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Our study extends the emerging stream of research of kinship involvement in business by examining how the involvement of in-laws in firms affects their agency issue and performance. Drawing on social embeddedness theory and the agency perspective, we argue that in-laws of the firm owner exhibit different degree of embeddedness in a family from his/her blood-relatives, reducing their attachment and communication within the firm. Using a large sample of publicly listed firms in China, we find that family firms with a greater percentage of the owner's in-laws in the top position have lower returns on assets and market values compared to other family firms. While the negative effect on firm performance will be strengthened when the spouse of the firm owner is in the top position, the cost of in-laws' involvement will be alleviated when the parents of the firm owner are in the top position and in-laws have increasing ownership. We also find the inferior performance of in-laws is mediated by the excess managerial perquisites and the increasing risk aversion on strategy. We discuss the implications of our paper for the family firm studies, research of firm embeddedness of kinship, and literature of corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how socially discriminated firm leaders use family to overcome their market disadvantages. In the context of China, we examine firm founding leaders with rural original family backgrounds--rural founders, who are socially discriminated against in the Chinese urban-rural chasm. Drawing on the family embeddedness perspective, we argue that rural founders are more likely to use family members in leadership teams because the social discrimination they face engenders greater difficulty in attracting or retaining professional executives. We further explore the moderating roles of achieved social prestige at founder or firm levels, which could alleviate the social discrimination and thus weaken the positive relationship between rural founders and family embeddedness. Subsequently, the use of family members is more likely to contribute to rural founder-led firms' performance. Using panel data on Chinese privately-founded listed firms, we find support for our arguments. Our study offers novel insights and evidence about how socially discriminated firm leaders address disadvantages and gain competitive performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature focuses on how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and firms with political connections ("insiders") engage in government-initiated corporate social responsibility (GCSR) activities, little emphasize whether and how private-owned enterprises (POEs) ("outsiders") respond to GCSR. Drawing on the evidence from Chinese listed firms, we find that compared with SOEs, POEs have lower motivation to participate in GCSR, but this effect is weakened if the local government has strong poverty alleviation aspiration. Additional analysis shows that POEs can easily access government subsidies and bank loans after participating in GCSR. We posit that POEs' participation in GCSR may be the consequence of local governments' reverse budget constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct a theoretical model to understand how firms adapt their corporate political strategy when political officials reshuffle in the aftermath of anticorruption initiatives. We delineate two types of bribery, i.e., greasing bribery and paving bribery, and posit that in the aftermath of anticorruption campaigns, firms with ascribed political connections, i.e., state-owned enterprises ("insiders") reduce their expenditures on greasing bribery, while firms without ascribed political connections, i.e., family firms ("outsiders") increase their expenditures on paving bribery. These effects are strengthened when firms are more reliant on government. Our theoretical predictions are supported by the evidence from Chinese listed firms between 2007 and 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political connections are considered as individual-level social network, but little is known about the associations between political connections and personal outcomes (e.g., well-being) and its underlying mechanisms. Utilizing a sample of Chinese rural entrepreneurs, we aim to examine how political connections can shape their cognitive evaluation of subjective well-being (life and job satisfaction) by taking into consideration of mediating effects of rent seeking and institutional trust. Multilevel analyses reveal that political connections are positively associated with life and job satisfaction. Rent seeking and institutional trust function as mediators explaining the associations. Our study bears important theoretical implications for institutional influences on entrepreneur well-being as well as inspires policy makers relative to entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational goals play a central role in driving firm decision making. The behavioral theory of the firm conceptualizes goals as situational aspirations that guide organizational adaptation through performance feedback. However, this aspiration- directed logic implicitly assumes the short-term orientation of decision makers, while the effect of long-term strategic goals on firm decision making is less explored. Our study focuses on long-term strategic goals, which, we argue, influence firm decision making through decision makers' commitment. Borrowing insights from strategic communication research, we conceptualize strategy specificity to capture decision makers' commitment to strategic goals and theorize its implications for firm strategic risk-taking. Additionally, we examine the interactive effects of strategy specificity and performance feedback on strategic risk-taking, with contingencies of managerial discretion and board shareholding. Using panel data on 1,074 Chinese listed firms in manufacturing industries, we find that firms with higher strategy specificity engage in more strategic risk-taking. However, this behavioral tendency is weakened when firms receive strong negative or positive performance feedback. Moreover, we find that the moderating effect of performance feedback on strategy specificity is enhanced by managerial discretion but mitigated by board shareholding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transitional China offers an ideal opportunity for scholars to examine an important yet understudied topic -- the relationship between entrepreneurship and extensive social change. Using a national sample survey of private business owners in 1,209 Chinese villages, we found that villains as actors of illicit violence significantly reduced a rural business's income. Moreover, this negative effect was stronger if (1) the village administration requisitioned more agricultural lands; (2) the business owner was female; or (3) the business owner was an "outsider" (i.e., was not born in the village). These findings are consistent with our argument that local Chinese state has decayed as it relies on illicit violence to execute its predatory agenda, and that social control has considerably weakened in rural China when more male adults migrate to cities for work. Our study illuminates the emerging "gangster capitalism" in post-socialist China, deep challenges faced by Chinese state and society, and more generally, the intricate relationship between the state, private business, and illicit violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We proposed and tested a multilevel model of exploring regional differences and variations in entrepreneur well-being (job and life satisfaction) as well as the impact of regional determinants based on theories of entrepreneurial contexts and entrepreneur well-being. Utilizing a sample of rural Chinese entrepreneurs running agribusinesses in rural areas across 31 provinces, the multilevel analyses provided evidence (1) on the average provincial effects of social (family support) and institutional (institutional trust) contexts on entrepreneur well-being; (2) that such effects varied across each province; and (3) that the average provincial effect can be distinguished from the entrepreneur-level effect. The findings establish research avenues on how the determinants of entrepreneurial contexts affect entrepreneur well-being. This study has important theoretical implications for entrepreneur well-being, entrepreneurial cognition and regional (rural) entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposed a unique form of family-government relationship established via marriage: political marriage. Using a sample of 164 marriage events of family firm members collected in China, we found that political marriage was positively related to family firm performance beyond the effects of traditional political ties. Furthermore, we found that length of marriage positively moderated the relationship between political marriage and firm performance. There was a three-way interactive effect of political marriage, length of marriage, marital quality on firm performance in such a way that the positive effect of political marriage was the strongest when length of marriage was long and marital quality was low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]