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The purpose of this paper is to document the relationship between intra-group coopetition and subsidiaries' innovation performance and the moderating impact of the intensity of external competition.

Data were collected from 75 subsidiaries in China through a questionnaire survey of their R&D and general managers. The total number of individual respondents was 205. We tested our hypothesis by using ordinary least squares regression.

Intra-group cooperation was found to promote a subsidiary's performance in product and process innovation. Intra-group competition was found to have a U-shaped relationship with product and process innovation. Intra-group cooperation strengthens the U-shaped relationship between intra-group competition and process innovation.

This study involved firms from more than one industry. Studies of specific industries might reach more specific conclusions. And all of the data were self-reported by the managers of the firms concerned. Future studies would be well-advised to consider more objective data describing pairs of parent firms and subsidiaries.

Subsidiaries ought to build their internal networks to cooperate with each other. That can bring significant advantages in terms of information and synergy in innovation. Subsidiaries are also suggested to take full advantage of the opportunities that intra-group competition brings.

This study is the first one to explore coopetition phenomenon in the context of business group. By taking Chinese business group subsidiaries as the research samples, this research not only extends the coopetition research but also reveals that cooperation and competition are co-existed and exert influence in subsidiaries.

Too often leaders of multi‐business groups struggle with how to best add value at this level of management. CEOs and business group leaders can improve the odds of success in these roles, and better retain potential successors, by answering three questions: Is there a clear business case for grouping these businesses? Given a clear business case, what are the most important roles the group executive should play? Given these roles, what are the key skills I should look for in each group executive? Drawing from interviews, existing literature, and their own extensive experience, the authors provide frameworks and perspectives that help top executives answer these questions.

Peer groups have been established as one of the best tools for leadership learning for family business leaders. However, these groups remain underutilized because business leaders disengage and voluntarily create turnover from these groups. This study explores the perceptions of family business leaders concerning the usefulness, growth opportunities, and equity within peer learning groups to determine what factors impact retention in these groups.

Two surveys were administered to 321 family business owners and leaders through three large family business centers in different regions of the United States. Leaders were grouped into those who left versus those who remained in a peer learning group. Data were collected about their learning experiences and why they remained or voluntarily left a group.

Lack of equity was found to be the main determinant of turnover in peer learning groups. Peer learning groups need to consist of business owners along the same trajectory, career stage, and in similar stages of growing a family business in order to equally contribute to the group’s learning. Business leaders who are in peer learning groups they report as being equal also report that their groups are more helpful, trustworthy and create better-quality learning experiences.

Peer groups are important for peer-to-peer learning and continued education for family business leaders. Having a group of peers whom have dealt with similar issues can help business leaders overcome problems successfully. However, little research exists that examines what factors make these peer groups successful.

We combine insights from the strategic management and international business literatures in order to explore the moderating role of business group characteristics on the link between innovation and internationalization in the context of the pharmaceutical sector in India. We test our three hypotheses on a sample of 219 Indian pharmaceutical firms affiliated with business groups, over a five-year period (2005–2010) in a panel of 1,096 firm-year observations. Results indicate that, contrary to our contention, research expenditure is negatively associated with export intensity, implying that firms in the Indian pharmaceutical sector may face a trade-off between investing in innovation and international expansion. As expected, business group characteristics significantly impact the strength of the relationship between innovation and internationalization. Theoretical and practitioner implications are discussed.

Business groups often contain banks or near banks that can protect group firms from economic shocks. A group bank subordinate to other group firms can become an “organ bank” that selflessly bails out distressed group firms and anticipates a government bailout. A group bank subordinating other group firms can extend loans to suppress their risk taking to default risk, preserving risk-averse low-productivity zombie firms. Actual business groups can fall between these polar cases. Subordinated group banks magnify risk taking; subordinating group banks suppress risk taking; yet both distortions promote business group firms’ survival. Limiting intragroup income and risk shifting, severing banks from business groups, articulating Business Group Law, or dismantling business groups may mitigate both distortions but also limits business groups’ internal markets, which are thought to be important where external markets work poorly.

We argue that the United States has experienced a decline of economic, political, and military power since the 1970s, and that this decline can be attributed in part to the fragmentation of the American corporate elite. In the mid-twentieth century, this elite – constrained by a highly legitimate state, a relatively powerful labor movement, and an active financial community – adopted a moderate and pragmatic strategy for dealing with the political issues of the day. The “enlightened self-interest” of corporate leaders contributed to a strong economy with a relatively low level of inequality and an expanding middle class. This arrangement broke down in the 1970s, however, as increasing foreign competition and two energy crises led to spiraling inflation and lower profits. In response, the corporate elite waged an aggressive (and ultimately successful) assault on government regulation and organized labor. This success had the paradoxical effect of undermining the elite’s own sources of cohesion, however. Having won the war against government and labor, the group no longer needed to be organized. The marginalization of the commercial banks and the acquisition wave of the 1980s exacerbated the fragmentation of the corporate elite. No longer able to act collectively by the 1990s, the corporate elite was now incapable of addressing issues of business and societal-wide concern. Although increasingly able to gain individual favors from the state, the elite’s collective weakness has contributed to the political gridlock and social decay that plague American society in the twenty-first century.

Pakistan has experienced financial liberalization with rapid ups and downs in economic growth due to domestic issues during the last 2 decades. Motivated by inconclusive and conflicting time-driven findings about the performance of the business groups, this study examines the performance of business groups in Pakistan for a relatively long period from 2003 to 2018.

The study uses 3,821 firm-year observations from non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). For the estimation, pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) with industry- and year fixed effects and two-step system generalized methods of moments (GMM) are used.

The study finds that group-affiliated firms outperform independent firms in accounting performance, while underperform in market performance. The outperformance is mainly driven by medium-sized business groups, while underperformance is driven by small and large business groups. Further, the study documents that the underperformance in terms of market performance of firms affiliated with small and large groups is greater before the economic downturn, while outperformance in terms of the accounting measure of firms affiliated with medium-sized groups is greater during the economic downturn. These findings support our time-driven concerns. Overall, the authors' findings are consistent with institutional and transaction cost theories.

Business groups are important channels to reduce market inefficiencies. Business groups may enhance the affiliated firms' resources and resistance capacity through active utilization of the internal capital market, specifically when market conditions are not ideal for affiliates. However, effective utilization of internal capital markets depends on group size. Therefore, investors should deliberate on the size of business groups and diversification within business groups.

The authors extend the literature by providing fresh evidence related to the performance of business groups in the Pakistani context while accounting for the role of the size of business groups.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of business group characteristics on firm‐operating performance in Chile.

Using a multiple regression model, this study examines the effect of business group characteristics (interlocking of directors, management concentration, and business group specialization) on operating performance (ROA growth) in a sample of 104 publicly traded Chilean firms.

It is documented that, except for interlocking of directors, the two other business group characteristics (management concentration and business group specialization) are significantly related to the operating performance of firms belonging to Chilean business groups. These findings suggest that Chilean business groups would improve or deteriorate the performance of their affiliated firms modifying its characteristics.

Too little is known about the effect of business group characteristics on firm‐operating performance in Latin American countries such as Chile because there is no research that analyses its impact on firm‐operating performance in the region.

Viewing business groups as institutionally embedded agents, the purpose of this paper is to theoretically addresses the distinctions between institutional embeddedness renewal and overembeddedness, and empirically analyzes the proposed effecting mechanisms in the context of China.

The paper predicts the specific performance effects accompanying the collective and local processes governing systematic institutional embeddedness phenomena, and examine the proposed hypotheses using a real experimental setting of Chinese business groups during the period of enterprise reform and stock market liberalization, employing data on 38 business groups in the textile industry from 2000 to 2008.

The results of the econometric analysis support an optimistic view that business groups can strategically renew their embeddedness even in the late stages of market-oriented institutional transition as in China. Specifically: first, the positive effect of the self-enhancing isomorphic pressure around both the new and the old institutions implies the relative dominance of systematic institutional embeddedness renewal within business group communities; second, at the local level, institutional strategies promoting the market orientation of adopted organizational forms bring about not only positive but also negative effects, suggesting the need to manage a simultaneous significant risk of overembeddedness.

The paper establishes an institutional strategy framework to predict potential effects associated with systematic institutional embeddedness phenomena, such as institutional embeddedness renewal and overembeddedness, in the context of market-oriented institutional transition.

This paper aims to report the findings from a longitudinal study of Indian business groups responding to the pro-market reforms that the government had initiated. It explores their diversification choices at the group level and the group performance consequences of these choices during a period of institutional changes (1990-2008).

Ordinary least squares regressions were used to analyze data spanning the 1988-2008 study period for 98 Indian business groups.

Results show that business groups that focused their portfolios in the early stages of institutional reforms tended to perform worse than their counterparts that did not do so. However, as market reforms became more established, business groups that made the transition from an unfocused to a more focused portfolio experienced superior performance consequences.

The findings underscore the temporal dimension of focusing and suggest that both changing strategy by refocusing business portfolio too early or waiting too long to refocus can hurt performance outcomes.