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Based on the theory of bounded rationality, the purpose of this paper is to explore the role played by top managerial management cognition in firms' efforts to obtain and maintain competitive advantage in a dynamic environment.

A research framework of the relations between environment changes, management cognition, strategic actions, organizational capability evolution and organizational performance is built. Data are collected through interviews, internal documents, and external documents and consequently a qualitative database is built to construct a causal map between environment, cognition, strategic actions, and organizational capability. Then by applying this causal map, a case study analysis of Vanward Group is carried out to explore its management cognition, strategic actions, and organizational capability in a dynamic environment.

The research propositions were tested and confirmed that top managerial management cognition is of bounded rationality and in dynamic environment it exerts direct and critical effect on their firms' strategic actions and organizational capability. Further discussion is extended to the roles played by institutional factors in organizational strategic decision process and the roles of top management in organizational dynamic capability.

The generalizability of this paper's conclusions to other firms is to be tested by large sample quantitative research.

The research confirms the bounded rationality perspective in strategic management, and explores in depth the formation, evolution, and functions of top management cognition in a dynamic environment. It also emphasizes the non‐economic factors related to the continuous acquisition and maintenance of competitive advantages in a dynamic environment.

The paper releases the economic assumptions underlying industrial structure theory and resource‐based views by emphasizing the effect of top management cognition on organizational strategic actions and organizational capabilities. It further enriches the institution‐based view by illustrating how institutional environment affects top management cognition and consequently affects the changes in organizational strategic actions and organizational capability. Thus, the institutional context for organizational strategic decision making is emphasized. The paper contributes to research in dynamic capability by emphasizing top management roles in developing dynamic capability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of capacity building in reverse mentoring as an enabling routine in bringing about changes in cognitions and capabilities for strategy formulation/implementation and organisational change.

This paper is based on an action research case study of a reverse mentoring initiative for digital transformation in a large metal multinational based in India. The capacity-building action research was carried out during a consultancy project.

Top management team (TMT) change does not always provide the route to change in managerial cognition. Sometimes the TMT has to develop cognitive changes and new cognitions through learning and engage in way-finding to formulate/implement a strategy. Such learning requires routines, here digital reverse mentoring with capacity-building intervention, to enable development of personal knowledge (Eraut, 2000), along with cognitive changes, leading to development of capabilities. Such capacity-building routines serve as the enabling processes that facilitate learning and cognitive change.

This study demonstrates the value of enabling process routines to facilitate learning and cognition change in bridging strategy implementation and change. It also suggests the need to look at a strategy as way-finding in order to better understand the gap between strategy formulation, implementation and change.

The study suggests the need for development of learning and cognition change routines as enabling processes in firms and provides insights into how old economy firms may adapt to digital era.

This study documents the routine of digital reverse mentoring as an enabling process for strategy development/implementation.

This paper aims to attempt to develop an integrative theoretical framework that approaches global industrial marketing from a managerial cognition perspective.

Drawing from the managerial cognition research, business strategy research, and international business research, this paper develops a theoretical framework that is relevant to global industrial marketing.

Global industrial marketing research has much to gain from the managerial cognition literature. The framework developed in this article presents relevant managerial cognition variables, their individual and firm level antecedents, and desirable outcomes.

The framework presented in this paper provides strong theoretical foundation for further theory development in global industrial marketing research and managerial cognition research. However, given the conceptual nature of our research, empirical scrutiny and further conceptual and empirical research are required.

Given the growing importance of global industrial marketing, the authors hope that this article provides a theoretical foundation for future research. For practitioners, the framework provides a useful starting point for evaluating managerial cognition in their firms and effective usage of the managerial cognition concept.

By recognizing the decisive role of top managers (TMs) of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this study attempts to explicate the microfoundation of pro-environmental operations of SMEs by examining the influence of institutional pressure on managerial cognition and subsequent SME pro-environmental operations. This study highlights the personal ethics of TMs, so as to examine the moderating effect of TMs' place attachment on SMEs' pro-environmental operations.

Empirical data are collected from a questionnaire survey of 509 SMEs in China. Hierarchical regression results are subject to cross-validation using secondary public data.

This study demonstrates that coercive and mimetic pressures have inverted U-shaped effects, whilst normative pressure has a U-shaped effect on the threat cognition of TMs. The results also show that TMs' threat cognition (as opposed to opportunity cognition) positively influences SMEs' pro-environmental operations. Moreover, both the emotional (place identity) and functional (place dependence) dimensions of place attachment have positive moderating effects on the relationship between threat cognition and SMEs' pro-environmental operations.

Findings of this study lead to important implications for practitioners such as regulators, policy makers and trade associations. Enabling better understanding of the nature of SMEs' pro-environmental operations, they allow for more targeted development and the provision of optimal institutional tools to promote such operations.

This study allows some important factors that differentiate SMEs from large firms to surface. These factors (i.e. institutional pressures, managerial cognition and place attachment) and the interactions between them form important constituents of the microfoundations of SMEs' pro-environmental operations.

This study proposes that the three core underpinnings of dynamic managerial capabilities (DMCs) – managerial cognition, managerial human capital and managerial social capital – represent individual-level micro-foundations that influence corporate social responsibility (CSR). It further explores the interaction mechanism between the three underpinnings in influencing CSR, and their influence depends on the technological turbulence caused by big-data-related technologies.

This study uses a quantitative research method and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to test the relationship between latent factors based on a sample of 270 Chinese top managers.

The three core underpinnings of DMCs are positively related to CSR. Managerial human capital and managerial social capital mediate the relationship between managerial cognition and CSR. Technological turbulence's moderating effects are also tested. Specifically, technological turbulence amplifies the positive relationship between managerial cognition, managerial human capital and CSR but negatively moderates the relationship between managerial social capital and CSR.

Why are some firms more willing to participate in CSR than others mainly depend on the fact that the actual participants of CSR are the top managers who formulate strategies and implement CSR plans. This study, grounded in the DMCs framework and the upper echelons perspective, is arguably the first to link DMCs' three core underpinnings and CSR, and further explore the multiple drivers' mechanisms and boundary conditions. This study contributes to individual micro-foundation of CSR literature, and advances the understanding of whether and how top managers influence CSR engagement.

Managers play a critical role in shaping the development of firms due to the risky and long-term nature of innovation. Although the managerial effect on strategic change has long been factored into organizational theories, scholars still lack a complete understanding of the specific managerial capabilities that drive innovation in today's digital economy. The present study builds on dynamic managerial capabilities theory to close this research gap. The paper proposes managers' dynamic capabilities and their three underlying drivers – managerial human capital, social capital, and cognition – as a direct antecedent to digital firms' innovativeness.

The study draws on survey data from German Industry 4.0 manufacturing firms, which were analyzed using regression analysis.

The results confirm managers' dynamic capabilities as facilitators of innovation. In contrast to previous research on nondigital industries, the findings demonstrate that only the complete portfolio of managers' dynamic capabilities promotes innovativeness in digital firms. The study provides evidence for the importance of dynamic managerial capabilities in the digital economy yet contradicts previous research on nondigital industries related to the advantageousness of managers' human capital, social capital, and cognition for innovation.

The study contributes to the literature by being the first to holistically test the effects of dynamic managerial capabilities on innovation in digital firms. The results offer a nuanced account of managers' dynamic capabilities, thereby expanding dynamic managerial capabilities theory to the digital economy.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explicate the role played by information technology (IT) in enabling managerial dynamic capabilities. By doing so, this paper seeks to address a critical theoretical gap regarding IT’s role in enabling dynamic capabilities (DCs). DCs are knowledge-intensive and information-intensive processes and play a crucial role in facilitating strategic renewal of firms operating in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous business environments. Although managers play a central role in the DCs framework, extant research has only focused on the role of IT in enabling firm-level and process-level DCs.

This conceptual paper uses the literatures on dynamic managerial capabilities, individual-level information system use, social capital, human capital, managerial cognition and technology-enabled learning to build propositions that link managerial IT use with the enablement of dynamic managerial capabilities.

This paper introduces a new construct called individual IT leveraging capability (IILC) and provides theoretically grounded arguments that link IILC with managerial social capital, managerial cognition and managerial human capital. It also explicates the relationships between managerial social capital, managerial cognition and managerial human capital and the dynamic managerial capabilities of sensing, seizing and reconfiguring.

The establishment of the linkage between IT and dynamic managerial capabilities extends the literature on the business value of IT. This work also adds to the literature on dynamic managerial capabilities by providing a theoretically grounded argument that IT can act as an antecedent of such capabilities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is arguably the first to theorize the role of IT in enabling managerial DC and thus addresses a critical gap in academic research literature.

The significance of market orientation (MO) in industrial marketing literature is immense. Separately, the role of dynamic managerial capability (DMC) as an individual-level capability has been found to be beneficial to business-to-business (B2B) transactions. However, the assessments of DMC as the antecedent to complement MO in achieving firm performance are rare. To address this knowledge gap, this study builds upon a research framework on the DMC theory and MO literature. Additionally, this study aims to investigate how export assistance avails MO-firm performance relationship and assists entrepreneurs to thrive in the international market.

The research was conducted among the entrepreneurial export manufacturing firms in the apparel industry in Bangladesh. Structural equation modelling was used to investigate the hypothesized relationship among 329 firms.

Two attributes of DMC, namely, managerial social capital and managerial cognition of entrepreneurs improve the MO process of export manufacturing firms. MO mediates the relationship between DMC and firm performance. Additionally, export assistance positively moderates the relationship between MO and the financial performance of the firm.

MO requires complementary capabilities to realize the value of it efficiently. This study strongly advocates entrepreneurs to nurture DMC to leverage MO and capitalize on emerging opportunities by productively using export assistance. Firms in the emerging economies often suffer from resource-scarcity and export assistance mitigates barriers to expand international operations and yield financial liberty to the firms operating in the international B2B market.

This paper reports the findings of a study which tested a model that predicts the turnover cognitions of hotel managers. Several predictor variables of turnover intentions were identified: perceived psychological contract breach and felt violation; organisational commitment; career expectations; perceived managerial competencies; job satisfaction, career identity and career satisfaction; demographic and human capital characteristics; and organisational characteristics. A total of 14 hypotheses were tested. The study findings (based on a sample of 89 hotel managers), reveal that a number of variables significantly predict turnover cognitions. These findings do not correspond with the normative predictions found in the hospitality literature. The findings reveal that it is the more psychological, perceptual and affective variables that are most significant in explaining turnover intentions. The findings highlight the types of variables that are important in managing the expectations of hotel managers and from the perspective of the hotel as employer, the types of issues that should be considered to enable better retention of high performing managers.

This paper aims to illustrate how institutional factors, such as Guanxi (connectedness) mechanism in a transition economy, could impact managerial cognition and their temporal orientation at individual level as well as induced change on corporate environmental strategy (CES). More specifically, this paper explores the micro foundation of corporate strategy change in an attempt to examine how corporate strategic choice and actions evolve with managerial cognition of “Guanxi” with various temporal orientations.

The paper reviews the extant literature focusing on Guanxi and CES with special attention to the temporal orientation in strategy formulation. A conceptual framework is proposed to analyze the underlying mechanism of Guanxi in mediating and shaping CES. A multi-case study with four companies operating in two industry sectors were investigated considering their relative long foothold as well as their different postures and dynamic change of corporate environment strategy in the past decades.

The findings support recent critiques on the likely shift in strategic choice of firms from the traditional Guanxi-based to a rule-based format. The interactions between entrepreneurial cognition and strategic activities toward environmental issues were still influenced by deep relational embeddedness. The findings proved that managerial Guanxi cognition impacts managers’ temporal orientation and their strategic choice on CES. Foreign-invested enterprises in the process of localization face the potential risk of emerging backdrop of their CES, i.e. from more active strategy to more reactive strategic posture, whereas local private-owned enterprises show a transformation from reactor to follower and even pioneer in the wave of those entrepreneurs’ changing cognition on the role of Guanxi in their businesses.

One main limitation of the study is the lacking of quantitative measurement of corporate environment performance. Although the paper used multiple cases to explore the dynamics of Guanxi on impacting CES, only with further development of effective scale measurement to test corporate environment performance can increase the explaining power of the proposed theoretical model in this study. It is important to note that with data of longitudinal measurement of corporate environment performance, it would be more convincing to show the outcome of the temporal lens of Guanxi on CES. However, the lacking availability of qualified disclosed data on indicating corporate environment performance constrains another limitation for the study. Considering the complexity of corporate environment strategy, the focus cases in the paper might still lack powerful and convincing illustration to prove the impact of Guanxi on CES despite the enriched contextual data and description. It is necessary to conduct deeper analysis to exclude the impact of other possible factors on CES to highlight the direct impact of Guanxi on CES.

The results of the in-depth analysis and interpretation of the exploration of the cases suggest that Guanxi still seems to dominate managerial thinking process as the norm is deeply rooted in their mind sets. However, Guanxi is no longer considered as a mere reactive cultural norm rather a positive mechanism through which Chinese firms can achieve their sustainable environmental strategic goals as well as economies prosperity in the rapidly competitive business landscape in modern China.

Previous research on CES largely neglected the context factors. This paper presents a conceptual model to deepen our understanding of the contextual factor of Guanxi with a temporal perspective and its consequent influence on CES. This helps policy makers as well as strategic management researchers and academics to reconsider the mechanism of adaptation and selection in shaping CES in the event of large scale institutional change.