This paper examines the mobility paths taken by Chinese coursework graduates who studied abroad chiefly in business (Chinese ‘foreign’ graduates) and the consequences for their careers. A model is developed that focuses on the two major interconnected paths of repatriating and remaining abroad, and looks at the influence of pull–push forces. The model suggests the career consequences for repatriates, and their reactions to re-entry to China, in contrast to the career consequences for stayers and their reactions to the host country. The career capital the business graduates acquired while studying is developed. Adverse career consequences and reactions may lead to further mobility, including re-expatriation abroad by repatriates and repatriation by stayers. Overall, Chinese foreign business graduates may be caught in a dilemma when selecting the best path for their career and lifestyle. Implications for future research and management of Chinese foreign business graduates in host countries and China are assessed.

While ‘open innovation’ is often considered to be an organisational strategy with universal application, its generalisability and applicability to organisations operating within emerging economies has yet to be fully explored. This study provides empirical evidence of its importance within a substantial sample of Chinese large firms and small and medium enterprises. Using Tobit regression analysis, our findings indicate that external knowledge sources from inter-firm networking are more important in creating the benefits of open innovation for Chinese small and medium enterprises than their larger peers. Linkages to university and research institutes generally have few direct effects on the innovation performance of both large and small firms in China. However, the role of universities and research institutes is shown to be important among our large firm sample when combined with evident internal absorptive capacity. This interaction is generally limited to our large firm sample, and is not as evident among small firms.

Our study indicates that the barriers to the adoption of open innovation by Chinese firms might be largely related to the comparatively weak domestic research expertise and limited organisational absorptive capabilities, with this most particularly evident for small and medium enterprises.

These findings suggest that, based on this evidence, there is no need for emerging economies like China to mimic the emergence path from closed to open innovation followed by developed countries. Chinese firms will be more likely to garner the benefits available from openness when they develop the capabilities required to identify, assimilate and commercialise knowledge and technologies obtained from external sources.

This study supports tournament theory in relation to high levels of organizational hierarchies, indicating that the job complexity facing the top management team supposes that pay dispersion positively influences firm performance. Examining a sample of 709 firm-year observations of Spanish listed companies spanning the period 2004–2012, our results indicate that the association between firm performance and top management team pay dispersion is conditional on the effectiveness of corporate governance. High top management team pay dispersion is associated with better performance in owner-controlled firms, where more effective monitoring is exerted by the board of directors.

Our paper contributes to progress on the conceptualization and the operationalization of the alliance portfolio configuration. A variance-based structural equation modeling (partial least squares) has been applied to a sample made up of top global contractors. Previous works on alliance portfolio have analyzed the dimensions of alliance portfolio configuration independently and therefore, the interrelationships between them have not been studied. Results from the data analysis show that the dimensions of alliance portfolio configuration are interrelated in such a way that the relational and the partner alliance portfolio dimensions (a) fully mediate the effect of structural alliance portfolio on the value of the alliance portfolio capital; and (b) this capital exerts significant and positive influences on the growth of the international market share.

Counterproductive work behavior is detrimental to the organization or to coworkers. It includes both breaking rules or laws, as well as social norms. Many authors show a negative relationship between this behavior and work satisfaction, surmising that the lack thereof – and the ensuing desire to ‘get back’ at the employer – are the seeds of workplace deviance. A study carried out in Polish organizations found this relationship to be less clear. The study concerned work satisfaction and counterproductive behavior, organizational justice, stress at work and propensity for aggressive behavior. A cluster analysis identified a group of individuals in whom relatively high levels of job satisfaction are nevertheless accompanied by proclivity for counterproductive behavior. The configuration of results suggests that this group resorts to counterproductive behavior because of an inability to balance difficulties at work with personal inclinations. The implications of these results for personal management is discussed in the conclusions.

Self-disclosure has been connected to a number of organisational benefits such as increased motivation, trust building, employee well-being, organisational identification, the communication of organisational values and commitment. Curiously, however, little work about self-disclosure has been published in management and organisation journals and still less that is concerned with spiritual self-disclosure, despite increasing employee diversity as globalisation intensifies.

This paper reports on the analysis of semi-structured, qualitative, interview data collected from 40 Australian managers and professionals. The findings reveal that spiritual self-disclosure was largely perceived as taboo, ‘risky’ and stigmatising with the potential for negative consequences. These risks are all captured in the concept of being on the outer, a metaphor denoting marginalisation from the social, cultural and spiritual identity of the organisation. In contrast, ‘safe’, inclusive organisational cultures are likely to encourage spiritual self-disclosure and the benefits it can bring to employees, managers and organisations.

This paper investigates the effects on knowledge creation of network size and partner diversity formed through alliance relationships. These effects are tested empirically in the biotech industry setting, which is representative of industries that emphasize external collaboration. Using patent count as a proxy of knowledge creation, Poisson regression was employed to test our predictions empirically. The statistical results show an inverted U-shaped relationship between network size and knowledge creation. In addition, a negative relationship was observed between partner diversity and knowledge creation. This research suggests that small biotech firms should strive to achieve a balanced network size. Knowledge creation is better promoted in these firms through alliances with firms of similar organizational type. The value of this research lies in the fact that it provides new insight into properties of alliance networks by highlighting potentially negative consequences of having an oversized alliance network and partner diversity.

Future time orientation is essential if an employee is to be motivated to conduct activities that generate long-term rather than immediate gain, and which may involve risk. Given that feedback seeking requires the employee to slow down and seek input, it is surprising that little is known about the relationship between future time orientation and feedback seeking. Drawing upon psychological ownership theory and construal-level theory, we hypothesized a positive influence of future time orientation on feedback seeking from various sources (i.e., supervisors and co-workers). We also hypothesized job-based psychological ownership as a newly identified motive of feedback seeking and employed it to explain how future time orientation exerts influences. Tested with data from a sample of 228 subordinate–supervisor dyads from China, the results revealed that (1) future time orientation was positively related to feedback seeking from supervisors and co-workers and (2) job-based psychology ownership mediated the relationship between future time orientation and feedback seeking.

Salespersons differ from office workers in office time, work pressure and salary structure, thus their perceptions of organizational politics (POPs) and work motivations may also differ. Based on literature review and the expectancy theory of motivation, this study proposes three hypotheses: (1) POPs is positively related to salesperson performance, (2) POPs is positively related to salesperson work motivation and (3) there is mediator effect for work motivation in the relationship between POPs and salesperson performance. A questionnaire survey was conducted on four representative companies from the list of product manufacturers and service providers in Taiwan. The POPs and work motivation questions were answered by the salespersons, whereas the salespersons’ performance questions were assessed by the sales managers. A total of 850 questionnaires were distributed with 510 valid responses returned for hypotheses testing. The results support the three hypotheses, suggesting POPs can lead to improved salesperson performance, and this effect is mediated through work motivation. This new finding disagrees with the orthodox finding within the literature, which states that POPs and job performance for office workers are negatively correlated. The inconsistency may be ascribed to different work motivations between two groups of organizational members.

Little is known about the relationship between political behavior and successful decision making in non-Western national settings, or about the impact of environmental factors on this relationship. Moreover, our understanding of the decision processes through which political behavior translates into decision outcomes is also not well understood. The present research extends previous studies by examining how political behavior influences decision success in a new setting, with reference to the moderating impact of three environmental factors representing industry and society/nation environment effects, and the mediating role of a decision process, intuition. The findings from a survey of 131 Tunisian firms suggest that the practice of political behavior negatively influences decision success. We also find evidence of the importance of product uncertainty and intuition in understanding this relationship. Our findings address key issues not yet well understood in the theoretical literature, and provide managerial insights into ways of improving strategic choices in organizations.

Drawing from fields such as marketing psychology, strategy, social psychology, and organizational behavior, the present examination explores the individual and organizational bases for personal reputation; specifically, how different bases interact with one another to produce an individual’s reputation within organizations. It is proposed that individuals use personal reputations to satisfy their need for positive self-esteem as well as to secure their sense of belonging in organizations. Furthermore, reputation allows individuals to obtain rewards such as autonomy, power, and career success and the opportunity to signal key information to audiences. Likewise, organizations utilize personal reputations to predict their members’ behaviors, market those who are a part of the organization to others, build their own corporate reputations, and signal information to consumers and competitors. To further this understanding of personal reputation an examination is presented as to how organizations serve as an essential context within which individuals realize their personal reputations and regulate their behavior.

In this article, we build on recent attempts to theorize about the evolution of boards of directors by juxtaposing firms’ strategies to gain, maintain, and repair legitimacy onto their life cycle to examine how board characteristics change – both symbolically and substantively – to reflect their firm’s evolving legitimating strategy. In doing so, we develop insights contributing to our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the evolving structure and composition of boards of directors. We suggest that boards fulfill an important role ingrained in the firm’s legitimacy in addition to, and intertwined with, their substantive contribution to the firm’s performance at each life cycle stage. We also address firms’ real ability to effect change in their board as a function of the factors that pertain to each stage of life cycle. We conclude by expounding the implications of this novel framework for future research and managerial practice.

This paper theorizes that conflict management strategies influence radical settlements in institutional fields. Radical settlements are truces to conflict reached between field constituents that significantly change constituents’ relations and their institutional context. We develop theory on the concept of radical settlements by introducing a typology of conflict management strategies that predicts variance in the likelihood of a radical settlement in institutional fields. We ground this typology within a framework of two key antecedents – ideological salience and field polarization – proposed to influence conflict management strategies. Our paper provides new insights to the literature on conflict and institutional change by shedding new light on the counter-intuitive phenomenon of conflict settlement or cessation as a catalyst for change within institutional fields.

Although organizational learning types like adaptive and generative learning are considered to follow different processes, a general framework of organizational learning that includes them has remained elusive. In order to do so, we propose a framework that embraces them and incorporates facets such as consciousness and emotions, which are strongly related to organizational learning but had not been included in any model. These facets are essential in the framework as they bind the process together and represent a sequence and progression through the learning process.

We developed and tested a model of employee creativity based on achievement goal theory and role identity theory. Examining the relationship between the three dimensions of goal orientation and employee creativity, we explored the mediating effect of creative role identity. Data were collected from 197 employees and their supervisors from several industries in China. The results indicated that employee learning orientation was positively related to employee creativity, but that no such positive relationship existed between approach performance orientation and employee creativity. Interestingly, we found that avoidance performance orientation was positively related to employee creativity. Learning orientation, approach performance orientation and avoidance performance orientation were all found to have significant effects on creative role identity. In turn, creative role identity fully mediated the relationship between learning orientation and employee creativity, and the relationship between avoidance performance orientation and employee creativity. These findings contribute to the advancement of role identity theory, and their theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

We undertake a critical literature review to facilitate academic dialogs regarding decisions under uncertainty in international business settings and highlight the growing focus on international investments as conveyers of real options. Our literature review (1) provides a systematic overview of uncertainty types considered in this literature, real options identified as particular to international investments, and valuation approaches used and (2) highlights key methodological approaches used for testing real options models applied to international investments, and the controversies in this regard. This study draws on the above to shed light on important avenues for future research including (a) the need for more fine-grained and diverse measures of uncertainty in the international context, (b) an emphasis on clarifying the value effects of combinations of real options, and (c) the necessity of further consideration of the costs of options along with the value.

The debate on how firms govern their inter-organizational relationships to foster their business performance is far from being settled. While several arguments suggest both transactional and relational mechanisms may act as complementary or substitutive forces, this paper explores and demonstrates how both mechanisms can be jointly exploited to enhance performance. Adopting the context of the US equity underwriting market, this paper reveals that an issuer adopting a transactional governance mechanism to manage its inter-organizational relationships with underwriters obtains a lower cost offering (cost performance) but may not entail price premium (price performance) of that offering. In contrast, an issuer taking a relational governance mechanism has superior price performance but worse cost performance. Nevertheless, this paper uncovers that an issuer adopting a synthesized mechanism obtains better cost performance and price performance by leveraging the advantages from both of the transactional and relational mechanisms.

We investigate how exposure to unethical practices affects the personal attitude of accountants in small accounting firms towards unethical behaviours. This is an important topic for business because accountants in small accounting firms are in a position to influence the behaviour of the large number of businesses they serve. The main independent variable is a measure of exposure to a variety of different types of unethical practices. A regression involving the exposure variable onto personal attitude is carried out using data from owners/managers of small accounting firms in Australia. Findings confirm a negative relationship between the amount of exposure and personal attitude towards questionable practices: increased exposure to questionable ethical behaviour is related to an increase in the level of acceptance of unethical behaviour. While such a finding is not unexpected, it suggests that other strategies need to be pursued to encourage ethical behaviour.

This study develops a relational model of institutional work. The past research implies that the nature of relationships between individual actors actually shapes the nature of institutional work the actors engage in. However, the research falls short of an explicit, systematic analysis of different relationships between the actors and their work implications. This study basically argues that the actors’ power positions, which might be dominant or subordinate in relation to those of other actors, and their meaning frameworks, which might diverge from or converge with those of other actors, lead the actors to engage in a particular type of relationship with those other actors, and this relationship gives a particular form to the institutional work of the actors in relation. Hence, this study explicitly locates institutional work within the context of the relationships and highlights that institutional work is a relational rather than structural or individual phenomenon.

As the co-opetition strategy is frequently adopted by small and medium-sized accounting agencies, the main purpose of this study is to discuss the antecedents and impact of the adoption of the co-opetition strategy from the viewpoint of the resource-based theory. This study distributed questionnaires to CPAs (Certified Public Accountant) of small and medium-sized accounting agencies, and recovered 225 valid questionnaires for analysis. This study applied the confirmatory factor analysis to test the intrinsic quality of the measurement model, the structural equation modeling in testing the research hypotheses, and cluster analysis in distinguishing the co-opetition strategy types. The empirical results suggest that expertise heterogeneity positively affects competition strategy, and expertise complementarity positively affects the cooperation strategy. Finally, this study presents the resource and co-opetition strategy relationship matrix in order to provide small and medium-sized accounting agencies with reference for practical business operations.