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This paper aims to present the impact of several likely trajectories of development for global industries, namely, re-shoring, regionalization, diversification and replication, recently identified by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, on the evolution of the corporate parenting styles (CPSs) of multinational corporations (MNCs).

This viewpoint presents a novel view of CPSs as a set of relationships between the corporate centers of MNCs and their subsidiaries, including domestic ones, identifies the most likely connections between anticipated trajectories of development in global industries and the evolution of CPSs of MNCs and outlines directions for further research.

The anticipated trajectories of the development of global industries may result in changes in prevailing CPSs and lead to the proliferation of previously less common parenting styles. Although many of the anticipated changes in CPSs may be pursued by corporate headquarters (CHQs), a combination of powerful subsidiaries putting bottom-up pressure on CHQs and powerful owners capable of imposing requirements on top management teams and generating top-down pressure may affect the CPSs used by corporations.

The authors connect possible trajectories of development for global industries with the evolution of CPSs of MNCs.

Retailers increasingly endeavour to implement artificial intelligence (AI) innovations, such as humanoid social robots (HSRs), to enhance customer experience. This paper investigates the interactive effect of HSR intelligence and consumers' speciesism on their perceptions of retail robots as sales assistants.

Three online experiments testing the effects of HSRs' intellectual intelligence on individuals' perceived competence and, consequently, their decision to shop at a retail store that uses HSRs as sales assistants are reported. Furthermore, the authors examine whether speciesism attenuates these effects such that a mediation effect is likely to be observed for individuals low in speciesism but not for those with high levels of speciesism. Data for all studies were collected on Prolific and analysed with SPSS to perform a logistic regression and PROCESS 4.0 (Hayes, 2022) for the mediation and moderated-mediation analysis.

The findings show that the level of speciesism moderates the relationship between HSR intellectual intelligence and perceived competence such that an effect is found for low but not for high HSR intelligence. When HSR intellectual intelligence is low, individuals with higher levels of speciesism (vs low) rate the HSR as less competent and display lower HSR acceptance (i.e. customers' decision to shop using retail robots as sales assistants).

This research responds to calls in research to adopt a human-like perspective to understand the compatibility between humans and robots and determine how personality traits, such as a person's level of speciesism, may affect the acceptance of AI technologies replicating human characteristics (Schmitt, 2019). To the best of the authors' knowledge, the present research is the first to examine the moderating role of speciesism on customer perceptions of non-human retail assistants (i.e. human-like and intelligent service robots). This study is the first to showcase that speciesism, normally considered a negative social behaviour, can positively influence individuals' decisions to engage with HSRs.

This study aims to examine consumers’ responses to crowdsourcing campaigns in the request initiation stage using the signaling theory from economics. The purpose of the research is threefold. First, it provides a comprehensive classification of various task types within crowdsourcing. Second, it conceptualizes crowdsourcing announcements as signals of customer orientation and empirically tests the differential effects of the two most common crowdsourcing task types (product- and communication-related) on customer orientation perceptions. Third, it illuminates the downstream behavioral consequences of crowdsourcing campaign announcements.

The authors conducted secondary data analysis of 883 crowdsourcing campaigns (pilot study) to provide evidence on the differential effects of crowdsourcing task types. In addition, four laboratory experiments were conducted to test the theoretical arguments. To test the main effect of crowdsourcing task types, Study 1A (N = 252 MTurk workers) used a one-factor (product- vs communication-related crowdsourcing vs control) between-subject design, whereas Study 1B (N = 171 undergraduate students) used a 2 (task type: product- vs communication-related) by 2 (product category: restaurant vs fashion) between-subject design. Study 2 (N = 93 MTurk workers) explored the underlying mechanism using a one-factor (product- vs communication-related) between-subject design. Study 3 (N = 375 MTurk workers) investigated the boundary condition for the effect of task type with a 2 (task type: product- vs communication-related) by 3 (company credibility: low vs neutral vs high) between-subject design.

The pilot study provides evidence for the conceptualized typology and the differential effects of crowdsourcing task types. Study 1A reveals that product-related crowdsourcing tends to have a more substantial impact than communication-related crowdsourcing on how customer-oriented consumers perceive a company. Study 1B validates the results of Study 1A in a different product category and population sample. Study 2 shows that the differential customer-orientation effect is mediated by the perceived cost of implementing the crowdsourcing outcome and unravels the differences in consumers’ purchase and campaign participation intentions depending on task type. Study 3 highlights that the customer-orientation effect attenuates as company credibility increases.

This research contributes to the crowdsourcing literature by categorizing the various types of crowdsourcing campaigns companies undertake and revealing the differential impact of the different types of crowdsourcing campaigns on consumers’ perceptions and behavioral intentions. In doing so, this research converges two lines of consumer research on crowdsourcing, i.e. product- and communication-related crowdsourcing. The findings add to the debate over the returns from research and development (R&D) versus advertising and extend it from marketing strategy to crowdsourcing literature.

The findings highlight the importance of choosing specific task types for crowdsourcing and lead to practical recommendations on designing crowdsourcing campaigns to maximize their benefits to crowdsourcing brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that differentiates crowdsourcing task types and compares their effectiveness from a consumer perspective.

The authors probe the relationships between country institutional support for entrepreneurship and new venture survival. Specifically, the authors unpack the nuanced influences of entrepreneurs' perceived environmental uncertainty and their subsequent entrepreneurial behavioral profiles and how this particularly bolsters venture survival in contexts with underdeveloped institutions for entrepreneurship.

Coleman (1990) ‘bathtub’ framework is applied to develop a model and propositions surrounding how and when emerging market entrepreneur's perceptions of their countries institutional support toward entrepreneurship can ultimately enhance new venture survival.

Entrepreneurs' interpretations of regulatory, cognitive and normative institutional support for private enterprise helps them embrace uncertainties more accurately reflective of “on the ground” realities and stimulates constructive entrepreneurial behaviors. These are critical for increasing survival prospects in characteristically turbulent, emerging market contexts that typically lack reliable formal resources for cultivating nascent ventures.

This paper has implications for international policymakers seeking to stimulate and sustain entrepreneurial ventures in emerging markets. The authors shed light on the practical importance of understanding the social realities and interpretations of entrepreneurs in a given country relating to their actual perceptions of support for venturing—cautioning a tendency for outsiders to over-rely on aggregated econometric indices and various national ‘doing business' rankings.

This study is the first to create a conceptual framework on the mechanisms of how entrepreneurs in emerging economies affect new venture survival. Drawing on Coleman's bathtub (1990), the authors develop propositional arguments for a multilevel sequential framework that considers how developing economies' country institutional profiles (CIP) influence entrepreneurs' perceptions of environmental uncertainty. Subsequently, this cultivates associated entrepreneurial behavior profiles, which ultimately enhance (inhibit) venture survival rates. Further, the authors discuss the boundary conditions of this regarding how the national culture serves to moderate each of these key relationships in both positive and negative ways.

Building on the theory of brand psychological ownership, this paper aims to explore the mediating role of brand psychological ownership in the relationship between brand personality (innocence/coolness) and consumers’ preferences, as well as identify the boundary conditions of this relationship.

To test the hypotheses, a series of four experiments were conducted in Wuhan, a city in southern China, using questionnaires administered at two universities and two supermarkets. Hypotheses were tested using PLS-SEM in SmartPLS 4.

The results indicate that brand personality, specifically the dimensions of innocence and coolness, has a significant impact on consumers’ brand preferences. Brands with a cool personality are preferred over those with an innocent personality. Moreover, the relationship between brand personality and consumers’ brand preferences is moderated by power motivation and identity centrality.

This study contributes to the literature by differentiating between brand personality of innocence and coolness as two separate constructs and proposing brand psychological ownership as a mechanism through which brand personality affects brand preferences. The study’s samples were drawn from universities and supermarkets in southern China, providing evidence for the significant moderating effects of power motivation and identity centrality on consumers’ brand preferences.

This study’s purpose is twofold: First, to investigate the relationship between managerial competences and Integrated Reporting (IR) practices; Second, to test whether all the managerial competences attributes are significantly related to IR practices.

This study adopts a correlational research design, and is also cross-sectional. Data were collected using a questionnaire survey of 188 manufacturing firms in Uganda. Data were analyzed with the help of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences.

The study finds that significant associations between managerial competences of knowledge and experience exist with IR practices except for skills. However, experience is the most significant predictor of IR practices. This experience is manifest, among others, in the managers’ ability to get the word out to the public including why the public should be proud of what the company does and about what the company offers and works to make it better.

This study did not control governance variables and yet governance and IR are inextricably associated. Future research should aim at testing the efficacy of investing in governance aspects potentially improving IR. This is because Environmental, Social and Governance investing is predicted to make capitalism work better and deal with the grave threat posed by climate change. The study also focuses on manufacturing firms, and these results may be only applicable to the manufacturing firms in Uganda. More research is therefore needed to further understand the effect of managerial competence attributes on IR in manufacturing firms in other contexts. Well, the results imply that more experienced managers are better placed to embrace IR practices than their less experienced counterparts.

The authors find that managerial experience explains IR practices more than competences and this makes intuitive sense since, for example, better experiential communication potentially minimizes the challenges such as lack of comparability, difficulty in communicating entity-specific information, information not available in a usable format and data errors normally encountered by IR (especially electronic) users. Hence, this study enhances our understanding of the role of managerial competences in the improvement of IR practices using perceptions of report preparers from a developing country where IR is voluntary and where the size of the stock market is small.

This study aims to understand consumers' attitudes towards luxury products based on the stereotype content model, brand anthropomorphism and the psychological ownership theory.

The authors collected data from Indian consumers using the online questionnaire survey method. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS AMOS version 24 and PROCESS SPSS macro, using both mediation and moderated mediation models.

The findings suggest that increasing brand anthropomorphism and stereotypes enhance consumers' attitudes through a significant mediating role of brand credibility. The results also show that consumers' psychological ownership positively moderates the mediating path via brand credibility from low to high levels.

In doing so, this study contributes to the literature on luxury retail by examining how brand stereotypes and brand anthropomorphism impact consumers' attitudes towards luxury brands through the mediating role of brand credibility and the moderating role of psychological ownership. In the process, the study provides an understanding of Indian consumers' attitudes in the context of the Indian luxury retail sector.

The usage of robot waiters in the hospitality industry is growing, thus increasing the number of human–robot interactions in frontline services. Focusing on robot waiters in restaurants, this study aims to propose the social cognition (SC)–psychological ownership (PO)–customer responses (CR) model, while examining the association between SC, PO, robot anthropomorphism and CR.

The hypotheses of this study are tested using a three-step mixed-method approach that includes partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), necessary condition analysis (NCA) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

PLS-SEM demonstrates the mediating role of psychological ownership on the relationship between SC, customer attitudes regarding being attended by a robot and revisiting intentions. Robot anthropomorphism enhances the relationship between SC and psychological ownership. NCA indicates that SC and psychological ownership are necessary conditions for the presence of favorable attitudes and revisiting intentions. FsQCA suggests that different configurations of the antecedent conditions lead to better attitudes and revisiting intentions.

Frontline hospitality robots need to be perceived as warm, competent, responsive and adaptable to customer requests to elicit positive responses. Managers should employ attractive robots displaying anthropomorphic features. Managers need to ensure that customers have some knowledge about robots before interacting with them. Managers should also consider customer heterogeneity and the context in which the robots will be deployed.

Based on the psychological ownership theory, this paper analyzes the relationship between SC, psychological ownership and CR. Anthropomorphism moderates the relationship between SC and psychological ownership.

This study aims to investigate the individual factors that directly and indirectly favor (or hinder) employees’ attitudes toward women in management. Two sides of psychological ownership (PO), promotion-focused and prevention-focused PO, are studied as having a direct effect on employees’ attitudes toward women in management. Past and future temporal focuses are examined as possible antecedents to the sides of PO, and as indirectly affecting employees’ attitudes toward women in management.

Survey questionnaires were collected from 230 MBA and related program students who were currently working and enrolled in one of six different universities in Ethiopia. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to validate all measurement scales, and structural equation modeling was used to test the study hypotheses using Mplus software.

Employees with promotion-focused PO and employees with prevention-focused PO had a favorable and unfavorable attitude, respectively, toward women in management. In addition, a future temporal focus had a significant positive effect on promotion-focused PO, and a past temporal focus had a significant positive effect on prevention-focused PO. Overall, this mediation model showed that promotion-focused PO partially mediates the relationship between future temporal focus and attitudes toward equal opportunity for women managers, whereas prevention-focused PO fully mediates the negative relationship between past temporal focus and attitudes toward women in management.

This study provides new insight for organizations by showing how employees’ temporal focus explains their side of PO and how that affects their reaction toward women in management.

A new mechanism for revealing gender inequality in organizations is introduced. Moreover, the relationship between temporal focus and PO is discovered. This study is novel in providing an understanding of the antecedent to and effect of prevention-focused PO, which are largely overlooked in extant research.

Applying the internationalization process model (IPM) and the strategic fit perspective, this research aims to test the effects of firm age on Chinese firms’ outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in developing and developed countries.

Using data on some Chinese firms, this study applied the zero-inflated negative binomial model and Heckman two-stage model to do the analyses.

This research found that firm age has different effects on Chinese firms’ OFDI in developed and developing countries. State ownership and industry munificence independently and jointly can moderate these effects.

This study contributes to the IPM and solves the theoretical conflict about the firm age–OFDI relationship.