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Although scholars in strategic management have identified innovating and exit as firms’ two sequential strategic responses to long-run crisis, the potential interdependency has yet remained implicit. Specifically, in the context of Chinese Privately Owned Enterprises (POEs), this study investigates the interrelationship of these two strategic responses during long-run crisis. Building on resource redeployment perspective, the authors propose that firms tend to simultaneously leverage innovating and exit responses.

The authors use the data from the 2010 Chinese POEs survey to verify how firms in the long-term crisis made strategic responses after the 2008 financial crisis. Besides, the authors utilize Probit regressions as the basic analysis and further employ bivariate Probit regressions to conduct robustness tests.

This study provides empirical evidence confirming that firms in the long-run period of the crisis tend to adopt both exit and innovating strategies at the same time, that is, the strategy of resource redeployment. Moreover, this study further finds that government subsidies, the degree of marketization and firm’s organizational capability could all accentuate the decision-making of firms’ resource redeployment.

The authors thus contribute to the study of strategic responses to crisis in strategic management by dynamically find out the interdependency of two responses and enrich the research on resource redeployment perspective by identifying three influential positive antecedents, adding to the ongoing investigation on positive drivers of resource redeployment.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of strategic leadership (SL) on business operational resilience (OR) in the hotel industry in Egypt, namely, during and after the pandemic. This investigation also aimed to explore the mediating function of crisis response strategies (CRSs) and organisational e-readiness (Oe-R) in this relationship.

The researchers conducted a cross-sectional study using a questionnaire as the primary data collection method. Using partial least squares structural equation simulation (PLS-SEM), the study used a comprehensive sample that targets the general managers of all five-star hotels in Egypt.

Results indicated that SL has a positive impact on CRSs and Oe-R. Furthermore, the results reveal a positive influence of Oe-R on both CRSs and hotel OR. On the other hand, CRSs do not influence hotel OR. The findings showed that CRSs fully mediate the link between SL and OR. However, CRSs do not serve as a mediator between Oe-R and OR. Furthermore, the findings showed that Oe-R partially mediates the link between SL and both OR and CRSs.

The study yields unique and valuable theoretical and practical insights to guide hotel leaders and managers towards adaptive recovery and resilience in turbulent and crisis-ridden environments by demonstrating that the combined mediating function of CRS and Oe-R is more effective in strengthening the relationship between SL and OR.

This study represents a pioneering investigation that establishes a correlation between SL and OR, either through direct or indirect means. The research examines the involvement of CRSs and Oe-R as collaborative mediators in this relationship. Previous studies undertaken in the hotel industry and service sector have not investigated this specific element.

A growing body of literature suggests that unpredictable, resource-depleting shocks – ranging from natural disasters to public health crises and beyond – require the firm to respond adaptively. However, how firms do so remains largely undertheorized. To contribute to this line of literature, the authors borrow from the conservation of resources (COR) theory of stress and the dynamic capabilities perspective to introduce the concept of firm stress – a state of reduced and irregular readiness firms enter into following unpredictable, resource-depleting shocks. Our theoretical model illustrates that firms must punctuate the stress state to adapt by first deploying a retrenchment response, thereby conserving resources and allowing the firm to consider how to best redeploy its dynamic capabilities to adapt. Subsequently, the firm can redeploy its capabilities and adaptively respond in one of three ways: exiting (reconfiguring resources for alternative use), persevering (reconfiguring resources for better use), or innovating (developing new resources). Overall, the authors offer a process model of firm stress and adaptive responses following an unpredictable, resource-depleting shock that paves the way for future research on stress in the strategy literature.

This study aims to unveil the impact of strategic renewal and its implications on employment during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the role of strategic renewal in mitigating the adverse effects of crises, fostering organizational adaptation and restructuring capabilities. Additionally, it examines the moderating effect of familiness on understanding the strategic renewal process and its importance to family firms during times of crisis.

The study utilizes data from the STEP Project Global Consortium, which collected information from 3,026 family firms operating in 75 countries and various sectors during the pandemic. Structural Equation Modeling was employed to test the authors' research hypotheses.

The authors' results reveal that strategic renewal significantly impacted employment growth during the COVID-19 pandemic of family firms. Strategic renewal plays a crucial role in mitigating the negative effects of that crisis on employment by helping firms adapt and restructure their capabilities. The study also found that synergies among family members positively influenced innovation in organizational resilience and enhanced the positive effects of strategic renewal on employment growth.

This study contributes to the literature by emphasizing the importance of strategic renewal of family businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers insights into mitigating vulnerability risks amidst crises and adds to the understanding of the strategic renewal process and its implications for the organizations. The findings hold theoretical implications for the field of strategic management and provide valuable insights into the unique challenges and opportunities faced by family firms in uncertain environments.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0771

In the wake of severe socio-economic damage, many firms have made creative and technological progress in their responses to the COVID-19 crisis. This paper examines internal and external environmental complexity elements as antecedents of business responses and builds a framework for tourism firms to respond to the pandemic crisis.

This study obtained survey data from 395 respondents in the Vietnamese tourism and hospitality industry. A partial least squares structural equation modeling–artificial neural network approach was used to examine various combinations of internal and external environmental complexity elements that have different impacts on business responses and firms' performance.

The knowledge and practice created by the firm's employees (individual creativity), obtained from traditional contexts (traditionality) were identified as internal environmental complexity factors while practice learned from other firms (mimetic pressure), information processing (status certainty) and digital transformation (digital technology speed) were treated as external environmental complexity factors. Internal and external environmental complexity factors influence business responses and firms' performance positively but differently.

This study demonstrates that firms should integrate their internal environment of creativity and traditionality with external environmental factors of mimetic pressure, status certainty and digital technology speed to create better business responses, and thus firm performance in the COVID-19 era.

This investigation contributes to environmental research and narrows the existing research gap relating to the association between types of environmental complexity and firms' responsive action, which then influence firms' performance in terms of sustainable competitiveness.

Universities globally have faced the introduction of research performance assessment systems that provide monetary and ranking rewards based on publication outputs. This study aims to seek an understanding of the implementation of performance-based research funding (PBRF) and its impact on the heads of departments (HoDs) and accounting academics in New Zealand (NZ) tertiary institutions. The study explores NZ accounting academics’ experiences and their workload; the relationship between teaching and research in the accounting discipline and any issues and concerns affecting new and emerging accounting researchers because of PBRF.

Applying an institutional theoretical lens, this paper explores accounting HoDs’ perceptions concerning the PBRF system’s impact on their academic staff. The research used semi-structured interviews to collect data from NZ’s eight universities.

The key findings posit that many institutional processes, some more coercive in nature, whereas others were normative and mimetic, have been put in place to ensure that academics are able to meet the PBRF requirements. HoDs suggest that their staff understand the importance of research, but that PBRF is a challenge to new and emerging researchers and pose threats to their recruitment. New academics must “hit the ground running” as they must demonstrate not only teaching abilities but also already have a track record of research publications; all in all, a daunting experience for new academics to overcome. There is also a teaching and research disconnect. Furthermore, many areas where improvements can be made in the design of this measurement tool remain.

The PBRF system has significantly impacted on accounting academics. Central university research systems were established that subsequently applied coercive institutional pressures onto line managers to ensure that their staff performed. This finding offers scope for future research to explore a better PBRF that measures and rewards research productivity but without the current system’s unintended negative consequences.

This research aims to focus on the strategic management by National Olympic Committees (NOCs) during the COVID-19 crisis. The authors investigate “How are strategies being developed within European NOCs to tackle the impact of the corona crisis?” and “which measures have proven to be particularly helpful?”

The research uses a sequential exploratory mixed-methods approach. Five high-level representatives of European NOCs were interviewed using expert interviews to gain insights into their strategy development process. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, and a questionnaire was developed based on the results. Nineteen other European NOCs were surveyed using this questionnaire to verify the strategy development process steps on a larger sample.

The research resulted in a six-step NOC strategy development process framework, with helpful measures for each step. It can help the organizations to better cope with current or upcoming crises.

This framework can serve as a guide for NOCs to find the right steps and measures to better perform in crisis situations.

The current study investigates the impact of directors' attributes on the extent of compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) fair value disclosure requirements. The attributes investigated include directors' human capital (accounting qualification) and social capital (political association), directors' share ownership and the power distance between the chief executive officer (CEO) and the rest of the board members.

The study uses disclosure analysis to measure the extent of compliance with the fair value disclosure requirements of IFRS. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is used to test the relationship between the disclosure score and directors' attributes. Data were collected from the annual reports and websites of the sample companies.

Contrary to conventional belief, this study's findings suggest that directors' social capital and the power distance between the CEO and the rest of the board act as more powerful factors than directors' human capital in explaining corporate mandatory disclosure. Specifically, the results indicate that powerful actors form a dominant coalition and co-opt influential constituents from the institutional domain to neutralize the effect of legal coercion and the accounting expertise of board members and Big Four audit firms on the extent of compliance with institutional (fair value) rules.

This study utilizes Oliver's (1991) framework of strategic response to institutional processes in the Bangladeshi context. Although the study provides new insights into corporate disclosure practices, findings are not generalizable due to different institutional settings in different countries. Therefore, future studies could replicate the approach in different institutional settings.

The findings of this study will be of interest to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as it focuses on a developing country that has adopted IFRS 13 and other fair value-related standards relatively recently.

The disclosure analysis contained in this study represents the first comprehensive analysis of the extent of compliance with the fair value disclosure requirements of IFRS. Furthermore, this study considers the impact of directors' social capital and finds that it is a more powerful determinant of the extent of compliance with IFRS as compared to human capital.

Crisis response has emerged as a salient concern for firms in the onset of COVID-19. While research suggests that resilience is critical during such disruptions, there remains a need to examine how firms build resilience during evolving situations. This study focuses on resiliency created through operational flexibility and examines how firms developed resiliency to COVID-19 through an adaptation of three technology-based levers of flexibility: change in a firm's product and service offerings, the channel it uses for sales and the location of a firm's workforce.

This study uses a unique cross-sectional dataset generated from a survey administered by a reputable financial institution, from March 20 to June 20, during the inception of COVID crisis. This study uses ordinary least squares to analyze data from 6,076 firms across 20 countries.

Results indicate that flexibility through a combination of a change in a firm's product and service offerings, with movement to selling through a digital channel, had a positive impact on firm sales. However, flexibility through a combination of change in product and service offerings with workforce location changes had negative impacts. Robustness analysis indicates that negative impacts worsen in countries with higher digitization and in manufacturing and retail firms as compared to service firms, indicating the inflexibility of physical goods–based business models. Results highlight dimensions through which technology-based flexibility can take place and the benefits of flexibility on firm performance.

This study provides managerial insights into technology-based operational flexibility mechanisms that can be employed for building performance resilience during unexpected disruptions. Research findings inform firms facing supply chain challenges and inflation pressures of business today.

The purpose of this paper is to provide small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets with an updated Purchasing Portfolio Matrix (PPM) specifically for international sourcing. This data-driven PPM matrix is designed to provide a dynamic and process perspective that can help SMEs survive the disruptions caused by emergency situations such as the global COVID-19 pandemic.

This research reports on qualitative interviews with experienced informants from 15 SMEs in the manufacturing industry. The authors follow process-based research using a combination of retrospective and real-time case study approaches to gradually unveil the dynamics in segmentation and sourcing strategies in the international sourcing context during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings reveal the dynamics of segmentation and international sourcing strategies during global disruptions and unpack the underlying logic behind the dynamics that is specific to SMEs in emerging economies.

Existing literature on PPM predominantly focuses on static and normal sourcing circumstances. This paper addresses this gap by adopting a dynamic approach to study how sourcing strategies of SMEs from emerging economies evolve in a highly volatile environment from an international sourcing perspective.