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This replication study was invited by the Editor in Chief of Management and Organization Review, Arie Y. Lewin. The original study by Judge, Fainshmidt, and Brown (2014) spanned the global financial crisis (2005–2010), and as such, this anomalous time period may not have been representative of most economies, or even the overall global economy. In this replication study we refine and extend Judge et al. (2014) which explored the provocative question – which form of capitalism works best in terms of ‘equitable wealth creation’? Similar to the earlier study, we find that there are multiple paths to macro-economic success. Notably, effective institutional configurations tend to combine high-quality regulatory institutions, effective skill development systems, and social cultures largely unaffected by corruption so there is some commonality amongst effective configurations. In contrast, ineffective institutional configurations tend to be relatively weak in one or several of these three critical sets of institutions. Importantly, we find some novel patterns emerging from the most recent data, including potentially new forms of capitalism associated with equitable wealth creation. In addition, we find that effective credit market institutions are more important, and collective bargaining institutions are less important than the original study suggested. We discuss implications for the comparative capitalism literature, policy makers, and the future of capitalism in the global economy.

Research Summary: We employ an exploratory approach to understand what differentiates boards that retain limited, potentially tokenistic, gender diversity (i.e., a single female director), and boards that more genuinely diversify their composition by appointing additional female directors. Previous studies have speculated that strategic leaders responsible for board appointments may influence this occurrence. Using longitudinal data on U.S. firms, we find that more female top managers and having the sole female director serve on the nominating committee increase the likelihood of additional female director appointments. Boards and nominating committees with younger members amplify these effects, respectively. We use interviews with board members and professional corporate governance consultants to discuss the probable causal mechanisms that underpin these relationships, highlighting novel theoretical insights related to gatekeeping and social psychology. Managerial Summary: We explore what compels firms to appoint additional female directors after the first one, as only one female director could be considered a token. Using data on U.S. firms, we find that more female top managers and having the sole female director serve on the nominating committee make firms more likely to appoint additional female directors. These likelihoods are highest when younger directors make up the board at large and/or nominating committee. Chief executive officers can be change agents for gender diversity in their organizations by hiring female top managers and pushing for better representation of women on boards. Likewise, younger directors appear to enhance board gender diversity. These findings can inform the director selection process.

We advance a new theoretical framework to capture the diverse and unique institutional context of understudied economies in Africa, Middle East, East Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Our framework encompasses the configurational context encapsulated by state, financial markets, human capital, social capital, and corporate governance institutions operating in these regions. Using qualitative data solicited from experts to compile the institutional profiles of 68 economies, we identify seven types of institutional systems. Ultimately, we offer a more comprehensive and up-to-date taxonomy of the national institutional context operating throughout the global economy. We call this taxonomy “Varieties of Institutional Systems.”

We develop the concept of corporate governance deviance and seek to understand why, when, and how a firm adopts governance practices that do not conform to the dominant governance logic. Drawing on institutional theory, coupled with both the entrepreneurship and corporate governance literature, we advance a middle-range theory of the antecedents of corporate governance deviance that considers both the institutional context and firm-level agency. Specifically, we highlight the centrality of a firm’s entrepreneurial identity as it interacts with the national governance logic to jointly create corporate governance discretion (i.e., the latitude of accessible governance practices) within the firm. We argue that as a firm’s governance discretion increases, it will be more likely to adopt overconforming or underconforming governance practices that deviate from established norms and practices. Moreover, we propose that adopting a deviant corporate governance practice is contingent on the governance regulatory en...

We develop a conceptual framework and provide empirical evidence that helps to explain why management scholars submit the same paper to more than one scholarly conference, a practice referred to as...

Why some firms distribute generous cash dividends while others are reluctant to do so remains an unanswered question despite decades of scholarly examination. Although the extant literature on dividend policy has explored the effects of determinants at the country, industry, firm, and firm-year levels, it remains unclear whether and how much each level of analysis matters to dividend policy. Consequently, this study seeks to move the literature forward by decomposing the variance at each level associated with dividend policies in a global sample of 8903 firms over an 11-year time period. We employ hierarchical linear modeling and find that all four levels of analysis help to explain dividend policy, but the firm and firm-year effects account for the majority of variance. Furthermore, decomposing the variance within each year reveals that the firm level has the strongest effect on dividend policy. Finally, while the variance in dividend policy explained by each level varies according to the dividend policy measure used, it is largely stable over our study period. We discuss implications of these findings for future research on dividend policy and for the field of comparative corporate governance.

This paper focuses on a broad and emergent set of organizations operating in subsistence economies that seek to promote and support new venture activity. We label these organizations, Entrepreneurship Enabling Organizations (EEOs) and argue for their central role in addressing institutional voids confronting entrepreneurs. Specifically, we propose that EEOs’ provision of venture scripts, which are sequentially ordered expert behaviors appropriate for the creation of new ventures, is critical to creating successful new ventures as well as addressing institutional voids in these economies. We use social cognitive and institutional theories to explain how social connections and interactions introduce and begin to institutionalize venture scripts.

A firm's enterprise strategy is its overarching strategic orientation, addressing questions regarding its general purpose and the specific nature of its relationships with stakeholders along two dimensions: (a) scope, which represents the range of stakeholders the organization attempts to serve, and (b) type, which represents the general motivation behind stakeholder initiatives. The corporate social responsibility literature has played an important role in bringing a concern with stakeholder issues; however, this literature does not provide a systematic means of integrating these concerns into the firm's strategic architecture. Enterprise strategy offers a unifying construct, grounded in strategic considerations of both the social and economic demands placed on an organization. However, despite its conceptual importance to strategy and social issues, this construct is empirically underdeveloped. This study develops a reliable and valid measure of the enterprise strategy construct to advance the field's understanding of this increasingly important stream of research. Based on computer-aided text analyses of company letters to stakeholders, we systematically identify terminology that reflects the scope and type of a firm's espoused enterprise strategy. Overall, these data support four fundamental orientations of enterprise strategy: (1) narrow defensive, (2) narrow offensive, (3) broad defensive, and (4) broad offensive.

Plain language summary This study examines how national competitiveness, measured as productivity per worker, is fostered within an economy using a sample of 90 developed and developing economies. We build upon Porter's popular Diamond Model, but extend it by adding the quality of public governance and extent of multinational enterprise penetration as two additional elements. Our study shows that not all four elements of the original Diamond Model are required for an economy to be competitive. Instead, we find that there are four distinct paths to high levels of national competitiveness. Context for intense rivalry among firms appears in all four paths. Results also suggest that public governance quality is key to national competitiveness. The extent of multinational enterprise penetration, however, is not. Technical summary We examine Porter's Diamond Model in conjunction with multinational enterprise (MNE) penetration and governance quality as a system of elements that collectively affect national competitiveness. Utilizing fuzzy-set analysis and data on 90 nations, we identify four configurations sufficient for high national competitiveness, all of which exhibit high governance quality as a core condition. In these four configurations, the extent of MNE penetration is either absent or does not matter, and strength in all Diamond Model elements is neither necessary nor sufficient for high national competitiveness. Uncovering these patterns allows us to advance a more comprehensive theoretical framework emphasizing public governance and the ways in which elements of the Diamond Model, governance quality, and MNE penetration combine as complements or substitutes to affect national competitiveness. Copyright © 2016 Strategic Management Society.

This paper examines the effect of comprehensive voluntary disclosure on the excess executive compensation and firm value. Using Taiwan data over the period 2005-2009, we find that firms exhibit significantly positive relationship between excess executive compensation and firm value when a firm elects to comprehensively voluntary disclose additional information more than mandatory requirement on their disclosure practices. The evidence indicates that highly transparent disclosures could positively affect excess executive compensation on creating firm value, thus inducing a better interest alignment between executives and shareholders (i.e. comprehensive voluntary disclosures can strengthen pay-for-performance relationship), especially significantly on group-affiliated firms. Moreover, to discompose the effect of two disclosure type, the result shows that a firm discloses information transparently only on financial and operating information could mitigate the relationship between excess executive compensation and firm value; instead, it is little help to a firm discloses transparently only on compensation disclosure.

Imprinting theory suggests that founding conditions are ‘stamped’ on organizations, and these imprinted routines often resist change. In contrast, strategic choice theory suggests that the firm can overcome organizational inertia and deliberately choose its future. Both theories offer dramatically different explanations behind an organization's capacity for change. IPO firms provide a unique context for exploring how imprinting forces interact with strategic choice factors to address organizational capacity for change as a firm moves from private to public firm status. Juxtaposing imprinting and strategic choice perspectives, we employ fuzzy set analysis to examine the multi-level determinants of organizational capacity for change. Our cross-national data reveal three effective configurations of organizational capacity for change within IPOs, and two ineffective configurations. Our results suggest that the antecedents of organizational capacity for change in entrepreneurial threshold firms are non-linear, interdependent, and equifinal.

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. Prior evidence suggests that board independence may enhance financial performance, but this relationship has been tested almost exclusively for Anglo-American countries. To explore the boundary conditions of this prominent governance mechanism, we examine the impact of the formal and information institutions of 18 national business systems on the board independence-financial performance relationship. Our results show that while the direct effect of independence is weak, national-level institutions significantly moderate the independence-performance relationship. Our findings suggest that the efficacy of board structures is likely to be contingent on the specific national context, but the type of legal system is insignificant.

Prior studies of IPO underpricing, mostly using agency theory and single-country samples, have generally fallen short. In this study, we employ the knowledge-based view (KBV) to explore underpricing across 17 countries. We find that agency indicators are insignificant predictors, board of director knowledge limits underpricing, and external knowledge both substitutes for and complements internal board knowledge. This third finding suggests that future KBV studies should consider how internal and external knowledge states interact with each other. Our study offers new insights into the antecedents of underpricing and extends our understanding of comparative governance and the KBV of the firm.

Capitalism is the dominant economic system adopted throughout the global economy, but there are many different models of capitalism practiced depending on what the society decides “economic effectiveness” is. In this study, we assert that an effective economy simultaneously achieves two seemingly divergent outcomes: it (1) creates economic wealth efficiently, and (2) shares that wealth equitably. Employing insights from Whitley’s national business systems framework and fuzzy set analysis, we examine how national institutions collectively configure with respect to the overall level of equitable wealth creation within 48 developed and developing economies. We find that three configurations are associated with relatively high levels of equitable wealth creation, and another three are associated with relatively low levels. As such, our analysis supports the notion of equifinality – that there is no one optimal model of capitalism. Furthermore, we begin to demonstrate that these models of capitalism are constantly evolving, but their evolution is generally slow even when considering the practice of capitalism before and after the 2008 global economic crisis. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of international business, with a special emphasis on considering a more holistic context for exploring how multinational enterprises interact with their institutional environment(s).

In this study, we seek to understand how four dimensions of national business systems surrounding the corporate headquarters of multinational firms influence corporate technological entrepreneurship (CTE). After controlling for fairly well–established antecedents of corporate technological entrepreneurship at the firm and industry levels, we find that national–level predictors explain considerable variance above and beyond our control variables. Furthermore, we find that various national–level dimensions influence different measures of CTE. Overall, our study points to the remarkably strong role of home institutional context for understanding two types of technological entrepreneurship pursued by relatively large, multinational firms based in 24 different economies.

It has been repeatedly noted that entrepreneurship within the United States and other countries is over-represented by immigrants. However, no study has yet explored whether being an immigrant is a...

We explore the concept of interdisciplinary research impact and better understand what factors might be associated with it. Using the field of corporate governance research as a case study and linking our research impact concept to a novel measure of scholarly citation rates, we seek to understand why some corporate governance scholars are cited more than others. We first developed a comprehensive ranking of the top-100 scholars cited for their research in corporate governance and then compared that “high-impact” group with scholars who had published governance research that was not yet cited. We hypothesized that indicators from the social network perspective would be predictive of interdisciplinary research impact. Our data largely supported our hypotheses using this new and improved measure of research impact, and robustness tests also supported our results.

The financial crisis of the late 2000s resulted in enormous costs to the economies of many countries and the fortunes of millions of families, and it challenged a host of our conceptions and theories of corporate governance. The governing boards of many financial-services firms seemed unable to prevent the risky and ill-fated decisions that jeopardized their firms, devastated their investors, and helped precipitate a financial meltdown that morphed into global recession. Company boards were also directly responsible through their compensation committees and consultant advisors for a sharp rise in executive compensation during the 2000s that may have contributed to undue short-term risk-taking among the financial-service companies that helped spark the recession. The macroeconomic environment also changed. Historically low interest rates, and the development of new ways of financing mortgage products led to an irrationally exuberant mind-set of lending and borrowing in the housing market. The quality of some loans was questionable, but home asset prices continued to increase – until they collapsed in 2008. The boom and bust in the housing market was an important contributor – one of many including inadequate corporate governance – to the perfect financial storm of 2008–09. From a conference with 87 papers on the role of corporate governance in precipitating or exacerbating the financial crisis, and from five articles by governance researchers and three articles by prominent governance participant-observers included in this special issue, it is evident that governance played a contributing role. An article by Muller-Kahle and Lewellyn finds that directors of sub-prime lenders compared with other lenders served on a larger number of other company boards, presumably allowing then less time to monitor the sub-prime lender's risky practices, and they served for fewer years on the sub-prime lender's board, suggesting that they were less experienced in evaluating the financial risks of the sub-prime markets. A second article by Grove, Patelli, Victoravich, and Xu report that the higher the levels of debt held by banks, a policy presumably monitored and approved by directors, the lower bank financial and operating performance during the financial crisis. A third article by Yeh, Liu, and Chung finds that director independence on the auditing and risk management committees affected risk taking behaviors and subsequent performance. In the pursuit of productive avenues for reform, a fourth article Pirson and Turnbull argue for a network of boards representing multiple constituencies, convened through a “stakeholder congress,” that would bring more sources of information to the attention of more actors who could make more effective use of the information in guiding company risk management. A fifth article by Nicholson, Kiel, and Kiel-Chisholm argue for the re-establishment of professional restraints and creation of a new set of more responsible social norms within the financial sector to avoid the next financial meltdown. Three well-informed participant observers corroborate these findings and direct special attention to both company and country governance issues at they help foster the financial meltdown. Berglof finds that the absence of both micro and macro protections against excessive and systemic risk may have opened the way for the perfect storm. Feinberg concludes that distortions from economically-rational pay practices – ultimately the responsibility of the board – may have contributed to the financial crisis as executives sought to optimize their pay in ways that were not optimal for the firm nor its investors, customers, or lenders. Johnson places some of the blame for the crisis indirectly on the governance door step – directors who hired and monitored the bankers at center of the crisis had helped foster a culture of short-term greed and narrow self-interest that became toxic when it became systemic and no longer limited to a few aberrant players. Taken together, the five articles and three commentaries in this issue point to the importance and interplay of both micro and macro governance factors in contributing to the financial crisis of 2008–09 – and to the importance of reforming those factors to help avert another financial crisis in the future.

A meta-analysis of 42 empirical studies was conducted to quantitatively summarize the corruption literature within a holistic theoretical framework. In general, variables within the political/legal, economics, and socio-cultural categories were equally correlated with national corruption; however, there have been twice as many studies examining the causes of corruption than those that examine the effects of corruption. Furthermore, we found that some measures of corruption are more robust than others. Finally, we identified some insights which future researchers might want to explore further. Overall, this study summarizes previous research, and serves as a guide to future research on corruption.

Innovative entrepreneurship has been the focus of attention for both individual entrepreneurs as well as policy makers. Building on evolving idiosyncrasy view regarding opportunity, in order to cap...

Manuscript Type: Empirical Research Question/Issue: This study seeks to better understand the antecedents of shareholder activism targeted at firms located in three common law countries (i.e., USA, UK, and Australia) and three civil law countries (Japan, Germany, and South Korea) during the 2003–07 time period. Research Findings/Insights: Our findings suggest that the antecedents of shareholder activism vary by the motivation of the activist. We demonstrate that activists target firms with two motives (a) to improve the financial performance, and (b) to improve the social performance of the firm. With respect to the target firm level antecedents, we find that firm size is unrelated to financial activism, but positively related to social activism; ownership concentration is negatively related to both financial and social activism; and prior profitability is negatively related to financial activism, but positively related to social activism. Further, these relationships in the case of financial activism are generally stronger in common law legal systems, whereas those in the case of social activism are generally stronger in environments with a greater level of income inequality. Theoretical/Academic Implications: Our findings suggest that future research should differentiate between the motivations of the activism event. Further, we find that while agency logic works well for financial activism, institutional theory provides stronger explanations for social activism. Overall, we demonstrate the complementary nature of these two theories in explaining shareholder activism. Practitioner/Policy Implications: We found that the “exposure” to shareholder activism varies by the motivation of the activist, and the nature of the firm and its national context. An understanding of these issues would help firms develop proper response strategies to activism events.

Manuscript Type: Empirical Research Question/Issue: Effective corporate governance requires accurate and reliable financial information. Historically, each nation has developed and pursued its own financial standards; however, as financial markets consolidate into a global market, there is a need for a common set of financial standards. As a result, there is a movement towards harmonization of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) throughout the global economy. While there has been considerable research on the effects of IFRS adoption, there has been relatively little systematic study as to the antecedents of IFRS adoption. Consequently, this study seeks to understand why some economies have quickly embraced IFRS standards while others partially adopt IFRS and still others continue to resist. Research Findings/Results: After controlling for market capitalization and GDP growth, we find that foreign aid, import penetration, and level of education achieved within a national economy are all predictive of the degree to which IFRS standards are adopted across 132 developing, transitional and developed economies. Theoretical/Academic Implications: We found that all three forms of isomorphic pressures (i.e., coercive, mimetic, and normative) are predictive of IFRS adoption. Consequently, institutional theory with its emphasis on legitimacy-seeking by social actors was relatively well supported by our data. This suggests that the IFRS adoption process is driven more by social legitimization pressures, than it is by economic logic. Practitioner/Policy Implications: For policy makers, our findings suggest that the institutional pressures within an economy are the key drivers of IFRS adoption. Consequently, policy makers should seek to influence institutional pressures that thwart and/or enhance adoption of IFRS. For executives of multinational firms, our findings provide insights that can help to explain and predict future IFRS adoption within economies where their foreign subsidiaries operate. This ability could be useful for creating competitive advantages for foreign subsidiaries where IFRS adoption was resisted, or avoiding competitive disadvantages for foreign subsidiaries unfamiliar with IFRS standards.

Within transition economies, a popular tactic for revitalizing large and inefficient stateowned enterprises (SOEs) is to privatize them. Unfortunately, the empirical evidence related to this issue is equivocal. This study, therefore, explores more deeply what the relationship may be between privatization efforts of SOEs and their financial performance in transition economies. Specifically, we seek to better understand whether privatization reforms per se, or other corporate governance mechanisms that complement or substitute for this effort, are most effective. Using a panel sample of Chinese state-owned public firms over an eight year period from 1999 to 2006, we find that managerial ownership has a more significant impact on firm performance than privatization does. This finding suggests that internal incentives to managers may be more effective than external market mechanisms in economies transitioning from centralized planning to market control. Our results are robust using a wide variety of performance measures and different model specifications.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to systematically develop a reliable and valid construct that can facilitate and enhance the organizational change process by following Hinkin's suggestions for construct development. The “Organizational Capacity for Change” (OCC) construct provides a multi‐dimensional assessment tool to diagnose and guide organizational change.Design/methodology/approachIn the first empirical study, the paper provides details on the creation and refinement of the OCC instrument by reviewing the results of nearly 3,600 respondents in 161 organizational units in a wide variety of industries from 1999 to 2005. In the second empirical study, it tests the OCC instrument in a single industry to determine the validity of the measures.FindingsThe result is a reliable and valid multi‐dimensional, 32‐item instrument which describes a new construct in the organizational sciences that can be used by executives to prepare for and enhance their organizational change process, or for scholars to study the organizational change process.Practical implicationsTheoretically, this measure refines and extends the dynamic capabilities literature. Pragmatically, this measure provides a tool for assisting executives to lead organization change initiatives.Originality/valueThis measure provides a reliable and valid tool for assessing organizational change capacity, as well as provides a means for gauging improvement in organizational change capacity over time.

Several international business scholars have elaborated upon Hymer's [Hymer, S. H. (1960). The international operations of national firms: A study of direct investment. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA] costs of doing business abroad through the liability of foreignness notion. While this research has made important contributions, there is need for more conceptual refinement and synthesis due to the vastly increased scale and scope of MNE operations in recent years. Consequently, this study attempts to more precisely delineate the liabilities of foreignness component of costs of doing business abroad from other costs/liabilities that arise from the increasing complexity of global business. Further, we synthesize both the costs and benefits of cross-border operations that accrue to the foreign subsidiary into an integrated conceptual framework, and advance 11 theoretical propositions on how those impact its competitive dynamics. We illustrate these notions through a longitudinal case study on the operations of Ford Motor Company in India over the past 80 years.

This study explored some human resource and human systems' aspects of the competitive dynamics for firms attempting to survive and prosper within Russia, a highly volatile transition economy. Overall, this study adds to our understanding of international strategic human resource management, dynamic capabilities, and the generation of competitive advantage within transition economies. We found that a relatively new construct derived from the dynamic capabilities and organizational change literatures, known as ‘organizational capacity for change,’ is positively associated with firm performance within a wide variety of Russian firms. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between organizational capacity for change and firm performance is stronger when there are relatively high levels of uncertainty with the task environment. Finally, we found that organizational capacity for change is an important attribute in all sizes of organizations, not just for large organizations as hypothesized.

The literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) has evolved in separate theoretical silos and a holistic conceptualization is yet to emerge. Research has focused mostly on inter-country differences and not much on explaining intra-country FDI variations. Traditionally FDI locations have been evaluated through country-level FDI determinants even though provinces differ widely in infrastructure and other attributes. Further, neither is the varying importance of FDI determinants to different industries factored in, nor are the differing FDI incentives from national and provincial governments integrated into a single framework. To address these gaps this study synthesizes insights from three streams of FDI research and develops an integrative conceptual framework that can comprehensively analyze intra-country FDI inflows. We demonstrate the usefulness of the framework by empirically analyzing FDI trends within China’s 31 provinces. The study thus makes a substantive contribution by offering scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners a holistic conceptual and methodological approach for understanding FDI trends within a country.

PurposeSuccessful firms must exploit existing markets while simultaneously exploring new market opportunities. However, skills required to do both simultaneously are often at odds with each other. To reconcile this dilemma, the authors aim to discuss the new concept of “strategic ambidexterity”, which is conceptualized as the ability to simultaneously pursue exploitation and exploratory strategies in ways that lead to enhanced organizational effectiveness.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conceptually integrate literature from organizational theory, strategic management, and marketing to yield three new theoretical propositions.FindingsIt is argued that a relatively new dynamic capability, organizational capacity for change, is the primary antecedent of strategic ambidexterity and that this relationship is moderated by environmental uncertainty and organizational slack.Originality/valueMost organizational and marketing theories rely on linear assumptions and models. However, twenty‐first century organizations must reconcile competitive realities that are often nonlinear in nature. This study provides a conceptual framework which transcends traditional thinking, and provides a comprehensive yet concise framework for researching this new competitive reality further.

The authors studied panel data for corporate governance ratings in 50 countries between 1997 and 2005 to understand what the country-level predictors of corporate governance legitimacy might be. Using neo-institutional theory, they found that all three pillars of institutionalization influenced perceptions of corporate governance at the national level—specifically, (a) the greater the extent of law and order, (b) the more the culture emphasized global competitiveness, and (c) the less the prevalence of corruption, the higher the corporate governance legitimacy within a nation. This study refines and extends the comparative corporate governance literature, as well as the neo-institutional perspective.

This study examines a promising new dynamic capability known as organizational capacity for change (OCC). It is anticipated that organizations will find such a capability valuable if they find it n...

Empirical research on strategic alliances has been limited because previous studies examined alliance outcomes, and the factors associated with them, from a single partner in a manufacturing alliance. Furthermore, many of these studies have been done from a transaction cost perspective and researchers have inferred opportunistic behavior, rather than directly measuring it and observing its actual relationship with alliance performance. Building on previous transaction cost theory and research, this study seeks to address these gaps by analyzing factors associated with both opportunistic behavior and alliance performance within a major service sector, namely the US healthcare industry. After controlling for asset specificity and alliance age, we found that partner trustworthiness and contractual safeguards were negatively related to opportunistic behavior. Furthermore, opportunistic behavior was negatively related to alliance performance, as hypothesized. Interestingly, mutual equity investments were found to be unrelated to opportunistic behavior, counter to transaction-cost logic. These findings refine and extend the transaction-cost economics perspective regarding our understanding of strategic alliance behavior and outcomes, and offer executives in service-based industries some practical ideas for assuring favorable strategic alliance outcomes.

Using the resource-based perspective and the organizational change literature, we conceptually describe and empirically test a new and important organizational capability known as organizational capacity for change (OCC). The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the relationship between an organization's capacity for change and its environmental performance within Bulgaria, a uniquely appropriate transition economy trying to grow economically without major new degradation to its highly diverse natural environment. We found a strong positive association between OCC and environmental performance after controlling for industry sector, organizational size, and organizational profitability. In addition, we found that the greater the differences in OCC from the perspective of top management, midmanagement, and frontline workers, the worse the firm's environmental performance. However, this relationship was most pronounced when there were differences in the perceptions of top managers and frontline workers.

This article documents the evolution of an outdoor-based experiential leadership training event within an Executive MBA (EMBA) program. The purpose of this article is to encourage other EMBA faculty and directors to consider adding a similar event to their leadership development initiatives and to learn from our experiences. After 3 years of experience with this approach, we improved continuously each year and now offer a potentially transformative capstone personal growth experience that focuses on Kouzes and Posner’s (1995) leadership practices inventory.

This study investigates the relationship of strategic leadership behaviors with executive innovation influence and the moderating effects of top management team (TMT)'s tenure heterogeneity and social culture on that relationship. Using survey data from six countries comprising three social cultures, strategic leadership behaviors were found to have a strong positive relationship with executive influence on both product–market and administrative innovations. In addition, TMT tenure heterogeneity moderated the relationship of strategic leadership behaviors with executive innovation influence for both types of innovation, while social culture moderated that relationship only in the case of administrative innovation. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Developing an effective corporate governance system is key to Russia's future. Russia is now at a crossroads as it decides to either continue pursuing the Anglo-American form of governance with its emphasis on external market controls, or turn to a more Western European model with its emphasis on internal controls, or some combination of the two. To make these challenges more tangible and bring them into sharper focus, we discuss some of the governance challenges facing four bellwether Russian firms – Gazprom, Sberbank, Wimm-Bill-Dann and Mobile TeleSystems. We conclude with a discussion of the key institutional forces that will heavily influence the path taken by Russia in the future, along with predictions for the future.

Using the agency and institutional perspectives, this study advances several hypotheses about the board structure–firm performance relationship within Russia. We tested these hypotheses using survey data. Despite a relatively small sample size, predictions from both theoretical perspectives were supported. Specifically, we found a negative relationship between “informal” CEO duality and firm performance. This finding is noteworthy given the 1996 Russian Federal law which prohibits the CEO from also serving as board chair. Also, we found that the more vigorously the firm pursues a retrenchment strategy, the more negative the relationship between proportion of inside directors and firm performance. Overall, these findings suggest that effective corporate governance may be essential to firm performance in Russia.

Good governance requires an effective board of directors and their involvement in the strategic decision-making process of the firm. Codes of corporate governance specify the structures and process...

Empirical evidence shows that board independence may positively affect IPO performance, but this relationship is almost only explored within Anglo-American countries. Following calls to narrow the ...

Executive Summary Most experts agree that our character is influenced by our distinctive national culture, but the world is becoming more "boundaryless" as international trade, transportation and communication systems become more efficient. As a result, it is unclear whether the global marketplace has begun to homogenize the character traits of business leaders. This research hypothesizes that character traits of business leaders will be one of the last aspects to be homogenized in our global marketplace. To explore this hypothesis, we compare and contrast three dimensions of leadership character (i.e., personality, values, and spirituality) for American and Taiwanese CEOs in small- and medium-sized firms. In general, we found robust differences between these two sets of CEOs offering support for the "culture-bound" nature of leadership character. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic examination of the inner character of CEOs in a cross-cultural study. ********** Strategic leadership effectiveness is increasingly seen as a function of the competence and character of those in executive positions (Bennis, 1998). While there is extensive research on the skills and competencies required of effective leaders, there is relatively little scholarly exploration of leaders' inner character (Renshon, 1998) and only anecdotal evidence from a cross-cultural perspective (Usinier, 1998). Despite the fact that leadership always comes down to a question of character (Bennis, 1998), there is remarkably little systematic research on this topic. Character is defined as "the complex of mental and ethical traits marking and often individualizing a person." (1) Given this general definition, leadership character can be conceptualized as the highly individualized inner landscape which guides a leader's perceptions and behaviors. In this paper, we operationalize leadership character along three dimensions -- personality, values, and spirituality (Judge, 1999). Personality may be thought of as the inner social system that determines how we relate to ourself and to others (Jung, 1923). Values represent the inner belief system about desirable end states or modes of behavior (Rokeach, 1975). Spirituality is the inner meaning system that helps us and others to makes sense of life (Conger, 1994). Together, these three character traits can and do interact to influence the perceptions and behaviors of the leader. The character of a leader is important and relevant because of its strong link with the leader's credibility; and its impact on organizational trust, organizational culture, and organizational longevity. Leadership character generates trustworthiness within an organization, which is theorized to provide a valuable and rare resource that is not easily imitated by competitors. By exploring the "essence" of leadership (i.e., the leader's character), we may begin to understand why the research and theories on leadership behavior is so equivocal, especially in cross-cultural settings (e.g., Ricks, Toyne & Martinez, 1990). Is Leadership Character Culture-Bound or Culture-Free? Numerous studies have provided evidence for the notion of leadership being a "culture-bound" phenomena (e.g., Hofstede, 1999; Usinier, 1998). Some theorists argue that the study of international management and leadership should be rooted in the cultural context of the individual executives being studied. For example, Inkeles and Levinson (1969) developed the concept of "modal personality" within cultures which would indicate that national character is more influential than occupational character or level of industrial development, in explaining a leader's perceptions and behavior. Since national cultures are strikingly different and change very slowly (Hofstede, 1999; Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1998), this suggests that leadership character may be culture-bound. Griffeth, Hom, DeNisi and Kirchner (1980) found that 52 percent of the variance in manager's behavior could be attributed by their nationality within a single multinational firm. …

Executive Overview Although most of the academic research on strategic alliances has focused on structural characteristics of international alliances in global manufacturing-based industries, many executives are struggling to make strategic alliances work within other contexts. Using insights from the strategic-alliance literature and anecdotes from the healthcare industry, we refocus attention away from the traditional, solitary model of leadership to a shared model of leadership among the top executives of the partner organizations. In so doing, we advance three lessons for leaders to predict and explain strategic alliance success in the healthcare industry. Specifically, these lessons direct attention to top executives' joint abilities to collaborate from a distance, to focus on creating customer value above all else, and to experiment and implement innovative ways to compete in the industry with a partner.

The authors explored the relationship between the degree to which total quality management (TQM) practices were adopted within organizations and the corresponding competitive advantages achieved. T...

One of the accepted beliefs among strategic management researchers is that strategic decision consensus among decision-makers facilitates decision implementation speed and implementation success. Despite this belief, there has been little empirical research directly examining these relationships. Using hierarchical regression, this study examines the effects of strategic decision consensus and commitment on decision implementation speed and success. Results from a sample of 68 intact strategic decision-making teams in Southeastern United States hospitals support the normatively accepted ideal that decision consensus helps build decision commitment, which in turn positively affects implementation success. Contrary to our expectations, however, decision commitment serves to slow implementation speed. The implications of these results for consensus and implementation research are discussed.