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This paper aims to examine how a firm’s capability affects its political networking in emerging economies and how the institutional environment influences the relationship between a firm’s capability and its political networking.

The authors test the theoretical model by analyzing a database from a World Bank survey in China.

The results show a nonlinear (U-shaped) relationship between a firm’s capability and its efforts in political networking. The relationship between a firm’s capability and political networking is contingent on the institutional environment, as reflected in institutional development and industry regulation.

This study elucidates political networking in emerging economies and contributes to research on corporate political strategy.

By incorporating the resource-based view with the dynamic capability view, this study aims to examine the link between corporate political networking strategy and firm performance in transition economies by focusing on the mediating role of corporate entrepreneurship and the moderating role of dysfunctional competition.

A large-scale questionnaire survey was conducted among 1,300 senior managers from 650 enterprises in China, and valid survey data were obtained from 401 enterprises.

Empirical results demonstrate that political networking strategy is positively related to firm performance and that this relationship is fully mediated by corporate entrepreneurship. Moderated path analysis indicates that dysfunctional competition strengthens the direct effect of political networking strategy on corporate entrepreneurship and its indirect effect on firm performance via corporate entrepreneurship.

This research is among the first to examine the mediating mechanism underlying the relationship between political networking strategy and firm performance in the context of transition economies. In addition, existing research has seldom discussed the effects on corporate entrepreneurship of external resource acquisition from government sources. This research fills this important gap and identifies the condition under which political networking benefits corporate entrepreneurship.

This study examines the effect of political networking capability (PNC) and strategic capability on exploratory innovation/exploitative innovation through the mediation of absorptive capability (AC).

Using empirical survey data collected from 153 traditional manufacturing firms (TMFs) in China, the authors apply partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) combined with mediation analyses to test hypotheses.

PNC has a higher impact on exploratory innovation than exploitative innovation through AC. The authors thus provide novel empirical insights into independent variables of firms' ambidextrous innovation and their implementation mechanisms.

The authors highlight a unique situation of China and contribute to the literature on PNC and AC. The findings demonstrate that AC plays an important role in configuring government-obtained external resources into new products, thus influencing ambidextrous innovation strategic decisions.

TMFs' executives should enhance PNC to obtain more resources to conduct exploratory and exploitative innovation. Government officials and policymakers should strengthen the supervision of TMFs' innovation activities and adopt effective measures to ensure that TMFs could conduct more exploratory innovation as governments expected.

This study provides new insights by bridging research gaps in the literature and advances the insights of how TMFs' PNC/strategic capability directly and indirectly fosters exploratory and exploitative innovation via the mediating role of AC in China.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of different types of networking, namely, business networking, financial networking and political networking, on the performance of new ventures and the extent to which competitive advantage influences the process.

Data were collected through a structured questionnaire using sample size of 319 newly established ventures in Pakistan – an emerging economy. The hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling by using AMOS 21.

Results of the study indicate that business networking, financial networking and political networking significantly and positively contribute to new ventures performance and competitive advantage. Results also show that competitive advantage is a strong mediator between financial networking and new venture performance, as well as between business networking and new venture performance, respectively. However, in case of relationship between political networking and new venture performance, competitive advantage plays only a partial mediating role.

The study suggests that the owners and managers of new ventures should devote considerable efforts to developing all the three types of networks; in particular these networks are important for newly established ventures operating in emerging markets to access resources and to enhance performance.

Extensive review of available literature indicates that this is the first paper to assess the impact of networking on new ventures’ performance with a mediating role of competitive advantage. This study contributes to the existing literature through empirical evidence.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of political connections in the emerging market context.

A case study analysis of three Russian pharmaceutical firms is conducted to uncover how they performed through the Russian transition – the institutional upheaval of the 1990s – and the ongoing state-led industrialization.

In the early years of transition, firms heavily rely on political networking to gain legitimacy and fill institutional voids. As institutions strengthen, the need for political networking is being substituted by arm’s length networking. Strengthening of institutions also results in a more stable business environment, evolving firms’ strategies from short-term core competency concentration to long-term innovative visions.

Firms operating in the Russian, Commonwealth of Independent States and some other Eastern European state domains must be wary of complex ties that are prevalent in these countries and often can assist or hinder firm performance. Although formal institutions strengthen arm’s length networks, a close cooperation between strategic firms and the state remains.

The paper proposes two phases of the Russian transition and provides a taxonomy of strategic choices of Russian firms during the transition. Further, the paper describes the key institutional developments in the two phases of the Russian transition. Finally, a framework of political connections and their role in business operations in the two phases of the transition is provided.

Based on the social network theory, this study investigates the impact of political ties on innovation performance. Besides, this study also tests a mediation role of absorptive capacity (AC) and a moderation role of technology turbulence.

A hypothetico-deductive approach is adopted to test the hypotheses. Data were collected from the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) managers/owners through a structured questionnaire.

Partial least square structural equation modeling technique is used to analyze the hypothesized relationships; the findings showed that political ties significantly impact the innovation performance, and this relationship is mediated by AC. Moreover, technological turbulence moderated the relationship between political ties and innovation performance.

Despite the increasing attention to the role of networking in improving innovation, there is a scarcity of studies on the role of political ties, AC and technology turbulence in fostering organizational innovation; thus, this study is a unique contribution to literature.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the type of resources that firms draw on to expand internationally within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) context. The authors seek to understand the impact of technological, political and knowledge resources on ASEAN firms’ multinationality, moderated by labor intensity, the type of ownership and the stage of economic development.

The hypotheses are tested on a sample that comprises 4,056 manufacturing firms in five ASEAN countries: Indonesia, Lao PDR, Philippines, Vietnam and Timor-Leste.

The authors found that technology resource is not positively associated with multinationality. However, this relationship is moderated by labor intensity and type of firm ownership. Political resources, such as lobbying activities and informal payment to government, are important for ASEAN firms for foreign expansion. However, excessive informal payment may prove to be counterproductive. The authors also found that local firms tend to exploit more political resources than foreign counterparts and firms operating in the lower stage of economic development tend to spend more on lobbying activities, but pay less informal contribution. Finally, for the manager industry experience, they found an inverted U-shaped relationship with respect to multinationality, but for manager education, the association was unexpectedly negative.

From a practical perspective, the findings have three important implications for management of ASEAN multinationals. First, multinationals can systematically exploit and internalize political ties by carefully integrating political activities, through informal contribution and lobbying, into their strategic planning or corporate structure. The findings suggest that political networking will offset weak technological resources, particularly for local firms. Second, managers of multinationals operating in ASEAN should not rely excessively on political actors, as the extra costs associated with the above optimum political resources exceed its marginal benefit. Moreover, excessive reliance on political actors will expose the firm to the threat of opportunism. Even though political resources are important managers need to maintain the utilization of political resources at the optimal level. Third, besides technological and political resources, managers’ knowledge is also crucial for ASEAN firms’ internationalization. The authors provide evidence showing that the positive effect of managerial experience is limited only to a certain level, even though tmanagers’ education has positive linear relationship with multinationality. This implies that at the early stage of international activities, both manager’s experience and education will have positive impact on the firm. However, when international activities are getting more complicated, the manager’s education takes over the manager’s experience. Above its optimum point, the manager’s experience will limit the manager’s capability to create innovative solutions for international expansion, and therefore it is the manager’s education that is able to stimulate revolutionary solution.

In this paper, the authors examine the resource impact on multinationality or the extent to which business activities span across national boundaries to shed light on the antecedents of foreign expansion in ASEAN. They discuss three types of resources (i.e. technological, political and knowledge resources) and seek to understand the impact of these resources on multinationality. Political resources are highlighted in addition to technological and knowledge resources in this paper because ASEAN firms are generally situated in a weak institutional environment in which the political resource is crucial for firms’ entry, operation and exit in international markets (Boddewyn and Brewer, 1994; Hillman and Keim, 1995; Rodriguez et al., 2005).

Given the inconclusive findings on relational ties–performance relationships, this study approaches this phenomenon through social capital theory and resource-based view (RBV) lenses to advocate the mediating role of nonmarket- and market-based capabilities.

A survey-based research methodology was employed. A list of 1,425 foreign subsidiaries was identified from the Thailand Board of Investment (BOI) website, and key informants were contacted. A final response rate of 11.8% was achieved. All hypotheses were tested via path analyses with the bootstrapping technique.

The results indicate that the relationships between business- and government-relational ties and performance are fully mediated by market- and nonmarket-based capabilities with the latter serving as essential but inadequate preconditions for achieving superior firm performance.

To mitigate the liability of foreignness and to enhance performance of foreign subsidiaries operating in volatile emerging economies such as Thailand, government and business relational ties are crucial in developing nonmarket- and market-based capabilities. The nonmarket-based capabilities entail the ability to negotiate with and influence policy makers, which in turn helps augment the development of market-based capabilities, including the ability to be highly responsive to customers' needs.

This research illustrates the embedded roles of nonmarket and market-based capabilities developed through complex interactions among social actors, including the multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) subsidiaries and government and nongovernment counterparts, in attaining superior performance. The results indicate how relational ties enable MNEs’ subsidiaries to develop various capabilities, and how these capabilities are related with each other and linked to firm performance. Findings from an emerging economy undergoing recent political and economic uncertainties also provide theoretical advancements for international business studies.

This study aims to demonstrate the importance of organizational networks in organizational performance is relatively rich; less understood are processes in organizational networking that entrepreneurs and organizations use in making sense of rapidly changing contexts for organizational performance.

This study conducts an exploratory organizational-level narrative analysis into firms’ experiences in two major emerging markets (EMs), namely, Russia and India – to identify organizational networking processes in the midst of institutional upheavals. The study is based on in-depth case studies of firms in EMs sourced from interview data from senior management and consolidated with secondary data.

The authors find that initially firms rely on informal networks (including blat/svyazi and jaan-pehchaan/jan-pehchan) and later formal (in the form of bureaucratic followed by proprietary) networks to make sense of the changes and uncertainties in turbulent environments. The authors also demonstrate the cyclical nature of strategic sensemaking in the process of developing organizational networks for performance.

The study has a number of theoretical and practical contributions. First, it extends the well-established business networking construct to a more inclusive organizational networking construct. Second, it demonstrates that sensemaking is dependent on interorganizational networking from the outset and throughout the growth of an organization in turbulent markets – from informal to formal bureaucratic and proprietary networks. Finally, this study is unique in documenting the entire process of sensemaking from scanning to performance as well as successfully demonstrating the cyclical nature of sensemaking.

Building on the resource-based view of the firm the purpose of this paper is to study the intangible resources available for social ventures, and presents a typology of growth strategies based on the intangible resources possessed by those enterprises.

This research applies a multiple case study technique for ten social enterprises in Egypt listed on Ashoka and Schwab Foundation websites. The research employs a purposive sampling technique. Data triangulation is used based on reports, websites, and interviews with social entrepreneurs and employees.

The study has three main findings: describing the intangible resources needed by social ventures to grow; detailing the growth strategies adopted by social ventures and corresponding funding mechanisms; explaining how intangible resources affect the selection of growth strategies, and how these interact with the context to produce expected outcomes. Overall, a typology for growth strategies of social ventures is presented.

This paper is an original attempt to advance research on social enterprises in relation to the RBV and the domain of venture growth and impact scale-up.

This research is beneficial for social ventures and venture philanthropists who wish to learn about the specific resources important for venture growth, and understand the suitable strategies and context for organizational growth and impact scale-up.

This research is one of the few attempts to study and explain the types of intangible resources in social ventures and the role of different resource bundles in deciding social venture growth strategy.