout and NSEB through the mediating variables of job embeddedness, and distributive justice in the construction industry. By using the social exchange theory, this article analyzes the data of 302 employees from construction companies in Hong Kong to assess these relationships. The results showed a negative relationship between moral leadership and the construction employees’ burnout. This article provides construction companies and their managers with useful insights on the way the moral leadership mediate through job embeddedness and distributive justice to curtail the employees' burnout. The results of this article also motivate scholars to investigate the multidimensional role of moral leadership in their future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the question of the conditions under which chief executive officer (CEO) leadership may enhance the effectiveness of new technological implementation (NTI) and the mechanisms by which they may do so. Using a structured questionnaire collected from multiple source informants in 89 small- and medium-sized firms (89 CEOs, 65 implementation managers, and 305 employees), we consider a specific leadership style, labeled task-enabling leadership, and examine how task-enabling CEOs can facilitate the NTI process. The findings of multilevel structural equation modeling analysis indicate that CEO task-enabling leadership creates socio-psychological conditions of safety and availability which in turn enhance NTI effectiveness, and that this indirect effect of task-enabling leadership on NTI effectiveness, via socio-psychological conditions, is significant when the implemented technology is radical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research studies how chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) demographic characteristics, such as gender and age, impact firm unethical behaviors. However, the effect of CEOs’ biological traits on corporate illegality is not fully known. Grounded in the approach/inhibition theory of power, this article analyzes whether and how one of male entrepreneurs’ most obvious genetically determined biological traits, facial masculinity, predicts the corporate illegality of new ventures. Biological traits are mainly genetically determined. They not only shape an individual's psychological process, but also impact behaviors. Recently, scholars repeatedly call for incorporating entrepreneurs’ biological traits into entrepreneurship research. Based on a sample of Chinese firms listed in the growth enterprise market from 2010 to 2016, we identify and quantify male entrepreneurs’ facial masculinity with the artificial intelligence facial recognition technology Face++. We find a positive relationship between male entrepreneurs’ facial masculinity and new venture corporate illegality. Moreover, we explore the moderating role of individual differences (personal accountability) and social factors (social instability). These factors decrease the likelihood of male entrepreneurs with more facial masculinity to engage in new ventures corporate illegality. Although the facial masculinity of firm leaders may benefit firms by improving firm performance, our results show that there is a need to consider this stably biological trait when predicting unethical behaviors among new ventures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success of early-stage start-ups is strongly dependent on founders’ education. Yet, while scholars maintain that investors should consider founders' education an important signal of start-ups' prospects, mixed empirical findings suggest that more education does not always trigger positive investor reactions. Scholars have thus urged the development of new theoretical insights that may explain why and when education is beneficial to start-ups' emergence. Based on cognitive and social psychology literature, in this article, we evidence that different configurations of founders' education affect the ability of founding teams to obtain funding. The empirical support that we obtained from a sample of 1078 start-ups helps reconcile the contradictory findings of past research through a joint examination of two dimensions of founders' education that were previously only investigated separately—the level of education and the heterogeneity of educational backgrounds. Our focus on the group dynamics founding teams advances our understanding of the contribution of founders’ education onto early-stage start-ups' fund raising. In greater detail, educational level and educational heterogeneity positively affect the amount of funds raised, but their joint presence negatively moderates such a relationship. In doing so, we also provide start-uppers and policymakers with important information regarding how cofounders should group together when launching a start-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite significant evidence that new product development (NPD) project teams self-destruct in stressful situations, empirical research on stress interventions is notable sparse. The current article extends research on stress reduction strategies in the context of NPD teams by considering the role of Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) in lowering job stress. Drawing on the job demand-control-support theory, we argue that NPD teams with a strong TMS regulate and address job demands more effectively, have greater control over critical team tasks, and enjoy a supportive team's environment and thus, experience less stress. The article also investigates the moderating effects of project complexity and technological turbulence on the relationship between TMS and job stress. The results, based on data from 140 NPD projects, reveal that a TMS can lower job stress which, in turn, decreases team learning and job satisfaction. Also, TMS appears more effective to reduce stress in situations of high and moderate project complexity and low and medium technological turbulence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although acquisition strategies have been widely used by firms, past research has suggested that this type of strategic tactic can be risky, hence top management must justify this decision. Top management can engage in hubristic behaviors to do so. Therefore, we investigate if it is possible to identify the hubristic managerial before the decision is implemented, and how hubristic behaviors by the managers impact the long-term market performance of the firm. Using a sample of 11 596 firms over a span of 27 years, we found that managers actively manipulate firm performance prior to an acquisition, the degree of manipulation affects the degree of long-term performance, and the top management's decision to purchase the asset will negatively affect firm organizational performance. We contribute to organizational strategic decision-making literature by showing that managers may act with hubris in acquisitions decisions and that this hubris is predictable. Our results also suggest that top managers in pursuit of a corporate acquisition will need to justify their decision making to the board of directors by illustrating their success in managing the firm through high firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This historical, longitudinal, and qualitative study draws upon a contingent view of trust to explain how asymmetric power causes trust structures to move from trust equilibrium to trust disequilibrium and triggers strategic trust-pursuing actions. We conclude that a trustor firm has the dominant and manipulating power in an asymmetric power network to extract maximal value in a systematic way, thereby causing trustee firms to adopt strategic trust-pursuing actions to buffer the trustor's power. Consequently, this study proposes an original theoretical framework to illustrate how trustee firms must be smart trust-pursuers in a trust-based network with asymmetric power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, we report the empirical findings of a vignette study designed to examine how volitional computer users cope with information technology (IT) threats based on the technology threat avoidance theory (TTAT). We incorporate the construct of wishful thinking, an important form of emotion-focused coping behavior that is rarely studied, along with problem-focused coping into a research model to examine the interaction between the two coping approaches. The results reveal that wishful thinking weakens the effect of perceived avoidability on avoidance motivation. In turn, wishful thinking is positively affected by perceived threat and this effect is stronger when a user has low risk tolerance. Although perceived avoidability can reduce wishful thinking, its effect is fully mediated by perceived threat. This study highlights the important role of wishful thinking in affecting users’ security behavior. It not only corroborates, but also extends the extant propositions of TTAT, thus making a significant contribution to IT security research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increased research attention directed to the importance of knowledge protection in collaborative business partnerships, such as IT offshore outsourcing, the extant literature offers conflicting views on whether knowledge protection inhibits project performance. Based on the transaction cost theory and the psychological contract theory, this study investigates how outsourcer knowledge protection affects project performance through partnership quality from the view of the vendors. Hypotheses were proposed and examined using data from 180 IT offshore outsourcing projects. This study finds that knowledge protection reduces partnership quality and project performance. Furthermore, a vendor's relational contract schema strengthens the negative effect of outsourcer knowledge protection on partnership quality, while a vendor's transactional contract schema weakens the negative effect. This study extends our understanding regarding the effects of knowledge protection on project performance and has important implications for outsourcing project management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists and engineers are essential to Research and Development (R&D) organizations. Although the literature on technical professionals tends to characterize them in terms of dichotomies or even make no distinctions at all, it is known that human capital is more heterogeneous and nuanced. There is a need to revisit the underlying assumptions about technical professionals through deep empirical work to keep management connected to the reality of today's workforce. In this research, we explore different types of professional identities by examining the work motives and behavior of a group of employees in a scientific R&D organization. Using in-depth interviews with 25 scientists and engineers at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) center, we develop a motive-based model of technical professionals’ work identities. We found an overlapping spectrum of relevant work identities that go beyond the scientist versus engineer dichotomy. Our model suggests three dimensions of motivation (social orientation, temporality of reward, and involvement with technology) that define different technical professional's identity types-–among them, enablers, bridgers, researchers, and intrapreneurs. Depending on their dominant motivations and behaviors, these identities react differently to incentives. This research offers a more current and grounded classification of technical professionals, which has implications for both scholars studying intellectual human capital and managers leading organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]