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To reconcile the existing contradictory conclusions on the relationship between cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and innovation, this paper aims to propose a theoretical model of the impact of cross-border M&As on technological innovation and explore the moderating role of institutional distance from the perspective of springboard theory and new institutional theory.

Through the use of the two-way fixed effect model and the U-test method, the authors test the hypotheses based on a sample of cross-border M&A events of Chinese manufacturing enterprises during the period from 2006 to 2019.

The research shows that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between cross-border M&As and technological innovation. Furthermore, formal institutional distance moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship in such a way that it reaches its turning point at a smaller scale of cross-border M&As, and the inverted U-shaped relationship is steeper when formal institutional distance is relatively high. The informal institutional distance moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship in such a way that it reaches its turning point at a larger scale of cross-border M&As and the inverted U-shaped relationship is flatter when the informal institutional distance is relatively high.

The research conclusions integrate heterogeneous views of the existing research, further clarify the influence mechanism and boundary conditions between cross-border M&As and technological innovation, identify the different moderating roles of formal institutional distance and informal institutional distance and enrich the literature on knowledge transfer and recombinant innovation during post-merger integration.

The purpose of this study is to explore the inverted U-shaped relationship between green customer integration (GCI) and opportunistic behavior, as well as the moderating effects of contractual control and relational norms.

The authors conducted hierarchical regression analysis using two-waved data from 206 Chinese manufacturing firms to test hypotheses.

The authors found that GCI has an inverted U-shaped effect on opportunistic behavior. Furthermore, both contractual control and relational norms negatively moderate the inverted U-shaped relationship between GCI and opportunistic behavior.

This study uncovers an inverted U-shaped link between GCI and opportunistic behavior by combining transaction cost economics and social exchange theory. Furthermore, this study reveals contractual control and relational norms can be deemed as two boundary conditions affecting the inverted U-shaped GCI–opportunistic behavior relationship. This study also offers managerial implications for firms curbing opportunistic behavior that may result from GCI.

This study aims to explore how relationship trust and different types of influence strategy (i.e., non-coercive and coercive influence strategy) impact green customer integration (GCI), while investigating the moderating mechanisms of big data development and social capital.

Following hierarchical linear regression analysis, the authors examine hypothesized relationships by combining survey data from 206 Chinese manufacturers with secondary data.

The results show that relationship trust positively affects non-coercive influence strategy, while its impact on coercive influence strategy is insignificant. Non-coercive influence strategy has an inverted U-shaped impact on GCI. Furthermore, big data development flattens the inverted U-shaped relationship between non-coercive influence strategy and GCI. Conversely, social capital steepens the inverted U-shaped relationship between non-coercive influence strategy and GCI.

This study sheds light on managers on how to involve customers in GCI through friendly strategies that favor the involvement of customers and the willingness to develop environmentally friendly initiatives.

Although GCI has received widespread attention, how it can be enhanced remains unclear. These findings provide novel insights into the emerging GCI literature and complement social exchange theory.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how boundary-spanning search affects sustainable competitive advantage under the conditions that competitors also search and to test the moderating role of knowledge integration capability.

This paper classifies boundary-spanning search into proactive search and responsive search by considering competition and develops a theoretical model in which knowledge integration capability moderates the effects of proactive and responsive searches on sustainable competitive advantage. Empirical analyses were conducted on the data of 245 Chinese advanced manufacturing firms.

The results show that proactive and responsive searches have inverted U-shaped relationships with sustainable competitive advantage. Moreover, the relationships between proactive and responsive searches and sustainable competitive advantage are moderated by knowledge integration capability. Specifically, as knowledge integration capability increases, the inverted U-shaped relationship between proactive search and sustainable competitive advantage becomes flatter, whereas the inverted U-shaped relationship between responsive search and sustainable competitive advantage becomes almost linear.

This paper enriches the research of boundary-spanning search by considering competition and uncovers how boundary-spanning search affects sustainable competitive advantage under the conditions that competitors also search. Furthermore, this paper sheds light on that the effects of proactive and responsive searches on sustainable competitive advantage are even more complex than inverted U-shaped patterns and provides a contingent viewpoint to deeply understand the relationship between boundary-spanning search and sustainable competitive advantage.

The speed of internationalization is an important research topic in the process of internationalization. This paper aims to answer two questions: first, what is the relationship between the speed of internationalization of Chinese multinational firms and their performance? Second, how do potential slack and knowledge assets of firms affect this relationship?

The authors choose Chinese A-share listed manufacturing firms from 2009–2018 as the research sample and use the fixed-effect regression model to test the proposed hypotheses.

Firstly, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the speed of internationalization and firm performance (SI-P). Secondly, the potential slack and knowledge assets of firms moderate the inverted U-shaped relationship. Firms with a higher level of potential slack or knowledge assets have a flatter inverted U-shaped relationship between SI-P.

First, the authors develop and extend Penrose’s theory of firm growth to the research topic of speed of internationalization. Second, this paper incorporates the time dimension into the research on the internationalization process and locates the research context in emerging market firms (EMFs). This is a step forward in clarifying the complex relationship of SI-P. Third, the authors show that the SI-P relationship of EMFs is inverted U-shaped and integrate previous studies, which argue that rapid internationalization positively or negatively affects firm performance. Fourth, starting from inside the firm, the authors provide more contextual factors for better understanding and analysis of the SI-P relationship.

Agricultural carbon productivity considers the dual goals of “agricultural economic growth” and “carbon emission reduction”. Improving agricultural carbon productivity is a requirement for promoting green and low-carbon development of agriculture. Agricultural production agglomeration is widespread worldwide, but the relationship between agricultural production agglomeration and agricultural carbon productivity is inconclusive. This paper aims to study the impact of agricultural production agglomeration on agricultural carbon productivity, which is conducive to a better understanding of the relationships among agglomeration, agricultural economic development and carbon emission, better planning of agricultural layout to build a modern agricultural industrial system and achieve the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality.

Based on China's provincial data from 1991 to 2019, this paper uses non-radial directional distance function (NDDF) and Metafrontier Malmquist–Luenberger (MML) productivity index to measure total factor agricultural carbon productivity. Subsequently, using a panel two-way fixed effect model to study the effect and mechanism of agricultural production agglomeration on agricultural carbon productivity, and the two-stage least squares method (IV-2SLS) is used to solve endogeneity. Finally, this paper formulates a moderating effect model from the perspective of the efficiency of agricultural material capital inputs.

The empirical results identify that Chinese provincial agricultural carbon productivity has an overall growth trend and agricultural technological progress is the major source of growth. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between agricultural production agglomeration and agricultural carbon productivity. The input efficiency of agricultural film, machine and water resources have moderating effects on the inverted U-shaped relationship. Agricultural production agglomeration also promotes agricultural carbon productivity by inhibiting agricultural carbon emissions in addition to affecting agricultural input factors and its internal mechanisms are agricultural green technology progress and rural human capital improvement.

This paper innovatively adopts the NDDF–MML method to measure the total factor agricultural carbon productivity more scientifically and accurately and solves the problems of ignoring group heterogeneity and the shortcomings of traditional productivity measurement in previous studies. This paper also explains the inverted U-shaped relationship between agricultural production agglomeration and agricultural carbon productivity theoretically and empirically. Furthermore, from the perspective of agricultural material capital input efficiency, this paper discusses the moderating effect of input efficiency of fertilizers, pesticides, agricultural film, agricultural machines and water resources on agricultural production agglomeration affecting agricultural carbon productivity and answers the mechanism of carbon emission reduction of agricultural production agglomeration.

This paper draws upon the Yin and Yang concept of Chinese philosophy within a Western context to examine coopetition, namely, the interplay between cooperation and competition. Although coopetition activities should positively affect company performance, earlier research involving this relationship has typically been linear in nature and without moderating factors. Consequently, underpinned by resource-based theory and the relational view, the purpose of this investigation is to examine the non-linear (inverted U-shaped) link between coopetition and company performance under the moderating role of competitive intensity.

Collection of survey data involved a sample of 101 internationalising wine producers in New Zealand. Following a check of the statistical data for all major assessments of reliability and validity (together with common method variance), testing the research hypotheses and control paths took place through hierarchical regression. Furthermore, 20 semi-structured interviews helped explain the underlying mechanisms behind the quantitative results.

Coopetition had a non-linear (inverted U-shaped) relationship with market performance. Surprisingly, competitive intensity yielded a negative moderation effect. The mixed methods results highlighted that firms must strike an effective balance between the paradoxical forces of cooperativeness and competitiveness across their product-market strategies.

This investigation contributes to the existing literature by developing and testing a conceptual framework examining the nature of the relationship between coopetition activities and market performance – using non-linear (inverted U-shaped) and moderating effects. It addresses a debate between two schools-of-thought concerning the impact of competitive intensity on the coopetition paradox. Additionally, this study helps to explain the coopetition construct through the Yin and Yang concept to highlight how the paradoxical forces of cooperativeness and competitiveness can create harmful outcomes for organisations if they do not manage them effectively (across domestic and international markets).

The authors wanted to study the antecedents of knowledge hiding from a leadership perspective.

The authors tested two hypotheses on high-tech employees in China. H1 was: “There is a curvilinear relationship between knowledge leadership and knowledge hiding behaviors.” H2 was: “Psychological ownership moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge leadership and employees’ knowledge hiding behaviors such that this relationship is more pronounced among employees with high psychological ownership compared to employees with low psychological ownership.”

Results revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge leadership and knowledge hiding. Psychological ownership moderates the link between knowledge leadership and knowledge hiding. The inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge leadership and knowledge hiding was more significant among employees with higher psychological ownership, whereas the inverted U-shaped relationship became weaker among employees with lower psychological ownership.

The paper was significant because previous researchers had not studied the antecedents of knowledge hiding from a leadership perspective.

The purpose of this research is to explore the relationship between supervisor-subordinate Guanxi (SSG) and employee affective commitment. Integrating social exchange theory (SET) with conservation of resource (COR) theory, this paper explores the mixed effect of SSG on affective commitment as well as the moderating roles of an individual difference (subordinate work ethic) and a contextual variable (procedural fairness).

This research adopted a survey involving 249 subordinates to test the hypothesized model.

The results showed that the relationship between SSG and affective commitment was inverted U-shaped, and this relationship was moderated by work ethic and procedural fairness, respectively.

Despite those contributions listed above, there are still some limitations that future research should seek to address. First, the data of this research are cross-sectional, which might cause common method bias to responses. However, all the hypotheses are higher-order forms of the main effects (curvilinear and moderating effects), which are not affected by the cross-sectional nature of the study (Podskoff et al., 2003). Moreover, given these variables in the model are related to subordinates' internal psychological states or perceptions, data for the study should be collected from subordinates. Relatedly, the cross-sectional nature of the dataset may raise a question about the directionality of the relationships. However, the research model is based on strong theories (i.e. SET and COR theory). In addition, prior research has indicated that Guanxi has an influence on commitment, not vice versa (Cheung et al., 2009; Chen and O'Leary, 2018). However, given that only experimental design can conclusively prove the directionality of the relationship, the authors encourage to replicate the current study using such a design. In addition, the authors encourage future studies to collect longitudinal data and replicate the current study. Second, this study only tested how work ethic and procedural fairness moderated the relationship between SSG and affective commitment. The authors encourage future research to explore the moderating effect of other moderators, such as the integrity of supervisors. In particular, when the supervisor has a high level of integrity, the negative influence of higher SSG may be weakened. Third, this study did not explore the mechanism linking SSG with affective commitment. Future studies should explore the potential mechanisms. For example, subordinates' emotional exhaustion might be the potential mechanism between SSG and affective commitment.

The results imply that supervisors should treat SSG as a double-edged sword and maximize the positive influence of SSG. In addition, organizations should hire individuals with high work ethic or provide related training. At last, organizations should realize the importance of procedural fairness and set a sector that oversees making and executing well-designed roles.

Previous studies on SSG mainly focused on its positive effect on affective commitment, neglecting to explore its negative effect. This paper helped to illustrate the relationship between SSG and affective commitment comprehensively by indicating the relationship between SSG and affective commitment was inverted U-shaped and moderated by work ethic and procedural fairness, respectively.

This article examines the effect of the customer focus (CF) group of competencies, which includes communication and negotiation skills, on project performance as measured by reaching the internal and the overall budget, the quality, and the deadline goals.

The multiple regression model was based on a dataset from Trimo, an engineering and production company of prefabricated buildings.

The inverted U-shaped relationship of the CF group has been proven to exist with all project goals.

The present study provides a starting-point for further empirical research on the international construction sector, projects, teams, and competence research.