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Capitalizing on a unique measure of takeover susceptibility principally based on the staggered implementation of state laws, this study aims to explore the takeover market’s effect on managerial ownership. The market for corporate control, often known as the takeover market, is an important external governance mechanism, whereas managerial ownership is a vital internal governance instrument. Managerial ownership brings into convergence the interests of shareholders and managers. The originality of this study arises from the usage of state-level anti-takeover legislations as a measure which is beyond the control of firms and plausibly exogenous to firm-specific characteristics.

In addition to the standard regression analysis, this study also executes a variety of robustness checks to minimize endogeneity, i.e. propensity score matching, entropy balancing, instrumental–variable analysis, Lewbel’s (2012) heteroscedastic identification and Oster’s (2019) testing for coefficient stability.

Based on a large sample of US firms, the results show that more hostile takeover threats bring about significantly lower managerial ownership. The results reinforce the prediction of the substitution hypothesis. The disciplinary function of the takeover market reduces agency conflict to the point where managerial ownership is less necessary as a governance mechanism. Specifically, a rise in takeover susceptibility by one standard deviation diminishes managerial ownership by 7.22%.

`To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to shed light on the impact of the takeover market on managerial ownership using a novel measure mainly based on the staggered adoption of state laws, which are plausibly exogenous to individual firms’ characteristics. Consequently, unlike prior research, this study is more likely to indicate a causal effect, rather than merely a correlation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organisations to transform face-to-face teams into virtual ones through the adoption of remote working modes. This event has represented the starting point of a process that is changing how management control (MC) systems are designed and implemented to guide employees towards organisational objectives. The previous literature on virtual teams (VTs) has devoted scant attention to MC issues. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how MC – and particularly cultural control – has changed to cope with the shift from face-to-face to VTs and by analysing the interrelationship between the different control mechanisms and the resulting tensions.

The research adopts the methodological framework based on abduction to provide a theoretical explanation and conceptualisation of MC in virtual settings. To tackle the research objective, this work undertakes a cross-sectional field study based on semi-structured interviews with managers of different service companies.

The results of the research highlight the key challenges that managers are called to deal with to design and change MC systems when implementing remote working. In particular, managers must cope with the reduced possibility to leverage cultural controls. To do this, this study’s analysis found that managers act by introducing and/or removing formal and informal controls and by orchestrating the interplays and tensions between these mechanisms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, to date limited attention has been paid to MC in VTs. Moreover, few researchers have investigated the process of MC change from face-to-face to VTs. This work aims to contribute to this nascent stream of literature by providing interesting implications for both research and practice.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of rapid internationalization by emerging-market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) on their innovation performance. It also seeks to identify any potential moderating factors that could influence this relationship.

By analyzing data from listed Chinese MNEs from 2012 to 2022, this study applies a negative binomial regression model to test the research hypotheses.

This study uncovers an inverted U-shaped relationship between the internationalization speed of EMNEs and their innovation performance. It also suggests that strong absorptive, learning and managerial capacities could play positive moderating roles in the effect of internationalization speed on EMNEs’ innovation performance.

This study highlights rapid global expansion, promoting new knowledge acquisition for EMNEs. However, due to time-compression dilemmas with limited EMNE firm-specific advantages, overly accelerated internationalization hinders learning effectiveness. Additionally, this study reveals the critical importance of three firm-specific capacities in EMNEs – absorptive, learning and managerial capacities – in efficiently assimilating newly acquired knowledge from foreign markets and enhancing their innovation performance through rapid internationalization.

This article aims to examine the role of boundaryless career orientation in influencing Internet professionals' strategies toward workplace problems in China's Internet companies, which feature prominent problems including excessive overwork. It addresses one question: how do Chinese Internet professionals make grievance strategies?

This article draws on qualitative data based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 134 employees from 6 representative Chinese Internet companies. The data were collected during 2018-2021 and analyzed with a grounded theory approach.

This article highlights the role of boundaryless career orientation in explaining Chinese Internet professionals' strategies toward workplace grievances. The author develops a comprehensive model to illustrate how boundaryless career orientation influences four grievance strategies namely, strategic compliance, exit, dissent expression and resistance that correspond to four different motives to advance the professionals' boundaryless career: learning, transferring, relieving and resolving. Internet professionals choose different grievance strategies based on how each option can benefit their boundaryless career goals.

This article is one of the first to bring in boundaryless career orientation as a key factor in explaining Chinese Internet professionals' grievance strategies. It provides a fuller picture than previous studies by showing wide varieties of professionals' grievance behaviors. The finding of high-level boundaryless career orientation among Internet professionals offers insights on how companies can improve employment relations by improving career management practices.

This study aims to investigate the possible implications of compliance with corporate governance (CG) provisions, including board composition and ownership structures, on the firm’s likelihood of falling into financial distress.

The study applies a random-effects logistic regression model as a baseline analysis using a sample of 110 FTSE 350 manufacturing companies from 2014 to 2019. This technique is supported by conducting a two-stage Heckman regression model to overcome the potential existence of endogeneity problems.

The empirical evidence suggests that board composition and ownership structure are heterogeneously associated with financial distress probabilities in that they might have either reduced or increased the financial distress of the sampled firms. Specifically, board independence, board gender diversity, audit committee independence and institutional ownership negatively influence the likelihood of financial distress. In contrast, and consistent with the expectations, ownership concentration is positively attributed to financial distress, while the board size, audit committee size and managerial ownership have insignificant impacts on financial distress.

The study extends the existing body of knowledge by examining the collective effect of board characteristics and ownership structures on firms’ financial distress likelihood among a sample of manufacturing firms within the FTSE 350 index post the 2008 global financial crisis and following the recent CG reforms in the UK during the study period from 2014 to 2019.

The 2008 Chinese melamine milk scandal resulted in six reported fatalities and affected around 300,000 children, of whom 54,000 were hospitalised. Previous studies have used linear approaches to examine the root causes of the melamine milk scandal.

In the present study, we applied a systems approach to the melamine milk scandal to identify the complex systems-level failures across the supply chain leading to the incident and why food fraud incidents such as this occurred in the dairy sector. Additionally, systemic failures associated with food fraud vulnerability factors were considered (i.e. opportunities, motivation and control measures).

48 contributory factors of influence were identified and grouped across six sociotechnical levels across the Chinese dairy system, from government to equipment and surroundings. Lack of vertical integration (processes and communication) contributed to the failure. When viewed from a broader perspective, the melamine milk scandal can be linked to a series of human errors and organisational issues associated with government bodies, the dairy supply chain, individual organisations and management decisions and individual actions of staff or processes.

This approach is of value to policymakers and the industry as it supports public health investigations of food fraud incidents and proactive food safety management.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to analyse a food safety or fraud incident using the AcciMap approach and the food fraud vulnerability assessment (FFVA) technique. AcciMap analysis is applied to both unintentional and intentional aspects of the incident.

This study aims to examine the effects of the culture for innovation, work engagement and the use of interactive performance measurement systems (PMSs) in the interorganizational accounting processes automation at a shared services center (SSC).

A single-entity survey was carried out at an SSC provider of B2B accounting services of a multinational company in the electrical sector, and structural equation modeling was applied for data analysis.

The results show that the culture for innovation, the work engagement and the use of interactive PMS positively and significantly influence the accounting process automation in the investigated SSC. Moreover, the use of interactive PMS presents a mediating effect on the relationship between culture for innovation and work engagement.

The research findings contribute by revealing that the culture of innovation, work engagement and the interactive PMS support the use of robotic process automation and artificial intelligence in the interorganizational automation of accounting processes in an SSC-type service ecosystem. This highlights the importance of the culture of innovation and the positive feeling toward work being reinforced by the organization and the role of the interactive PMS as a formal instrument to transmit the organizational objectives and provide a common vision.

The study reveals that the use of interactive PMS seems to be an important conductor of the behavior of employees toward the accounting process automation strategy at the SSC, reinforced, in this case, by the culture of innovation and work engagement.

The purpose of this study is to extend sales control research to inside sales. Aside from a few notable exceptions (Conde et al., 2022) much of the sales control literature has focused on a single control mechanism rather than a sales control portfolio perspective. The authors add multiple layers to Conde et al. (2022) by capturing secondary operational data and manager interviews to access sales control theory in practice.

With operational data from a Fortune 100 financial services company and sales manager interviews, the authors present evidence that managers apply a portfolio of controls to ensure sales agents’ overall performance.

Findings support that cultural controls have a greater influence on overall performance than a focus solely on process and outcome controls. Inside sales managers can generate better results when they focus on creating an employee-centric culture rather than controlling sales agents with formal sales controls.

This study extends sales control research by examining inside sales managers’ formal and informal sales controls. Historically, inside sales had sales leaders balance a myriad of sales controls grounded in strict oversight. With a few notable exceptions, the limited inside sales control research provides the opportunity to display an inside sales manager’s need to jointly focus on operational results and sales outcomes, illustrating the importance of cultural controls compared to other sales process and outcome controls. This research considerably extends sales controls research by focusing on inside sales.

Green supplier selection (GSS) is acknowledged as important governance in green supply chain management (GSCM). However, this paper argues that GSS is not a stand-alone GSCM governance mode that determines manufacturers' environmental performance but rather one that needs to be aligned with contractual governance, particularly contractual control and adaptation, to promote environmental performance effects. This paper adopts GSS as ex ante governance and introduces behavior and outcome controls as ex post contractual control and adaptation, respectively. Thus, this paper addresses how GSS affects environmental performance directly and indirectly through behavior and outcome controls within transaction cost economics (TCE) theory.

This research model was tested on 300 Chinese manufacturing firms, and multiple regression analysis was used to validate our hypotheses.

A direct relationship was observed between GSS and environmental performance. This direct relationship is positively mediated by behavior and outcome controls.

This paper develops and elucidates an integrative green supply chain process proceeding from the implementation of ex ante GSS and ex post contractual governance to the realization of environmental performance. Furthermore, this paper considers two different forms of contractual governance, specifically contractual control and adaptation, and explains how they can be implemented using behavior and outcome controls from the perspective of TCE theory.

The integration of industry 4.0 has become a priority for many organizations. However, not all organizations are suitable and capable of implementing industry 4.0 because it requires a dynamic and flexible implementation strategy. The implementation of industry 4.0 often involves overcoming several tensions between internal and external stakeholders. This paper aims to explore the paradoxical tensions that arise for health-care organizations when integrating industry 4.0. Moreover, it discusses how a paradox lens can support the conceptualization and proposes techniques for handling tensions during the integration of industry 4.0.

This qualitative and in-depth study draws upon 32 semi-structured interviews. The empirical case concerns how two health-care organizations handle paradoxical tensions during the integration of industry 4.0.

The exploration resulted in six recurring technology tensions: technology invention (modularized design vs. flexible design), technology collaboration (automation vs. human augmentation), technology-driven patient experience (control vs. autonomy), technology uncertainty (short-term experimentation vs. long-term planning), technology invention and diffusion through collaborative efforts among stakeholders (selective vs. intensive collaboration) and technological innovation (market maintenance vs. disruption).

A paradox theory-informed conceptual model is proposed for how to handle tensions during the integration of industry 4.0. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to introduce paradox theory for quality management, including lean and Six Sigma.