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This study aims to analyse the political connections of Portuguese companies through the members of the board of directors, exploring how these connections influence, in particular, the composition and characteristics of the boards.

The research used a strategy based on analysing the financial statements and curriculum vitae of the directors of Portuguese companies listed on Euronext Lisbon from 2014 to 2019. The political connections of board members were examined, considering the variables identified in the existing literature.

The results indicate that companies with political connections maintain these relationships for long periods and have a greater number of members on the board of directors compared to companies without such connections. Directors with political experience tend to occupy non-executive positions, suggesting that companies may value political contacts more than the management skills of these directors. It was also found that there are politically connected directors who belong to multiple boards and that women appointed to the board are less likely to have a political background, reflecting male dominance in Portuguese politics.

The main limitations of this study include the small number of listed companies in the sample, which may affect the statistical robustness of the results, as well as the use of secondary sources, which may not capture all relevant policy linkages. In addition, the results are specific to the Portuguese context and may not be generalisable to other countries or other regions of the world.

This study contributes to the understanding of political connections in Portuguese companies, offering valuable insights into how these connections influence board composition and can impact corporate strategy and governance. The findings of this study can be especially useful for business leaders looking to optimise the formation of their boards of directors.

The paper analyses the role and impact of Twitter in Spanish political communication, specifically focusing on how the platform influences the visibility and relevance of political candidates' messages during various election campaigns and across various political dimensions – government vs. opposition, traditional vs. populist, and left-wing vs. right-wing.

The study employs a longitudinal quantitative analysis perspective regarding the number and impact of messages posted by the main candidates in the six general elections held in Spain during the period 2011–2023. The tweets were automatically collected through the Twitter API for 54 days, between the call for elections and voting. The equalisation versus normalisation framework regarding social media is used.

The findings showed that the dissemination of messages on Twitter exhibited a skewed distribution characterized by notable differences in the unequal relevance of tweets between candidates on the left-right and traditional-populist axes, especially among the tweets with the highest impact. Tweets from opposition and populist candidates presented a greater level of relevance than those from government and conventional candidates. No discernible differences were identified along the ideological spectrum, indicating a high degree of cross-partisan engagement on social media. Findings indicate that opposition and populist candidates are strategically utilising Twitter, challenging the notion of normalisation and emphasising the equalising potential of social networks.

The study offers a long-term view of political communication, which is relatively rare in social media research, often focused on shorter time frames or single election cycles. The multidimensional comparison provides nuanced insights into how different political identities and affiliations are manifested and engaged with on social media.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of political skills of faculty members in Chinese universities on their tendency to obtain knowledge shared by their colleagues, as well as their tendency to share knowledge with their colleagues. Moreover, this study investigated the role of collectivistic culture in a workplace as the moderating variable that may influence the effect of political skill on knowledge sharing.

Survey data were obtained from 387 faculty members across six universities located in the northern and the central cities of China. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used as the statistical method for data analysis.

The results provided significant evidence that supported the positive effect of political skill on knowledge sharing. Furthermore, the moderating effect analysis showed that in the workplaces that had strong collectivist culture, the degree to which employees obtained knowledge shared by others, as well as the willingness of employees to share their knowledge to others, was more likely to happen as compared to that in the workplaces that had a weak collectivist culture.

As part of human capital development policies, political skill training could be an intervention to promote knowledge sharing among faculty members. The training may be particularly helpful to promote knowledge sharing in a workplace that adopts individualistic culture more than in a workplace that adopts collectivistic culture.

This study provided new evidence that extended previous studies by unveiling the moderating effect of collectivist culture in a workplace that was found to reduce the effect of political skill on knowledge sharing.

Existing research has examined the results of women’s political leadership participation (WPLP) and the reasons for the lack of advancement of women to management positions. However, little research has been adopting a more comprehensive framework and configuration perspective to investigate the determinants of WPLP. By integrating institutional theory and institutional complementarities theory, this study aims to construct an institution–culture–structure framework to investigate the multiple driving mechanisms of WPLP.

Drawing on the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method and a sample of 66 countries, the authors identify multiple equifinal combinations of conditions related to high and not-high levels of WPLP.

According to the results, the authors summarize five pathways influencing WPLP. These pathways include education and culture-driven pattern, political institutions-driven pattern, political institutions and structure-driven pattern, integrated-driven pattern and political institutions and culture restrictive pattern.

The authors shed new light on the driving mechanism of WPLP and contribute to research on making full out of women’s leadership.

Scholars have underscored the importance of organizational authenticity, but it is unclear how it influences the links among market strategy, and nonmarket strategy (NMS) and firm performance. This study addresses this gap in the literature.

A survey of 294 managers in firms based in the United States investigates configurations among competitive strategy (e.g. cost leadership or differentiation), political and social nonmarket strategy (NMS), authenticity, and firm performance.

Cost leaders tend to engage in political nonmarket strategy (PNMS), but the interaction does not necessarily improve firm performance. Differentiators are more likely to pursue social nonmarket strategy (SNMS) and perform better, but neither market-nonmarket strategy configuration is inherently optimal.

The results support market-nonmarket strategy configurations but do not prescribe optimal combinations. However, the sample is cross-sector and employs self-reports for firm performance.

Political and social authenticity can enhance firm performance, but nonmarket activity can compromise a firm’s ability to be politically and socially authentic. Authenticity can drive performance, but a firm’s nonmarket activity can compromise its ability to be politically and socially authentic. Firms should view a prospective loss in authenticity as a potential cost of nonmarket activity.

This paper investigates how a firm’s emphasis on market (competitive) strategies, political and social nonmarket strategies, and political and social authenticity impact financial and non-financial performance. It also tests the veracity of two market-nonmarket configurations, cost leadership with political NMS and differentiation with social NMS.

The phenomenon of global brands taking a stance on crucial, yet polarizing, socio-political issues, namely global brand activism, is rising. However, how consumer views on this practice are shaped when global branding elements are factored in remains unclear. Drawing from the functional theory of attitude formation, this study investigates the relationships of consumer characteristics (political ideology, consumer ethnocentrism) and brand factors (global brand attitudes and perceived motivation of global brand activists) with attitudes toward global brand activists.

Using a survey of a UK nationally representative sample (n = 439), we test our hypothesized model via structural equation modeling and mediation analysis.

Our findings reveal direct and indirect effects of political ideology on attitudes toward global brand activists (AttGBACTIVs). While consumer ethnocentrism and global brand attitudes do not directly drive AttGBACTIVs, they do influence them indirectly. Perceived motivation of global brand activists emerges as a key mechanism activating these effects and affecting AttGBACTIVs.

First, this study constitutes a novel examination of consumer views of brand activism through a global branding lens. Second, our investigation uniquely combines important determinants of brand activism outcomes with key international marketing factors (namely consumer ethnocentrism and global brand attitudes). Third, the concurrent exploration of individual and brand factors in our mediated model reveals the complex mechanisms through which attitudes toward global brand activists are formed.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between political connections, financing decisions and cash holding.

Based on historical data from 181 active non-financial firms listed on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Stock Exchange Markets during the period of 2009–2016, this study uses ordinary least squares and dynamic system-generalized method of moments to test the research hypotheses. The final data set comprises a total of 1,448 firm-year observations from ten major non-financial industry classifications.

This study finds a positive relationship between political connections and each of internal financing proxied by retained earnings ratio and external financing proxied by short- and long-term debt to total asset. The findings also show a positive relationship between political connections and cash holding.

The findings of the study provide a better understanding of the role of politically connected directors in financing decisions and cash holding in the GCC. Investors can consider the presence of royal family members in the board of directors when making investment decision. Policymakers are encouraged to develop more effective policies that encourage listed firms to provide information on the political positions of the board of directors, managers and major shareholders/owners of companies.

This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the relationship between political connections and financing decisions by focusing on the GCC region. This study also highlights that boards in connected firms in the GCC have lower monitoring role owing to political interventions, and that connected firms face higher agency problems as they have weak governance and boards compared with non-connected firms.

This study builds on the panarchy theory by viewing the supply chain as a socio-ecological system and further expands it by considering the within-level linkages internal to the supply chain level. Three types of linkages are considered: the two cross-level linkages with the planetary and the political-economic levels and the supply chain within-level linkages. The research questions are addressed using the data gathered by the Carbon Disclosure Project within its Supply Chain Programme.

This work aims to study, applying the lens of panarchy theory, how the planetary and the political-economic levels affect the supply chain within-level linkages for sustainability. Furthermore, the difference in how these cross-level linkages influence focal firms and first-tier suppliers is explored.

The results show that considering the planetary-supply chain linkage, climate change risk exposure is likelier to foster within-level linkages with buyers than with suppliers. Further, climate change mitigation investments have different roles in the different tiers: focal firms are pushed to strengthen the linkages with their suppliers when they lose efficacy in improving their carbon performance, whereas first-tier suppliers exploit investments to gain legitimacy. Discussing the political-economic level effect, perceptions from first-tier suppliers could be two-fold: they could perceive a mandating power mechanism or exploit policymakers’ knowledge to advance their capabilities.

The results contribute to the sustainable supply chain management literature by providing empirical evidence of the cross-level linkages theorised by the panarchy theory. Moreover, the concept of within-level linkages is proposed to apply the theory in this field.

Contact tracing apps have emerged to collect data and mitigate the spread of infectious diseases. However, privacy and security concerns have caused individuals to hesitate to adopt these solutions. Our objective is to evaluate the role of the political environment, information privacy, security and users’ intentions to use contact tracing apps.

We scraped the digital app store and collected 399 relevant reviews and other data from 21 contact tracing apps in the USA. A semi-supervised machine learning model was developed to extract information on privacy and security aspects from the reviews.

Our findings show a positive connection between security controls and user adoption, as reflected in star ratings. Users residing in states with blue political environments tend to assign higher ratings to apps, especially when robust security controls are in place. These findings confirm the influence of the political environment on the adoption of contact tracing apps. In times of a pandemic, our findings suggest that users prioritize security over privacy concerns, emphasizing the critical role of strong security features in promoting app acceptance.

This paper emphasizes the political environment of the state offering the app intersects with concerns about security and privacy as well as the effectiveness of security and privacy measures, influencing the app’s ratings. Also, it shows the importance of understanding and addressing the role of the political environment when designing and promoting such public health tools, regardless of the specific disease or outbreak.

This paper examines the relationship between heterogeneous political connections and corporate overinvestment.

Based on a comprehensive Malaysian dataset of 834 publicly listed companies from 2000 to 2022, the authors employed multivariate ordinary least squares regression to test the relationship.

Despite different types of political connections, the findings demonstrate a positive relationship between political connections and corporate overinvestment. In particular, the association is more profound in government-linked companies (GLCs) but weaker in firms that developed political ties through family members of ruling elites. Further analysis reveals that the “helping hand” effect is only observed in GLCs and firms with politically connected directors and businessmen, whereas the “grabbing hand” effect is observed among firms connected through board, businessmen, and family ties. Moreover, the relationship is more persistent among firms with politically connected directors and businessmen around the regime change.

Regardless of the types of political connections, the findings show that politically connected firms tend to engage in rent-seeking through political patronage networks and high levels of government interference in resource allocation. Therefore, a more sophisticated monitoring system should be developed within the political patronage networks to reduce the likelihood of different types of political-business collusion. In terms of research limitations, the research design does not consider the influence of financial constraints and management efficiency. Future research could explore these facets to comprehensively understand the dynamics between political connections and corporate investment decisions.

The evidence informs market participants about the relationship between heterogeneous political connections and corporate overinvestment, reinforcing previous findings that crony capitalism, political patronage, agency problems, and weak governance are well-entrenched in Malaysia’s emerging economy. The government should acknowledge these concerns by enacting anti-corruption campaigns and promoting a fair business environment. In the meantime, policymakers might redesign regulations and revise corporate governance frameworks to substantially reduce the value of political connections, thereby diminishing the bargaining power of politicians.

As corporate investment efficiency has a considerable impact on firm value, investment decisions that enhance firm value will increase share price and maximise shareholder value. Conversely, firms may damage shareholder value if they overinvest or undertake projects that do not yield sufficient. Hence, the findings of this study may assist investors in making more informed judgements, particularly by understanding different types of business-government relations, as political connections are one of the determinants of corporate overinvestment.

This study reveals that the degree to which overinvestment issues manifest within firms is influenced by the nature of the political connections those firms possess. This indicates that politically connected firms should not be regarded as a homogenous group of firms.