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This study aims to investigate the impact of corporate diversification and growth opportunities on the performance of real estate investment trusts (REIT) in Malaysia and Singapore before and during the pandemic.

The sample consists of 33 public-listed REITs across Singapore and Malaysia. A dynamic panel system generalized method of moments (DPS-GMM) estimation is used to account for unobservable factors and a relatively short sample period (2009–2022).

Results indicate that the impact of diversification is contingent on the market where the REIT is based and other institutional factors. The estimates also show that diversified REITs are better able to weather period of economic uncertainty.

We provided a definitive answer as to why corporate diversification leads to conflicting outcomes – market and institutional factors, strategic intent and the overall economic environment. We also show that the impact of typical firm controls (i.e. free cash, size) can differ. Future firm-level work should thus study similar phenomenon more contextually and carefully consider these varying effects.

The literature is divided on the impact of diversification on firm performance. By using a two-country sample, we show conclusive evidence that this contradictory outcome is due to market and institutional factors. We also show evidence that strategic intent is an important factor that influences the outcomes of diversification, regardless of market. We also infer that excess cash aids the resilience of the firm, contrary to the negative perception of excess cash during normal times. Firm size, in contrast, does not contribute to firm performance during a crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the financial factors across multiple levels of analysis that influence the performance effects of the unrelated diversification strategy, including institutional-, industry- and firm-levels.

Using a unique panel dataset of Italian firms from 1980 to 2010, the paper tests hypotheses on how industry external financial dependence and the firm's financial constraints both separately and jointly alter the performance benefits of unrelated diversification in contexts with financial market inefficiencies.

Unrelated diversification increases performance in weak financial contexts and such positive effect is enhanced by greater industry external financial dependence and greater firm financial constraints. However, as financial markets develop, the moderating effects of firm financial constraints shrink.

The study highlights the importance of recognizing the multiple financial contingencies that may alter the benefits of the unrelated diversification strategy, suggesting caution in its pursuit to boost firm performance.

The authors develop a theoretical framework that explains the performance outcomes of unrelated diversification, linking the benefits of an internal capital market (ICM) with the financial context of the firm and offering a fine-grained analysis that moves beyond the advanced/emerging economy dichotomy. Furthermore, leveraging on the unprecedented time frame of the empirical analysis, the paper highlights the crucial role of industry- and firm-level financial contingencies and demonstrates that their effects change at varying levels of development of the financial context.

This study examines the firm-level financial consequences caused by supply chain disruptions during COVID-19 and explores how firms' supply chain diversification strategies, including diversified suppliers, customers and products, moderate the negative effect on firm performance.

Based on data drawn from 222 publicly traded firms in China, the authors use event study methodology to estimate the effects of supply chain disruptions on the financial performance of affected firms. Regression analyses are conducted to examine the moderating effects of supply chain diversification.

Firms affected by supply chain disruptions during COVID-19 experienced a significant decline in shareholder value in two weeks and a subsequent decrease in operating performance in one year. Diversified suppliers, customers and products act as shock absorbers to alleviate the negative effects. Further regression shows a substitution effect between customer and product diversification. Cross-industry comparisons reveal that service firms experienced more loss than manufacturing firms. Customer diversification mitigates the adverse effects of supply chain disruptions for both manufacturing and service firms. Supplier diversification exerts a noteworthy role in manufacturing firms, while product diversification is beneficial for service firms.

The study provides empirical evidence on the magnitude of financial consequences of supply chain disruptions during COVID-19 in both the short term and long term and enriches the current understanding of how to build resilience from the supply chain diversification perspective.

Much prior work involving director incentives and corporate behaviour has been focussing on their absolute dollar value or the intrinsic value and generated mixed findings. Comparison theories, however, suggest that the relative value of an incentive may be the main drive for individual performance. This study attempts to investigate the role of director relative pay in promoting the board’s intervention with unrelated diversification decisions.

The analysis uses data from firms operating in more than one segment during the period from 1999 to 2019. Data were obtained from WRDS databases. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis and the two-stage system generalized method of moments (GMM) were run to test the hypotheses. To test the robustness of the findings, alternative proxies for the key independent variables were used in separate analyses.

The results support the hypothesis that unrelated diversification negatively impact firm performance, while higher director relative pay will help reduce unrelated business diversification. The absolute director pay, however, has no significant impact on corporate strategic choices. The results also highlight the moderating effect of director overcompensation. Director overcompensation will cancel out the impact of relative director pay on unrelated diversification.

This study takes a fresh theoretical perspective by framing the investigation using the dimensional comparison theory to address the single untended comparison framework in the director pay structure – the intra-individual framework. It is the first to investigate the role of director relative pay in corporate strategic choices. The findings support the contention that the relative value of the incentive is an important indicator of the effectiveness of the pay.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of technological diversification (TD) on enterprise innovation performance, meanwhile focusing on the moderating effects of various organizational slack (i.e. absorbed and unabsorbed slack) and ownership types (i.e. state-owned or privately-owned) in the context of Chinese listed firms.

This study formulates five hypotheses based on organization and agency theories. Our empirical analysis employs a fixed-effect regression estimator with a unique panel dataset of Chinese-listed manufacturing firms and 13,566 firm-year observations over 9 years from 2012 to 2020.

Our findings show that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between TD and innovation performance, varying with different types of organizational slack and ownership. In state-owned enterprises (SOEs), unabsorbed slack negatively moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship; however, in privately-owned enterprises (POEs), this relationship is positively moderated. Although absorbed slack has negative moderating effects in both SOEs and POEs, its impact is only significant for POEs.

Our results imply that organizational slack has a contrasting impact on the relationship between TD and innovation performance when the type of ownership varies. Therefore, the managers that intend to achieve optimal innovation performance through TD should understand how organizational slack can be leveraged.

This study contributes to the existing literature by applying the relationship between TD and innovative performance to the transition economy, as well as examining the double-edged sword impact of state ownership on firm innovation performance.

This study is to examine and develop sector skills strategies and action plans for the textile and apparel (T&A) sector.

The paper used a participatory action qualitative method anchored on the Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED) framework, utilising the workshop-based approach with 24 key stakeholders of the sector. Content analysis was used with the help of Nvivo software.

The findings revealed that there are skills shortages, skills gaps, skills mismatches and skills diversification programmes available through higher education and work-based learning. Further, there are labour supply challenges such as national skills policy and strategy, government and stakeholder coordination, funding, relevance of curriculum and qualifications, access to practicals and the absence of a clear national vision for the sector.

This study possesses an inherent limitation in terms of generalising the findings derived from qualitative research.

This research is among the first of its kind to assess skills needs and gaps through the lens of STED framework, which has been overlooked in previous literature. Importantly, this study provides vocational insights into skill needs in the sector.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether a diversification by grape varieties may help wine producers reduce uncertainty in quantity and quality variations due to increasingly erratic climate conditions.

This study hand-collects granular quantity and quality data from wine harvest reports for vintages 2003 to 2017 for the Valais region in Switzerland. The data allows us to obtain detailed data on harvested kilograms/liters and Oechsle/Brix degrees. It is then merged with precise meteorological data over the same sample period. The authors use this data set to capture weather conditions and their impact on harvested quantities and quality. Finally, they build portfolios including different grape varieties to evaluate whether this reduces variations in quality and quantity over vintages.

The findings highlight that the weather varies relatively strongly over the sample period and that climate hazards such as hail, frost or ensuing vine diseases effectively occur. These strongly impact the harvested quantities but less the quality of the wine. The authors further show that planting different grape varieties allows for a significant reduction in the variation of harvested quantities over time and thus acts as a good solution against climate risk.

The effect of climate change on viticulture is becoming increasingly important and felt and bears real economic and social consequences. This study transposes portfolio diversification which is central to reducing risk in the finance industry, into the wine industry and shows that the same principle holds. The authors thus propose a novel idea on how to mitigate climate risk.

This study aims to estimate Pakistan’s export potential in new and existing export products, as well as their potential destination markets.

This study uses a nonparametric approach based on demand, supply and easiness factors for estimating export potential at disaggregated product and destination levels.

A significant number of new export products (extensive margin) and existing products (intensive margin) are identified that have export potential. The estimated unrealized export potential at extensive margins is $2bn and at intensive margins is $5bn. The range of new products included value-added products, semifinished products and intermediate products. Surprisingly, there is high potential to diversify in China and export existing products more intensively in the EU. Moreover, the potential at extensive margins is regional diverse compared to intensive margins.

The methodology used in this paper only provides export potential for short-to-medium term period because the global demand conditions are varying. Also, the mineral and resource-based products cannot be included in the analysis because their exports are heavily dependent on the availability of natural resources.

The findings have important policy implications in terms of providing guidelines for government policies related to industrial development, international trade and export promotion at the product and destination level. Overall, the study reveals that traditional sectors lack room for product diversification. As the existing export incentives favor major industries. To foster diversification, existing incentives must be redesigned to cover new products or sectors. Moreover, China has the greatest potential for product diversification, while Europe has the greatest potential to export current products more intensively. Further research is needed to simulate trade policy scenarios and estimate demand, supply and ease factors in export potential.

This study provides a unique perspective on export potential assessment at disaggregated product and destination levels, reinforcing the importance of redesigning trade policies and export incentives separately for export diversification.

COVID-19, like many previous crises, proved once more that some hospitality and tourism organizations are more crises resilient than others. Despite increasing frequency and magnitude of crises, little is known about the features of crises resilient organizations and mitigation strategies they adopt. If the characteristics of such resiliency are identified, those strengths might be targeted. Hence, the purpose of this study is to identify characteristics of crises resilient organizations by analyzing the interface between different organizational characteristics, recovery strategies they adopted and impacts of COVID-19 on individual hospitality and tourism organizations.

A global sample of 202 respondents from 20 countries and four continents, representing different sectors of the hospitality and tourism industry, participated in the survey. Descriptive analysis and cluster analysis were used to rank the items and group hospitality and tourism organizations based on their crises resiliency.

Service quality, loyal customers, branding, high paid in capital, domestic market base, hygiene and safety image, information and communication technology adoption, product and market diversification and restructuring debts emerged as major characteristics and strategies of crises resilient organizations. Using cluster analysis, four different groups of organizations were identified. Based on the impacts of COVID-19 on these organizations, Cluster-1 emerged as significantly more crises resilient, whereas Cluster-4 organizations were significantly more vulnerable to crises. Their characteristics and mitigation strategies they adopted were discussed.

The paper not only identified features of crises resilient organizations and successful mitigation strategies but also measured their impact on various performance indicators. Future studies might use characteristics, mitigation strategies and performance indicators identified in this study.

Based on the findings, tourism organizations would focus on strengthening characteristics and implementing strategies that make crises resilient organizations. Public bodies and destination management would also set their decision criteria based on these findings to create a more resilient tourism industry.

This research not only identifies how hospitality and tourism organizations are affected by COVID-19 but also how these impacts change based on different organizational characteristics and strategies. Understanding which organizational characteristics affect the crises vulnerability of hospitality and tourism organizations might inform risk and crises management literature and structural design elements in tourism businesses, hence offer both theoretical and practical implications.

This study aims to examine the role of returnee managers that can affect the strategic-divestment decision of emerging-market firms (EM firms). Drawing on arguments from the upper echelons theory and international human resource mobility perspectives, this study aims to propose that returnee managers influence corporate divestitures when the business outlook is negative. In addition, this study aims to examine the interplay between returnee managers and CEOs, whose characteristics can foster or undermine the efforts of returnee managers to engage in corporate divestments.

This study examines 278 firms from nine emerging economies. The negative binomial regression was employed to estimate the model. In the robustness checks, the logistic regression was adopted to confirm the earlier findings.

The empirical results support the notion that returnee managers strengthen the relationship between firm performance and divestments. Because of the limited liabilities of foreignness and outsidership, returnee managers can gain social trust and credibility through communication and social interaction. Furthermore, the results provide mixed support for the moderating effect of CEO characteristics on the performance–divestment relationship.

This study reveals that returnee managers are a great asset for EM firms that aim to find synergies and upgrade their capabilities through asset reconfiguration, which is an essential activity of emerging market firms to integrate themselves into the global competition. Meanwhile, CEO characteristics can foster (through their education level) or hinder (due to their age) divestment attempts, influenced by returnee managers.

This study explores an understudied phenomenon in international business (IB): strategic divestment of EM firms. The literature that examines strategic divestment and corporate refocusing in emerging markets is extremely limited. Furthermore, this study explores the novel topic that intersects the international business (IB) and international human resource management (IHRM) research areas. Specifically, this study investigates the impact of returnee managers on strategic divestments.