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Building on resource dependence theory and contingency theory (CT) and focusing on an emerging market setting, this study investigates how demographic board diversity (BD) influences the export intensity (EI) of firms listed on Borsa Istanbul (BIST), with the moderating effect of firm size, as a contingency factor, on this interaction.

Using a sample of 65 exporting firms listed on the BIST Industrials Index, this study explores how demographic attributes of board members, represented by the board diversity index (BDI), affects EI by employing panel data analysis over the period of 2016–2020.

The results suggest that there is a negative relationship between BD and EI, but firm size has a positive moderating effect on the association of BD and EI, indicating that large firms with diverse boards are more prone to access foreign markets and make export. The findings further indicate that board size and CEO duality have a negative and significant effect on EI, while marketing intensity has a positive and significant impact.

The sample covers only public companies listed on the BIST Industrials Index, and the impact of board characteristics on the EI is analyzed for a limited time frame, i.e. from 2016 to 2020.

The findings help business executives better understand the contribution of the firm size on the interaction of BD and EI and offers valuable insights to companies to gain a competitive edge in international markets.

The study provides evidence on the effects of board attributes on the EI from the perspective of emerging countries. It also helps to gain a deeper understanding of how board dynamics contribute to the internationalization of companies.

This study aims to examine how external and internal conditions drive the impact of circular economy mechanism by decomposing into three policy networks in terms of reduce, reuse and recycle, to better understand the contingency model of climate change and effect of firm size on subsequent performance.

Drawing on circular economy network and resource-based view (RBV)-network-resilience strategy framework, a pooled longitudinal cross-sectional data model is developed using a sample of 4,050 Taiwanese manufacturing multinational corporations (MNCs) making foreign direct investment between 2013 and 2018. Structural equation modeling analysis is used to comprehensively examine and investigate each circular economy policy network in the context of climate change and firm size. Post hoc multigroup analysis (MGA) is also conducted.

MGA shows that the reduce policy network is positively and negatively related to manufacturing know-how and production size, respectively. The impact of reuse policy network can enhance the competence of large firms. The recycle policy network is more prominent in terms of competence enhancement of climate change.

MNCs are seeking to build circular economy policy networks to a greater extent, given climate change pressure and guidelines.

This study adds to the circular economy and RBV-network-related literature on climate change and interactions to enhance performance, echoing the recent call on the sustainability of the circular economy of MNCs.

Liquidity is a primary concern for businesses. The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of the collaborative liquidity management within the supply chain. Larger firms prescribe favorable trade terms in the transactions and do not engage in value chain vision sharing with their smaller counterparts. Smaller firms encounter challenges with liquidity and often face the risk of bankruptcy. Such practice can threaten the entire supply chain. Instead, collaborative liquidity management can offer a win–win scenario to both parties. In that case, what are the benefits of implementing a collaborative liquidity management approach across the value chain, and what is the reward?

The authors selected key liquidity metrics that matter most to the organizations from a cohort of 307 firms from the Indian automobile industry for 10 years (2012–2021). The authors classified the businesses into five distinct revenue-based categories. They emphasized the importance of expanded supply chain finance adoption and demonstrated how collaborative liquidity management strategies boosted return on assets.

The research confirms the tangible benefits of greater adoption of supply chain finance in realizing supply chain members’ shared vision. The authors challenged the age-old practice of power-based relationships in the supply chain. They recommended a win–win scenario through practical cooperation and increased adoption of SCF by value chain members.

Existing research predominantly focuses on dyadic relationships and is restricted to Europe and China. According to the authors, no comprehensive investigation has been conducted in India. This application of simulation techniques to improve the liquidity performance of companies in developing economies is innovative.

This paper aims to investigate the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) management practices of construction companies in South Korea to ascertain specific components and practices that need improvement for successful OSH performance.

A quantitative research strategy was adopted. A close-ended questionnaire survey covering 45 OSH management practices was sent to 324 contractors; 108 responses were gathered, representing a response rate of 33.3%. Data were analysed using simple descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and Pearson’s chi-square test.

The findings revealed that there is a moderate level of implementation of OSH management practices among construction firms in South Korea. However, there is a significant disparity in terms of implementation between large enterprises on the one hand and small to medium enterprises on the other. Furthermore, a few of the business characteristics (i.e. the size of companies and certification to OHSAS 18001) were closely associated with the extent of the implementation of OSH management practices.

This research uncovers the OSH management practices that are poorly implemented and lays the foundation for appropriate measures to improve OSH in South Korean construction companies. It suggests an effective strategy for communicating health and safety issues to workers, training safety managers, reviewing risk assessments, reviewing the health and safety plan, incentivising workers by rewarding good behaviour and having a penal mechanism for employees not adhering to the rules.

The study provides insights into an under-investigated South Korean construction industry topic. It offers additional insight into state-of-the-art health and safety management practices in the construction industry in South Korea. Furthermore, it establishes which components of OSH management practice require improvement in the Korean context. This is also one of the few studies in OSH which establishes the association between the construction business characteristics and OSH management in the South Korean construction domain.

This study aims to analyze the determinants influencing Chinese manufacturing companies in implementing lean manufacturing (LM).

The determinants to be explored in this study consist of technological, organizational and environmental (TOE) dimensions. A questionnaire survey was conducted on Chinese manufacturing companies, and 208 samples were analyzed.

The findings show that the relative advantage of LM and organizational support have significantly positive effects on Chinese manufacturing firms’ adoption of LM. The complexity of LM, quality of human resources, organizational readiness, customer pressure, international situation, governmental support and environmental uncertainty do not have significant effects.

This paper contributes to the literature by using the TOE model to explore the factors influencing LM adoption in the Chinese manufacturing industry.

The agricultural supply chain is susceptible to disruptive geopolitical events. Therefore, agri-food firms must devise robust resilience strategies to hasten recovery and mitigate global food security effects. Hence, the central aim of this paper is to investigate how supply chains could leverage digital technologies to design resilience strategies to manage uncertainty stemming from the external environment disrupted by a geopolitical event. The context of the study is the African agri-food supply chain during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The authors employ strategic contingency and dynamic capabilities theory arguments to explore the scenario and conditions under which African agri-food firms could leverage digital technologies to formulate contingency strategies and devise mitigation countermeasures. Then, the authors used a multi-case-study analysis of 14 African firms of different sizes and tiers within three main agri-food sectors (i.e. livestock farming, food-crop and fisheries-aquaculture) to explore, interpret and present data and their findings.

Downstream firms (wholesalers and retailers) of the African agri-food supply chain are found to extensively use digital seizing and transforming capabilities to formulate worst-case assumptions amid geopolitical disruption, followed by proactive mitigation actions. These capabilities are mainly supported by advanced technologies such as blockchain and additive manufacturing. On the other hand, smaller upstream partners (SMEs, cooperatives and smallholders) are found to leverage less advanced technologies, such as mobile apps and cloud-based data analytics, to develop sensing capabilities necessary to formulate a “wait-and-see” strategy, allowing them to reduce perceptions of heightened supply chain uncertainty and take mainly reactive mitigation strategies. Finally, the authors integrate their findings into a conceptual framework that advances the research agenda on managing supply chain uncertainty in vulnerable areas.

This study is the first that sought to understand the contextual conditions (supply chain characteristics and firm characteristics) under which companies in the African agri-food supply chain could leverage digital technologies to manage uncertainty. The study advances contingency and dynamic capability theories by providing a new way of interacting in one specific context. In practice, this study assists managers in developing suitable strategies to manage uncertainty during geopolitical disruptions.

This paper aims to test a contingency-based path model that concurrently links the role of management accountants (MA) and advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) to cost system sophistication (CSS), as well as linking the latter to improvements in organisational performance through improving cost management and product planning decisions.

This paper used the questionnaire survey strategy to collect data from 373 medium and large manufacturing business units based in the UK, then subjected the data to structural equation modelling analysis to test a contingency-based path model.

The results show that the role of MAs and AMTs positively influence CSS. Moreover, it was found that the latter is positively associated with improvements in cost management decisions which, in turn, lead to improvements in organisational performance. However, no support was found for the association between the level of CSS and improvements in product planning decisions, although the latter was found to be positively associated with organisational performance. These results confirm the theory and empirical findings regarding the role that MAs and AMTs play in designing the cost accounting system, and support the argument that adopting sophisticated cost systems does not lead directly to improvements in organisational performance, unless the benefits of such systems, in terms of improved decision-making and cost applications, are used.

This research contributes to the literature by testing a contingency-based path model that incorporates hitherto underexamined contextual factors, namely, the role of MAs and AMTs; examining the effect of CSS on a critical output, organisational performance and the mechanisms of this effect; and considering the complexity of the business environments through the concurrent testing of the relationships involved in the research model.

Considering corporate governance (CG hereinafter) practices' variety across Anglo-American and European countries, this study relies on contingency and complexity theories to investigate the effect of environmental sustainability performance (ESP hereinafter) on shareholder value under various configurations of board of directors (BoD hereinafter), firm and country characteristics.

The author used the Thomson Reuters Environment Pillar Score (ASSET4) and the Total Shareholder Return to assess ESP and shareholder value respectively. The author applied a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA hereinafter) to an unbalanced panel of 2,284 observations from 486 European and Anglo-American non-financial listed firms over the period 2016–2020.

The author found a positive association between ESP and shareholder value and he displayed notable differences between Anglo-American and European economies regarding causal predictors of this positive association. Within European firms operating under civil law code where investor protection is low and family ownership is widespread, ESP creates shareholder value under configurations of causal predictors that significantly differ from those of their Anglo-American peers. The author's findings are robust to different identification strategies.

This study assists researchers, practitioners, shareholders and policymakers the significant roles that BoD diversity, organisational and institutional traits are jointly playing as determinants of the ESP-shareholder value relationship.

The author's study offers a more encompassing, complete and theoretically richer picture of the key drivers and outcomes of ESP.

This study aims to investigate contextual factors affecting the deployment of strategy-driven manufacturing accounting techniques (SMAT), as well as the impact of SMAT usage on organisational competitiveness. Seven major SMAT were investigated, namely, benchmarking, integrated performance measurement, environmental management accounting, strategic costing, strategic pricing, strategic investment and life cycle costing.

By using multi-informant strategy, structured questionnaire was used to gather survey data from 129 senior accounting, finance and production personnel of publicly quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Data was analysed using structural equation modelling and propensity score matching.

Result shows that the usage rate of the SMAT is generally moderate. Market orientation and deliberate strategy formulation are notable determinants of SMAT usage. The inability of competition intensity and perceived environmental uncertainty to notably affect SMAT usage suggests that external environmental pressure to use SMAT is weak.

Although the impact of SMAT usage on organisational competitiveness is positive and statistically significant, it is conceivable that the impact of SMAT could have been more assuming SMAT recorded extensive usage. Thus, the lack of competitiveness of manufacturing companies in Nigeria may not be unconnected to the superficial usage of SMAT.

The study contributes to knowledge in three ways. First, it extends studies on the contingency theory that contextual factors influence the adoption of management accounting innovations. Second, it exposes the contextual factors affecting the adoption of SMAT in a developing country. Third, it provides evidence on the value relevance of management accounting innovation in enhancing organisational competitiveness.

Informed by the resource-based view of the firm, dynamic capabilities theory and contingency theory, this study examines the impact of Industry 4.0 (IR4.0) technologies adoption on firm performance (FP) while accounting for the mediating role of innovation ambidexterity (IA) and moderating roles of contextual and methodological factors that drive the performance gains of the phenomenon.

A random-effect model in comprehensive meta-analysis (CMA) is used to synthesize 113 studies in 115 independent samples with 192,188 observations.

This analysis demonstrates that IR4.0 digital technologies are directly related to financial and non-financial performance, disclosing that the performance effect on non-financial is the largest. Moreover, there is a complementary partial mediation role of the impacts of IR4.0 on FP by IA. Furthermore, this focal relationship is moderated by boundary-spanning conditions: contextual factors – firm size, business type, economic development, industry sector and methodological factors – proxy of FP, sample size and study type.

The results imply that IR4.0 produces financial and non-financial benefits by enabling firms to develop dynamic capabilities like innovation ambidexterity, which informs managers and practitioners that unless IR4.0 technologies and IA strategies are combined together to generate superior FP, IR4.0, in and of itself, would produce a less positive impact on FP than the combined impact of IR4.0 and IA. Therefore, managers should focus on converting IR4.0 resources to dynamic capabilities like IA by leveraging open innovation strategies or building IR4.0-based coordination mechanisms by creating cross-unit business synergies.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, per the literature review, this is the first meta-analysis structural equation modeling study on the interplay between IR4.0, innovation ambidexterity and firm performance.