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While common sense suggests that corruption will likely have a negative impact on the economy as it raises the cost of doing business, research on the topic showed inconsistent results (positive, negative and neutral). This paper aims to verify whether corruption has a “grease” or “sand” effect on the wheels of entrepreneurial rates and under which conditions corruption will have stronger or weaker effects.

Using institutional theory as the basis for the hypotheses, generalized least squares estimation is conducted to empirically examine the role of corruption and political discretion in entrepreneurship in a sample of 93 countries.

Countries with higher levels of corruption are associated with lower levels of firm creation. However, this negative effect of corruption is weaker when there are higher levels of political discretion.

This is the first evaluation of the moderating effect of political discretion on the negative impact of corruption on entrepreneurship.

Crisis management increasingly requires coordination and collaboration between multiple organizations. This means that inter-organizational boundaries have to be spanned by dedicated organizational members (i.e. boundary spanners). This paper aims to describe which features facilitate the work of boundary spanners in crisis management.

A case study, consisting of 26 interviews, has been conducted in the Netherlands to explore how civilian and military representatives effectively spanned inter-organizational boundaries.

Five features are identified that enable boundary spanners to improve crisis management coordination and collaboration. Boundary spanners are likely to be successful when they (1) serve long terms, (2) are sensitive to partners' concerns, (3) have considerable discretion, (4) are politically skilled and (5) prove influential in their own organization.

Crisis organizations can extend boundary spanners' term length, broaden their discretionary space and give them more influence to facilitate their work. Additionally, in the selection process, it would be well to choose organizational members who display a sensitivity to the interests of crisis partners and possess political skill.

Multiple studies have reiterated the key role of boundary spanners in enabling crisis management coordination and collaboration. Yet, this study is the first to provide a systematic analysis of key features that help boundary spanners to reach this goal.

The purpose of this study is to refute the work of Andersen (2017) by suggesting a different theoretical view and to argue that the concept of managerial discretion is one of the core dimensions that cannot be discarded when studying corporate governance.

This paper uses theoretical frameworks from recent literature, definitions and empirical studies on the concept of managerial discretion and corporate governance.

Several studies have empirically tested and measured the concept of managerial discretion, some have provided validity and reliability of the concept and others have showed the direct impact of discretion on firm performance.

Research on managerial discretion provides owners and board of directors a clear advice on how much discretion can be granted to top executives by taking into consideration the different dimensions of the external and internal environment.

This paper concludes that corporate governance research will not improve if it abandons the concept of managerial discretion.

This study investigated the moderating role of democracy in the relationship between corruption and foreign direct investment. The purpose of this study is to understand whether corruption has different effects on the location decisions of multinational enterprises (MNEs) depending on the regime type.

This study explored how institutional context influenced the impacts of corruption on the location decisions of MNEs, specifically using a sample of Chinese cross-border mergers and acquisitions between 2000 and 2020.

This study assessed the role of democracy in the relationship between corruption and the location decisions of Chinese MNEs. In general, this study found that Chinese MNEs were hindered by host country corruption, but that these detrimental effects were weaker in the presence of more effective democratic institutions.

This study contributes to the literature on institutional factors in international business through its simultaneous investigation of the effects of both democracy and corruption on the location decisions of MNEs. Moreover, there is a prevailing view that Chinese MNEs are willing to enter countries with high corruption, but the results of this study indicate that they are risk-averse in ways similar to their Western counterparts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the initiatives of local governments to launch modernisation processes are facilitated by local autonomy, which is increasingly important in both the theory and practice of public policy and management.

Local government reforms are distinguished according to the institutional structure at which they are directed and local autonomy is assessed as a multidimensional concept. Drawing on a multilevel analysis of the Swiss case, this paper combines data stemming from a survey conducted at the local tier with secondary data from the regional tier.

The main empirical findings are threefold. First, when local governments undertake managerial or political reform initiatives, their autonomy with respect to higher levels of government matters. Second, it is not local autonomy but rather the perception of structural problems that is the force driving territorial reforms. Third, it is not the autonomy enjoyed by local governments vis-à-vis local factors, but rather the pressures stemming from that context that may lead to reforms.

By adopting a comparative approach to local autonomy, this paper shows that local governments which have sufficient latitude for local policy making are likely to take initiatives to improve service delivery in accordance with local preferences.

The practice of corporate chief executive officer (CEOs) engaging in sociopolitical activism on issues both related and unrelated to their companies is gaining attention in the popular press and among management scholars. The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents and motivations of CEO sociopolitical activism in a typology of influences internal and external to the CEO and to the organization. This study’s typology highlights the need for greater understanding of CEOs’ sociopolitical activism for the CEO as an individual actor and for the company they represent.

This study’s approach is to conceptually review the literature on CEO activism and to create a theoretic framework for future analysis of the antecedents and motivations and ramifications of CEOs’ sociopolitical activism for the CEO as an individual actor and for the company they represent. The author highlights four theories and seeks future application of these theories to the phenomena in a typology.

The typology highlights the application of management theories to various ramifications of CEO activism to four influences on CEO activities. Upper echelons theory helps explain the motivation of a CEO internally, whereas agency theory applies to CEO activism internal to the CEO and external to the organizational operations. External to the CEO, organizational culture theory supports responses internal to the organization, and stakeholder theory provides insight into responses external to the CEO and the organization.

This study provides conceptual support for the study of CEO activism and encourages future research on the topic.

While research has shown that multiple actors, both internal and external to the organization, influence performance, oftentimes, these actors are studied in isolation. This paper aims to examine the performance implications of both top management team (TMT) and chief executive officer (CEO) human capital. In addition, the authors consider external actors' influence on performance by examining corporate political activity (CPA).

The authors use a sample of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) football teams, examining human capital data on the head coaches and the assistant coaches, combined with the schools' participation in NCAA football committees.

The study findings indicate that organizations engage in various market and nonmarket strategies in concert, and that different strategies result in performance outcome differences. Specifically, we examine how the use of CEO and TMT human capital and CPA interact and influence performance.

The authors examine the moderating effects of political activity on the human capital–performance relationship for both top leaders and TMTs. Organizations benefit from investing in the human capital of their leaders internally and CPA externally.

While organizations engage in market and nonmarket actions in concert, management research has generally studied these concepts in isolation. This paper suggests that both market and nonmarket activities can influence performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of internal capabilities and environmental turbulence on market (e.g. cost leadership and differentiation) and nonmarket (e.g. political and social) strategies (NMS), and considers how these strategies impact financial and non-financial performance in firms in the United Kingdom.

A survey was administered online to 215 practicing managers in the UK. Measures for competitive strategy (i.e. cost leadership and differentiation), NMS, strategic capabilities, market turbulence and firm performance were adopted from or based on previous work. Hypotheses were tested via SmartPLS.

Findings underscore the impact of market turbulence across all market and nonmarket strategy dimensions. Multiple links between capabilities and strategies were identified. Both cost leadership and differentiation were significantly linked to non-financial performance, but only differentiation was significantly linked to financial performance. An increased emphasis on social NMS was linked to higher financial performance, but not non-financial performance. Political NMS was linked to neither financial nor non-financial performance.

The sample included managers in multiple industries. Self-typing scales were utilized to measure market turbulence, emphasis on capabilities, strategic emphasis and firm performance.

Emphasis on social NMS can promote financial performance, but political NMS does not appear to drive either financial or non-financial performance.

This paper provides empirical support for a UK-based model linking market turbulence, strategic capabilities, market and nonmarket strategies, and both social and firm performance. It supports NMS as a key performance driver, but with caveats.

Previous research combining corporate political activity and collective action theory has focused solely on industry structure and its role in predicting group lobbying or PAC participation. The purpose of this paper is to use a different context—franchise systems—to apply Olsonian collective action theory to political activities.

Using a random-effects technique in STATA on an unbalanced panel data set, this paper empirically models the effects of franchise system size and degree of franchising on the level of lobbying intensity.

Since franchise systems are made up of differing unit ownership structure, the author first model if those systems that are fully franchised lobby less than those with franchisor unit ownership (supported). Next, since collective action theory predicts that more participants in a space will lead to less collective action, the author predict that franchise systems with larger unit counts will lobby less than those with smaller counts (not supported). Finally, the author test the interaction of these two effects as systems that are fully franchised and of higher unit totals should have an even greater negative relationship with political activity (supported).

This paper uses both a novel data set and a novel context to study collective action. Previous research has utilized an industry structure context to model the level of lobbying and collective action, while the current research uses an analogous logic, but in the context of franchise systems.