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This study aims to examine whether and how corporate sustainability capability influences energy efficiency through competitive intensity and slack resource availability.

The authors applied a two-wave research design and administered a survey questionnaire to senior-level managers of 78 ISO-14001 and ISO-50001 certified manufacturing companies. The authors use a multi-method approach for data analysis. AMOS 23 software was applied for covariance-based structural equation modeling. In addition, SPSS 25 software was applied for hierarchical regression analysis to examine the causal relationships in the model.

The finding reveals that corporate sustainability capabilities, which include energy-saving opportunities, seizing energy-saving opportunities and resource reconfiguration, significantly improve firms’ energy efficiency. In addition, competitive intensity and slack resource availability positively moderated the relationship between corporate sustainability capability and energy efficiency.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the link between corporate sustainability capability and energy efficiency in developing countries such as Pakistan. Although the influence of various corporate sustainability capabilities on sustainable performance has been widely examined in the literature, the role of corporate sustainability capability has been limitedly explored with energy efficiency. This study extends the literature by adding to the knowledge of corporate sustainability capability that enhances boundary conditions in developing countries.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have been increasingly investing in their economic and social development in recent years, yet the effectiveness of their spending remains unknown although they have been taking reforms to advance their spending efficiency practices.

The study applies a quantitative approach to analyze panel data using a multiple regression model based on the World Economic Forum (WEF) reports of the global competitiveness index (GCI) from 2009 until 2018.

The results show that policies' strength has a positive and significant influence, while national infrastructure and workforce empowerment have a negative and significant influence over the extent of spending efficiency implementation in the GCC countries.

GCI disclosure assessment criteria changed in 2019 and then stopped in 2020 due to COVID-19. A different version of GCI was published in 2020, which focuses on recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and no other issues have been published since then. This represented a barrier to recent data collection.

Practical contribution is the value added by this study to a minimal literature on spending efficiency in the GCC countries. This study’s theoretical contribution to knowledge is the integration of the new institutional sociology (NIS) perspective of institutional theory and the resource slack theory to investigate a set of factors rarely explored in relation to their impact on governmental spending efficiency.

This study provides the following recommendations for policymakers: The GCC government should direct government training bodies and universities (in business majors) to include mandatory spending efficiency subjects to enhance current knowledge. Also, the governmental-related bodies of spending efficiency should make agreements with universities and research centers to improve the diverse R&D aspects of government spending efficiency. Another important recommendation is to enforce the adoption of the GRC concept regarding spending efficiency practices for governmental employees to guide them towards implementing spending efficiency practices.

This study's theoretical contribution to knowledge is the integration of the new institutional sociology (NIS) perspective of institutional theory and the resource slack theory to investigate a set of factors rarely explored in relation to their impact on governmental spending efficiency. Also, the practical contribution is the value added by this study to a minimal literature on spending efficiency in the GCC countries. The research has established empirical evidence to support the findings above.

The rapid, yet low-profit, expansion of the production capacity of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) represents a remarkable phenomenon. However, the motivation behind this key operational decision remains underexplored, especially concerning the prioritization of sociopolitical and financial goals in operations management. Drawing on the multiple-goal model in the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF), the authors' study aims to examine how SOE capacity expansion is driven by performance feedback regarding the sociopolitical goal of employment provision and how SOEs differently prioritize sociopolitical and financial goals based on negative versus positive feedback on the sociopolitical goal.

The authors' study uses panel data on 826 Chinese SOEs in manufacturing industries from 2011 to 2019. The authors employ the fixed-effects model with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, which are robust to heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation and cross-sectional dependence.

The authors find that SOEs increase capacity expansion as sociopolitical feedback becomes more negative, but they may not increase capacity expansion in response to positive sociopolitical feedback. Moreover, negative profitability feedback strengthens SOEs' capacity expansion in response to negative sociopolitical feedback. In contrast, negative profitability feedback weakens their response to positive sociopolitical feedback.

The authors' study offers a novel behavioral explanation of SOEs' operational decisions regarding capacity expansion. While the literature has traditionally assumed multiple goals as either hierarchical or compatible, the authors extend the BTOF's multiple-goal model to illuminate when firms pursue sociopolitical and financial goals as compatible (i.e. the activation rule) versus hierarchical (i.e. the sequential rule), thereby reconciling their tension in distinct performance situations. Practically, the authors provide fine-grained insights into how operations managers can prioritize multiple goals when making operational decisions. The authors' study also shows how policymakers can influence SOE operations to pursue sociopolitical goals for public benefit.

To reconceptualize the organizational environment in a comprehensive manner, it is important to specify not just the velocity but also other aspects of turbulent environments. Concurrently, the purpose of this paper is to also propose that organizational adaptability and, particularly, the speed of adaptations are critical to moderate the impact of turbulence in the environment on organizational performance.

This paper uses a conceptual methodology to fully specify turbulent environments and commensurate managerial response appropriate for such environments. Based on a perspective borrowed from the field of fluid dynamics used to specify the phenomenon of turbulence, the authors develop a conceptual model with research propositions. Four dimensions that describe turbulence in fluid flow when applied metaphorically offer a comprehensive view of the organizational environment.

An extreme, unanticipated, sudden onslaught resulting in a prolonged disrupted environment such as during the recent coronavirus crisis is best characterized as having caused turbulent environmental conditions. Management theories have addressed disruptions as high-velocity environments in the context of rapid changes in information technology. With a broadened conceptualization of the organizational environment to better capture extreme disruptions, the authors provide a comprehensive model appropriate for turbulent environmental conditions and offer research directions for scholarly pursuit.

This paper provides a new perspective from the physical sciences to better conceptualize organizational environments during extreme disruptions such as in turbulent environmental conditions.

This study aims to highlight the impact of introducing women directors to board committees, thereby empowering them to contribute to decision-making, and as a result, influence firms’ financial performance in an emerging economy.

This study uses a fixed-effects panel data regression model to test the impact of gender diversity on corporate boards as well as board committees on firms’ financial performance. Two widely used diversity measures, the Blau index and the Shannon index, have been used to enhance the robustness of the results.

The findings suggest that gender diversity on prominent board committees (remuneration committee and nomination committee) positively affects firms’ financial performance when measured by the market-based performance measure, but it is insignificant when measured through accounting-based performance indicator. Furthermore, the benefits of gender diversity accrue to the firms only when women are part of prominent committees and are engaged in governance mechanisms, rather than just being appointed on corporate boards as a means of tokenism.

This study is among the first to investigate the relationship between gender diversity and financial performance through the lens of committee assignments. Moreover, the unique cultural and institutional setting offered by India, which is an emerging economy, provides a fertile ground for understanding the role of women leaders in the workforce.

This paper elucidates the role of anger in error management (EM) and organizational learning behaviors. The study explores how anger can catalyze learning, emphasizing its strategic implications.

A double-layered moderated-mediated model was developed and tested using data from 744 Chinese CEOs. The psychometric properties of the survey instrument were rigorously examined through structural equation modeling, and hypotheses were tested using Hayes's PROCESS macros.

The findings reveal that anger is a precursor for recognizing the value of significant errors, leading to a positive association with learning behavior among top management team members. Additionally, the study uncovers a triple interaction effect of anger, EM culture and supply chain disruptions on the value of learning from errors. Extensive experience and positive grieving strengthen the relationship between recognizing value from errors and learning behavior.

This study uniquely integrates affect-cognitive theory and organizational learning theory, examining anger in EM and learning. The authors provide empirical evidence that anger can drive error value recognition and learning. The authors incorporate a more fine-grained approach to leadership when including executive anger as a trigger to learning behavior. Factors like experience and positive grieving are explored, deepening the understanding of emotions in learning. The authors consider both negative and positive emotions to contribute to the complexity of organizational learning.

This study aims to contribute to the existing literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) by examining the influence of national media environments on the economic consequences of CSR. Drawing on signaling theory, this study distinguishes between two country-level media environments − digital media accessibility and media freedom − of which the prior research has often implied their value in cultivating the stakeholders’ awareness about the firms’ socially responsible behavior, suggesting that they amplify the benefits of CSR actions.

This study conducts multilevel analysis with a sample of 44,222 firm-year observations representing 6,726 companies from 57 countries over the period 2003–2019.

This study finds supportive evidence that CSR is more positively related to financial gains in countries with greater digital media accessibility. This study concludes that digital media accessibility affects a firm’s reputation and legitimacy benefits derived from CSR actions, resulting in better financial performance (FP).

The findings of this paper contribute to the existing literature on the CSR–FP relationship by demonstrating the relevance of considering the media environment to better explain the link between CSR and FP. In doing so, this study enriches our understanding of the importance of the media at macro-level institutions by examining how and why these media environments cultivate a culture of CSR as a strategic tool for firms.

Using the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theory, we explore the impact of strategic management practices, innovation and social capital on small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) performance in three developing Arab countries, namely, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia.

Drawing upon firm-level data derived from the standardized World Bank Enterprise Surveys, we use quantile regressions and the marginal effects analysis to test our hypotheses.

Our results show heterogeneity among the three countries as to the factors affecting firm performance. The configuration of performance determinants also differs among firms within each country, depending on their level of performance.

Our findings further the understanding of the performance determinants of SMEs in developing countries within their own local context. They imply important theoretical, methodological, managerial and policy implications.

This study is the first to investigate simultaneously strategic management practices, innovation and social capital as determinants of SMEs’ performance in developing countries. We confirm an important premise of the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities theory, which has not been thoroughly investigated in the literature, claiming that strategic management, innovation and social capital cannot be separately investigated as determinants of firm performance. We do so by going beyond the mere inclusion of interaction terms in regression equations to computing marginal effects.

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) has attracted considerable attention worldwide, and the challenges of managing employees’ entrepreneurial behaviours are increasingly recognised. However, the paucity of research on managers’ entrepreneurial behaviour in the United Arab Emirates multinational corporate environment creates a salient gap in the current understanding of how national and organisational cultures that not always align frame the critical problems of CE. This study aims to fill this research gap by examining multinationals’ CE antecedents drawing on an institutional perspective in Dubai.

The author conducts 54 in-depth interviews with middle managers in multinational enterprises. This study adopts a multiple case study research design to reveal whether an emergent discovery is exclusive to a particular case or is consistently replicated by multiple cases. The author has used abductive reasoning to systematically integrate analytical framework deduction with raw data induction.

This study’s findings indicate that CE in Dubai is ineffective and fragmented. Arguably, the cultural background of employees creates different circumstances and determinants of entrepreneurial behaviour. Hence, CE may not achieve epitome competencies without identifying multicultural nuances in an organisational context.

Existing research has placed relatively little emphasis on the role of individual national culture in multinational enterprises. This study’s results offer potentially valuable implications for theory, practice and future research addressing other emerging countries. This model presents a distinct CE architecture with compelling evidence for national culture (at the macro level), organisational culture, Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument and emergent factors (at the meso level) and individual middle managers' real-life experience (at the micro level).

Drawing on the concept of superior resource, capability and processes of the resource-based theory of the firm, the purpose of the current study is to analyze the influence of firms’ winner-picking strategic approach on firm performance (FP) via a direct and indirect mechanism.

Using survey data of 104 diversified manufacturing firms, the current study analyzed the conditional indirect effect of firms’ strategic approach on efficient resource allocation with the help of Statistical Analysis Software (SAS) process macros.

The study found that firms’ choices of winner-picking approach can undermine the resource allocation efficiency when not perfectly blended with firms’ access to the resource. Furthermore, the effect of winner-picking strategy (WPS) on resource allocation efficiency via firms’ competitive advantage (CA) can be greater when both strategic choice and resources are employed adequately.

Despite making a unique contribution, the present study has a few limitations requiring researchers’ attention to be tackled in the forthcoming. This includes a little amount of data, a self-reporting technique and failure to include all the possible reasons that could lead to inefficient resource allocation.

The present research has potential applications for managers of the manufacturing industry in a period of sheer uncertainty [coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)]. First, the study alerts managers about the challenges of underinvestment and overinvestment while allocating resources. At the same time, this study provides an important implication for managing the importance of firms’ access to capital (AC).

The current study has made a sizeable impression in the literature on internal resource allocation and resource-based theory of the firm by recommending a model that augments the theoretical foundation of strategic management of the firms. As there are only a handful of studies on this grave issue in the context of developing economies, thus, closely considering these insights would be helping for the firms for allocating resources efficiently in the manufacturing industry.