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Foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate in complex and competitive international environments, implement market and non-market strategies, manage resources and value-added activities and contribute to the overall performance of their parent firms. Thus, the research question on the determinants of MNE foreign subsidiaries’ performance is of interest to managers and academic researchers. The empirical literature has flourished over the recent decades; however, the domains are fragmented, and the findings are inclusive. The purpose of this study is to systematically review, analyse and synthesize the empirical articles in this area, identify research gaps and suggest a future research agenda.

This study uses the qualitative content analysis method in reviewing and analysing 150 articles published in 24 scholarly journals during the period 2000–2023.

The literature uses a variety of theoretical perspectives to examine the key determinants of subsidiary performance which can be grouped into six major domains, namely, home- and host country-level factors; distance between home and host countries; the characteristics of parent firms and of subsidiaries; and governance mechanisms (the establishment modes and ownership strategy, subsidiary autonomy and the use of home country expatriates for transferring knowledge from the headquarters and controlling foreign subsidiaries). A range of objective and subjective indicators are used to measure subsidiary performance. Yet, the research shows a lack of broader integration of theories and presents inconsistent theoretical predictions, inconclusive empirical findings and estimation bias, which hinder our understanding of how the determinants independently and jointly shape the performance of foreign subsidiaries.

This study provides a comprehensive, nuanced and systematic review that synthesizes and clarifies the determinants of subsidiary performance, offers deeper insights from both theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects and proposes some promising avenues for future research directions.

The literature currently offers only fragmentary insights into the research on the relationship between employee emotions and human resource management (HRM). Therefore, further research is essential to bridge this knowledge gap. Our study aims to identify the mediating effects of positive employee emotions and exhaustion in the relationship between HRM and employee engagement.

Drawing on the literature review findings, a conceptual model was formulated to illustrate the relationship between HRM, employee emotions and engagement. A confirmatory analysis was conducted using structural equation modelling (SEM CFA) on a sample of 1,000 employees to validate the proposed model. The data were collected in 2021, with a particular emphasis on exploring the indirect influence of HRM on engagement through positive employee emotions and exhaustion.

The quantitative research aimed to test a model depicting the relationship between HRM and employee emotions. The findings indicate the robust effect of HRM on positive employee emotions and exhaustion. The authors observed significant variation in the level of impact depending on the size of the organisation (stronger in large firms) and the sector (stronger in the public sector).

The study bridges the gap in our understanding of the link between HRM and employee emotions. It would be advisable to further explore the specific impact of individual HRM practices on both positive and negative employee emotions. It is worth extending the scope of future research to explore components of the investigated constructs as well as mediators and moderators of the relationship between HRM and employee emotions.

This study aims to propose a multi-level (bottom-up) analysis to build an organizational change capability (OCC) development model by integrating paradox and social cognitive theories. Using these theories, OCC (Level 2) is influenced by the leader’s paradox mindset (Level 1) and collective PsyCap (Level 2). The study also examined the moderating effect of magnitude to change on the effect of leader’s paradox mindset on OCC.

The proposed hypotheses were tested empirically using data from 327 respondents and 48 work teams from 21 leading private higher education institutions in Indonesia. To analyze the data, a multi-level analysis was conducted with Mplus software.

The results showed that, in a cross-level relationship, leader’s paradox mindset had a positive effect on OCC, whereas OCC mediated the effect of leader’s paradox mindset on organizational change performance. On an organizational level, collective PsyCap affected OCC, and OCC significantly mediated the relationship between collective PsyCap and organizational change performance. Moreover, the authors found a moderating effect of magnitude on change of leader’s paradox mindset to OCC.

This study used a multi-level analysis to evaluate the mechanisms of influence of leader’s paradox mindset (bottom-up) on OCC and the moderation effect of magnitude to change in an Indonesian context.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the older perspective on the nature of workplace politics and its disruptive role in organizations. In particular, this paper references the positive aspect of meaningful relationship building that is promoted by workplace politics and how the very politicking becomes a necessary tool for generating and maintaining social capital within the organizational boundaries.

The paper relies on presenting author’s viewpoint on positive workplace politics and its intertwined relationship with social capital.

In the process of politicking, the relationships built, the networks established and maintained and the social capital acquired are of immense value. To thwart the negative effects of organizational politics such as disengagement from work, intentions to quit, low job satisfaction, etc., we must look into the multidimensional nature of politics and the value that social capital adds to it.

The positive side of politics has long been in the shadows of its pronounced negative side. The paper presents the ground work for exploring the many colours of organizational politics and also delve into the factors that can thwart the negative effects of politics that may be experienced by the employees.

The paper contends that workplace politics is not just responsible for the disruptive and unwanted behaviours but is rather an important source of the positive and productive interpersonal relationships that are often useful in accomplishing individual and organizational goals.

Becoming a learning organisation (LO) is an aspiration for every organisation as it offers internal capabilities, a competitive advantage and synergy gains to organisational members. Scholars across the globe have tried to examine the outcomes of LO at various organisational levels. Still, the existing literature is fragmented, and there is no systematic understanding of the multi-level outcomes of LO. Therefore, this study aims to synthesise, analyse and categorise the scientific literature into various levels of outcomes of LO to provide a conceptual framework for use by future researchers and academicians.

The authors have performed bibliometric analysis using 603 research articles published in Scopus, entailing 1,345 authors from 77 countries, followed by a thematic cluster analysis using bibliographic coupling to understand the current research trends and to recommend a set of broad themes to provide direction for future researchers in this domain.

The results are largely descriptive and aim to capture a panoramic view of what has been written on the topic so far. The bibliometric analysis was conducted using different means like citation analysis, cluster analysis, and keyword analysis to reveal the most significant publications, notable authors, keywords, current research trends, and future research questions. Further, the bibliographic coupling led to the categorization of the outcomes of LO into the following four clusters (including sub-clusters): (1) Individual level learning outcomes (2) team-level learning outcomes, (3) organisational-wide learning outcomes and (4) inter-organisational learning outcomes.

Managers and practitioners (change agents) expect academicians and researchers to suggest a set of actions that integrates their learning efforts with business performance across diverse sectors and industries. So, future researchers may try and explain the findings of seminal studies identified in the most cited documents, to design choices and trade-offs that may address major hindrances in implementing the construct in true spirit. The researchers may collaborate with practitioners to study the outcomes of LO with a scientific and empirical lens. Finally, the study invites change agents and organisation development (OD) practitioners to document the outcomes of their efforts to create and leverage the outcomes of LO.

Researchers across the world have tried to examine the outcomes of LO at various levels in organisational setting including, measuring capabilities and attitudes at individual level, team capabilities and innovation, and organisational performance and sustainability, but still there is no tested conceptual framework which encompasses the various outcome levels of LO in one frame.

Of critical concern to the world is the need to reduce consumption and waste of natural resources. This study provides a multi-level exploration of the ways situational and transformational links between levels and challenges are related to the adoption and utilization of material flow cost accounting in Vietnam, to encourage green productivity.

Based on triangulation of public documents at different institutional levels and a set of semi-structured interviews, situational and transformational links and challenges for material flow cost accounting in Vietnam are examined using purposive and snowball sampling of key actors.

Using a multi-level framework the research identifies six situational and transformational barriers to implementation of material flow cost accounting and suggests opportunities to overcome these. The weakest links identified involve macro-to meso-situational and micro-to macro-transformational links. The paper highlights the dominance of meso-level institutions and lack of focus on micro transformation to cut waste and enable improvements in green productivity.

The paper identifies ways for companies in Vietnam to reduce unsustainability and enable transformation towards sustainable management and waste reduction.

The paper is the first to develop and use a multi-level/multi-time period framework to examine the take-up of material flow cost accounting to encourage transformation towards green productivity. Consideration of the Vietnamese case builds understanding of the challenges for achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 12, to help enable sustainable production and consumption patterns.

In social media, crisis information susceptible of generating different emotions could be spread at exponential pace via multilevel super-spreaders. This study aims to interpret the multi-level emotion propagation in natural disaster events by analyzing information diffusion capacity and emotional guiding ability of super-spreaders in different levels of hierarchy.

We collected 47,042 original microblogs and 120,697 forwarding data on Weibo about the “7.20 Henan Rainstorm” event for empirical analysis. Emotion analysis and emotion network analysis were used to screen emotional information and identify super-spreaders. The number of followers is considered as the basis for classifying super-spreaders into five levels.

Official media and ordinary users can become the super-spreaders with different advantages, creating a new emotion propagation environment. The number of followers becomes a valid basis for classifying the hierarchy levels of super-spreaders. The higher the level of users, the easier they are to become super-spreaders. And there is a strong correlation between the hierarchy level of super-spreaders and their role in emotion propagation.

This study has important significance for understanding the mode of social emotion propagation and making decisions in maintaining social harmony.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-03-2024-0192.

The paper aims to clarify how work-specific characteristics at both the individual and organizational level influence professional civil servants’ readiness for change during the implementation of reforms in public administration. We examine the influence of work characteristics at the individual and organizational levels, such as reform-related strains, organizational climate, and organizational professionalism, on the employees’ response to change. In addition, we also consider the interaction between these specific work characteristics.

This article employs a quantitative multi-level analysis to examine the influence of individual and collective predictors of employees' readiness for change. For our analysis, we used data from the evaluation of a school reform in Switzerland aimed at aligning teachers' working conditions with those of other administrative employees. The survey conducted for the evaluation includes responses from 2,162 teachers.

Our study expands the understanding in public management research of work characteristics that either promote or reduce employees’ readiness for change in the public sector. Our findings suggest that the organizational level, in our case the school level, influences the individual’s response to change. Furthermore, the role of organizational professionalism in terms of a reform-related transformation of the identities, structures, and practices of the actors concerned is highlighted as a potential stressor and catalyst that reinforces the negative correlation between reform-related stress and willingness to change.

This paper offers insights into how public managers can effectively overcome challenges in the implementation process of public school reforms. This also includes the awareness among change agents that positively associated changes at the organizational level may have negative consequences at the individual level, due to the fact that they affect professional understanding, for example, which may cause the affected actors to respond with resistance.

This paper contributes to the small number of multi-level research studies on the responses to change in public administration and answers the call for research to investigate the hurdles that may arise when implementing change. Further, the paper contributes to the literature on the impact of new public management (NPM) on the identity of professional civil servants.

Innovation management in the healthcare sector has undergone significant evolutions over the last decades. These evolutions have been investigated from a variety of perspectives: clusters, ecosystems of innovation, digital ecosystems and regional ecosystems, but the dynamics of networks have seldom been analyzed under the lenses of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs). As identified by Cao and Shi (2020), the literature is silent about the organization of resource allocation systems for network orchestration in EEs. This article investigates these elements in the healthcare sector. It discusses the strategic role played by entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) in resource allocation and elaborates on the distinction between sponsored and nonsponsored ESOs in EEs. ESOs are active in network orchestration. The literature explains that ESOs lift organizational, institutional and cultural barriers, and support entrepreneurs' access to cognitive and technological resources. However, allocation models are not yet discussed. Therefore, our research questions are as follows: What is the resource allocation model in healthcare-related EEs? What is the role played by sponsored and nonsponsored ESOs as regards resource allocation to support the emergence and development of EEs in the healthcare sector?

The article offers an explanatory, exploratory, and theory-building investigation. The research design offers an abductive research protocol and multi-level analysis of seven (sponsored and nonsponsored) ESOs active in French healthcare ecosystems. Field research elaborates on semi-structured interviews collected between 2016 and 2022.

This article shows explicit complementarities between top-down and bottom-up resource allocation approaches supported by ESOs in the healthcare sector. Despite explicit originalities in each approach, no network orchestration model prevails. Multi-polar coordination is the rule. Entrepreneurs' access to critical technological and cognitive resources is based on resource allocation modalities that differ for sponsored versus nonsponsored ESOs. Emerging from field research, this research also shows that sponsored and nonsponsored ESOs manage their roles in different ways because they confront original issues about organizational legitimacy.

Beyond the results listed above, the main originalities of the paper relate to the instantiation of multi-level analysis operated during field research and to the confrontation between sponsored versus nonsponsored ESOs in the domain of healthcare-related innovation management. This research shows that ESOs have practical relevance because they build original routes for resource allocation and network orchestration in EEs. Each ESO category (sponsored versus nonsponsored) provides original support for resource allocation. The ESO's legitimacy is inferred either from the sponsor or the services delivered to end-users. This research leads to propositions for future research and recommendations for practitioners: ESO managers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers.

The present study aims to advance a new framework to spur creativity at individual and team levels in the construction industry by studying a leader's sense of humor. The authors develop and test a multi-level model to investigate the direct and indirect effects of leader's humor on creativity within teams working on construction projects. The authors draw on the benign violation theory to hypothesize that a leader's sense of humor influences the acceptability of norm violations in teams, which helps to improve their creativity. The authors also integrate the benign violation theory with the social information processing theory to examine the indirect effects of project leader's sense of humor on individual- and team-level creativity via team psychological safety.

The authors collected data from 165 members nested in 45 teams working on construction projects in China. The construct's factor structure and discriminant validity were established through confirmatory factor analysis. The authors used multi-level modeling via Mplus to test team-level to the individual-level direct and indirect hypotheses, while team-level direct and indirect hypotheses were tested using ordinary least squares regression.

The results show that the leader's humor has a dual positive direct effect on individual and team creativity. Furthermore, these effects are partially mediated by team psychological safety. The implications of these findings to improve the construction management theory and practice are discussed in the manuscript.

The current study contributes to the literature by understanding the significance of leader humor in predicting individual-level and team-level creativity within the construction sector. It expands the literature by examining team psychological safety as the underlying mechanism in the relationship between leader humor and creativity.