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This study aims to distinguish how unabsorbed and absorbed slack affects market and financial performance via proactive and reactive supply chain resilience (SCRES), particularly under varying conditions of organizational ambidexterity.

By collecting survey data from 277 Chinese manufacturers, we verify the conceptual model applying structural equation modeling.

Proactive SCRES mediates the positive impacts of both unabsorbed and absorbed slack on market and financial performance, whereas reactive SCRES mediates only their positive effects on financial performance. High levels of organizational ambidexterity strengthen the indirect effects of both types of slack on market and financial performance via proactive SCRES, but not when mediated by reactive SCRES.

We introduce a new theoretical perspective to view fits (as mediation) between the use of unabsorbed/absorbed slack in different ways when switching attentions to proactive or reactive SCRES, both of which can be improved through organizational ambidexterity. This study offers novel insights into how managers can switch attentions between proactive and reactive SCRES knowing when to appropriately use unabsorbed/absorbed slack for which purposes, and the use of different learning modes (explorative vs exploitative).

Building on the value chain model, this study develops a theoretical framework to illustrate the associations between digitalization and firms’ value chain activities from three typical dimensions including R&D investment, manufacturing cost efficiency and marketing cost efficiency. The roles of unabsorbed and absorbed slack resources in their relationships are also examined.

Based upon a large sample of Chinese manufacturing firms from 2016 to 2020 and then employing text mining-based analysis and the multiple regression model, this study empirically tests the effects of digitalization on firms’ value chain activities and how these effects are moderated by slack resources.

The findings show that increase in digitalization leads to an increase in firms’ R&D investment and a decline in manufacturing cost, but results in an increase in marketing cost. In addition, the unabsorbed slack resources and absorbed slack resources play differentiated roles in the associations between digitalization and these value chain activities.

This study contributes to the debate on how digitalization facilitates or hinders the value increment by employing the value chain model and further analyzing the impacts of digitalization on three value chain dimensions: R&D investment, manufacturing cost efficiency and marketing cost efficiency. This study extends the possibility that the influences of digitalization on different value chain dimensions may vary depending on some key contingency factors such as unabsorbed and absorbed slack resources.

The affordable loss (AL) heuristic, as one crucial sub-dimension of effectuation, delineates the maximum level of investment entrepreneurs are ready to lose in a worst-case scenario. Conflicting conceptualizations remain regarding whether entrepreneurs’ psychological traits matter for AL. Based on the narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry perspective, this study investigates the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) narcissism and AL behaviors.

Using data collected from the CEOs and paired vice presidents at 122 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in mainland China, the authors intend to further explore the association between psychological traits, especially CEO narcissism and AL behaviors under environment and resource constraints (e.g. perceived uncertainty and slack resources).

The findings show that CEO admiration-based narcissism is positively related to AL behaviors in the firm. Furthermore, when firms hold more slack resources, narcissistic admiration has a stronger positive association with AL; while when the environment becomes more uncertain, narcissistic admiration has a weaker positive association with AL. In contrast, CEO rivalry-based narcissism is negatively related to AL behaviors in the firm. When the environment becomes more uncertain, narcissistic rivalry has a stronger negative association with AL.

This article contributes to trait-based effectuation research and suggests that individual psychological traits affect AL behaviors at the firm level, though the patterns of the relationship vary with both the type of narcissism and contexts.

This study aims to examine whether exploitative and exploratory overseas R&D have independent and significant effects on emerging economy multinational enterprises' (EMNEs’) innovation performance and whether top management team (TMT) nationality diversity and openness have a moderating effect on these relationships.

This study analyzes data collected from Chinese-listed manufacturing enterprises for 2007 to 2018.

Empirical results show that both exploitative and exploratory overseas R&D can help improve EMNEs' innovation performance. The authors further find that TMT nationality diversity and TMT openness strengthen the aforementioned relationships.

This study presents the first empirical evidence showing whether and when exploitative and exploratory overseas R&D have independent and heterogeneous effects on EMNEs' innovation performance.

In recent years, the trend of hiring external CEOs has become increasingly prevalent. However, the impact of these CEOs' prior experiences in different firms on the innovation of their successor firms has not received sufficient attention. Drawing on upper echelons theory and management power theory, this study explores the non-linear relationship between prior CEO experience and breakthrough innovation, as well as the moderating effects of different types of CEO power.

We selected China’s A-share listed manufacturing companies as samples and used zero-inflated Poisson regression to verify the hypothesis. We employed instrumental variable methodology to address potential endogeneity issues and conducted robustness tests by substituting core variables, changing measures, adding additional control variables, and shrinking the core variables.

We conclude that there exists an inverted U-shaped relationship between prior CEO experience and breakthrough innovation. Furthermore, we analyze the effects of formal and informal CEO power on the role of prior CEO experience in breakthrough innovation and find that the inverted U-shaped relationship is contingent upon the level of CEO power.

The findings extend research on CEO succession and offer a reference for firms aiming to hire external CEOs with prior experience to foster breakthrough innovation.