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The purpose of this paper is to address the conflicting views on the role of bottom‐up learning; this research combines the information‐processing and organizational inertia views to explore how bottom‐up learning affects both exploratory and exploitative innovations and if the effects are contingent on organizational formalization.

Data for this study are obtained through an interview survey instrument from 213 firms. The questionnaire is adopted from several previous studies on organizational learning, structure and innovation with minor translation adjust. A pilot test was conducted and necessary modifications were made to the questionnaire. Tests show that the sampling validity is not biased by non‐response bias and the measure reliability and validity are acceptable. Furthermore, Harman one‐factor and CFA tests show that the results should not be biased by common method bias. The multicollinearity is also tested and controlled during regression analysis.

The findings show that bottom‐up learning has accelerated positive effect on exploitative innovation while having an inverted U‐shaped effect on explorative innovation. Furthermore, the organizational formalization strengthens the positive effect of bottom‐up learning on exploitative innovation and the U‐shaped effect on exploratory innovation.

The paper contributes to organizational inertia and information‐processing theories by providing a complete picture on how firms built exploitative and exploratory innovations through bottom‐up learning aligned with appropriate organizational structure.

This study aims to investigate the impact of women’s representation at one hierarchical level on women’s representation above or below that level. No past research investigated these effects in the hospitality and tourism industries. The mixed results of research in other industries and across industries demand tests of curvilinearity and moderators.

Using annual equality reports, a panel data set for 2010–2019 was created for the hospitality and tourism industries. The sample of 581 organizations had up to 5,810 observations over the 10 years.

The analyses show the following effects of women’s representation: an inverted U-shape from management to non-management, a U-shape from non-management to management and a U-shape from management to the executive team, with more pronounced effect in small organizations.

To increase the number of female employees, organizations should invest their resources in hiring and retaining female managers until a gender balance is reached while managing any backlash from men. The results suggest that organizations with more than 40% of women non-management employees and 50% of women managers start `experiencing positive bottom-up dynamics. Thus, efforts need to be made to attract and retain a women’s pipeline at the non-management and management levels.

This study delivers pioneering evidence of the top-down and bottom-up phenomena in hospitality and tourism. It refines evidence of such effects found in past research conducted in other industries and across industries.

How do firms make effective strategic change when competitive advantage deteriorates fast in a dynamic environment? Based on information-processing theory and organizational inertia theory, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how bottom-up learning affects the speed and magnitude of strategic change and if these relationships are contingent on strategic flexibility.

Using data of 213 firms in China, the authors conduct an empirical test of hypotheses through a stepwise multivariate regression approach.

The empirical study suggests that resource flexibility weakens the positive relationship between bottom-up learning and the speed of strategic change while strengthens the impact of bottom-up learning on the magnitude of strategic change. In addition, coordination flexibility strengthens the positive impact of bottom-up learning on the speed and magnitude of strategic change.

The findings not only provide a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of strategic change, but also offer strong guidance for firms on how to make better use of strategic flexibility in order to benefit from bottom-up learning.

The aim of this study was to examine how manufacturing digitalization can be leveraged to promote green innovation in the digital era by investigating the effects of manufacturing digitalization on green process innovation, and thus firm performance. The authors also explored how the role of manufacturing digitalization varies with horizontal information sharing, vertical bottom-up learning and technological modularization.

Five hypotheses were examined by performing regression analyses on survey data from 334 manufacturing firms in China.

Manufacturing digitalization positively affects green process innovation, and thus firm performance. Furthermore, this positive effect is strengthened by horizontal information sharing and technological modularization and weakened by vertical bottom-up learning.

This study extends the literature rooted in the natural-resource-based view by identifying the crucial role of green process innovation and investigating the value of manufacturing digitalization for developing green capabilities in the digital era. It also contributes to this line of research by revealing contingent factors to leverage manufacturing digitalization from the information processing perspective. Furthermore, this study extends information processing theory to the digital context and identifies the interaction of organizational design (vertical bottom-up learning and horizontal information sharing) and digital investment (manufacturing digitalization).

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study investigates a variety of approaches to supply disruption risk management for achieving effective responses for resilience at the supply management subunit level (e.g. category of items). Drawing on the attention-based view of the firm, the authors model the attentional antecedents of supply resilience as (1) attentional perspectives and (2) attentional selection. Attentional perspectives focus on either supply risk sources or supply network recoverability, and both are hypothesised to have a direct positive association with supply resilience. Attentional selection is top down or bottom up when it comes to disruption detection, and these are hypothesised to moderate the association between disruption risk management perspectives and resilience.

Conducted at the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study employs a hierarchical regression analysis on a multicountry survey of 190 procurement professionals, each responding from the perspective of their own subunit area of supply responsibility.

Both attentional disruption risk management perspectives are needed to achieve supply resilience, and neither is superior in terms of achieving supply resilience. Both the efficiency of the top down and exposure to the unexpected with the bottom up are needed – to a balanced degree – for improved supply resilience.

The results encourage firms to purposefully develop their supply risk management practices, first, to include both perspectives and, second, to avoid biases in attentional selection for disruption detection. Ensuring a more balanced approach may allow firms to improve their supply resilience.

The results contribute to the understanding of the microfoundations that underpin firms' operational capabilities for supply risk and disruption management and possible attentional biases.

This paper aims to examine how trust and communication at the personal level relationships conform to trust and communication at the organizational level relationships and which role do the two different level relationships play in influencing firms’ commitment, performance and propensity to stay in long-term relationships.

A face-to-face questionnaire study was conducted using a sample of 209 in Mainland China companies, which were surveyed in nine exhibitions. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results support the bottom-up effect of interpersonal trust and communication on inter-organizational trust and communication. Interorganizational trust has a more powerful total effect on firm commitment. Interpersonal communication has a more powerful total effect on inter-organizational trust and communication and firms’ operational performance. Interpersonal communication, inter-organizational trust and communication have comparably high impacts on firms’ propensity to stay in long-term relationships.

This paper selects Mainland China as the research context and targets a single boundary spanner in each respondent firm to evaluate both the interpersonal and inter-organizational relationships. A cross-sectional approach was used.

This paper suggests that business people should pay attention to the role of human factors in a firm’s relational exchanges with SC partners and effectively use the positive effects of these factors to create relationship-building benefits.

This paper conducts cross-level research, which has been called for in recently published inter-organizational literature. It develops and provides empirical evidence for a bottom-up model from interpersonal relationships to inter-organizational relationships and identifies their impacts on organizational outcomes simultaneously.

Strategic management is traditionally seen as an exclusive managerial task rather than inclusive where accountability is reserved for top managers. However, contemporary strategy management practices increasingly pay attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) by engaging with broader internal and external stakeholders via more open business models such as ecosystems. Hence, central to our examination is the concept of openness disposition, which in the context of strategic management refers to the tendency of individuals, collectives, and managers to make strategy transparent, participatory, and/or inclusive, or look for closure. While openness in strategy is regarded as a positive means of contemporary management, fostering diversity, creativity, innovation, and empowerment, there are some researched downsides too. The purpose of this chapter is to address the openness puzzle in strategy and gain a deeper understanding of the dilemmas of bottom-up strategy initiatives, and investigate the associated dilemmas, if any in the context of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We contribute to addressing the performative effects of the dynamic expansion and contraction in openness within the SME strategy process while using the concept of openness dilemmas, tensions, and disposition. Using the Management Control Theory, this chapter will combine theory with SME practitioners’ experiences of bottom-up strategy initiatives to increase EDI in their organisations. Based on findings that emerged from a four-year longitudinal multiple case study research with 10 European SMEs, we found that bottom-up strategy exercises are more interactive. They consider a greater number of views, increase legitimacy, and EDI at the workplace, and yield more process benefits, but are time-consuming and difficult to organise that require special attention to the capability, reciprocity, and credibility dimensions.

Despite the growing belief that multilevel research is necessary to advance human resource management (HRM) understanding, there remains a lack of multilevel thinking – the application of principles for multilevel theory building. The purpose of this paper is to propose a systematic approach for multilevel HRM research.

The paper proposes an agenda for multilevel HRM research by addressing three obstacles (concerning questions, theories and methods) that impede advancement in this field.

The paper provides an inclusive definition of multilevel HRM research that serves to advance its use, and maps out a multilevel HRM research landscape that captures the various aspects of this concept. The paper identifies unanswered multilevel questions within 16 research domains and develops a systematic approach to tackle these research questions by invoking three relevant theories and methodologies.

Some of the identified research questions could not be answered due to limitations in mainstream multilevel theories and methodologies. In response, this paper proposes theories and methodologies that can address some of the multilevel HRM research questions identified in this paper.

The findings can help HRM academics working on cross-disciplinary and cross-level research problems with a clearly structured approach to what multilevel HRM research is and what steps should be taken in conducting such research.

The originality lies in the systematic approach that precisely describes multilevel HRM research, and addressing obstacles that inhibit rigorous and relevant multilevel HRM research by highlighting relevant research questions, theories and methodologies.

Drawing on the concept of resource-based theory of the firm; the purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of firms’ strategic approaches on the firm performance via indirect effect using a multilevel, bottom-up approach.

Using the survey method, the present study obtains data from 104 diversified manufacturing firms and analyzes the bottom-up effect of firms’ strategic approach on efficient resource allocation using Mplus.

Given the prevailing conditions, the study found that the motive of most firms is growth rather than risk mitigation or collaboration in the manufacturing sector of Pakistan. Furthermore, the study found that the bottom-level employees’ information asymmetry has a significant impact on the strategic resource allocation decision, which can lead to resource allocation inefficiency.

Despite making a unique contribution, the present study has few limitations requiring researchers’ attention to in the forthcoming. These include a low amount of data, self-reporting technique and failure to include all the possible reason that could cause resource allocation inefficiency.

The present research has potential applications for managers of the manufacturing industry. First, the study alerts managers about the challenges of resource allocation. At the same time, this study provides critical implication for managing bottom-level employees.

The current study has made a sizable impression in the literature of resource-based theory of the firm by recommending a model that augments the theoretical foundation of strategic management of the firm. So, closely considering these insights would be helping for the firms for allocating resources efficiently in the manufacturing industry.