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This study aims to investigate the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) power and the level of tax avoidance of Tunisian listed companies. It also examines the moderating role of institutional ownership in this association.

The sample comprises 306 firm-year observations of companies listed on the Tunis Stock Exchange during the 2013–2020 period.

The results indicate that CEO power reduces tax avoidance levels. Moreover, the relationship between CEO power and tax avoidance is more pronounced in the presence of institutional ownership, suggesting that CEOs act less opportunistically when monitored by institutional investors, which results in a reduction in tax avoidance.

This study suggests that CEO power and institutional shareholders’ influence are important factors in determining firms’ avoidance behavior. This study has significant implications for shareholders and regulatory bodies. Indeed, shareholders apprehend the impact of appointing a powerful CEO on tax avoidance practices. This study may also provide regulators with new insights into the influence of CEO power dimensions and institutional ownership on tax aggressiveness.

This study fills the gap in the accounting literature by investigating how CEO power may impact tax avoidance behavior and provides empirical evidence on the moderating impact of institutional ownership on this relationship in an emerging economy context characterized by a weakly protected investor setting.

This paper explores organization-level racialized work strategies for maintaining racialized organizations (Ray, 2019). It focuses on intentional actions to maintain dominant racial norms, demonstrating how work strategies are informed by dominant racial structures that maintain racial inequities.

We compiled a chronological case study (Yin, 2012) based on 168 news media articles and various organizational documents to examine responses to athlete protests at the University of Texas at Austin following the death of George Floyd. Gioia et al.’s (2013) method uncovered how dominant racial norms inform organizational behaviors.

The paper challenges institutional theory neutrality and identifies several racialized work strategies that organizations employ to maintain racialized norms and practices. The findings provide a framework for organizations to interrogate their strategies and their role in reproducing dominant racial norms and inequities.

In 2020, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was reinvigorated within sporting and corporate domains. However, many organizations engaged in performativity, sparking criticism about meaningful change in organizational contexts. Our case study examines how one organization responded to athlete activists’ BLM-fueled demands, revealing specific racialized work strategies that maintain structures of racism. As organizations worldwide disrupt and discuss oppressive structures such as racism, we demonstrate how organizational leadership, while aware of policies and practices of racism, may choose not to act and actively maintain such structures.

Trust is the glue that holds cooperative relationships together and often exists in an asymmetric manner. The purpose of this study is to explore how to mitigate the issue of losses or increased transaction costs caused by opportunistic behavior in a soft environment where trust asymmetry is quite common and difficult to avoid.

This study focuses on examining asymmetric trust between the government and the private sector in public-private partnership (PPP) projects. Drawing upon both project realities and relevant literature, the primary conditional variables influencing asymmetric trust are identified. These variables encompass power perception asymmetry, information asymmetry, interaction behavior, risk perception differences and government-side control. Subsequently, through the use of a survey questionnaire, binary-matched data from both the government and the private sector are collected. The study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to conduct a configurational analysis, aiming to investigate the causal pathways that trigger asymmetric trust.

No single conditional variable is a necessary condition for the emergence of trust asymmetry. The pathways leading to a high degree of trust asymmetry can be categorized into two types: those dominated by power perception and those involving a combination of multiple factors. Differences in power perception play a crucial role in the occurrence of high trust asymmetry, yet the influence of other conditional variables in triggering trust asymmetry should not be overlooked.

The findings can contribute to advancing the study of trust relationships in the field of Chinese PPP projects. Furthermore, they hold practical value in facilitating the enhancement of trust relationships between the government and the private sector.

This study examines the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) power, institutional investors and their interaction on green financing provided by Bangladeshi financial institutions and the moderating effect of government policy and CEO political connections on these relations.

We employ ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions and interaction terms among variables of interest for the empirical analysis.

Green financing decreases with CEO power, implying that CEOs of this country’s financial institutions are averse to green loans, whereas institutional investors increase green financing extended by these institutions. The government policy, which includes financial incentives for complying financial institutions, strengthens institutional investors' positive impact on green financing, but it does not change CEOs' aversion to green loans. Institutional investors have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between green finance (GF) and CEO power, but this positive moderating effect is negated in banks where the government owns a stake, possibly because CEOs of state-owned financial institutions are politically connected, which reduces institutional investors’ influence over them.

This study is unique in that it is the first to examine how the interaction among different stakeholders affects green financing in a unique setting. As the literature is almost silent on this topic, the findings of this paper are expected to raise policymakers’ awareness of the obstacles that hamper the efforts of developing countries to go green.

While the potential for digital innovation (DI) to transform organizational practices is widely acknowledged in the information systems (IS) literature, there is very limited understanding on the socio-political nature of institutional interactions that determine DI and affect organizational practices in social cash organizations. Drawing on the neo-institutionalist vision, the purpose of the study is to examine the unique set of institutional exchanges that influence the transition to digital social cash payments that give rise to new institutional arrangements in social cash organizations.

The paper draws on an in-depth case study of a government social cash organization in Pakistan. Qualitative data were collected using 30 semi-structured interviews from key organizational members and stakeholders.

The results suggest that DI is determined by the novel intersections between the coercive (techno-economic, regulatory), normative (socio-organizational), mimetic (international) and covert power (political) forces. Hence, DI is not a technologically deterministic output, but rather a complex socio-political process enacted through dialogue, negotiation and conflict between institutional actors. Technology is socially embedded through the process of institutionalization that is coupled by the deinstitutionalization of established organizational practices for progressive transformation.

The research has implications for government social cash organizations especially in the Global South. Empirically, the authors gained rare access to, and support from a government-backed social cash organization in Pakistan (an understudied country in the Global South), which made the data and the consequent analyses even invaluable. This made the empirical contribution within this geographical setting even more worthy, since this case study has received little attention from indigenous scholars in the past. The empirical findings showcased a unique set of contextual factors that were subject to BISP and interpreted through an account of socio-cultural sensitivities.

The paper provides practical implications for policymakers and practitioners, emphasizing the need to address institutional challenges, including covert power, during the implementation of digitalization projects in the public sector. The paper has certain potential for inspiring future e-government related (or public sector focused) studies. The paper may guide both private and government policy-makers and practitioners in presenting how to overcome certain institutional challenges while planning and implementing large scale multi-stakeholder digitization projects in similar country contexts. So while there is scope of linking the digitization of public sector organizations to anti-corruption measures in other Global South countries, the paper may not be that straightforward with the private sector involvement.

The paper offers rich social insights on the institutional interchanges that occur between the social actors for the innovation of technology. Especially, the paper highlights the social-embeddedness nature of technology that underpins the institutionalization of new organizational practices. These have implications on how DI is viewed as a socio-political process of change.

This study contributes to neo-institutional theory by theorizing covert power as a political force that complements the neo-institutional framework. This force is subtle but also resistive for some political actors as the force shifts the equilibrium of power between different institutional actors. Furthermore, the paper presents the social and practical implications that guide policymakers and practitioners by taking into consideration the unique institutional challenges, such as covert power, while implementing large scale digital projects in the social cash sector.

This paper aims to explore the strategic and evolving role of human resource management (HRM) directors within the context of underdeveloped institutional arrangements. The study focuses on India and conducts a comparative analysis of the roles of HRM directors in both multinational enterprises (MNEs) and domestic firms.

Survey-based data from the HRM directors of 252 enterprises were gathered for the comparative analysis, including both multinational and domestic enterprises.

HRM directors in MNEs lack the proficiency required to effectively fulfil their strategic role. In addition, there has been a notable shift in the responsibilities of HRM directors in MNEs, with increased emphasis on labour movements and trade union negotiations, as opposed to traditional human resource (HR) activities. This shift suggests that the role of HRM in MNEs operating in India has been influenced by local isomorphic forces, rather than following a “pendulum swing” between home and host country institutional pressures. The prevalence of informality in the Indian institutional arrangements may act as a strong counterforce to integrating the strategic agency of MNEs' home country HRM directors into the organizational structure. Despite facing resistance from the local institutional context, HRM directors in MNEs are responding with a pushback, prioritizing labour movements and trade union negotiations over core HRM activities.

The study highlights the broader implications for theory and practice, shedding light on the challenges faced by HRM directors in navigating incoherent institutional arrangements. It emphasizes the need for a deeper understanding of local forces in shaping HRM practices within multinational settings.

We contribute to the comparative HRM literature by elaborating on power struggles that HRM directors face amid the dichotomies of formal power and authority that are encoded in the organizational structure versus culturally contingent power that can be accrued from engaging in informality. We also highlight their engagement in prolonged institutional mediation and change, which serves as a compensatory mechanism for the institutional shortfalls they encounter within the context of emerging markets.

This study seeks to explicate how institutional disruptions impact multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiary control choices. It uses institutional theory to understand the influence of formal and informal institutions across countries on the type of control system employed in an MNC manufacturing subsidiary.

This study’s sample is based on a unique dataset from five trustworthy sources. We use multi-level models to account for the hierarchical nature of the sample of 1,630 multinational subsidiaries spread across 26 host countries by firms from 21 home countries.

The institutional distance between the host and the home country has a negative relationship with strategic control. In contrast, the home country’s power distance has a positive relationship with strategic control.

Study findings indicate the need to incorporate formal and informal institutional elements in the control system’s conceptual framing and design. This notion complements existing visualizations of optimizing MNC controls through extant articulations of minimizing governance costs through organizational design choices or strategic needs.

This study examines the impact of institutional ownership (IO) on firm performance. It also investigates whether powerful CEOs using a “CEO score index” moderate IO and firm performance nexus by drawing on insights from the agency and resource dependency theories.

Data were obtained from annual reports of companies listed on the Palestine Security Exchange from 2009 to 2019. Panel data regressions were conducted based on 528 observations. In addition, this study repeated the analysis using a one-step generalized method of moments (GMM) and two-stage least squares analysis to deal with the endogeneity issue.

Results show that IO and CEO power is positively associated with firm performance. Besides, it has been established that CEO power strengthens the relationship between IO and performance. Thus, this can be summarized that IO improves firm performance; however, with the powerful CEO intervention, the performance will improve even more.

Studying IO is timely given since the type of ownership is paramount to identify which form of a high degree of ownership affects the performance negatively, especially, in the Palestine environment which is dominated by institutional investors. This is of great importance to the investors as it will enable them to identify the type of firms to which they can commit their funds, and which firm excels through the CEO power. Besides, the inconsistency results in previous literature on IO, and firm performance indicates that there is an indirect effect that needs alternative explanations.

The paper covers the topic of power strategies between actors and the interplay between the service ecosystem and the actor(s), and vice versa. The paper addresses the lack of conceptual development concerning power considerations beyond dyadic, rigid and role-based models found in general marketing literature. Further, the paper opens the area of power relationships, using the service ecosystem as conceptual framework.

The paper has a systemic and sociological view on service-ecosystems using mainly Giddens' structuration theory. Service-dominant logic literature from 2004 to 2021 is systematically reviewed for power issues and qualitatively analyzed. Mayring's step model of, firstly, inductive and, secondly, deductive category development is applied. Subcategories were identified, subsumed and finally grouped into five categories to increase the level of abstraction.

The article investigates power considerations and enables marketers to create power through (1) imbalance, to find strategies and counterstrategies for (2) actor's behavior, to understand the (3) actor's embeddedness within a service ecosystem and its dynamic nature, to learn about (4) institutions and actor's institutional work. A set of seven propositions is presented for the conceptualization of power strategies in a service ecosystem.

The consideration of power on different levels supports both the zooming-in and zooming-out to observe and understand the power phenomena in a service ecosystem. Seven propositions about episodic as well as systemic power relations are presented. Power is conceptualized in service ecosystem as transformative capability of an actor to intervene on institutions and in some way alter them, recognizing that power relations are co-created, dynamic and context-dependent.

The article recognizes different levels (micro-meso-macro) of power considerations and helps practitioners and marketers to create power through (1) imbalance, find strategies and counterstrategies for (2) actor's behavior, understand the (3) actor's embeddedness within a service ecosystem and its dynamic nature, learn about (4) institutions and actor's institutional work. This enables managers to find an appropriate choice of action in their specific context to transform the service ecosystem(s) they are embedded in.

As all social systems are power systems, a service ecosystem can only be fully understood by integrating the elementary concept of power. As such, power considerations within actor strategies and the service ecosystem are relevant to improve the understanding of transformation of the service ecosystem. Power, in the sense of the transformative capability of actors, changes the social and material world.

Power issues are important to understand the “hows” of resource integration in service ecosystems and its transformation or stability.

Despite the importance of top management team (TMT) gender diversity in a firm's strategic decisions and the high degree of innovation activities that several firms have experienced in recent years, little or no research has examined how TMT gender diversity affects a firm's open innovation decision. The authors examine how TMT gender diversity impacts firms' open innovation activities. The authors further examine how this impact is affected by women executives' personal attributes and institutional conditions.

The sample comprised of 62,745 firm-year observations (9,831 firms) from 25 countries from 1990 to 2010. The authors employed the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique to estimate the results.

Employing novel panel data on co-owned patents across 25 economies, the authors find that proportion of women in TMTs has a positive impact on open innovation activities. Moreover, the authors find that women managers' power and institutional gender parity strengthen the association between gender diversity and open innovation.

The findings of this study indicate that firms committed to optimizing their open innovation policies and practices should include women in TMTs and create such conditions that are supportive for women executives to effectively express their innate inclinations. Importantly, our study supports the business case for gender diversity in top leadership positions by providing a compelling evidence for the positive impact of TMT gender diversity on open innovation.

This study contributes to the gender diversity literature by showing how women leaders' values and character become embedded in their companies' strategy and present empirical evidence that having women in TMTs increase the likelihood of conducting open innovation. Further, the authors show how women executives' power and institutional level gender parity provide boundary conditions that moderate the relationship between TMT gender diversity and open innovation.