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This study aims to re-examine the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on firm innovation. Studies on how EPU affects firm innovation have been inconclusive. The authors clarified the curvilinear relationship between EPU and firm innovation and examined the moderating effects of managerial pay gaps, specifically vertical pay disparity and horizontal pay dispersion.

This study’s analyses used data collected from Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2019.

The authors found an inverted U-shaped relationship between EPU and firm innovation. Furthermore, vertical pay disparity strengthens the curvilinear relationship, while horizontal pay dispersion weakens it.

First, politicians should avoid adjusting economic policies too frequently because the high EPU levels created by frequent adjustments can inhibit business innovation. Second, firms should be aware that EPU creates opportunities for leapfrogging. In particular, firms can incentivize executives to take advantage of the valuable growth opportunities presented by EPU by widening vertical pay disparities and avoiding excessive horizontal pay dispersion.

First, the authors analyze not only the positive effects of lower EPU on firm innovation but also the negative impacts of higher EPU to examine EPU’s “double-edged sword” effect on firm innovation. Second, the investigation of vertical pay disparity and horizontal pay dispersion as moderating variables sheds new light on the equivocal research findings regarding the EPU–firm innovation relationship and clarifies the boundary conditions of the double-edged sword effect of EPU on firm innovation.

This study examines how the presence of labor unions affects a firm’s pay disparity between executives and employees and its financial statement comparability.

It uses firm-level labor union data in Korea and applies regression analyses to a sample of 1,776 firm-year observations from 2004 to 2008.

The authors find that unionized firms have a smaller pay disparity between executives and employees than non-unionized firms, suggesting that labor unions place pressure on the pay structure. Unionization also lowers financial statement comparability, which helps managers of unionized firms maintain information asymmetry. Further, this negative relationship between unionization and financial statement comparability is stronger in non-chaebol firms, implying that they are more motivated than chaebol firms to reduce their financial statement comparability in response to the presence of labor unions. In addition, the negative relationship between unionization and financial statement comparability is pronounced in profit-making firms, firms with less analyst following, firms with fewer foreign investors and firms in more competitive product markets.

The finding that firms adjust comparability in response to labor unions interests regulators and policymakers, who emphasize the role of comparability in providing usefulness to information users.

The findings add to the existing literature on the effect of labor unions on firms' pay structures and accounting choices.

This paper empirically investigates the impact of board diversity in terms of demographic and cognitive dimensions on financial distress likelihood in an emerging Chinese market to explore whether the Chief Executive Officers' (CEOs) power moderates the relationship between board diversity and the probability of financial distress.

To test the hypothesized relationships, demographic diversity through gender, age and nationality, and cognitive diversity through education, expertise and tenure, are taken as independent variables to investigate their impact on the probability of financial distress measured by the Altman China Z score. Data is collected for 13,740 firm-year observations from 2009 to 2018. This study employs panel data regression under fixed effect assumptions. Further, to control the possible endogeneity issue, this study uses a two-step System Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) model as a robust check.

The results reveal that board diversity is positively associated with financial distress Z score, suggesting that diverse boards are helpful in reducing the likelihood of financial distress. Moreover, CEO power positively moderates this relationship. It means that board diversity, in the presence of powerful CEOs, is more effective in reducing financial distress likelihood by controlling the wrong financial decisions taken by top executives to reap personal benefits. Further, the robustness model confirms the relationship between board diversity and the probability of financial distress.

To the best of researchers' knowledge, this is one of the earliest studies to investigate board diversity by constructing demographic and cognitive board diversity indexes as a determinant of financial distress likelihood in China. Further, researchers found no study in the literature using CEO power as a contextual variable on the relationship between board diversity and financial distress.

This paper seeks to explore the effect of performance duration (rather than intensity) on the subsequent initiation of strategic change by firms. Specifically, the effect of outperformance and underperformance duration on strategic change, as well as the moderating effect of environmental dynamism, is studied.

Using a fixed-effects model, analyzing a sample of 34,907 firm-year observations from 1980 to 2018 across 112 industries mostly supported proposed hypotheses.

Results revealed a U-shaped relationship between outperformance duration and strategic change and an inverted U-shaped relationship between underperformance duration and strategic change. The moderation role of environmental dynamism was only partially supported.

This study examines a new dimension of performance feedback, namely duration, rather than the widely used intensity of performance feedback, to enhance our understanding of the behavioral theory of the firm.

This paper empirically investigates whether female CEOs (She-E-Os) have an effect on firm innovation among Chinese listed firms based on patent data. This study also delved further by looking at whether the internal corporate environment moderates the effect of female CEOs on innovation, that is, state ownership. Finally, this study investigates an additional test of financial constraints to examine whether financial constraints also moderate the impact of female CEOs on firm innovation.

This study used the data of all A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges for the period from 2008 to 2017. The authors use ordinary least squares regression as a baseline methodology, along with firm-fixed effect, lagged measure of female CEOs, alternative measures of innovation, Heckman two-step model and negative binomial regression to check and control the possible issue of endogeneity.

The authors’ findings show that CEO gender plays an important role in producing higher levels of innovation output by improving the governance structure. However, female CEOs have no effect on state-owned enterprises' (SOEs) innovation activities, which suggests that the main goal of SOEs is achieving sociopolitical objectives. Furthermore, female CEOs' influence on innovation output is weaker in firms with financial constraints.

This study adds to the emerging global discussion on gender diversity. Many legislative bodies require a quota for women on corporate boards due to gender inequality. This study's findings reinforce such guidelines by emphasizing the economic benefits of including women in top management positions.

This study provides new insights by highlighting the role of female CEOs in increasing firms' innovation activities. Additionally, this study provides evidence on whether the internal corporate environment (state ownership and financial constraints) moderates female CEOs' effect on innovation.

Although women have advanced in the economic sphere, the gender pay gap (GPG) remains a persisting problem for gender equality. Using Acker's theory of gendered organisations, this study strives to gain a better understanding from a macro and micro approach, how family and work-related policies, especially family-friendly measures (FFMs), and their uptake, contribute and maintain the GPG in Malta and specifically within the Financial and Insurance sector.

Two research instruments were used. National policy documents were analysed through the gender lens, followed by structured interviews with HR managerial participants within this sector.

Findings suggest that at a macro level, family and work-related policies could be divided into two broad categories: A set of family-friendly policies that contribute to the GPG because of their gendered nature, or because the uptake is mostly taken by women. These include make-work pay policies, which initially appear to be gender neutral, but which attracted lower educated inactive women to the Maltese labour market at low pay, contributing to an increase in the GPG. Second, a set of policies that take on a gender-neutral approach and help reduce the GPG. These include policies like the free childcare and after school care scheme that allow mothers to have a better adherence to the labour market. At the micro level within organisations, pay discrepancies between women and men were largely negated and awareness about the issue was low. Here, “ideal worker” values based on masculine norms seemed to lead to covert biases towards mothers who shoulder heavier care responsibilities in the families and make a bigger use of FFMs. Because men are better able to conform to these gendered values and norms, the GPG persists through vertical segregation and glass ceilings, among others.

Since not all the companies in the Eurostat NACE code list participated in this research, results could not be generalised but were indicative to future large-scale studies..

At the macro and policy level, some FFMs take on a clear gendered approach. For example, the disparity in length between maternity (18 weeks) and paternity leave (1 day) reinforces gender roles and stereotypes, which contribute to the GPG in the long run. While some FFMs like parental leave, career breaks, urgent family leave, telework, flexible and reduced hours seem to take on a more gender-neutral approach, the uptake of FFMs (except childcare) seems to generate discriminatory behaviour that may affect the GPG. When considering the make-work pay policies such as the “in-work benefit” and the “tapering of benefits”, this study showed that these policies attracted lower educated and low-skilled women into the labour market, which in turn may have further contributed to the increasing GPGs. On the other hand, the childcare and after school policies relieve working mothers from caregiving duties, minimising career interruptions, discriminatory behaviour and overall GPGs.

This study confirmed that organisations within the Financial and Insurance sector are gendered and give value to full-time commitment and long working hours, especially in managerial roles. Managerial positions remain associated with men because mothers tend to make more use of FFMs such as parental leave, reduced, flexible hours and teleworking. Mothers are indirectly penalised for doing so, because in gendered organisations, the uptake of FFMs conflict with the demands of work and ideal worker values (Acker, 1990). This maintains the vertical segregation and widens the GPG within the Financial and Insurance sector.

By using the gender lens and taking a wider and more holistic approach from the macro and micro level, this study highlights how interlinking factors lead to and sustain the GPG in the Financial and Insurance sector in Malta.

Although previous research has investigated how performance feedback may affect firms’ strategic actions, their findings has been inconsistent. The relationship between performance feedback and firms’ strategic activities thus appears complex. Moreover, the authors contend that it may vary with the measurement strategies employed (i.e. social or historical feedback, operationalizations of strategic actions or accounting- and market-based performance indicators) and the national contexts.

Therefore, the current article presents a comprehensive meta-analysis of prior research, including 1,637,817 sample observations from 101 studies that span more than 18 countries.

The results indicate that (1) performance that are below or above aspirational levels generally has a positive relationship with firms’ strategic actions; (2) these relationships are contingent on the implementation forms taken by the key variables, such as performance feedback, strategic actions and performance indicators; and (3) the relationships are much stronger in countries where managerial discretion is greater.

The findings contribute to the clarification of long-standing theoretical and empirical debates regarding the relationship between performance feedback and strategic actions, as well as some pertinent directions for future research.

The gender pay gap is a well-documented phenomenon in labor economics. Based on the 2018 Structure of Earnings Survey (SES), the authors estimate the impact of observable characteristics on the gender pay gap in Visegrad Group countries and provide policy recommendations on reducing the gender pay gap.

The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is applied to estimate the values of explained and unexplained parts of the gender pay gap. Gender pay gap in unadjusted as well as adjusted form is estimated using data on the individual level.

The results show that unadjusted gender pay gap proved to be stable at more than 20%. The authors found evidence that education widens gender pay gap implying that men have higher returns on education than women. Tertiary education proved to be the highest contributor to widening of gender pay gap. Results also show that there is strong sectoral and occupational segregation. Decomposition proved that only 21% of gender pay gap could be explained by observed characteristics. The unexplained part showed negative values, meaning women would have higher wages, if they had characteristics like men.

Structure of Earnings Survey data are published every four years; therefore the authors’ dataset from year 2018 might not completely reflect today's reality. Unfortunately, newer data are note available yet. Second, Structure of Earning Survey data do not contain variables representing social factors of respondents like marital status, number of children or labour market absence due to birth or childcare. Third, data used for this study do not contain firms that have less than 10 employees; therefore, considerable portion of the labour market is omitted.

Results of this study will help policymakers understand the roots and causes of the gender pay gap in Visegrad Group countries but addressing this issue requires further research.

Innovation goes beyond creation, concentrating on enhancement, which is essential for advancement. Since 1998, the European Journal of Innovation Management (EJIM) has been a leading forum dedicated to thought leadership and research on the advances in innovation management. Given that EJIM has run over two decades, the time is now opportune to reflect on the journal's contributions to innovation management. Thus, this paper aims to retrospectively review the productivity, impact and knowledge of innovation management research in EJIM.

This paper adopts a bibliometric methodology to engage in a retrospective review of EJIM. The bibliographic data of 757 papers published in EJIM from 1998 to 2021 were retrieved from Scopus and analyzed using performance analysis and science mapping techniques.

The productivity (publication) and impact (citation) of innovation management research curated by EJIM have grown prolifically over time. Though EJIM operates with a European title, the journal receives and publishes contributions worldwide (e.g. Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania). Noteworthily, the knowledge of innovation management research in EJIM can be divided into four categories: basic themes (general), which comprise innovation, open innovation, new product development and product and process innovation; motor themes (well-developed), which consist of organizational culture and innovation and leadership and creativity; niche themes (very specialized), which include dynamic capabilities and business model innovation; and emerging or declining themes (weakly developed or marginalized), which is made up of research and development (R&D) and green innovation.

This paper offers a seminal retrospection of EJIM and the journal's productivity, impact and contribution to innovation management.