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Elite interviewing is a well-established area of interview research methods. Nevertheless, the actual casting of an “elite” has been generally conducted in a prima facie or broad manner. A consideration of entrepreneurs and owner-managers as “elites” has been less profiled and received less attention, therefore the paper views the entrepreneurs and owner-managers as constituting a form of “local elite” within given and varying sectorial, regional and community boundaries. The authors argue that a consideration of entrepreneurs as “local elites” and transferring knowledge from an elite interviewing perspective may strongly support scholarly research in the entrepreneurship field.

The study conducts a comprehensive narrative literature review of elite interviewing literature and transfers key methodological insights to the entrepreneurship field. The methodological contribution based on literature is complemented by experiences and observations from an extensive inductive interview study with over 30 entrepreneurs of German manufacturing Small and Medium-sized Entities (SMEs) and are used to reflect on, and refine, interview research approaches with entrepreneurs.

The reflections and discussions in this paper provide valuable insights for other researchers conducting research in entrepreneurship domains regarding the power dynamics of negotiating access, procedural issues of interviews and thereby enhancing the quality of data.

The contribution to knowledge is mainly of a methodological nature. While the paper takes a novel act of recasting elite interviewing in the SME and entrepreneurship context, the paper methodologically contributes to the entrepreneurship and elite interview literature thereby facilitating higher quality interviews.

This study explores family firms' ex ante conflict management strategies to preserve their socioemotional wealth (SEW) under predictable conflict through the succession process. Specifically, the authors examine how family firms leverage the insurance-like benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to mitigate the threat of foreseeable family feuds among the sons of firms' family heads.

The authors focus on the charitable donations pledged by Korean family business groups (chaebols). Using the data of 62 chaebols with generalized least squares (GLS) models, the authors analyze 711 observations from 2005 to 2017.

The authors find a positive relationship between the number of sons of a family firm's head and the firm's CSR activities such as spending on charitable donations. Furthermore, the number of daughters of heads in executive positions strengthens such a positive relationship, whereas the number of business and political marriage ties weakens this relationship.

Family heads of family businesses may leverage CSR activities and marriage ties to elite families interchangeably to ward off negative impacts from foreseeable family feuds and preserve their SEW. Thus, a policy-based incentive for CSR that encourages more family heads to use CSR as insurance would serve the public interest.

The authors contribute to the family business literature by suggesting that CSR activities can be used by family firms as an instrument to mitigate foreseeable damage to the SEW caused by family feuds. The authors also shed new light on CSR research by finding that marriage ties to elite families may reduce the strategic value of CSR activities.

The purpose of this study is to analyze interlocking directorate (ID) networks of family and nonfamily firms (FFs) in Chile, Mexico and Peru.

Social network analysis methodology allowed us to analyze the position of FFs within the structure of IDs at the local and transnational levels.

FFs tend to have a higher proportion of board interlocks to other firms, especially FFs. In addition, FFs are more likely to occupy a brokerage position in national IDs structures. Finally, they also have a higher proportion of interlocks to other domestic firms in and nearby geographic areas. Thus, they create transnational networks.

This paper finds evidence that supports three of the premises of interorganizational familiness literature (Lester and Cannella, 2006). FFs are part of national as well as international corporate networks more than other types of firms, through interlocking directorships.

Analizar redes de consejeros de empresas familiares y no familiares en Chile, México y Perú.

El análisis de redes sociales nos permitió analizar la posición de empresas familiares dentro de la estructura de redes a nivel local y transnacional.

Las empresas familiares tienen un nivel más alto de entrecruzamientos con otras empresas, especialmente con las familiares. Además, las empresas familiares son mas propensas a ocupar posiciones de intermediación en las estructuras nacionales de redes. Finalmente, también tienen más entrecruzamientos con otras empresas nacionales y en regiones geográficas cercanas por lo que crean redes transnacionales.

Encontramos evidencia que apoya los tres pilares de la literatura de familiaridad interorganizacional (Lester y Cannella 2006). Las empresas familiares son parte de una red nacional e internacional más que otros tipos de empresas a través de las interconexiones de posiciones en consejos.

Analisar redes de diretores de empresas familiares e não familiares no Chile, México e Peru.

A análise das redes sociais permitiu analisar a posição das empresas familiares na estrutura das redes a nível local e transnacional.

As empresas familiares têm um nível mais elevado de ligações cruzadas com outras empresas, especialmente as empresas familiares. Além disso, é mais provável que as empresas familiares ocupem posições intermediárias nas estruturas das redes nacionais. Por último, têm também mais referências cruzadas com outras empresas nacionais e em regiões geográficas próximas, pelo que criam redes transnacionais.

Encontramos evidências que sustentam os três pilares da literatura sobre familiaridade interorganizacional (Lester e Cannella 2006). As empresas familiares fazem parte de uma rede nacional e internacional mais do que outros tipos de empresas através do interconexões de cargos nos conselhos de administração.

Despite the existing conceptual analysis on the impact of trade unions on employees' welfare and the wider economy, the mediating effect of political party orientation (i.e., right, centre and left) on income inequality remains under researched. In this paper, the authors empirically explore the relationship between the nature of political party orientation, trade unions and income inequality.

The authors use three different measures of income inequality and dummy variables that capture government party orientation with respect to economic policy for a panel of 17 OECD economies over the period 2000–2016. The authors employ a panel fixed effects approach and the Driscoll and Kraay's (1998) nonparametric covariance matrix estimator.

The empirical evidence indicates that strong unions and, to some extent, left party governance, are fundamental institutional elements to combat rising levels of income inequality whilst countries dominated by right-wing political parties appear to exacerbate income inequality. The results pertaining to the impact of centrist parties on income inequality are ambiguous suggesting that a potential fragmentation may exist in their political approach.

The evidence generated can have significant policy ramifications in alleviating rising levels of income inequality as well in relation to the declining unionization rates observed across advanced economies.

Relationships are a critical success factor for business operations across markets with dominant Chinese culture, like Taiwan. The intersection of a high-quality institutional environment and a traditional Chinese cultural background in Taiwan provides a unique setting for exploring different types of relational mechanisms and ensuing renqing practices (i.e. reciprocal exchange of favors with empathy). The purpose of this paper is to examine when, where and how Taiwanese high-performance organizations manage and deploy interorganizational renqing across their business relationship portfolios. Answering these questions can help build a theory of interorganizational renqing and advance interorganizational reciprocity theorization more generally.

This research is motivated by two key research questions. First is related to how renqing givers understand renqing in the context of their organizations and their interorganizational business relationship portfolios. Second, whether organizations prefer a neutral renqing balance, a renqing debt or a renqing surplus is another point of interest. The study is based on interviews with upper echelon elite informants at six high-performing Taiwanese organizations with business relationship portfolios worldwide.

It is found that interorganizational renqing is deployed as a hybrid resource, taking on the functions of both an investment and a type of insurance against risk. Two notable differences between interorganizational and interpersonal renqing are also noted. First, the social exchange norm aspect of renqing points to salient social exchange norms also in interorganizational exchanges. This confirms the importance of understanding not only the regulative and normative dimensions of business relationships, as a type of institution, but also the cognitive dimensions and underlying institutional logics. Second, this study shows that unlike at the interpersonal level, the notion of renqing debt is not common at the interorganizational level – at least not within high-performance organizations with market leader positions.

This study explores interorganizational renqing practices and their strategic deployment through the use of “accessing” and “embedding” relational mechanisms. The study also adds to the poorly understood nature of interorganizational reciprocity and provides support for developing a theory of interorganizational renqing, as a form of interorganizational reciprocity within a Chinese cultural context.

This study aims to examine how the prestige of audit committee (AC) chairpersons influences earnings management.

The sample contains 1,973 firm-year observations of French listed firms for the period 2007–2018. The authors examine the status of AC chairs and CEOs by focusing on the French business elite system. This study tests the association between AC chairs’ (relative) status and the level of earnings management using measures of accrual earnings management and real earnings management (REM).

The results of this study do not show that high-status AC chairs constrain accruals manipulation. However, the results provide evidence that they play a key role in constraining REM. High-status AC chairs are more likely to enhance the monitoring of this type of manipulation, given their thorough knowledge and understanding of the firm’s business environment and practices. This study also finds evidence that AC chairs with a status higher than CEOs are associated with lower levels of REM. The results suggest that prestigious AC chairs influence lower status CEOs’ strategic decisions.

This study demonstrates that high-status AC chairs play an important role in detecting and constraining deviations from normal business practices. The results have substantial implications for boards, which will benefit from an understanding of how the appointment of high-status chairs affects financial reporting quality.

This study revisits the discourse on the neoliberalization of business schools and explores how accreditation-linked institutional pressures catalyze cultural change that adversely impact academic labor and academic subjectivities in the Global South.

This study is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with academics from elite business schools in India.

This study shows how academics encounter institutional pressures in Indian business schools. Three major themes emerged from the data: (1) the conception of the ideal academic that existed before accreditation, (2) how the conception of the ideal academic was fundamentally transformed during and after accreditation, and (3) the challenges academics experienced in achieving the performance targets introduced by accreditation-linked institutional pressures.

This study offers two contributions to the extant literature on business schools located in the Global South: (1) it illustrates how organizational changes within business schools in India are structured by accreditation-linked institutional pressures coming from the Global North, and (2) it adds to the growing body of work on neoliberal governmentality by highlighting the implications of accreditation-liked institutional pressures on academic subjectivities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore elites' prevalence in the process of participatory budgeting (PB) in a Ukrainian municipality.

The paper draws on the elite control and capture literature to examine the occurrence of unintended consequences resulting from the process of PB. Data for this case study are derived from document analysis and semi-structured interviews.

This study demonstrates how the involvement of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) promoted PB in a Ukrainian municipality. In the process of orienting politicians and administrators to PB, its normative benefits tend to be prioritised, whilst very little attention has been paid to making inhabitants aware of their role in the process of participatory decision-making. Although PB is intended to propagate good governance and accountability, it has in fact turned out to be a means of promoting corruption and furthering the personal interests of rent-seeking actors.

The paper demonstrates how elites can capture and control PB in the context of emerging economies, thereby preventing its propagated benefits of ensuring equality, justice and emancipation in local communities from being realised.

Exploring PB in Ukraine, the authors urge that caution should be exercised with regard to the wholesale adoption of externally/NGO-propagated ideas. Each emerging economy context is distinct, and an appreciation of this uniqueness is key to the success of PB reforms in different countries.

This paper aims to determine whether policy uncertainty caused by institutional decay in countries with populist rulers influences the internationalization decision of emerging market firms (EMFs).

The study used binary logit analysis on firms from Latin American countries undertaking cross-border greenfield investment projects.

The results suggest that internationalization decision is demotivated by policy uncertainty generated by populist chief executives and promoted by that of political parties.

This study uses populist rhetoric to describe policy uncertainty due to chief executives and ruling parties, which influences internationalization decision by increasing anticipated transaction costs. This inquiry identifies populism as a variable that influences EMFs to internationalize, while empirically testing the claim of theoretical scholarship that populism reconfigured the sociopolitical and institutional forces that shape the world’s business. This study further advances institutional theory by offering a fresh perspective on the influence of home instead of host-country institutions on the internationalization motivation of firms due to institutional decay caused by populist regimes.

This paper aims to investigate the prevalence of corruption in Ghana to understand how and why it has turned public procurement into a mere money-making scheme instead of a means to provide needed public goods and services.

The study focuses on Ghana as a case study and mobilizes the monetization of politics lenses. Data are collected via interviews with key officials across the procurement sector (including the government, donors and civil society), documents, documentaries and news articles.

The findings suggest that the increasing costs of elections and political financing coupled with the costs of vote-buying, which has become informally institutionalized, intensify corruption practices and, consequently, turns public procurement into a mere source of cash for political ends. Political appointments and legalized loopholes facilitate this by helping to nullify the safeguard accounting and other control institutions are designed to provide. Likewise, enduring poverty and rising inequality “force” citizens into a vote-buying culture which distorts democratic premises that may drive out unscrupulous politicians; thus, perpetuating capture schemes. Civil society's efforts to remedy these have had little success, and corruption and inequality remain rife.

The main practical implication of the study lies in the need for a gradual demonetization of elections, and the consideration of the fundamental function of public procurement as a policy instrument embedded in economic, social, cultural and environmental plans. Additionally, given the connectedness of the various corruption issues raised, a comprehensive system-based approach in dealing with them would be more effective than a piecemeal approach targeting each issue/problem in isolation.

While extant literature has examined the issue of endemic corruption in developing countries using state capture, few have attempted to explain why it remains enduring, particularly in public procurement. This study, therefore, contributes to the literature on corruption and state capture theoretically and empirically by drawing on monetization of politics from political science to explain why corruption and state capture endure in certain contexts (with Ghana as an illustrative example) which reduce public procurement to a cash-milking scheme.