Search results

This study examines whether a firm’s management earnings forecasts affect its technical innovation activities. Our study also examines whether the cost of debt plays a mediating role between the management earnings forecasts and the innovation nexus.

We obtained data from 1,032 Chinese non-financial firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2005 to 2022 (i.e. 18,576 firm-year observations). We used various econometrics techniques, such as Heckman’s (1979) two-stage selection method and two-stage least square, to examine the relationship between management earnings forecasts and the firm’s technical innovation activities.

We find a positive relationship between management earnings forecasts and the firms' technical innovation. We also find that the cost of debt mediates the relationship between management earnings forecast and technical innovation. Further analysis indicates that frequent earnings forecasts provide incremental information regarding a firm’s future value and cash flows, thus reducing the volatility and uncertainty in cash flow calculations. Our findings are robust to several tests.

Our study has implications for policymakers, practitioners and high-level management of Chinese firms, enabling them to understand the relationship between management earnings forecasts and firms' innovation activities.

This study seeks to explore the intricate relationship among supply chain transparency, digitalization and idiosyncratic risk, with a specific focus on newly public firms. The objective is to determine whether supply chain transparency effectively mitigates idiosyncratic risk within this context and to understand the potential impact of digitalization on this dynamic interplay.

The study utilizes data from Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on China’s Growth Enterprise Board (ChiNext) over the last five years, sourced from the CSMAR database and firms’ annual reports. The research covers the period from 2009 to 2021, observing each firm for five years post-IPO. The final sample comprises 2,645 observations from 529 firms. The analysis employs the Hausman test, considering the panel-data structure of the sample and favoring fixed effects over random effects. Additionally, it applies the high-dimensional fixed effects (HDFE) estimator to address unobserved heterogeneity.

The analysis initially uncovered an inverted U-shaped relationship between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk, indicating a delicate equilibrium where detrimental effects diminish and beneficial effects accelerate with increased transparency. Moreover, this inverted U-shaped relationship was notably more pronounced in newly public firms with a heightened level of firm digitalization. This observation implies that firm digitalization amplifies the impact of transparency on a firm’s idiosyncratic risk.

This study distinguishes itself by providing distinctive insights into supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk. Initially, we introduce and substantiate an inverted U-shaped correlation between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk, challenging the conventional linear perspective. Secondly, we pioneer the connection between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk, especially for newly public firms, thereby enhancing comprehension of financial implications. Lastly, we pinpoint crucial digital conditions that influence the relationship between supply chain transparency and idiosyncratic risk management, offering a nuanced perspective on the role of technology in risk management.

The study examines whether affective organizational commitment and its drivers differ between Polish female and male employees.

Our proprietary data are from ongoing surveys conducted by a major Polish HR consulting firm. The nationwide survey of nearly 3,000 Polish workers in 2020 constitutes the data set in this analysis. Regression analysis is applied to analyze the relationship between organizational commitment, gender and other variables.

The study provides support for the job model, that is, women and men have similar levels of commitment once all other factors are controlled. Although the results show that, ceteris paribus, the organizational commitment of women is statistically significantly higher than that of men, the effect size is trivial in practical terms. The study also discloses the fact that the determinants of organizational commitment of men and women are similar, thus refuting a commonly held notion about gendered job attribute preferences. Support for gender as a moderator between organizational commitment and its antecedents is not found. COVID-19-related work adjustments do not seem to have affected the commitment of Polish male and female workers to their employers.

The study adds to the scarce empirical literature on organizational commitment in Poland. To date, only a small number of such studies exist for Poland, and all of them use small homogeneous samples and limited questionnaires. The results are of value to researchers as well as HR managers seeking to improve long-term commitment to organizations.

Indirect knowledge leakage to rivals located near alliance partners represents a significant risk that has received limited scholarly attention. Hence, the question of how to manage this risk – which the authors term “partner-rival co-location risk” – in nonequity alliances remains unanswered, and this study aims to suggest establishing a steering committee to oversee the partnership.

Drawing on the agglomeration economies and alliance governance literatures, the authors develop a set of hypotheses and perform a series of empirical tests on 470 nonequity alliances in the US biopharmaceutical industry.

The authors propose that there is a positive linkage between partner-rival co-location risk and the formation of a steering committee in a nonequity alliance, which receives strong empirical support. Further, this relationship is significantly moderated by the breadth (alliance scope) but not the depth (reciprocal interdependence) of interaction between the partnering firms.

This paper is a pioneer to shed light on “partner-rival co-location risk” and how partner-rival co-location risk affects the governance decision of whether to establish a steering committee in a nonequity alliance, thus offering important theoretical and practical insights into competition and cooperation in alliance management.

The existing technology acceptance models have not yet investigated functional and motivational factors impacting trust in and use of conversational artificial intelligence (AI) by integrating the feedback and sequential updating mechanisms. This study challenged the existing models and constructed an integrated longitudinal model. Using a territory-wide two-wave survey of a representative sample, this new model examined the effects of hedonic motivation, social motivation, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness on continued trust, intended use, and actual use of conversational AI.

An autoregressive cross-lagged model was adopted to test the structural associations of the seven repeatedly measured constructs.

The results revealed that trust in conversational AI positively affected continued actual use, hedonic motivation increased continued intended use, and social motivation and perceived ease of use enhanced continued trust in conversational AI. While the original technology acceptance model was unable to explain the continued acceptance of conversational AI, the findings showed positive feedback effects of actual use on continued intended use. Except for trust, the sequential updating effects of all the measured factors were significant.

This study intended to contribute to the technology acceptance and human–AI interaction paradigms by developing a longitudinal model of continued acceptance of conversational AI. This new model adds to the literature by considering the feedback and sequential updating mechanisms in understanding continued conversational AI acceptance.

This study investigates the economic outcomes of the strategic deviation (SD), the fundamental and crucial question in institutional theory and strategic management. Previous studies have yielded contradictory findings. This study reconciles conflicting results by distinguishing the effects of the SD on financial and market performance, examining the mechanism of financing constraints and the boundary condition of institutional investor heterogeneity.

This research collected data from Chinese A-shares listed manufacturing firms from 2009 to 2021 from the CSMAR and Wind databases. This study conducted empirical tests using OLS models with Stata 15.

Empirical results demonstrate that the SD has different impacts on different dimensions of performance. The SD negatively impacts financial performance while positively impacts market performance. Financing constraints mediate the main effects. Moreover, transactional institutional investors positively moderate the negative effect of the SD on financial performance, whereas stable institutional investors negatively moderate the positive effect of the SD on market performance.

By systematically revealing how the SD has different effects on financial and market performance, this study reconciles the debate on the SD between institutional theorists and strategy scholars. This research makes contributions to the research stream by providing reasonable explanations for conflicting conclusions. Furthermore, by introducing the overlooked perspective of financing constraints, this research identifies crucial mediating mechanisms and highlights the double-edged effect of financing constraints, enriching our understanding of financing constraints. Finally, this study investigates the moderating effects of institutional investor heterogeneity, thereby making valuable contributions to the comprehension of boundary conditions.

This study explores the role of knowledge management capabilities (KMCs) in enhancing competitive advantage and organisational performance in fashion retailing. Employing the resource-based view (RBV) and knowledge-based view (KBV) perspectives, it investigates the interplay between managing knowledge effectively and fashion products’ complexity. The goal is to provide new insights into optimising KMC for greater agility and success in the fashion retail industry.

The study analysed survey data from 322 US fashion retail professionals using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The results revealed that knowledge infrastructure capability enhanced both competitive advantage and organisational performance significantly. In contrast, knowledge process capability did not significantly affect competitive advantage, it improved organisational performance. Importantly, product complexity moderated the relationship between competitive advantage and organisational performance negatively.

This study underscores the necessity for retailers in the fashion industry to enhance their KMC to bolster competitive advantage and organisational performance, while it also acknowledges product complexity’s effect on these strategies. These insights offer actionable guidance for industry leaders to optimise knowledge management to navigate the rapidly evolving retail landscape.

This research offers novel insights into the interplay of product complexity and KMC in fashion retail and highlights the unique effects on competitive advantage and organisational performance valuable for both academia and industry.

Although research on how the downstream calculations of a patent’s profit potential influence invention renewal decisions is extensive, the impact of the upstream knowledge creation stages is overlooked. The purpose of this study is to address this theoretical vacuum by examining the intra-organizational configuration of knowledge networks and collaboration networks.

The data consist of 491 global pharmaceutical firms that patent in the USA. Drawing on patent records, the authors simultaneously construct intra-organizational knowledge networks and collaboration networks and identify network cohesion features (i.e. local and global). The authors employ panel fixed-effects models to test the hypotheses.

The results show that local knowledge cohesion and local social cohesion decrease invention renewals, while global knowledge cohesion and global social cohesion increase renewals. Moreover, the marginal effects of local and global social cohesion are stronger than those of local and global knowledge cohesion, respectively.

The hypotheses are tested using the pharmaceutical industry as a research setting, which limits the generalizability of our findings. In addition, potential formal and informal contingencies are not considered.

Despite its limitations, this study provides valuable implications. First, managers are cautioned against the adverse effects of local cohesion structures on invention renewal. Second, firms can dynamically adjust their local and global network configuration strategies to harmonize the generation of valuable inventions and the retention of good ideas.

Complementary to previous research that focused on inventions’ performance feedback, this study delves into upstream knowledge creation stages to understand invention renewals.

This study aims to investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on national digital capability, specifically differentiating the impact between FDI greenfield and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The research also investigates factors shaping digital capabilities, encompassing government transparency and absorptive capability, while exploring the mediating influence of absorptive capability in the FDI–digital capability relationship.

An econometric model has been developed to examine the interrelationship between national digital capability, FDI inflows, national absorptive capability and government transparency. The data set encompasses 55 countries over a period of nine years (2013–2021). National digital capability data is derived from the well-established index published by the World Competitive Centre (WCC). The sources of the explanatory variables align with standard practices, drawing from reputable institutions (UNCTAD and the World Bank, among others).

The findings reveal a significant positive impact of FDI, particularly in greenfield investments, on national digital capability. Government transparency and research and development (R&D) investment are crucial factors contributing to digital capabilities. Additionally, the absorptive capacity, reflected by R&D investment, also emerges as a potential moderating factor, influencing the impact of FDI inflows on digital capabilities.

The results recommend that policymakers and stakeholders should carefully consider the role of FDI, especially in greenfield investments, as a catalyst for enhancing national digital capability. The findings also underscore the significance of promoting government transparency and directing investments towards R&D to nurture digital capabilities. Moreover, understanding the mediating role of absorptive capability can inform strategies aimed at optimizing the impact of FDI on digital capabilities.

This study contributes uniquely to the existing literature by being the first to systematically explore the influence of FDI on national digital capability. Furthermore, it presents innovative empirical findings on the role of absorptive capability in enhancing the FDI impact on national digital capability, an area that remains relatively uncharted in current literature.

This study aims to explore whether and how the two potential antecedents (i.e. relationship quality at the dyadic level and network density at the network level) affect firms’ internet-interactive capability (FIIC), referring to the capability of a specific firm to communicate and interact with the relevant partner firms on the basis of internet-interactive technologies in the internet environment and, at the same time, the following influence of FIIC on collaborative activities (i.e. joint planning and joint problem-solving).

This study designed a questionnaire and collected data on-site from 400 manufacturers. SmartPLS is used to validate the research model.

The results suggest that the dyadic relationship quality and network density of the partner group are both positively connected with a firm’s FIIC. Besides, FIIC is positively related to collaborative activities with its partners.

Given the nature of our data (i.e. cross-sectional), the authors can collect longitudinal or experimental data to retest the hypotheses.

This study gives certain guidance for firms to be aware of the factors that motivate FIIC and use their FIIC to influence their employees’ collaborative activities in their relationships with partners, thereby promoting cooperation performance.

This study attempts to extend the resource-based theory based on the logic of motivation-capability by exploring the potential antecedents of FIIC and makes contributions to the current studies on the antecedents of FIIC, which provides actionable insights for firms to play the role of FIIC in interfirm interactions.