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In an increasingly turbulent and competitive environment, open innovation could be critical for a firm’s success, favoring organizational flexibility and accelerating innovation processes. However, sharing innovation projects with external partners often requires changes in traditional organizational behavior and visions of CEOs. The purpose of this paper is to theorize and empirically verify how the CEO turnover and some socially relevant characteristics of the old and the new CEO may impact firms’ propensity toward open innovation under an integrated agency-resource dependence view and social identity perspective.

The empirical analysis was carried out on 264 companies drawn from 16 developed European markets included in the S&P Europe 350 Dow Jones index over the years 2006-2015. To test the predictions, the authors adopted regression analysis by employing the panel two-stages least squares model and the ordinary least squares econometric model.

Consistently with the predictions, the authors found that CEO turnover stimulates open innovation. Particularly, the results suggest that the organizational identity rationale may motivate a divergent propensity between insider and outsider new CEOs, with outsiders more prone to open innovation. The higher tendency of new outsider CEOs to undertake innovation projects jointly with external organizations prevails also within firms that experienced a long tenure of the former CEO, thereby suggesting that a new outsider CEO appears able to renovate corporate strategic directions also in highly orthodox organizational cultures.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that theorizes why CEO turnover might impact the propensity of the firm toward open innovation. The authors use an integrated agency-resource dependence perspective, and the results from the empirical analysis mostly support the predictions. Moreover, the authors adopt the social identity theory to show that the organizational identification of the CEO matters in the decision of engaging in open innovation.

This paper attempts to examine the activity and involvement of board of directors in internationalization activities of firms in emerging markets, by evaluating the resource provisioning roles of interlocks provided by board of directors, and the frequency of board meetings. We demonstrate that the effectiveness of board involvement is contingent upon the levels of family ownership in firms since family ownership could impact the firm’s ability to utilize the presence of different types of board members.

The authors test our hypotheses on a sample of listed Indian companies, extracted from the Prowess database published by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a database of the financial performance of Indian companies. On a panel of 3,133 firm years of 605 unique Indian firms with foreign investments, over a time period of 2006–2017, the authors apply different estimation techniques.

The results demonstrate that both board meeting frequency and director interlocks are instrumental in supporting internationalization activities in emerging market firms. However, family ownership moderates the role of insider and independent interlocks on internationalization investments in different ways; the authors find that interlocks provided by independent directors support internationalization activities in family firms, whereas those provided by insider directors do not. Further, the study also finds that board meetings are less effective in internationalization of family firms.

The authors conclude that family firms aiming at international diversification require to develop more connected and networked independent directors to enable internationalization in firms. While independent director interlocks enhance the international investments, it is also useful to know that board meetings are ineffective in utilizing the resources in family firms. This points to the possibility that family firms should device mechanisms to integrate family meetings with board meetings so that they can utilize the within-family processes to aid in their internationalization decisions.

The study contributes to resource dependence theory by understanding its limiting role in family firms. Theoretically, it helps delineate the limiting resource provision role of the insider directors vis-à-vis independent directors. The authors argue that the resource provision role of insider director interlocks does not effectively help in internationalization in comparison to independent director interlocks in family-dominated firms. Consequently, the study shows the limiting role of resource provision and utilization by family-owned firms in comparison to non-family-owned firms.

This study examines the relationship between board capital, including human and social capital, and corporate innovation. We propose two hypotheses: that a board with a higher level of human and social capital, respectively, is expected to have a higher level of innovation. To test these hypotheses, we use data from different sources, including SEC EDGARD-10k, Noah Stoffman, and S&P 500 Capital IQ for US public firms from all industries from 2000 to 2018. Four different innovation measurements are used to proxy for innovation: R&D, patents, citations, and number of new products. We use directors' level of education and industry experience to proxy for board human capital. The directors' social networks and interlocking ties are used to proxy for board social capital. We use fixed effect regressions to test the hypotheses and two-stage least square (2SLS) regressions to address endogeneity issues. We find that boards with higher levels of human capital are highly associated with corporate innovation in terms of citations. The findings imply that firms should hire directors with higher education and industry experience if they wish to increase their innovation.

The M&A literature lacks coherence and consistency when explaining the role of CEO power in influencing post-acquisition firm performance in both theoretical and empirical terms. This study uses meta-analytic techniques to quantitatively synthesize and evaluate the impact of 11 CEO power constructs (CEO duality; compensation; ownership; founder CEO; acquisition experience; functional area experience; outside directorship; elite education; CEO celebrity; age; and tenure) on acquiring firms’ post-acquisition performance. Results of 85 independent studies show that CEO ownership, functional area experience, and tenure are significantly positive predictors for better acquisition performance. At the same time, CEO duality and CEO elite education are significantly negative predictors of different measures of acquisition performance. These findings indicate the importance of integrating different theories to enhance our understanding of the nature of strategic leadership in acquisition performance.

This study aims to combine two fraud-related streams of the literature on guanxi and overconfidence into an integrated framework, which is the fraud triangle, to interpret the mechanism of fraud commission and detection.

A bivariate probit model with Partial Observability (POBi Probit) is applied. Moreover, the POBi Probit model is adjusted to the Chinese context. The China-specific POBi Probit model is constructed using data of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2014, with a total of 15,109 firm-year observations.

Overconfidence induces fraud commission and worsens fraud detection; overconfidence mediates the relationship between fraud and guanxi; the “white side” of guanxi comes from alumni networks, while the “dark side” is derived from relatives-based networks; overconfidence induces fraud commission in accounting and disclosure and benefits the detection of disclosure frauds. Guanxi suppresses fraud commission in management and disclosure, however, it worsens fraud detection given fraud in management and disclosure; overconfidence induces fraud commission in both state-owned enterprises (SOE) and non-SOEs, and benefits fraud detection in SOEs. Guanxi suppresses fraud commission and worsens fraud detection in SOEs and city-owned firms.

There are two drawbacks of the partial observable bivariate probit (POBi-Probit) method that must be mentioned here. On one hand, the ex ante variable selection is one of the most difficult parts of applying the POBi-Probit model and different variables are included in different studies. On the other hand, the POBi-Probit model might not converge if too many variables are included. Thus, many widely accepted factors can be included in the model. Thus, this study initially sets the POBi-Probit model based mainly on Khanna et al. (2015) and then adjusts the model for the Chinese context (e. g. considering government ownership) according to Yiu et al. (2018) and Zhang (2018) and the local study of Meng et al. (2019). Considering the observability of fraud, on one hand, the observability of fraud commission is a widely accepted limitation, especially when accounting opacity comes across with regulatory efficiency (Yiu et al. (2018). On the other hand, the observability of relationships is another obstacle to this study. Future studies can go further by revealing the presently unobservable relationships using Big Data technology.

This paper theoretically and practically contributes to the literature on both corporate fraud and corporate governance. Theoretically, by introducing integrated principal-agent resource-reliance theory (IPRT) and upper echelon theory (UET), this paper broadens the framework of fraud triangle theory (FTT) and testifies the availability of the broaden FTT in the transitional and emerging-market context of China. Practically, this paper provides evidence that guanxi and overconfidence are two of the factors affecting corporate fraud. Thus, this paper provides a governance approach opposing corporate fraud in China, which may help the other emerging economies in transition.

Drawing upon the resource dependence theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine how the board capital diversity influences the explorative innovation of firms, attempting to resolve the inconsistent empirical findings of the effect of outside directors on firm’s R & D strategy.

Using a sample of Korean manufacturing firms which consider R & D capability to be one of their core competencies, the study uses negative binomial model to test the influence of board capital diversity on explorative innovation.

Results support the value of moderate level of board diversity hypothesis by demonstrating that board capital diversity shows an inverted U-shaped relationship with explorative innovation. The results also suggest that CEO ownership positively moderates the relationship between board capital diversity and firms’ innovative performance.

Mainstream research has focussed on the directors’ monitoring role based on agency theory, overlooking the more positive resource provision role. Taking on the concepts of board capital and exploration, the study introduces the notion that outside directors should be selected with a view as vehicles for bringing in valuable expertise and social linkages for the firm’s explorative innovation.

Despite agency theory and resource dependence theory suggesting that – albeit through different mechanisms – board independence positively influences firm internationalization, empirical evidence on this relationship has been mixed and inconclusive. Based on this, the purpose of the present study is twofold: first, to analyze and synthesize the existing empirical literature and, second, to develop new theoretical insights on the effect of board independence on firm internationalization.

The authors used advanced meta-analytic techniques that allowed them, first, to synthesize the existing empirical literature on the board independence–firm internationalization relationship and, second, to examine the effect of several contingencies on such relationship. This study relies on data from 87 primary studies (published and unpublished) carried out in multiple academic fields in the period 1998–2021 and covering 49 countries.

The results confirm the established agency and resource-dependence arguments, suggesting that higher board independence is associated with greater firm internationalization. Moreover, the results show that the focal relationship is moderated by home-country formal and informal institutional factors, and in particular, the legal protection of minority shareholders and family business legitimacy. The authors do not find evidence that CEO duality and board size moderate the focal relationship or that board independence has a stronger effect on breadth than on depth of internationalization.

This study lies at the intersection of the literatures on corporate governance and firm internationalization and on comparative corporate governance of the multinational firm, shedding further light on the role played by institutional environments in determining the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms.

This study aims to examine the relationship between board capital and firm performance in the Chinese tourism industry.

The study’s sample includes firms from the Chinese hotel, air transportation/travel and catering industries. This study explores the governance environment in tourism industries. This study estimates three dimensions of the board, including education, expertise and directors interlock. These dimensions are further grouped as human capital (i.e. education and expertise), social capital (interlocks) and board capital (sum of social and human capital). Ordinary least square regressions with multiple robustness tests are used to investigate the effect of board capital on firm value in Chinese listed tourism firms during 2005–2018.

This study finds that board capital positively impacts firm performance in its dimensions of human and social capital. This study also highlights the two important ownership contexts, namely, institutional investors and state-ownership, that shape the board capital-firm performance association in the Chinese tourism industry.

The findings suggest that board capital plays a significant role in corporate decisions. The results illustrate that higher board capital improves both governance mechanisms and resource provision roles of the board, resulting in higher firm value. The results further offer implications for managers and shareholders of tourism firms when electing directors as shareholders’ representatives.

The study has two important contributions. First, it extends the prior literature of firm value by considering the board’s human and social dimensions in the tourism sector. Second, contrary to prior research on board, this study takes three facets of board capital, education, expertise and interlocks that improve governance mechanisms and bring new resources in the shape of skills, knowledge and expertise.

Although resource dependence theory (RDT) has substantially deepened the understanding of the function and role of boards, no systematic review of this body of work has yet been undertaken. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize prior research on the strategically relevant resources provided by board members to their organization in the light of RDT and indicate avenues for future research.

The review covers 79 research articles from 1978 to 2016 dealing with the resource provision of boards of directors.

Board capital research most often assumes a positive, linear relationship between board capital, resource provision and ultimately firm-level performance outcomes. This tendency tends to exclude from view the possibility of important trade-offs relevant to both theory and practice. Future research will need to incorporate more complex models that take into consideration nonlinear and curvilinear effects. The authors outline opportunities to advance board research by refining the methodological techniques employed.

By recommending investigation of the important trade-offs inherent in board composition, the authors seek to inspire future research that offers practical guidance for improving the effectiveness of corporate boards.