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This paper’s objective is to provide a systematic literature review of the contextual factors affecting downward communication from supervisors to subordinates in the audit environment. In addition, this review identifies emerging research themes and directions for future research.

I accomplish this review’s objectives by leveraging communication literature to establish a framework to identify and synthesize contextual factors affecting downward communication in the audit environment. The review identifies 50 published articles in the last 20 years from leading accounting and auditing journals.

This study consolidates research findings on downward communication under two primary contextual factors: (1) message and (2) channel. Findings indicate that empirical research examining communication in audit is fragmented and limited. Studies examining the message focus heavily on its content and treatment in the areas of feedback, nonverbal cues, and fraud brainstorming, and a handful of additional studies examine the effectiveness of the channel in these areas. Additional research is needed to understand a broader set of supervisor–subordinate communication practices, including those that are computer-mediated, and their effect on subordinate auditors’ judgments and behaviors in the contemporary audit environment.

Much of the audit literature examining communication to date is topic-versus construct-based, making it difficult to see how the research findings relate to one another. This review is the first to synthesize the literature to provide academics recommendations for a way forward, and inform practitioners of communication practices whereby supervisors can be trained to improve audit quality.

Retailers have recently leveraged store-loyal customers’ store attachment to maintain customer relationships and motivate patronage intentions. However, the COVID-19 outbreak has driven customer migration from offline to mobile channels. Mobile retail applications (APPs) have been used by numerous retailers to reach their customers. Nonetheless, it has yet to be determined (1) whether store attachment can facilitate (or impede) the adoption of mobile retail APPs and (2) whether store-loyal customers will continue visiting offline stores in the post-pandemic era. To address these questions, we propose a theoretical account using integrated theories on trust transfer and store attachment.

We conducted multi-stage, longitudinal field surveys in two cities of mainland China: Beijing and Guangzhou. From two rounds of data collection, 237 and 103 responses were obtained in March 2022. Hypotheses were tested by partial least squares – structural equation modelling (PLS–SEM).

Results showed that customer trust in an offline retailer can be transferred to the retailer’s mobile APP at the pre-adoption stage, facilitating APP adoption. Notably, store-loyal customers who exhibited a strong attachment to the physical store of a retailer were more inclined to transfer their trust to the mobile APP of the retailer. This occurrence leads to an increased adoption rate, enhanced post-adoption satisfaction and increased inclination to continue (rather than discontinue) usage.

This study is the first to investigate the changes in store-loyal customers' shopping behaviour in the mobile retail era and in the post-COVID-19 pandemic recovery. Our findings elucidate the role of physical store attachment in the trust-transfer mechanism. Furthermore, store attachment may not prevent customers’ channel migration behaviour. Retailers may have to re-consider how to manage channel cannibalisation issues in the post-pandemic recovery.

Makerspaces, which serve as fertile grounds for makers' innovation activities, are rapidly increasing in emerging markets to help unleash a massive wave of bottom-up innovation and encourage broader participation in entrepreneurial activities. Makers' motivations to innovate are key antecedents of their subsequent innovative behavior. The paper aims to investigate the impact of makers' innovation motivations (both economic and social motivations) on their exploration and exploitation activities in makerspaces and the moderating role of the makerspace climate for innovation.

A survey was conducted for 139 individual makers from five makerspaces in China to test the research hypotheses.

Economic motivation positively affected the degree of exploitative innovation and was negatively related to the degree of exploratory innovation. In contrast, social motivation negatively affected the degree of exploitative innovation and was positively related to the degree of exploratory innovation. The makerspace climate for innovation strengthened the relationship between social motivation and exploratory innovation and exacerbated the negative effect of economic motivation on exploration.

The results offer managers a better understanding of how makers' motivation to participate in makerspaces affects their innovative behavior. Such information can guide makerspaces in designing their incentive policies and recruiting makers in line with their values to amplify makers' creative potential.

The empirical results reveal the impacts of economic and social motivations on makers' exploration and exploitation activities in makerspaces. They thus provide new insights into how different motivations give rise to different innovative behaviors and imply how makers' innovation activities can be managed effectively.

Based on the dynamic capability theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the mediating role of the adaptive capability of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the relationship between business ties and firm performance. This study also investigates the moderating role of technological turbulence in those relationships.

Data were collected from 1,265 SME managers in Turkey. Partial least squares analysis, a variance-based structural equation modelling, was applied to examine a mediated moderation model.

The results support the proposed framework illustrating that business ties are positively related to adaptive capability and firm performance. Moreover, adaptive capability mediates the relationship between business ties and firm performance. The results also indicate that the indirect effect of business ties on firm performance through adaptive capability was moderated by technological turbulence.

SMEs in emerging economies need to enhance their business ties and invest in their adaptive capabilities to increase their performances. This relation becomes more strategic under technologically turbulent environments.

By introducing empirical data from the Turkish emerging context, this paper contributes to our understanding of how SMEs’ relational networks contribute to firm performance. From the dynamic capability perspective, it shows how SMEs use their adaptive capabilities to environmental challenges. It also fills an important gap by showing that environmental uncertainties (specifically technological turbulence) moderate the adaptive capability’s mediating impact on the relationship between business ties and firm performance. The results also provide potential future directions for dynamic capabilities research in emerging contexts.

This paper aims to explore how typical personal, interpersonal and environmental factors influence entrepreneurs' growth aspirations by investigating the impact mechanism of entrepreneurial competency and guanxi on the growth aspirations of small tourism entrepreneurs in a dynamic environment.

Applying social cognitive theory (SCT) and business growth theory (BGT), this research uses confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) based on the questionnaire survey data of 371 small tourism business owners/owner-managers to test the relationship between entrepreneurial competency, guanxi and growth aspirations, with self-efficacy as a mediator and environment dynamism as a moderator.

The findings indicate that entrepreneurial competency is a more direct and significant factor than guanxi in facilitating the entrepreneurial growth aspirations in small tourism enterprises (STEs). Entrepreneurial competency and guanxi can both enhance entrepreneurs' self-efficacy, which then affects their aspirations to grow their business. Self-efficacy is a critical predictor of entrepreneurs' growth aspirations in STEs, although its effect is weakened by environmental dynamism.

This study expands the integrated application of SCT and BGT in tourism context, providing a more comprehensive and nuanced interpretation of the growth aspirations of entrepreneurs in STEs. It sheds more light on the effect of different entrepreneurial capital on growth aspirations and provides managerial implications accordingly.

Drawing upon the resource-based view this study aims to examine the connections between formal and informal business relationships and resource-bridging and adaptive capabilities within the context of foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in Thailand. Based on prior literature emphasizing business network ties as sources of competitive advantage in emerging markets, this study extends the discourse by investigating the moderating effects of technological turbulence, power distance and assertiveness.

This study uses a quantitative research approach, using data obtained from a self-administered survey conducted among 168 foreign subsidiaries spanning diverse industries in Thailand. The data were analyzed by using multiple-group structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized relationships.

Cultivating different types of business ties enables foreign subsidiaries to improve different types of capabilities. While interpersonal relationships (i.e. informal businessties) enable them to develop their abilities to combine various resources (i.e. resource-bridging capability), rigid contractual-based relationships (i.e. formal businessties) help them to be more adaptive (i.e. adaptive capability). These relationships are also contingent upon the levels of technological turbulence, host-country power distance and host-country assertiveness.

This research builds upon prior research on network ties and capability building by delineating the specific nature of capabilities. Contradicting to the previous findings, demonstrating a negative relationship between formal business ties and capabilities, this study found that each type of business tie enables foreign subsidiaries to enhance different types of capabilities under different circumstances. Moreover, this study adopts a lens of host-country national culture rather than home-country culture in investigating the moderating effects of power distance and assertiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of two typical relationship management approaches (trust relationship with suppliers and reciprocity) on manufacturer resilience in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. Moreover, this paper aims to deepen the understanding of environmental uncertainty's moderating effect on the association between the trust relationship with suppliers (TRS) and reciprocity.

Structural equation modeling has been used to test the hypotheses on 361 Chinese manufacturing firms' managers and independent directors during the COVID-19 crisis.

The results reveal that reciprocity positively enhances three dimensions of manufacturer resilience, namely, preparedness, responsiveness and recovery capability. Reciprocity positively mediates the relationships between TRS and preparedness, responsiveness and recovery capability. Moreover, environmental uncertainty moderates the association between TRS and reciprocity.

This study highlights the critical role of reciprocity, the relational governance approach, in enhancing manufacturer resilience in practice. This paper suggests that during emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic, managers should adopt trust and reciprocity in supplier relationship governance to strengthen the resilience of manufacturing companies and adapt effective strategies according to the environment.

This study is unique in developing new scales of manufacturer resilience through interviews and surveys with Chinese manufacturers and theoretical research. Based on the social capital theory and social exchange theory, this study shed light on the role of trust and reciprocity. It also bridges relational governance theory with the literature on manufacturing firm resilience literature to help manufacturers better understand the transdisciplinary links between relationship management and resilient operations in emergencies.

Drawing on the organizational learning and relational governance literature, this study aims to advance a theoretical model to explain the export performance of emerging market export ventures.

This study selects quantitative methodology because the main objective of this study is to explore the role of export ventures’ performance (past) on guanxi networking, co-creation marketing strategies and present performance.

The empirical evidence suggests that guanxi networking and co-creation strategy can mediate the relationship between export venture performance in the preceding year and export venture performance in the following year. In addition, this study also provides some guidance for emerging market export ventures on how to build a strong guanxi networking and create opportunities for collaboration when the effect of export performance in the preceding year on current performance is absent.

The authors propose the inclusion of strategic guanxi networking-related factors (e.g. top executives’ ties with business-to-business customers, such as distributors in the host market) in the prior performance-current performance paradigm. The outcomes of this study also contribute to extant organizational learning theory research by integrating preceding performance research with the co-creation theory. The study offers new insights into organizational learning and relational governance from the emerging market perspective.

This paper identifies the development of and gaps in knowledge in various management disciplines, including international marketing in relation to political ties in emerging markets, based on a systematic review of the related literature. The paper develops a synthesized integrative framework and provides a research agenda and pathways for future research.

The study adopts the systematic literature review protocol to investigate the ways in which political ties have been examined in the management literature in various disciplines, such as international business, marketing, entrepreneurship, strategy, innovation, and organization. In total, 114 articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 2000 to 2022 were analyzed.

The authors believe that studying the impact of political ties on firm outcomes is timely and important as interest in this area of research is growing rapidly. The review reveals that the diverse conceptual and methodological approaches adopted in different management disciplines have resulted in inconclusive and mixed findings on the relationship between political ties and performance.

This is one of the few systematic literature reviews of political ties and firm performance in emerging markets. The authors clarify some of the ambiguities around the subject and offer a path forward for developing current understanding and insights. The study also highlights the major perspectives in management and clarify the similarities and differences in the conceptualization of political ties. In addition, the authors develop an integrative framework of the political ties–performance link in emerging markets.

This study examines the nexus of bond market development and economic growth from 2015 to 2022.

The system-generalized method of moments (GMM) is employed on economic growth, government market capitalization, corporate market capitalization, bond yield, interest rate spread, trade openness and investment level.

The findings show that the government bond market, corporate bond capitalization and bond yield positively impact the gross domestic product (GDP). The results equally reveal a causal link between the corporate bond market, bond yield and GDP.

Governments should emphasize creating, developing and sustaining bond markets in the economies of developing countries to boost economic activity by promoting structural transformation. Policymakers should improve the implementation of existing rules and regulations while complementing them with new ones since well-developed bond markets provide alternative sources of financing that make economies financially resilient. Policymakers should encourage the issuance of corporate bonds to enhance the efficiency of the capital markets and mobilize funds for economic growth stimulation. Governments and corporations should diversify their sources of funding into the bond markets since the bond yields are favorable to economic growth.

Earlier studies presented arguable results on the bond market development and economic growth nexus. Several findings indicate a positive link; others give a negative link between bond market development and economic growth. Some show causal directions, while other reveal none. The contradictory results motivate research. This research results contribute to the literature in that the government bond market, corporate bond capitalization and bond yield positively impact the GDP of developing nations.