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The purpose of this study is to theorize and test the relationships among lean operations and lean supply chain practices, learning- and innovation-oriented lean cultures and dynamic capabilities (DCs) microfoundations. Further, this study aims to assess the association of DCs microfoundations with process innovation.

The researchers combine primary data collected from 153 manufacturing firms located in five continents using a survey designed for the purpose of this study with archival data downloaded from the Bureau Van Dijk Orbis database and test the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modelling.

Results support the contribution of lean operations and lean supply chain practices to the development of DCs microfoundations, which further lead to greater process innovation. Additionally, while a learning-oriented lean culture positively moderates the relationships between both lean operations and lean supply chain practices and DCs microfoundations, an innovation-oriented lean culture only moderates the relationship between lean operations practices and DCs microfoundations.

This study identifies DCs microfoundations as the key mechanisms for firms implementing lean practices to achieve greater levels of process innovation and the important role played by lean cultures. This study provides direction for managers to put in place DCs through lean implementations, enabling their firms to be ready to respond to challenges and opportunities generated by environmental changes.

While previous research has confirmed the positive effects of lean practices on efficiency, the role of lean practices and cultures in developing capabilities for reacting to environmental dynamism has received little attention. This study offers an empirically supported framework that highlights the potential of lean to adapt processes in response to environmental dynamics, thereby extending the lean paradigm beyond the traditional focus on operational efficiency.

This study aims to investigate the influence of organisations’ board gender diversity on the adoption of the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) and on the use of external assurance.

The paper combines data from the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Disclosure Database and the Orbis database from Bureau van Dijk. The study uses logit models based on a sample of 366 large Asian and African companies which have addressed the SDGs in their sustainability reports published in 2017.

The results reveal that board gender diversity is positively associated with sustainability reporting and the involvement of an external assurance provider.

This study adds to the growing literature on the relationship between women’s participation on corporate boards and SDG reporting. Additionally, it addresses the understudied question of how the gender diversity of board resources affects the adoption of the external assurance of sustainability reporting.

This study investigates what causes businesses to increase their environmental stewardship beyond the governmental standards. This “beyond compliance behavior” is examined by analyzing the influence of organizational slack and institutional pressures in the European paper and paperboard industry. Beyond compliance behavior is measured as the adoption of a sustainable forestry certificate issued by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The longitudinal (10-year period) dataset consists of adoption events per company, their business characteristics and historic socio-economic data per region in the respective European countries. Examination was done by means of an event history analysis using the program “R.” The results show differences between antecedents of compliance and beyond compliance behavior. The authors discuss the results in the light of institutional and stakeholder theories. Due to institutional shifts in environmental demands, adoption of an FSC certificate has become an off-the-shelf compliance answer to legitimacy issues disguised as a progressive environmental stewardship program.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the factors that influence the adoption of new sustainability reporting (SDG) and external assurance (EXTA) practices. This study also examines the relationship between sustainability reporting activity and corporate economic performance for a sample of 99 companies in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries that addressed SDGs in their sustainability reports published in 2019.

Using a two-stage analysis, this study examines how firms’ characteristics and corporate governance variables affect SDG and economic performance, as well as the firm’s decision to adopt EXTA statements for a sample of companies in that addressed SDGs in their sustainability reports published in 2019. The authors collected data from the Global Reporting Initiative’s (GRI) Sustainability Disclosure database and the Bureau van Dijk for Orbis database.

The results show that the variables firm size, profitability, big 4 auditors and government ownership significantly affect SDG and economic performance. The results also reveal that firms operating in the manufacturing sector are positively correlated with SDG and the firm’s decision to adopt EXTA statements. Furthermore, the results indicate that board independence positively affects SDGs and EXTA.

The results can be particularly relevant and timely in helping large GCC companies promote their engagement to sustainable development practices by adopting more sustainable long-term strategies and policies. The findings could also guide managers in the strategic direction to identify firms’ characteristics and corporate governance features essential to promote sustainability reporting, an increasingly important performance indicator for investors and to enhance their confidence in the capital market. The results may also have practical implications to policymakers and other regulators in GCC countries to define effective frameworks that promote sustainable development reports and the use of EXTA.

The results make significant contributions by providing new insights to the existing literature on sustainability reporting in emerging markets by examining a unique perspective on the influence of firms’ characteristics and corporate governance features on the adoption of new sustainability reporting practices. The authors further add to the previous literature on the relationship between a firm’s economic performance and sustainable reporting by providing evidence from large companies in GCC countries, which might benefit from the adoption of multiple conceptual lenses, in this case, legitimacy and stakeholder theories. Lastly, through the empirical findings, this study provides economic validity to the 2018 joint initiative of the GRI and the United Nations Global Compact to strengthen corporate actions to achieve the United Nations SDGs.

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.

This paper aims to contribute to the scholarly debate on the origins and nature of industrial servitization. By resorting to contract manufacturing (CM) as an empirical case, it is posited that any product-service solution that a manufacturing firm is capable of delivering on a competitive basis mirrors its goals in value creation and capture, positioning within its value networks and the pool of assets and competences it holds.

To support this argument, a comparative case study of two CM firms that represent polar cases in the industry was conducted. The primary data were collected through participatory methodology, observations and semi-structured interviews of company representatives. The business experiences of an industry practitioner provided a distinct contribution to the content analysis and modelling.

It was concluded that servitization becomes endogenous as contract manufacturers aim for higher profitability through the insource of customer activities and hence extend their offering downstream in the supply chain. The findings suggest that the way out of the servitization trap is a shift toward original design and manufacturing business, where high value-adding modules are insourced and integrated into replicable solutions for various types of customers and market segments.

The generalization of the conclusion is constrained by the limited focus on two cases only. More industry and company data are therefore required to further validate this argument. Particularly valuable will be the data on the intermediate business models between the two polar cases.

Building on contested business practices, this paper outlines the logic of competitive strategy in CM on the basis of specific characteristics and implications of the various business concepts. In this case, the principal drivers of servitization are the acquisition of supporting capabilities and insourcing of customer activities. The case study method integrates theory with academic observation and managerial experiences.

This paper aims to systematically review the existing studies on the relationship of Sharī'ah governance (SG), as represented by the Sharī'ah supervisory board (SSB), with firm performance of Islamic banks (IBs), to suggest opportunities for future research in this field.

By adopting a systematic literature review, 21 empirical and theoretical papers published in Scopus concerning the relationship between SSB and performance of IBs were selected for review and analysis.

In light of the existing research studies' limitations, this paper suggests that the effect of SSB on IBs' performance still requires more empirical analyses using alternative analytical methods, alternative measures, and different periods (during crisis and non-crisis). Besides that, these studies should take into account the differences across jurisdictions in their SG models, the degree of agencies' intervention in SG practices, the control over cross-memberships of scholars, and the differences across IBs in the position of SSB in the organization structure.

The analysis undertaken in this paper would address the literature gaps on the effect of SSB on IBs' performance as this study serves as a guide for the researchers, academicians, and interested researchers from Islamic international autonomous non-for-profit organizations, e.g. AAOIFI and IFSB in research related to this important area. Importantly, the findings of this study would support regulators and related authorities across jurisdictions with suggestions on improving the current SG practices.

This paper presents a critical review of the existing research on SSB and IB performance and suggests new variables, measurements, analytical methods, and new issues for researchers in this area. Thus, it identifies the literature gap that still needs further empirical investigation and a suitable way to close it.

How to successfully drive open innovation (OI) has become an important issue. However, the existing literature on the determinants of OI focuses on organizational and situational factors, while the “human side” of it remains poorly understood. To address such problem, this paper examines the impact of two core qualities of CEOs – CEO power and social capital – on three representative OI modes from a micro-level perspective.

This paper uses the data of 4,213 firm-year observations from Chinese A-share listed companies. A panel logit model is used to test the hypotheses, and the author also uses clustering robust standard errors to ensure the robustness of the model.

A powerful CEO can drive the firm's adoption of technology, organization and market-oriented OI, and different types of social capital have a differential impact on such relationship. Specifically, the CEO's political social capital has a negative moderating effect, while his/her stronger business social capital can enhance the positive relationship between CEO power and various types of OI activities, as well as mitigate the negative effect of political social capital.

This paper echoes the call for more attention to be paid to the microfoundations of OI and provides theoretical implications for research on the convergence of OI and strategic leadership.

Firms are subject to power from both upstream and downstream partners; those partners may have different or even opposing impacts on supply chain relationships and financial performance. The purpose of this study is to investigate how upstream and downstream dependence structures affect a firm's financial performance through upstream and downstream relational depth (DEP) and relationship extendedness (EXT).

Data representing both upstream and downstream supply chain perspectives was collected using a multiple-respondent survey and was further augmented using financial performance data from an archival database.

Dependence advantages (ADVs) and disadvantages from upstream and downstream partners affect relational mechanisms and firm performance differently. Only downstream ADV will enhance a firm's DEP and EXT and subsequently affect firm's revenue and profit. Contradictory to widely held belief, the results reveal that firms that maintain long-term relationships with buyers and suppliers may experience lower revenue/profit.

This research represents a significant step in understanding the economic ramifications of dependence by (1) highlighting the difference between upstream and downstream supply chain dependence structure and (2) understanding the indirect effects of dependence structure on financial performance.

This paper aims to examine whether a private firm’s demand for a Big4 auditor is influenced by the auditor choice of its main supplier, customer and competitor. The authors rely on institutional theory to explain this stakeholders’ influence. The authors also examine whether the extent to which the firm’s board of directors engages in networking moderates this influence.

Questionnaire data are combined with archival data of 210 Belgian private firms with a statutory audit requirement. Logistic regression analysis is applied to examine to what extent firms follow their main competitor, customer and supplier in hiring a Big4 auditor.

The results reveal a positive association between the firm’s choice of a Big4 auditor and its main supplier being audited by a Big4 auditor, supporting the conformance effect (isomorphism) toward suppliers as hypothesized by institutional theory. The extent of board networking, however, seems to weaken this effect. Toward competitors, a divergence effect instead of a conformance effect is found, which indicates the existence of competitive differentiation regarding auditor choice.

While prior studies mainly focus on the agency relationships between shareholders, debtholders and managers to explain auditor choice, this study also takes into account the firm’s other main stakeholders by relying on institutional theory. Both the conformance effect toward suppliers as well as the divergence effect toward competitors provide interesting additional perspectives on why auditors are demanded, leading to interesting future research opportunities.

This paper fulfills an identified need to consider additional theories in explaining audit outcomes.