Search results

The rapid, yet low-profit, expansion of the production capacity of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) represents a remarkable phenomenon. However, the motivation behind this key operational decision remains underexplored, especially concerning the prioritization of sociopolitical and financial goals in operations management. Drawing on the multiple-goal model in the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF), the authors' study aims to examine how SOE capacity expansion is driven by performance feedback regarding the sociopolitical goal of employment provision and how SOEs differently prioritize sociopolitical and financial goals based on negative versus positive feedback on the sociopolitical goal.

The authors' study uses panel data on 826 Chinese SOEs in manufacturing industries from 2011 to 2019. The authors employ the fixed-effects model with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, which are robust to heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation and cross-sectional dependence.

The authors find that SOEs increase capacity expansion as sociopolitical feedback becomes more negative, but they may not increase capacity expansion in response to positive sociopolitical feedback. Moreover, negative profitability feedback strengthens SOEs' capacity expansion in response to negative sociopolitical feedback. In contrast, negative profitability feedback weakens their response to positive sociopolitical feedback.

The authors' study offers a novel behavioral explanation of SOEs' operational decisions regarding capacity expansion. While the literature has traditionally assumed multiple goals as either hierarchical or compatible, the authors extend the BTOF's multiple-goal model to illuminate when firms pursue sociopolitical and financial goals as compatible (i.e. the activation rule) versus hierarchical (i.e. the sequential rule), thereby reconciling their tension in distinct performance situations. Practically, the authors provide fine-grained insights into how operations managers can prioritize multiple goals when making operational decisions. The authors' study also shows how policymakers can influence SOE operations to pursue sociopolitical goals for public benefit.

The practice of corporate chief executive officer (CEOs) engaging in sociopolitical activism on issues both related and unrelated to their companies is gaining attention in the popular press and among management scholars. The purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents and motivations of CEO sociopolitical activism in a typology of influences internal and external to the CEO and to the organization. This study’s typology highlights the need for greater understanding of CEOs’ sociopolitical activism for the CEO as an individual actor and for the company they represent.

This study’s approach is to conceptually review the literature on CEO activism and to create a theoretic framework for future analysis of the antecedents and motivations and ramifications of CEOs’ sociopolitical activism for the CEO as an individual actor and for the company they represent. The author highlights four theories and seeks future application of these theories to the phenomena in a typology.

The typology highlights the application of management theories to various ramifications of CEO activism to four influences on CEO activities. Upper echelons theory helps explain the motivation of a CEO internally, whereas agency theory applies to CEO activism internal to the CEO and external to the organizational operations. External to the CEO, organizational culture theory supports responses internal to the organization, and stakeholder theory provides insight into responses external to the CEO and the organization.

This study provides conceptual support for the study of CEO activism and encourages future research on the topic.

This study aims to examine the unique lived experiences of international graduate students in light of COVID-19 and the recent sociopolitical climate in the USA (e.g. Black Lives Matter movement, protests against anti-Asian hate crimes and gun violence).

The authors used an exploratory qualitative design embedded within a constructivist/interpretivist paradigm. A total of 31 international health service psychology graduate students completed an online survey, 17 of whom participated in a 60-min one-on-one semi-structured interview.

Participants reported facing a range of difficulties (e.g. travel ban/inability to spend time with family, visa-related concerns, racism, decreased support) during the global pandemic and the recent sociopolitical climate in the USA. A total of 48 themes were identified and organized into six domains: COVID-19-related stress and worry, experiences of racism/discrimination, coping mechanisms, support received, recommendations for programs and higher learning institutions and advice for other international graduate students.

The recent sociopolitical climate in the US exacerbated some of the preexisting inequities for international graduate students due to their international student status and the global pandemic. Although few in number, students also spoke about some positive changes as a result of these major historical and political events. Implications for graduate education, clinical practice and policymaking are discussed.

This paper aims to take stock of current knowledge on chief executive officers (CEOs) speaking out on societal issues and to position the phenomenon with and against the relevant literature on CEO communication. Ultimately, the paper seeks to arrive at a better conceptual understanding of CEO advocates and activists from a communication science perspective.

This paper is conceptual and considers findings from the literature on personalization, reputation, issues and topic management.

The paper reflects media, receptive and strategic implications for CEO advocates and activists and derives four workable propositions. It lays the foundation for treating CEO advocacy and activism as a form of strategic topic management that harnesses personalization to address a new set of stakeholder demands.

The insights gained from this paper may help researchers and practitioners understand when CEOs should speak up, what to communicate and how. The human element behind this kind of communication echoes new expectations, demands and values from stakeholders, shareholders and society at large.

Understanding the specific interdependencies between personalization, reputation, issues and topic management underlying CEO advocacy and activism can help to improve a CEO's relationship with stakeholders and guide the public discourse to actively bring about positive societal change.

The paper fills a gap by providing an understanding of advocate and activist CEOs from a communication science perspective. The insights from this paper can be used as a starting point for further research on this subject.

For corporate communications, it is crucial to know how news media outlets report and frame the sociopolitical activities of multinational corporations (MNCs), including their corporate diplomacy, that affect perceptions of their legitimacy. Therefore, this study aims to identify how local news media frame corporate diplomacy in a host country and, in turn, benefit the media legitimacy of MNCs.

To identify media frames in the host country, a quantitative content analysis involving factor and cluster analyses of 385 articles published in newspapers in the United Arab Emirates from 2014 to 2019 addressing the corporate diplomacy of large European MNCs operating in the country was conducted.

This study identified three media frames, two of which establish moral and pragmatic media legitimacy. Results suggest that media legitimacy grows when news media emphasise institutional relationships between MNCs and local, established organisations and corporate diplomacy's benefits for society.

Findings provide insights into how corporate communications can contribute to legitimacy building by emphasising corporations' relationships with institutional actors in host countries and the benefits of corporate activities for local communities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study was the first in corporate communications to empirically investigate news media's role in corporate diplomacy and how media frames contribute to the media legitimacy of MNCs at the moral, pragmatic, regulative and cognitive levels.

Within North American institutions of higher education, the sociopolitical construct of whiteness comprises an often implicit set of lessons that are reflected not only in policy and curricula but also in the teaching practices of faculty. Such lessons perpetuate white centricity and supremacy, at enormous costs to those who have been negatively racialized. Therefore, it is critical for white faculty to engage meaningfully with ongoing processes of self-reflection, self-education, and skill development so that they can contribute positively to the interrogation and disruption of whiteness in higher education. This chapter discusses seven processual considerations for white educators who seek to interrogate and disrupt the problem of whiteness in teaching and learning.

Teacher education for social justice aims to enable teachers to work toward equity and justice in society and humanizing the educational experience of their students. Conceptualizing teaching as a political and ethical endeavor, social justice teacher education must engage seriously with the local and lived experiences of both teacher educators and student teachers. How then does teacher education for social justice move across communities and identities, and through cultural, social, geographic and temporal spaces? This chapter presents an autobiographical narrative inquiry into social justice teacher education across sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts, across time, and within different educational communities. Bakhtin's dialogic theory (1981) helps to trace the narrative threads wherein “each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life” (p. 293). The study examines my ideological becoming (Bakhtin, 1981) as a critical teacher educator in the context of a youth mentoring service-learning course for undergraduate teacher candidates. I examine the complexities and tensions in exploring experiences and co-constructing understandings of oppression, privilege and social justice with my student teachers on the youth mentoring course in dialogic struggles with my experiences of justice and education in the USA and Hong Kong as an English-speaking Chinese American. Providing an in-depth examination of the convergence of identity, social relations, place, and time in my knowledge formation, I critically reflect upon the notion of social justice to suggest that social justice teacher education is multi-voiced and lived both locally and globally.