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We present configurational theorising as a novel approach to developing middle-range theory in two steps: (1) we illustrate configurational theorising as a new form of supply chain inquiry by connecting its philosophical assumptions with a methodological execution, and (2) we generate new insights underpinning a middle-range theory for supply chain resilience.

We synthesise information from a range of sources and invoke ‘critical realism” to suggest a five-phase configurational theorising roadmap to develop middle-range theory. We demonstrate this roadmap to explain supply chain resilience by analysing qualitative data from 22 organisations within the Australian food supply chain.

Coopetition and supply chain collaboration are necessary causal conditions, but they need to combine with either supply chain agility or multi-sourcing strategy to build supply chain resilience. Asymmetrical analyses showed that the simultaneous absence of supply chain collaboration, supply chain agility and multi-sourcing results in low supply chain resilience, but coopetition was indifferent to low supply chain resilience. Similarly, high supply chain resilience is possible with the non-presence of supply chain agility and multi-sourcing.

The configurational middle-range theorising roadmap presented and empirically tested in this paper constitutes a substantial advancement to both theory and the methodological domain.

This is the first attempt at developing a middle-range theory for supply chains by explicitly drawing on configurational theorising.

Relying on the principles of the social exchange theory, the current study is aimed at investigating the impact of team-member exchange relationships (TMX) among school management team (SMT) members on school outcomes (organizational citizenship behavior [OCB], job satisfaction and innovation) via the mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships between principals and SMTs.

Data were collected from multiple sources in 86 elementary and junior high schools to avoid one-source bias: 86 principals, 357 SMT members and 683 schoolteachers who were not members of the management teams.

The results revealed a positive relationship between TMX and teachers' job satisfaction and OCB, but no significant link between TMX and innovation. LMX partially mediated the relationship between TMX and OCB and between TMX and teachers' job satisfaction. Full mediation was found in TMX-innovation relationship.

The findings carry a message for school principals and policymakers regarding the importance of developing and maintaining high-quality horizontal and vertical exchange relationships among the SMT members for their positive influence on school outcomes.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the link between TMX and LMX as a team phenomenon, and specifically in the educational setting. The finding that there is a positive link between the two constructs may imply that SMTs contribute to school success not only directly by exhibiting high-quality TMX but also indirectly through the high-quality LMX.

Climate change requires the reduction of direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a task that seems to clash with increasing supply chain complexity. This study aims to analyse the upstream supply chain complexity dimensions suggesting the importance of understanding the information processing that these may entail. Reducing equivocality can be an issue in some dimensions, requiring the introduction of written guidelines to moderate the effects of supply chain complexity dimensions on GHG emissions at the firm and supply chain level.

A three-year panel data was built with information obtained from Bloomberg, Trucost and Compustat. Hypotheses were tested using random effect regressions with robust standard errors on a sample of 394 SP500 companies, addressing endogeneity through the control function approach.

Horizontal complexity reduces GHG emissions at the firm level, whereas vertical and spatial complexity dimensions increase GHG emissions at the firm and supply chain level. Although the introduction of written guidelines neutralises the negative effects of vertical complexity on firm and supply chain GHG emissions, it is not sufficient in the presence of spatial complexity.

This paper offers novel insights by suggesting that managers need to reconcile the potential trade-off effects on GHG emissions that horizontally complex supply chain structures can present. Their priority in vertically and spatially complex supply chain structures should be to reduce equivocality.

The aim of the paper is to explore within-firm vertical pay inequality and its relation to firm size and firm performance.

Using firm-level microdata for Kazakhstan, the authors measure within-firm pay inequality as the wage differential between the top- and the bottom-level job occupations. The authors carry out their analysis based on panel regression models.

The authors find that within-firm pay inequality increases as firms grow. Further, they identify that this trend is mainly driven by top-occupation workers receiving more significant wage increases compared to lower-level workers as firms expand. Once the authors address concerns about endogeneity, they find that pay inequality is negatively associated with firm performance.

Developing strategies and policies that prioritize fairness and transparency in compensation practices is crucial during the expansion process of firms. By actively discouraging rent-seeking behavior, firms can create a work environment that promotes productivity and sustainability, ultimately leading to improved firm performance. The research findings highlight the importance of implementing context-specific interventions, recognizing that different environments may require tailored approaches to address pay inequality effectively.

This study contributes to the study of within-firm pay inequality, firm size and performance in an emerging economy, an area that has been largely overlooked in previous empirical research. The contrasting findings show the importance of the structural and industrial characteristics of emerging markets that contribute to broader and deeper impact of pay inequality compared to developed economies.

This study aims to investigate whether higher value creation leads to higher value appropriation and to identify the boundary conditions in a buyer–supplier relationship that can explain why a particular supplier can appropriate higher value than others.

The study uses questionnaire surveys. The sample of the survey has 150 publicly-listed supplier firms in Taiwan. The unit of analysis is the buyer–supplier relationship.

In the buyer–supplier relationship, suppliers’ bargaining power, partnership and a supplier’s original brand manufacturing (OBM) business can strengthen the positive relationship between value creation and value appropriation.

This study adopts the unilateral viewpoint of suppliers; however, some constructs might require dyadic evaluation. This study only explores the spillover effect of OBM business on the relationship between value creation and appropriation.

The spillover effect of a supplier’s OBM business in a buyer–supplier relationship allows the buyer to share more common benefits and the supplier to capture more private benefits as compensation. By broadening its customer base, a supplier can increase its bargaining power. A supplier can also maintain a strategic partnership with each essential buyer.

To avoid the dark-side effect of partnership, the model provides the contingency that a supplier can capture more value from a buyer–supplier relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to help better understand the translation process of the management control system (MCS) of privatised solid waste management (SWM) towards creating a stable network.

Drawing on the actor network theory (ANT), the case of a privatised SWM was studied. Data were collected from all entities involved in the privatisation process of SWM, which include Department A, Corporation X and the private sector concessionaire. Six documents were reviewed, 20 interviews were conducted and two observations were carried out.

The findings reveal that the control mechanism of SWM is complex, involving the interaction between human and non-human actors. Non-human actors include the key performance indicators (KPIs) and the concessionaire agreement (CA), which are the main control mechanisms towards creating a stable SWM network. Essentially, stability is achieved when the KPIs and CA can influence the activities of both intra- and inter-organisational relationships.

This paper provides a better understanding of the translation process of the MCS that adds to the stability of the network of a privatised SWM from the lens of the ANT.

Stakeholders in complex capital projects are characterized by complicated interactions, adversarial short-term relationships and cooperative demand for deliverables. Unhealthy interfaces between stakeholders often lead to significant interface conflicts, which gradually become apparent in the construction stage. However, stakeholder interface health (SIH) has not been well understood and measured in the construction industry by either scholars or practitioners. It is essential to identify unhealthy interface relationships between stakeholders by comprehensively assessing SIH for enhancing project performance.

The study provided a comprehensive framework to assess SIH. The assessment was based on Wuli-Shili-Renli theory. Moreover, the CRITIC and Grey-TOPSIS methodologies were applied to precisely evaluate the SIH level. Besides, graph-based interface networks were developed to visualize SIH. At last, the framework was applied to a mass rapid transit project in China to test the validity of the study.

The result showed that stakeholder interfaces with strict contract constraints are healthier. On the other hand, IM behaviors make up for the soft coordination mechanism without contract constraints to a certain extent. The results of the case study were consistent with the actual project practices. The proposed framework provided a useful IM tool for assessing and visualizing SIH.

The limitation of this study is that only the mass rapid transit project was selected for empirical analysis to validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework. It is recommended that the proposed framework be applied to other types of complex capital projects to further discussions in IM.

Theoretically, this study introduces a comprehensive framework to measure the health of stakeholder interfaces in complex capital projects, which helps to provide a theoretical basis and methodological support for stakeholder interface management.

Practically, applying SIH assessment to existing interface management procedures can help the project manager identify interface conflicts between stakeholders in time and eventually contribute to the improvement of PM performance. At the same time, the interface management team tracks the responsibilities of unhealthy interface stakeholders and requires them to take measures to improve the SIH level. Stakeholder interfaces with lower health scores should be given more attention. The proposed framework can serve as a novel IM approach to identify weaknesses in IM and take targeted management measures to alleviate unhealthy stakeholder interface relationships.

The study provides an innovative method for scientifically and accurately assessing SIH. This research can help scholars and practitioners in the project management field facilitate the diagnosis of unhealthy interface relationships and provide decision support for the project management theoretical foundation.

Although earlier research suggests a positive relationship exists between engaging in entrepreneurial marketing activities and firm performance, there may be contingent issues that impact the association. This investigation unpacks the relationship between entrepreneurial marketing behaviour and firm performance under the moderating role of coopetition, in an immediate post-COVID-19 period.

A resource-based theoretical lens, alongside an outside-in perspective, underpins this study. Following 20 field interviews, survey responses via an online survey were obtained from 306 small, passive exporting wine producers with a domestic market focus in the United States. The data passed all major robustness checks.

The statistical findings indicated that entrepreneurial marketing activities positively and significantly influenced firm performance, while coopetition provided a non-significant moderation effect. Field interviews suggested that entrepreneurs’ attemps to scale up from passive to more active export activities in an immediate post-pandemic period helped explain the findings. Owner-managers rejoined trustworthy and complementary pre-pandemic coopetition partners in the immediate aftermath of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) for domestic market activities. In contrast, they had to minimise risks from dark-side/opportunistic behaviour when joining coopetition networks with partners while attempting to scale up export market activities.

Unique insights emerge to unpack the entrepreneurial marketing–performance relationship via the moderation effect of coopetition, namely, with the temporal setting of an immediate post-COVID-19 period. Firstly, new support arises regarding the likely performance-enhancing impact of owner-managers’ engagement in entrepreneurial marketing practices. Secondly, novel findings emerge in respect of the contrasting role of coopetition in both domestic and export market activities. Thirdly, new evidence arises in relation to a resource-based theoretical lens alongside an outside-in perspective, whereby, strategic flexibility in pivoting facets of a firm’s business model needs effective management following a crisis.

This study aims to explore the enabling and suppressing effects of leader affiliative and aggressive humor on employee knowledge sharing form the lens of emotional contagion process, which provides theoretical reference for the applications of different leader humor style, thereby enhancing employee knowledge sharing.

This study collected three waves of data and surveyed 379 employees in China. Regression analysis, bootstrapping and latent moderation structural equation were adopted to test the hypotheses.

Leader affiliative humor has a positive impact on employee knowledge sharing, whereas leader aggressive humor has a negative impact on employee knowledge sharing. Positive emotion plays a mediating role between leader affiliative humor and employee knowledge sharing, and negative emotion plays a mediating role between leader aggressive humor and employee knowledge sharing. Moreover, supervisor–subordinate Guanxi moderates the relationship between leader affiliative humor and positive emotion, and between leader aggressive humor and negative emotion, respectively.

This study not only adds to the knowledge sharing literature calling for the exploration of antecedents and mechanism of employee knowledge sharing, but also contributes to our comprehensive understanding of the suppressing and enabling effects of leader humor style on employee knowledge sharing. Besides, this study also unpacks the dual-path mechanism and boundary condition between leader humor style and employee knowledge sharing and augments the theoretical explanations of emotional contagion theory between leader humor style and employee knowledge sharing.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore whether the nature of innovation is accumulative or radical and to what extent past year accumulation of technology stock can predict future innovation. More importantly, the authors are concerned with whether a change of policy regime or a variance in the quality of technology will moderate the nature of innovation.

The authors examined a dataset of 3.6 million Chinese patents during 1985–2015 and constructed more than 5 million citation pairs across 8 sections and 128 classes to track knowledge spillover across technology fields. The authors used this citation dataset to calculate the technology innovation network. The authors constructed a measure of upstream invention, interacting the pre-existing technology innovation network with historical patent growth in each technology field, and estimated measure's impact on future innovation since 2005. The authors also constructed three sets of metrics – technology dependence, centrality and scientific value – to identify innovation quality and a policy dummy to consider the impact of policy on innovation.

Innovation growth is built upon past year accumulation and technology spillover. Innovation grows faster for technologies that are more central and grows more slowly for more valuable technologies. A pro-innovation and pro-intellectual property right (IPR) policy plays a positive and significant role in driving technical progress. The authors also found that for technologies that have faster access to new information or larger power to control knowledge flow, the upstream and downstream innovation linkage is stronger. However, this linkage is weaker for technologies that are more novel or general. On most occasions, the nature of innovation was less responsive to policy shock.

This paper contributes to the debate on the nature of innovation by determining whether upstream innovation has strong predictive power on future innovation. The authors develop the assumption used in the technology spillover literature by considering a time-variant, directional and asymmetric matrix to model technology diffusion. For the first time, the authors answer how the nature of innovation will vary depending on the technology network configurations and policy environment. In addition to contributing to the academic debate, the authors' study has important implications for economic growth and industrial or innovation management policies.