Firms from transforming economies can leverage the characteristics of their location to develop innovative business models before internationalizing. This note showcases ByteDance's innovative business model for its TikTok app, which became one of the most downloaded apps globally. ByteDance used its large and increasingly demanding home market to experiment with creative combinations of business model elements to develop a unique business proposition that positions the TikTok app as a hybrid of social networking and video-sharing. In addition, TikTok benefitted from China's IT strength supported by national high-tech policy to an AI-based recommendation algorithm as a non-location bound resource. TikTok shows that firms from transforming economies can launch successful global products through business model innovation.

This study investigates the influence of managerial cognition and attention allocation on firms’ responses to negative performance feedback. We explore how managerial cognition, as shaped by managers’ experiences, connections, positions, and industry environments, affects underperforming firms’ attention allocation and, consequently, their decisions to invest in innovation. Utilizing a longitudinal sample of Chinese high-tech firms from 2009 to 2017, we find that firms increase investment in research and development (R&D) when performance falls below aspiration levels. We also document that underperforming firms are associated with an even larger R&D investment increase when their CEOs have an R&D or engineering background, serve simultaneously as the board chair, or are not politically connected. In addition, we highlight the moderating effects of industry competition and industry norms on the relationship between firm underperformance and R&D intensity. We conclude that managerial cognition affects firms’ allocation of attention to innovation as a solution for closing performance gaps and shapes corporate responses to negative performance feedback.

A chief executive officer (CEO) acting as the firm's transformational leader is typically viewed as instrumental to corporate entrepreneurship in established firms, but how exactly does a higher level of corporate entrepreneurship come about, given a transformational CEO's actions? We suggest that organizational ambidexterity can function as a core mediating mechanism between transformational CEOs and the observed level of corporate entrepreneurship and that the effectiveness of this mediating process varies as a function of critical contingencies related to characteristics of the top management team (TMT), the environment and the organization's design. Our empirical evidence, based on a sample of 145 Chinese private sector firms, and using three primary sources of data (145 CEOs, 506 TMT members, and 1,981 middle managers), provides support for a moderated mediation process. We find that the mediating pathway from transformational leadership to corporate entrepreneurship through organizational ambidexterity is not significant when boundary conditions are ignored. However, when environmental dynamism, TMT collectivism, and structural differentiation are included as moderators, CEO transformational leadership does affect corporate entrepreneurship via the creation and effective functioning of organizational ambidexterity.

Entrepreneurs play a focal role in a society's economic recovery from major disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that entrepreneurs’ ability to identify and act on entrepreneurial opportunities during the crisis reflects their resilience, and their innovations facilitate new patterns of work, learning, and leisure activities in post-COVID-19 societies. However, how, how quickly they act, and how influential their actions are depends on their context in terms of institutions, resource access, and market volatility. In China, some entrepreneurs have shown great resilience by utilizing network relationships and digital technology, not only to overcome short-term disruptions in 2020 but to shape the evolving ‘new normal’ where behaviors and capabilities have changed as a consequence of the experience of the pandemic. We discuss drivers of such resilient entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic in China and call for further research on the interplay between external disruptions, different types of entrepreneurship, and the consequences for resilience in emerging economies.

Recognizing the need for organizational change in a transition setting, we specify a research model entailing the effects of two important workplace variables on the relationship between dispositional resistance to change and organizational commitment. Organizational commitment is important because of its relationship with a host of considerations relevant to successful organizational change and development. We test the model with samples from four Ukrainian firms undergoing comparable substantive change, including in their human resource systems. The results indicate that the negative relationship between resistance to change and organization commitment is moderated by trust in management. Specifically, it is the lack of trust that exacerbates the negative influence of resistance to change on commitment. Also, high procedural justice strengthens the negative relationship, thereby reducing organizational commitment, an interesting divergence from the Western literature. These indigenous findings in a markedly different context from the West hold potential for theory that is richer and more comprehensive in its explanatory reach. The findings also provide useful insights for managers in Ukraine in their efforts to change organizational practices.

This study extends the extant literature on corporate philanthropy by exploring the indirect effect of physical attractiveness of CEOs on corporate philanthropy under conditional effects of family ownership and control. Recent empirical studies in psychology suggest that egalitarian values are negatively related to physical attractiveness. Based on these findings, we propose that physically attractive CEOs invest less in corporate philanthropic activities than less attractive peers as they have lower egalitarian values. Leveraging upper echelons and stewardship theory, we further consider the moderating impact of family ownership and control on the indirect relationship between the physical attractiveness of a CEO and philanthropy mediated through egalitarianism.

It is of interest in China and across the world to predict whether China will catch up with the most economically advanced nations in innovation capacity. To facilitate an ongoing assessment of China's innovation capacity, the article develops a China Innovation Capacity Growth Index composed of eight separate measures. China's performance in 2020 is compared to the baseline from 2015, showing that China has progressed in six of the eight measures. This article and the accompanying Technical Appendix explain each of the measures, including the sources for the data, and report the changes in performance over time.

This article studies the latent mechanisms underlying the non-linear correlation between a firm's relative innovation orientation of exploration vs exploitation and performance. We also investigate the moderating effects of cluster relationships on this relationship. Using a sample of 638 SMEs in four industry clusters in Tianjin, China, we confirm an inverted U-shaped correlation between a firm's relative innovation orientation and performance, and explicate the latent mechanisms underlying such an inverted U shape. We find that the number and strength of a firm's cluster relationships can moderate this inverted U-shaped curve: the former moves the turning point of the inverted U shape toward exploratory orientation, and the latter moves the turning point toward exploitative orientation. For improved performance, we discuss appropriate innovation balancing strategies for cluster firms with different cluster relationships, and optimal cluster strategies under different innovation-balancing conditions. This study adds to the increasing scholarly effort on latent mechanisms behind U-shaped relationships and moderating effects on such relationships in management research.