In an era of hypercompetition, research and development (R&D) investments are vital for organizations to stay competitive. This microlevel study draws on dynamic managerial capability (DMC) theory to explore the mechanisms contributing to competitive advantages. It posits that DMCs enhance firm performance by increasing R&D spending, and explores the moderating role of slack resources due to their effect on resource availability. Employing hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping methods on a longitudinal sample comprising 31 German DAX firms, the findings robustly demonstrate that DMCs facilitate firm performance by fostering R&D expenditures and confirm the moderating effect of specific slack resources. However, only internal but not external slack resources amplify the relationship between DMCs and R&D intensity. Overall, this study emphasizes the critical role of managers’ microlevel capabilities in determining firm performance and sheds light on how different slack resources influence the relationships between DMCs, R&D intensity, and firm performance.

By providing fresh insights into the development of Egyptian corporate networks and business groups between the early 1920s and late 1940s, this article extends the geographical ambit of an expanding field of study. Data from contemporaneous sources were analyzed through social network analysis techniques, in the search for an improved understanding of both the nature of and motivations behind networking in Egypt. In conducting this exercise, this article assesses the success with which the state acted to stimulate local entrepreneurship in its search for greater economic independence. By linking the Egyptian case to a wider literature on corporate networks, the article reveals similarities with other cases of how developing economies responded to the challenges of that era.

This article argues for a fundamental raison d’être reconceptualization of international investment law (IIL) through Martha Fineman’s ‘vulnerability theory’. The theory helps identify the structural sources of IIL’s shortcomings, whilst philosophically challenging the one-sided view that foreign investors are entitled to protections, but are free from obligations vis-à-vis the communities affected by their undertakings. Emphasizing the productive power of the state to take positive action that acknowledges ordinary citizens’ embeddedness within, and dependence upon, surrounding structures, the vulnerability theory challenges the hegemonic perception of the state as a source of danger – a view which has hitherto undermined both the potency and the enforceability of investor obligations. Used as a heuristic device in studying both IIL’s existing structures and the potential avenues for reimagining it, Fineman’s theory not only shines a novel light on the foundational premises of IIL, but also grants theoretical traction to existing ideas about improving the system.

This piece recounts the efforts by NGO Sign of Hope (SoH) to rectify human rights violations in South Sudan, which manifested themselves as drinking water pollution by the oil industry. Committed to exposing and remediating this water contamination, SoH was able to prompt the automobile company Daimler’s CSR to engage in extended dialogue with the oil industry stakeholders in Unity State. Despite a tactful use of various methods ranging from cooperation to confrontation, SoH’s campaign did not lead the oil producers to reverse the harm inflicted on the people of Unity State. When SoH tried to hold these companies accountable, SoH had the impression that it was hitting an elastic wall. This piece identifies lessons which may help to counter corporate human rights violations and compensate for the weakness of CSR in fragile states and in the face of corporate irresponsibility.

Momentum profits depend mainly on the short leg and therefore on barriers to short sales. Our research indicates that the decline in momentum profitability in the past 2 decades is driven partly by a contemporaneous growth in stock options trading. Stock options offer an alternative to short selling, augmenting the stock lending market, and thereby contributing to improved pricing efficiency. The resulting reduction in barriers to short sales contributes to lower returns to momentum trading from the short leg. Our results persist after matching stocks with and without options based on different firm-level characteristics.

This study provides a behavioral account of opportunistic diversification. We argue that top executives’ social comparison with peer firms based on business segment performance can lead them to increase their investments in high-profitability new businesses (i.e., opportunistic diversification). Specifically, when the performance of a firm's main business relative to its peer firms’ high-profitability business segment falls short of their aspirations, the firm's top executives will engage in problemistic search and subsequently increase opportunistic diversification. This effect is stronger when the firm is similar to peer firms along key firm characteristics and when top executives of the firm are underpaid. Although opportunistic diversification helps improve a firm's short-term accounting performance, it may weaken its long-term performance. Using Chinese non-real-estate firms’ diversification investment in real estate as our empirical context, we find support for our arguments.

Despite the influx of Chinese FDI at the dawn of the 21st century and decades of neo-liberal, market-oriented economic policies in Africa, the pervasive nature of institutional voids (particularly in the labor market) has been constantly flagged as an impediment to socio-economic development in the continent. This has prompted calls for more research into the ability of independent African states to pursue viable labor market policy options, from a business system perspective. While institutional theory (specifically the notion of institutional voids) suggests the use of market-supporting and contract-enforcement structures and processes to enable the efficient functioning of the economy, it does not address the effect of strong external ‘powers’ on weak local institutions in developing countries. This study qualitatively explores how the shifting geopolitical landscape (power) from Western to Chinese sources of FDI shaped the nature and evolution of labor market institutions in Cameroon. The findings show that an entrenched parochial and crony Cameroonian institutional context was at the mercy of transnational forces playing a pivotal role, rather than coherent national socio-economic policy options, in shaping labor market institutions in the country. In an act of political complicity, the dynamics that flowed from Chinese FDI have engendered a regressive turn toward the failed nationalistic labor market policies pursued by Cameroon after independence. This article contributes to revealing the debilitating role of Chinese and Western FDI, and the ensuing dynamics, in the creation and sustenance of labor market institutions in a parochial developing economic context characterized by regulative institutional voids.

This article proposes a novel way to estimate consumer switching costs and uses Lithuanian credit register data and two bank closures to provide this estimate for the loan market. I show that when a distressed bank’s closure forced firms to switch, they started borrowing at lower interest rates instantly and permanently and that this drop revealed the lower bound of firms’ ex ante switching costs. A healthy bank’s closure showed no such effect. The article’s findings suggest that distressed banks hold up and overcharge firms and that by closing and resolving such banks with good-bank/bad-bank separation regulators can improve firm financing.

Existing studies agree that owner dynamic capabilities are crucial in dynamic environments. Based on a systematic literature review of 44 research with CiteSpace and the content analysis method, this study aims to elucidate the dimensions and key factors of owner dynamic capabilities. Owner dynamic capabilities are studied in the context of a construction project due to their resource-constrained, goal-urgent, and uncertainty characteristics. Cognition capabilities, resilient change management capabilities, integrated organization capabilities, and strategic innovation capabilities are identified as the dimensions. Critical factors have also been analyzed at different levels. This study proposes a discriminatory framework of owner dynamic capabilities that combined organizational ambidexterity and resilience. Moreover, this study contributes to the clarification of the concept of owner dynamic capabilities and the enrichment of their knowledge hierarchy. Practitioners can track the main contradictions that owners are currently facing against the actual situation and seek strategies.

Medium Enterprises (MEs) are significant contributors to global economic development. Integrating sustainability practices in their business can support MEs worldwide to become more sustainable, improving companies’ performance and stakeholders’ expectations. Nevertheless, few MEs adopt sustainable practices. Following Behavioral Decision Theory and Behavioral Strategy literature, we argue that this can be associated with their managers’ decision-making processes – apart from not possessing considerable resources like large companies. Via a mixed-method research design involving 277 Italian ME managers, we investigate the cognitive biases that hinder the development of a sustainable performance management system (SPMS) in MEs. We found the most prominent biases influencing SPMS development. Then, we developed a ‘SPMS de-biasing funnel’ framework. We propose some corrective actions to reduce the impact of the most critical cognitive biases that influence SPMS development, allowing related beneficial potential outcomes.

This study analyzes the long-term power of mercantilist firms and brands in industries characterized by high uncertainty and asset specificity. It contrasts the reputation-building and protection strategies employed in two similar industries in Portugal in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; namely, those of Madeira and Port wine. The Portuguese crown created a collective brand for Port in 1756, the first regional appellation in the world. Madeira wine only received similar protection in the late twentieth century. This study argues that the Madeira wine industry relied on a different type of mercantilist proto-brand—a diffuse and multi-faceted “global” umbrella brand—of the British East India Company, which during its heyday more than rivaled the power of the Portuguese state as a product certifier and endorser.

The existing literature provides conflicting evidence of whether a collectivistic value orientation is associated with ethical or unethical behavior. To address this confusion, we integrate collectivism theory and research with prior work on social identity, moral boundedness, group morality, and moral identity to develop a model of the double-edged effects of collectivism on employee conduct. We argue that collectivism is morally bounded depending on who the other is, and thus it inhibits employees’ motivation to engage in unethical pro-self behavior, yet strengthens their motivation to engage in unethical pro-organization behavior. We further predict that these effects are mediated by the psychological mechanism of organizational goal commitment and moderated by a person’s strength of moral identity. Results of three studies conducted in China and the United States and involving both field and experimental data offer strong support for our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications of the research are discussed.

This article investigates how Chinese apparel companies have been able to acquire and upgrade knowledge over the last four decades. Based on a broad range of published sources and official data, it identifies the dominant firms that enabled the industry’s dramatic expansion during two distinct phases: export oriented in 1980–2005 and domestic market oriented in 2005–2020. Using the global value chains model, we analyze the varieties of knowledge needed during these two periods and how firms acquired it to boost their competitiveness.