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Research on strategic alliances is concerned with two issues: continuation and reconfiguration. Building on prior research that examines the two issues separately, the paper studies them simultaneously. This paper aims to investigate how strategic alliances may exert the synergetic effect between dynamics and stability as well as to discuss the dynamic evolution process and influence factors of strategic alliances.

This paper describes the construction of a two-party evolutionary game model of alliance and partners. The model is used to analyze the evolution process of synergetic mechanism to determine when to terminate and when to continue with a partnership. Further, numerical simulation is used to quantify the results and to gain insight into the effects of various factors on the dynamic evolution of the synergetic mechanism.

This paper reveals several synergetic states of dynamics and stability in the alliances. The results show that synergy states are positively affected by the collaborative innovation benefits, alliance management capability, the intensity of intellectual property protection, liquidated damages and reputation losses, and negatively affected by the absorptive capacity of partners.

The study helps the alliance to achieve long-term development as well as to balance the paradoxical relationship. The results suggest that managers of strategic alliances should focus on building strong and long-term relationships in order to achieve high performance innovations. Managers should also pay close attention to their partners’ behaviors in previous alliances.

This paper provides new insights into the paradoxical relationship in alliance by revealing the evolution of synergetic mechanism between dynamics and stability. The results remind alliances to understand the relationship between dynamics and stability and to notice the influence factors of synergistic effects when they are making decisions.

In this paper, the authors tentatively develop a theoretical model that depicts how the dynamic capabilities of a firm may be driven by three macro-organizational foundations: visionary leadership, organizational culture, and empowered human resources. The authors propose that visionary leaders are the original driver of dynamic capabilities and that visionary leaders create a unique organizational culture and empowered human resources so that their organizations embrace the spirit of entrepreneurship, an orientation toward learning, and a commitment to mission-driven improvement.

The authors use a case of the early success of a highly performing Chinese telecommunication equipment producer, Huawei Technology, to explain the theoretical model that shows how dynamic capabilities are developed as visionary leaders influence firm routines for learning, innovation, and strategic human resource policies, which in turn collectively create and update operational capabilities to deliver directly manipulatable competitive advantages.

The paper concludes by arguing that the sources of dynamic capabilities need not be dynamic. Instead, visionary leadership, organizational culture, and human resource policies are relatively stable factors in comparison with other possible competence-building mechanisms such as innovation or ambidexterity.

The authors’ model provides a direction for firms in high-tech industries to develop dynamic capabilities in order to maintain competitiveness and sustain high performance.

This paper is the first to present three macro-level drivers of dynamic capabilities, and it is also the first to understand the success of Huawei from a dynamic capabilities perspective.

This study investigates the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), total quality management (TQM), and corporate sustainability (CS). Specifically, the authors propose that TQM mediates the relationship between OCB and CS. The authors intend to demonstrate that TQM practice may be able to balance the interests of all stakeholders and hence improve the performance of all three CS elements, namely economic, social and environmental.

The authors designed a survey questionnaire. The authors then collected data from managers that were in charge of quality control in 216 companies. Hypotheses were developed and regression and path analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

OCB has a positive effect on both TQM and CS. TQM also is positively related to CS. Further, TQM mediates the relationship between OCB and CS. Further analyses show that the full mediation only applies to economic aspects of CS but not social and environmental.

Companies that aim to achieve overall CS performance should not only encourage OCB in an organization, but also pay attention to TQM. Moreover, when deciding on hard and soft TQM, the priority should be given to hard TQM.

The authors investigate the relationship between OCB, TQM and CS in detail. The authors treat TQM in two elements of soft TQM and hard TQM while treating CS performance in three elements of economic, social and environmental performances. The authors further examine how both hard and soft TQM impacts CS performance differently.

Private firms in China are like the third child in a family, constantly struggling to establish their position in an environment favoring their state-owned and collective siblings. The purpose of this paper is to discover some long-term-oriented legitimacy building strategies for private firms in China.

This paper examines the effect of both internal and external institutional factors on long-term legitimacy for private enterprises. The authors integrate stakeholder perspective and institutional theory to provide a framework of building sustainable legitimacy.

The authors’ framework delineates that a private company can build sustainable legitimacy through catering long-term legitimacy conferring to constituents such as customers, social responsibility and patriotism in the external institutional environment.

The authors’ framework further indicates how private firms could leverage internal institutional environment through developing appropriate mission, culture, leadership and human resources practices in conformity to the demands of constituents for gaining long-term legitimacy.

This paper is the first to address the short-term nature of legitimacy building strategies proposed in the past literature. In addition, it is also the first attempt to explore the multiplicity in legitimacy in China in search of long-term legitimacy building approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to present our viewpoint on the research on foreignness and provide directions for future studies. We suggest that research on foreignness can be expanded by exploring its complexity.

This article takes the form of a viewpoint.

We identify three facets of foreignness – foreignness effect (liabilities or assets) foreignness level (organizational or individual) and foreignness locus (external or internal to an entity), which have not been sufficiently examined in prior research.

We discuss how these aspects can inform a novel research agenda in this area.

There is no previous systematic and theoretical investigation of the interim CEO succession practice. This research attempts to fill the gap by studying this phenomenon and hence advance executive succession research/practice.

Based on agency theory, the authors propose a model and several propositions to predict what determines the origin of interim CEOs, the length of the interim tenure, and the career prospects for the interim CEO after the interim tenure.

Both firm performance and environmental uncertainty play an important role in the dynamic interim CEO succession process.

The paper provides the foundations for future empirical research on interim CEO succession.

Board members at companies experiencing sudden CEO departures should choose a loyal non‐aggressive veteran to be the interim CEO so as to minimize disruption and to smooth the transition. They should use caution when choosing an internal candidate because if such a candidate is not chosen to be the permanent CEO later, a talent may be lost.

The research is the first to systematically examine the phenomenon of interim CEOs. The authors make a unique contribution to the literature on CEO succession.

The purpose of the study is to employ the need theory to investigate whether a need for achievement has an effect on persistence behavior among entrepreneurs, and whether a need for achievement and business goals interact to influence such persistence.

A longitudinal study of nascent entrepreneurs was conducted by a field survey in a metropolitan area of a mid‐western state in the USA. Logistic regression was used to test the hypotheses.

Need for achievement is found to be positively related to entrepreneurial persistence. Business goals are found to moderate the relationship between need for achievement and persistence.

The time span between the two waves of data collection in the longitudinal study might have been too short.

This study highlights the importance of matching need for achievement and business goals. For complex tasks, a strong need for achievement should be accompanied with moderate business goals if persistence is to occur. Venture capitalists and government agencies can improve entrepreneurial success by keeping a close eye on the match.

Few studies have explored the issue of entrepreneurial persistence. The present study contributes to a better understanding of motivation and other variables that influence entrepreneurial persistence.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between competitive strategy, total quality management (TQM), and continuous improvement of international project management (CIIPM).

Based on a literature review, a theoretical model and five hypotheses are developed. A cross‐sectional data set collected from 268 international project managers based in four countries is used to test the theoretical model.

The results from the statistical analysis suggest that competitive strategy does not directly influence the CIIPM performance, but it influences through the mediation of TQM practices. The results also suggest that “human resource‐based” TQM elements have stronger influence toward CIIPM performance than “technology‐based” TQM elements.

The study used four TQM variables, which originated from the MBNQA (1995) framework. Although the four variables are robust and sufficiently represent the TQM dimension, the multi‐dimensional nature of TQM practice can be investigated further. Further, the study only utilized a single variable of CIIPM in investigating international project management performance. As future TQM and international project management practices go through evolutions, additional elements may be incorporated into the three‐domain contingency model.

The study results suggest that the TQM elements fully mediate the relationship between competitive strategy and CIIPM. This implies that organizations need an innovative management methodology, such as the TQM practice, in order to achieve competitive strategy materializing towards international project management performance. Further, the findings suggest that it is the soft TQM elements (i.e. top management's leadership, compensation, training and empowerment) that impact the CIIPM more significantly.

Although numerous classical studies are reported in various contexts involving competitive strategy, TQM practice, and project management performance, no existing study focuses on how these three domains are linked together.

The purpose of this paper is to examine factors that influence women entrepreneurship development in Bangladesh.

The paper adopts quantitative and qualitative analyses of possible factors that may affect the development of women entrepreneurships such as: age, education, socio‐culture, motivation, market information, business idea, enterprise creation, advocacy and decision making, enabling environment, and financing. A questionnaire was used to provide empirical evidence on the variables and to estimate the model employed by the study.

The analyses revealed that women face problems in establishing their own businesses in every step that they take. The desire for financial independence and decision making, market and informational network, availability of a start‐up capital, knowledge and skills, and responsibility towards children are the main factors that impact women's decision to become self‐entrepreneurs. The regression analysis, however, revealed that participation in women associations, advocacy, and decision making (self‐fulfillment) and knowledge are the main factors that affect women's decision to develop their business. Yet, the results indicated that religion does not influence women's entrepreneurship development.

The questionnaire survey employed in this paper is confined only to a women population who passed grade five and above as semi‐educated or educated women respondents group. The paper excludes homeless women or those who live in the slum urban areas.

The outcome of this paper can be used by researchers, government, non‐governmental organizations, civil society, and local community to formulate effective policy that motivate women to become entrepreneurs. This will have a positive effect on women participation on the economic development of Bangladesh.

This paper will be the first to provide empirical evidence on factors that affect women's entrepreneurship development in the urban Bangladesh.