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Intentions capture the motivational factors that influence a given behavior and indicate how hard a person is willing to try in order to perform the behavior. An individual's entrepreneurial intentions are a function of the perceived feasibility and desirability of engaging in a particular entrepreneurial behavior. Because they are perceptual factors, the processes of assessing feasibility and desirability of entrepreneurial behaviors tends to be limited to the cognitive abilities of the specific individual. The purpose of this paper is to use an experimental manipulation to illustrate to students how the simple act of planning can dramatically influence entrepreneurial intentions.

This paper draws from two sections of undergraduate study-abroad students who developed a severe craving for American foods they missed. Both sections assessed the desirability and feasibility of a particular entrepreneurial behavior (organizing an event to get the missed food), but one section was provided with a half-hour of classroom time to plan for the event.

The group of students who engaged in planning activities was significantly more likely to view the behavior as feasible and, in turn, had significantly higher intentions to engage in the behavior. This experiment provided a simple but powerful demonstration to students of how important a role planning plays in shaping entrepreneurial intentions.

This study offers a pedagogy that uses students both as participants and the primary audience of a manipulation of perceived feasibility and entrepreneurial intentions. Conducting this simple experiment and sharing the results with students provides dramatic evidence of the power of simple planning.

The past 25 years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the dominance of big‐box retailers in the global retail sector and the decline of small retailers. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the intensity of competition with big box retailers moderates the relationship of strategy choice to expected growth.

This study uses cross‐sectional survey data from a group of 199 small retailers in the USA. Hypotheses are tested using linear regression of expected growth on the use of three growth‐oriented strategies. These relationships are subjected to tests of the moderating effect of direct competition with big box retailers.

This study shows that small retailers pursue strategies of offering previously unavailable goods or services, high quality, and better service to pursue future growth. The interaction effect of strategy with directness of competition with big box retailers, however, has a negative and significant effect on expected growth.

The data set is from 2003 and is cross‐sectional. Future research on small retailers' strategic preferences should reflect a more recent competitive landscape and employ longitudinal data sets to establish cause‐and‐effect relationships.

Small retailers need to understand that the strategies they use to pursue growth essentially become strategies for mere survival when competing directly against big box retailers. One small retailer's growth strategy is another small retailer's survival strategy, depending on direct competition with a big box retailer.

This study provides support for the argument that small retailers should pursue growth‐oriented strategies that create value and differentiate them from big box retailers. Under direct competition from big box retailers, however, these growth‐oriented strategies seemingly become mere means for survival. Small retailers need to be aware of blind spots that prevent them from understanding strategy‐performance relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to perform empirical tests to explore the influence of social integration mechanisms on organizations’ absorptive capacities theorized by Zahra and George.

This study uses a cross‐sectional design to test the relationships between potential absorptive capacity, three social integration mechanisms (cross‐functional teams, participation in decision making, and self‐managing teams), and realized absorptive capacity, in a sample of 92 organizations that bid competitively to provide products and services to a US university.

An organization's use of cross‐functional teams is negatively related to its realized absorptive capacity and negatively moderates the relationship between potential and realized absorptive capacity. Self‐managing teams negatively moderate the relationship between an organization's potential absorptive capacity and its realized absorptive capacity.

The cross‐sectional design allows tests of relatedness but does not support cause‐and‐effect inferences.

Managers who follow the prescriptive implications of using social integration mechanisms to enhance their organization's absorptive capacity may actually hinder it. The type of social integration mechanism is an important consideration for managers of firm strategies.

This study extends and challenges the literature on absorptive capacity through its empirical analysis of the role of social integration mechanisms on an organization's absorptive capacity. Social integration mechanisms can have mixed moderating effects on the absorptive capacity development process, and potential absorptive capacity is not easily transformed into realized absorptive capacity. This study expands the context of absorptive capacity beyond R&D settings and incorporates a task environment that allows a direct linking of inputs and outputs.

Research in strategic management has provided a wealth of contributions to the study of competition between firms, yet most strategic management theories were developed and refined for large firm contexts. This suggests the assumed theoretical relationships between strategy preference and performance may break down in the small business setting.

The paper uses a data set from the National Federation of Independent Businesses to test hypotheses relating the strategy preferences of 754 small firms with the performance outcomes of survival and expected growth.

Small businesses can focus on both survival and growth when they pursue competency-based strategies, but they risk their very survival when pursuing flexibility-based strategies. Virtually all small firms pursue strategies to compete, but some of the strategies they follow to pursue growth endanger their survival.

Because of life-cycle and resource endowment factors, researchers should carefully parse differences between large and small firms when studying the relationship between strategy preferences and organizational performance.

Small business owners should be aware that their choices of strategies to pursue growth may lead to unintended consequences, such as the demise of their firms.

The paper demonstrates to researchers and practitioners how strategic preferences that presumably allow larger firms both to survive and grow do not have the same effects for smaller firms. The paper establishes boundary conditions for the effectiveness of flexibility strategies on performance in terms of firm size.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The language of modern life, especially in the political arena, is full of euphemisms. Sometimes they are meant to soften a blow or to obscure darker truths. They exist in business, too, as anyone who has been told “We will have to let you go” will testify. But the corporate world can also be very blunt in its appraisal of a situation or practice. In the early 1990s, the USA witnessed an unprecedented growth in chains of retailers such as Best Buy, Home Depot and Toys R Us. Similar processes have been at work in the UK and in some cases, such as Toys R Us, the enterprises are the same. The Americans gave such stores the bleak and to‐the‐point name “category killers” because they offered almost every conceivable product related to their category under one roof. In other words, the goal of these retailers was to dominate the category and “kill” the competition.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that can have a broader social impact.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the empirical literature on the resilience of public police officers and private security guards in stressful situations involving threats, violence, accidents or death. This paper studies the definitions of resilience used in these professions, identifies trends in applied research methods and examines the main topics addressed in previous research.

A scoping review was carried out, with searches in Web of Science and Google Scholar, as well as a secondary manual screening in Dutch academic journals. Based on this review, 33 empirical studies were included in the current paper.

First, it was revealed that a clear-cut definition of resilience applied to public police and private security guards is currently lacking. Second, predominantly quantitative designs were found to be used in the selected studies. Third, the 33 empirical studies provided insights on four main topics: demographic factors, personal characteristics, interpersonal aspects and resilience training programs. Remarkably, this scoping review did not find any empirical research on the resilience of private security guards.

This study systematically integrates the findings of empirical research on the resilience of security providers to stressful situations. The documentation of research activity, gaps and inconsistencies in the literature offer direction for future research in this relatively new field of study.

This paper aims to empirically analyse specific characteristics of an audit committee that could be associated with the likelihood of corporate fraud/scandal/sanctions.

The sample includes all firms that were investigated by the Financial Reporting Council through the audit enforcement procedure from 2014 to 2019, and two matched no-scandal firms. It uses logistic binary regression analysis to examine the hypotheses.

Results based on the logit regression suggest that audit member tenure and audit committee meeting frequency both have positive associations to the likelihood of corporate scandal. Complementing this result, the authors find negative but insignificant relationships amongst audit committee female chair, audit committee female members percentage, audit committee qualified accountants members, audit committee attendance, number of shares held by audit committee members, audit committee remuneration, board tenure and the likelihood of corporate scandal across the sample.

The results should help regulatory policymakers make decisions, which could be crucial to future corporate governance. Additionally, these results should be useful to investors who use corporate governance as criteria for investment decisions.

The authors extend, as well as contribute to the growing literature on the audit committee, and therefore, wider corporate governance literature and provide originality in that it is the first, to the knowledge, to consider two characteristics (i.e. remuneration and gender) in a UK context of corporate scandal. Also, the results imply that the structure and diversity of the audit committee affect corporate fraud/scandal/sanctions.

This article assesses the state‐of‐the‐art on the subject of international market selection based on a comprehensive review and synthesis of the literature. It provides an inventory, taxonomy and brief review of the normative quantitative models that have been proposed in the literature, and compares them to current business practices in selecting foreign markets. This comparison reveals a theory‐practice gap that is discussed in the context of the methodological and conceptual weaknesses of the models. Suggestions for future research are made.

The purpose of this study is to investigate Egyptian auditors’ ethical reasoning, to understand whether auditors’ ethical reasoning is influenced by audit firm size and/or auditor’s position.

This paper draws on 178 questionnaires that include six different ethical scenarios. This paper also uses the accounting ethical dilemma instrument that is developed by Thorne (2000) to measure the ethical reasoning of Egyptian auditors.

The findings are threefold. First, this study finds that the general level of deliberative ethical reasoning of auditors working in the Central Auditing Organization (CAO) and small firms are categorized in the post-conventional level, while auditors working in big and medium firms are categorized in conventional level. Second, the result suggests that there is a negative relationship between ethical reasoning and audit firm size in Egypt. Finally, the results show that ethical reasoning levels decrease when the position of auditors increase except for auditors working in CAO.

This study adds to the scarce literature in developing countries that measure auditors’ ethical reasoning. The findings suggest that auditors’ ethical reasoning depends on auditor’s firm size and the position the auditor holds within the firm. These findings will aid policymakers and regulators, especially in developing countries, to avoid any potential risk regarding professional misconduct and in evaluating the adequacy of the current code of ethics.