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Public service organizations (PSOs) face a critical dilemma: how to generate more value for society but with a much-reduced resource base. The article advances the strategy axis of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) research by examining EO and proactive market orientation (PMO) as joint-strategic approaches to this end, and how the characteristics of public managers may moderate the paths to value creation.

The article draws on a unique survey-based dataset developed from Brazilian PSOs and employs structural equation modelling for hypotheses testing. Post-hoc analysis, by way of analysis of variance, demonstrates the joint impact of the two strategic approaches on public service performance level.

Entrepreneurial and PMOs are revealed as routes to enhanced service performance, but managers’ domain expertise negatively moderates these relationships. Post-hoc analysis reveals how organizations displaying higher levels of both orientations realize superior performance, relative to those favouring either/or.

The study contributes new evidence for EO model specificity by examining a narrowly bounded sample of PSOs; addresses the neglect of other outcome variables beyond traditional performance, showing the value of EO for society and offers new insights to the managerial conditions that moderate the positive synergies between EO, PMO and service performance.

Developing and implementing strategies to maximize profitability is a fundamental challenge facing manufacturers. The complexity of orchestrating resources in practice has been overlooked in the operations field and it is now necessary to go beyond the direct effects of individual resources and uncover different resource configurations that maximize profitability. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Drawing on a sample of US manufacturing firms, multiple regression analysis (MRA) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) are performed to examine the effects of resource orchestration on firm profitability over time. By comparing the findings between analyses, the study represents a move away from examining the net effects of resource levers on performance alone.

The findings characterize the resource conditions for manufacturers’ high performance, and also for absence of high performance. Pension and retirement expense is a core resource condition with R&D and SG&A as consistent peripheral conditions for profitability. Moreover, although workforce size was found to have a significant negative effect under MRA, this plays a role in manufacturers’ performance as a peripheral resource condition under fsQCA.

Accounting for different resource deployment configurations, this study deepens knowledge of resource orchestration and presents findings that enable manufacturers to maximize profitability. An empirical contribution is offered by the introduction of a new method for examining manufacturing strategy configurations: fsQCA.

While the strategic management literature extols the virtues of engaging in strategic planning for superior performance, how a dynamic strategic planning capability can be developed remains underexplored; a knowledge void addressed by the paper through applying knowledge-based theory.

A mail survey was sent to high technology firms randomly sampled from the Kompass Directory of UK businesses. Firms were sampled at the SBU level, given the focus on strategic planning capability.

An organization’s strategic planning capability derives from extensive information distribution and organizational memory. While learning values is non-significant, symbolic information use degrades the development of a strategic planning capability.

By investigating the contributory activities that lead to strategic planning capability development, the findings establish how strategic planning materializes in organizations. Further, the differential effects found for knowledge management activities on strategic planning capability development extend empirical studies that suggest knowledge is always a central tenet of strategic planning.

A set of key knowledge activities is identified that managers must address for strategic planning capability development: strategic planning routines and values of search, analysis and assessment should be appropriately informed by investments in knowledge dissemination and memory on a continual basis. Meanwhile, information misuse compromises strategic planning capabilities, and managers must protect against out-of-context or manipulated information from infiltrating into organizational memory.

Despite the advent of the knowledge-based theory and its core premise that capabilities derive from knowledge management activities, little research has been conducted into demonstrating the knowledge-based antecedents of a strategic planning capability.

The direct selling model adopted in the beauty and cosmetics industry puts female consumer entrepreneurs at the heart of the business model. A neglected phenomenon in female entrepreneurship, this study aims to focus on female sales agents’ capabilities that are linked to sales performance and examine which capabilities might be shaped and enhanced through coaching and training in an emerging economy context.

Survey data were generated from a sample of 249 female sales agents who agreed to participate in a coaching and training programme run by a focal firm. Data were collected in two phases to investigate the capabilities linked to sales performance pre-intervention and the impact of coaching and training on the relationships between the capabilities and sales performance post-intervention. The time-lag data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

For female sales agents, self-efficacy and sales experience have a significant positive effect on adaptive sales performance both before and after the coaching and training intervention. In contrast, intellectual capital and self-motivation had a non-significant relationship with sales performance before the intervention. However, after the intervention, the relationship between these variables became positive and significant.

The study demonstrates the effects of pre- and post-coaching and training on female consumer entrepreneurs’ capabilities and the links to sales performance. These findings add critical empirical knowledge on how female consumer entrepreneurship may be developed and the role of entrepreneurship for female empowerment in the Asian context. Collectively, the findings bring to the fore the female sphere in consumer entrepreneurship research in emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to develop understanding of cross-cultural issues relating to the experience and implications of an elite grouping of Japanese CEOs customer value orientations (CVOs) within Japanese firms operating in India. The paper underlines that there is a propensity for East-West comparisons and in contrast the argument contributes to the under-examined area of research on East Asian/South Asian comparative studies.

Semi-structured interviews were employed to generate narratives that provided rich and novel insights into the lived experience of Japanese CEOs working in Indian contexts and in relation to CVO. An inductive framework was employed in order to develop a more in-depth understanding of Japanese CEO CVO in Indo-Japanese empirical settings.

The data analysis identified a number of shared themes that influence CVO practice in the Indo-Japanese context. The findings develop an awareness of cross-cultural management's (CCM) in relation to the under-explored area of the Indo-Japanese dyad.

The paper develops CCM perspectives towards a more in-depth conceptualization of Japanese CEO perceptions on CVO practice in India. This is also of potential relevance to wider foreign investors not only Japanese businesses. The sample respondents – Japanese CEOS working in India – constitute a small and elite group. The lead author, having experience as a CEO of a Japanese firm was able to use convenience sampling to access this difficult to access group. In addition, also stemming from the convenience aspect, all the respondents were in the manufacturing sector. The study was deliberately targeted and narrowly focussed for this reason and does not claim automatic wide generalizability to other employee strata or industry; however, other sectors and employees may recognize resonance. This identified gap provides space for future studies in varying regional, national and sector contexts.

The paper identifies implications for CCM training and Indo-Japanese business organization design.

Use and acceptance of the enhanced research paradigm could support diversity in research and knowledge production with implications for research, teaching and future policymakers.

The cross-cultural study is original in that it contributes to CCM literature by providing a rare Indo-Japanese (sic East Asian: South Asian) comparative study. It provides an uncommon granular appreciation of the interaction of these cultures in relation to CVO. In addition, it secures rare data from an elite Japanese CEOs of manufacturing sector businesses.

This special issue seeks to create an interdisciplinary community of researchers applying decision-making theory to the international marketing context. The articles published in this special issue contain cutting-edge conceptual and empirical studies that enhance existing knowledge on international marketing decision-making.

Thirty-six (36) manuscripts were submitted to the editorial office focusing on a broad range of international marketing decision-making. Following a thorough review process, a collection of five original empirical studies on different facets of international marketing decision-making from multiple theoretical, contextual and methodological perspectives are included in this Special Issue.

Overall, the combined evidence presented in this Special Issue shows that the general field of international marketing decision-making is starting to mature. Evidence from the contributors to this Special Issue shows that researchers have taken inspiration from both the past and the present when designing and crafting their research and, by doing so, they have collectively contributed to new knowledge in terms of international marketing decision-making principles, decision-maker personality traits, the consequences of international marketing decisions and cross-cultural differences with regards to decision-making influences and behavior.

With few exceptions, not much is known about how international marketing decisions are made. Yet, the way international marketing decisions are made is critical for international marketing success. This sphere of international marketing decision-making research, while relatively anemic, is typically underpinned by behavioral economic theories of decision-making, such that a duality in decision-making processes is identified. Nevertheless, international marketing and management studies are dominated by the planning paradigm, while in practice, managers often see the attempt to deviate from planning as irresponsible and dangerous. The articles included in this special issue have addressed major unanswered questions regarding the content and processes of international marketing decision-making.

This study investigates how firms build strong dynamic marketing capability (DMC) from open innovation (OI) to enhance the performance of entrepreneurial firms. Moreover, this study unfolds DMC's mediating and moderating mechanisms underlying inbound and outbound OI and performance relationships, respectively.

To test the research model and hypotheses, this study drew a sample of 251 firms operating in Malaysia using the time-lagged survey method. Structural equation modelling was used in this study to investigate the model relationships.

The findings of this study reveal the positive interplay between inbound OI (knowledge acquisition) and DMC. The outbound OI (knowledge exploitation) in this study is found to mediate the relationship between inbound OI and firm performance. In addition, while the DMC has a mediating effect in the relationship between inbound OI and firm performance, such a capability reinforces the positive relationship between outbound OI and performance.

This study provides a noble insight into the complex interplay between OI and entrepreneurial firms' performance by developing and testing an integrated framework underpinned by a knowledge-based view and dynamic capability theory. The findings highlight the significance of taking an interdisciplinary and integrated approach to better understand the determinants of entrepreneurial firms' performance in an emerging country context.

Within the globalized commercial context, Japanese business activity in India has increased significantly. The purpose of this paper is to highlight common attitudinal traits that would facilitate orientation of Indian executives towards Japanese management methods through, for instance “reverse adaptation”, using an approach other than cultural dimensions that have emerged in recent decades and consider how these play out in change management contexts.

A literature review was undertaken which found significant parallels between traditional Indian philosophy and modern Japanese management methods, inter alia long-term orientation, equanimity and Nemawashi (pre-arranged participative decision making) and shared spiritual dimensions. The paper employed a methodology of participant observation and semi-structured interview approaches contextualized through lived experience methodology (Van Manen, 2015). These events are described and analysed narratively using a blend of qualitative participant observation and reflexive critical incident review.

The findings, by examining the confluence of Indian and Japanese management, provide an innovative avenue of research and theory for change management.

The research employs an inductive methodology which employs vignettes to examine Indo-Japanese contexts. The limits to generalization are recognized within the study. The paper offers important implications on Indo-Japanese collaboration and change management.

These findings have important practical implications for Indian and Japanese managers who will be able to engage better within the dynamics of the Japanese work environment in Japanese subsidiaries in India. These same insights could also potentially facilitate wider examples of working in Japanese environments, either in Japan or outside Japan. At a more general level, the findings are relevant to all foreign investors in India for enhanced employee engagement by providing insights into spiritual values of Indian managers and their impact on change management situations.

There is emerging research on how traditional Indian philosophy tenets can be found in modern (western) management. This paper provides reasons, based in the extant literature, to believe that modern Japanese methods can trace their origin in Buddhist Indian philosophical thought and offer important implications for managing change.

The paper offers in-depth original insights into Indo-Japanese collaborative contexts.

Diversity in boards has gained attention as a reflection of societal imbalances. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of diversity in terms of both gender and nationality in management boards of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on firm performance from an upper echelons perspective. The authors also examine how board-specific characteristics influence the structural makeup of boards in gender and nationality diversity terms.

The authors focus on the UK because of its individualistic society and flexible labour market and assess 309 SMEs in the manufacturing industry over 2009–2019. A 3-stage least squares (3SLS) estimator is used to analyse the data, the Shannon index to measure board diversity, return on assets as proxy for firm performance, and owner-manager presence, board member age and tenure are the board-specific characteristics of primary interest.

Both gender and nationality diversity contribute to firm performance and represent distinct upper echelon characteristics that change the cognitive and psychological dynamics of boards. Firms with larger boards do not perform better, but diverse boards reduce the narrowing view of CEOs. Yet the presence of owner-managers, despite their performance-enhancing contribution, holds firms back from benefitting from diversity as a strategic choice.

This study extends the upper echelons theory to include board diversity as an important aspect that should become more central in upper echelon thinking when understanding firm performance. The authors’ findings suggest that theoretical developments in search of understanding firm behaviour must proceed by accounting for diversity and not simply focusing on decision-making styles.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of intermediate knowledge mechanisms on the participative leadership–employee exploratory innovation relationship using a distal mediation model.

Deploying a time-lagged questionnaire method implemented over four business quarters, data are generated from 1,600 responses in R&D units of Taiwanese technology firms.

The structural equation modeling results reveal that participative leadership is positively related to employee exploratory innovation; coworker knowledge and absorptive capacity partially mediate the relationship between participative leadership and employee exploratory innovation independently; and coworker knowledge sharing in combination with absorptive capacity partially mediates this relationship.

The findings contribute new knowledge on the relationship between participative leadership and employee exploratory innovation by uncovering intermediate knowledge mechanisms that augment this relationship.