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The world in which companies operate today is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, thus subjecting contemporary forms to an array of risks that challenge their viability in an increasingly competitive landscape. Organizations that cling to their traditional ways of operating impede their ability to survive while those able to embrace evolving changes and lever their strategic response capabilities (SRCs) will thrive against the odds. The possession of such capabilities has become a prominent explanation for effective adaptation to the impending changes but is rarely analyzed and tested empirically. Strategic adaptation typically assumes innovation as an important component, but we know little about how the innovative processes interact with the firm’s SRCs. Hence, this study investigates these implied relationships to discern their effects on organizational performance and risk outcomes. It explores the effects of SRCs and the role of innovation as intertwined adaptive mechanisms supporting strategic renewal that can attain superior performance and risk effects. The relationships are analyzed based on a large sample of US manufacturing firms over the decade 2010–2019. The study reveals that firms possessing effective SRCs have the ability to exploit opportunities and deflect risky situations to gain favorable performance and risk outcomes. While innovation indeed plays a role, the precise nature and dynamic effect thereof remain inconclusive.

A new era of M&A is emerging, characterized by new wave of strategic investment decision-making practices (SIDMP) toward Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies and circular economy. The digital technologies play a significant role in circular economy transitions and companies’ performance This includes investment in capability development, vertical and horizontal integration, effective procurement practices, and effective strategic control mechanisms. The circular economy strategy is more than just recycling and environmental concerns. It unlocks new strategies and new ways of strategic thinking. Its rapid expansion, as a new norm for companies, has characteristics of a fast-expanding market, given its exponential growth. Yet, there is a need to boardrooms commitment and responsibilities including oversight and support and a full-integrated organizational structure, sales, logistics, marketing, production, development, design, supply management, finance, human resources, and legal. To achieve successful implementation of SIDMP and M&A, companies should gather information on environmental, social, and governance issues. Therefore, it is critical to prioritize their strategies and identify areas that present the greatest risk on environmental and social issues including human rights, labor, and ethical issues in the companies supply chain. By creating shared values between society and shareholders, companies can maintain long-term success, legitimacy, and credibility. This chapter offers debate on recent developments in research and practice regarding SIDMP and synergy between I4.0 and circular economy.

This study traces the boundaries of online-based social networks and its possible extensions and intersections with offline social networks. It focuses on the massive multiplayer online (MMO) gaming community. Most online gaming research has only addressed one side of the equation, that is, the online aspect of social interaction, omitting the offline context. The primary objective is to look at both offline and online social contexts of gamers. The data analyzed here are part of a bigger research project. Using a sample of 242 respondents and a total of 1,452 social ties (three online and three offline) this work addresses the differences and similarities between online gamer’s offline and online networks. Around 72% of the participants were between the ages of 18 and 37. This group provides insight into the management of social interactions and ties in the digital age among millennials and the coming-of-age of Generation Z. The analysis suggests that overall offline ties are slightly more important than online. Still, this does not imply that online ties are not meaningful at all. The length of their online relationships plays a significant role in how participants qualify their ties. Most participants that had not met face-to-face were willing to meet their online ties. They also reported sharing personal and everyday life matters with their online social network at a lower rate of their offline network. Time spent with online relationships stemming from online gaming and a cooperative environment is more likely to be considered higher quality time. This suggests that in MMOs the gap between online and offline relationships is becoming narrower.

Vietnam started significant transition policy since 1986 with the introduction of extensive policy of Doi Moi process. The transition from a centrally planned economy toward market-oriented economy has brought some significant results; however Vietnam has until recently stood out as a success story among the transitional economies from a developmental perspective. This requires further investigation of other factors relating to the viability assumption of neoclassical economics. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between corporate governance and firm value in Vietnam, a small and open neo-transitional economy. The result suggests a positive relationship of board size and the value of a firm, but it is not significant. The result also shows a lack of significant negative relationship of other two independent corporate governance variables (shareholder concentration and CEO duality) and the value of a firm. However, to some extent, too high shareholder concentration and CEO duality tend to have negative impacts to the firm value. Other control variables such as price-to-book value ratio and return on total assets have significant and positive impacts on the value of a firm, while the market capitalization has a negative relationship with the value of a firm.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.

Outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from emerging economies, in particular from China and India, is on the rise. As a result, the international expansion of emerging-market multinational enterprises (MNEs) is attracting growing attention among scholars. However, existing research comparing the location patterns of Chinese and Indian MNEs is still scant. In order to fill this gap, we aim to analyze the impact of political risk and cultural distance on the location choice of Chinese and Indian MNEs. Drawing on an institutional approach, we propose several hypotheses regarding the influence of political risk and cultural distance on location decisions. We test our hypotheses using a sample of FDIs carried out by Chinese and Indian MNEs. Our findings suggest that the behavior of Chinese MNEs is less conventional than that of their Indian counterparts when facing institutional obstacles in host countries. Previous papers dealing with location decisions of China’s and India’s outward FDI did not specifically address the impact of political risk and cultural distance. This comparative study provides new empirical evidence on the influence of these traditional host country institutional factors.

This paper gives a selective review on some recent developments of nonparametric methods in both continuous and discrete time finance, particularly in the areas of nonparametric estimation and testing of diffusion processes, nonparametric testing of parametric diffusion models, nonparametric pricing of derivatives, nonparametric estimation and hypothesis testing for nonlinear pricing kernel, and nonparametric predictability of asset returns. For each financial context, the paper discusses the suitable statistical concepts, models, and modeling procedures, as well as some of their applications to financial data. Their relative strengths and weaknesses are discussed. Much theoretical and empirical research is needed in this area, and more importantly, the paper points to several aspects that deserve further investigation.

Managing diverse talents has become a necessary part of the human resource management of contemporary organizations. The growing diversity of organizations' workforce makes companies reassess their conventional HRM approaches. State-owned enterprises get the increasing attention of talent management scholars since state firms enthusiastically compete for talents. These companies have some particularities that distinguish them from private firms, and there is a need to analyse the existing research on the HRM in state companies which has the potential to add a missing part to the puzzle of managing diverse talents. We study the major topics in the literature on human resource management and talent management in state-owned enterprises, the key findings researchers provide and the gaps in the literature that need to be covered and the resulting research directions for future studies.

Social media came to the limelight in the wake of the early 2000s into the global space to foster interactions among individuals and groups of people. It has shown several positive sides for those who are far off to share vital information across the world, unlike yesteryears when communication seemed difficult for individuals in different locations. This study examines both the positive and adverse impacts of social media on Nigeria's socio-cultural space. It advances how Nigeria utilized social-media platforms during the pandemic and war situation. The study employed narrative discourse to demonstrate crisis communication patterns in Nigeria especially among millennial youths. The narrative discourse portends that there is an indication that social media is both a blessing and a curse to our nation. Often time, people communicate the wrong impression into the polity just to demonstrate their self-serving ideas. They overblow the incidence out of proportion and the majority of the receivers would fail to evaluate the source of the information, messages, and even pictures sent across social media. Most time photoshopped images are sent to prove negative points without having a recuse to the impact of such incidence in society. The chapter offers a vital expository on relevant communication approaches on social media to the audience that will not heat the polity. It examines effective communication strategies and stages of social media crisis management. This paper concludes that the negative effects which it has unleashed on Nigeria are more than its benefits, therefore, a curse rather than a blessing to Nigeria's socio-political and economic space.