Corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure is becoming increasingly important for modern corporations. Focusing on voluntary CSR disclosure and drawing on upper echelons theory, we propose that voluntary CSR disclosure is the manifestation of managerial preferences (e.g., managers’ professional ethical values and standards). Specifically, we argue that top executives with an academic background tend to have higher professional and ethical standards than their non-academic counterparts. These standards lead them to act with self-restraint and to perceive CSR disclosure as an opportunity rather than a threat. Compared with non-academic executives, therefore, top executives with an academic background provide stakeholders with more CSR information. Based on a sample of publicly listed firms in China, we find a significant difference in voluntary CSR disclosure between firms led by academic executives and firms without academic top executives. This difference is smaller for firms that are state-owned, firms that are audited by large audit firms, and firms with greater analyst coverage. We contribute to the literature on CSR voluntary disclosure by providing an in-depth analysis of the effects of top management teams’ academic backgrounds.

This study examines corporate philanthropy in the context of corporate wrongdoing punishment in emerging markets. Building on institutional theory, we propose that in emerging markets, after being punished for fraudulent behavior by the government, which is collectively the largest institution, convicted firms tend to use corporate philanthropy as an institutional strategy to regain legitimacy. Using data of Chinese-listed firms that were punished for financial fraud in the ten years from 2004 to 2013, our findings show the subsequent growth of corporate philanthropy to be positively related to punishment severity. Furthermore, convicted firms’ media visibility, dominant state ownership, and national political appointment strengthen the effect of punishment severity on corporate philanthropy increase. Our institutional perspective offers new insights into why firms engage in corporate philanthropy after fraud punishment.

Innovation contributes to a firm's long-term competitive advantages but also involves significant risk and uncertainty. As agency theory predicts, CEOs are self-interested and risk-averse, and thus are reluctant to engage in innovation investments. However, the extent to which CEOs are self-interested and the mechanisms through which self-interested CEOs affect firm innovation have not been empirically tested. To fill this gap, we propose that CEOs possess a mix of both self-preserving and other-regarding motives, and build a mediation model in which CEO values affect firm innovation via firms’ long-term orientation. Based on a three-phase (from 2014 to 2016) survey of 436 Chinese manufacturing firms, we find that CEOs with high self-regarding values reduce innovation efforts and performance by damaging a firm's long-term orientation. Moreover, CEO tenure, CEO duality, and environmental uncertainty weaken the relationship between CEO values and firm innovation via long-term orientation. Our study enriches the innovation literature by extending the basic assumptions of agency theory and by providing empirical evidence to determine whether and how self-regarded CEOs affect firm innovation.

We develop a stakeholder framework that examines how firms respond to the conflicting demands that arise from governments and investors in the context of corporate philanthropic giving. We argue that firms that experience such conflict exhibit a decoupling response in philanthropic giving. Furthermore, we identify the boundary conditions of the relationship between the conflicting pressures and the decoupling response. Drawing on stakeholder salience literature, we argue that this relationship will be weakened when CEOs perceive government demands as more salient (such as those with a communist ideology) and when CEOs are less sensitive to investor claims (such as those with fewer career concerns). We find empirical support for our arguments using a sample of 8,857 Chinese listed firms from 2006 to 2015. Our study contributes to the literature on stakeholder theory, decoupling, and corporate philanthropy.

Autonomy is a primary motive, as well as source of satisfaction, for those who start and run their own business. Autonomy is not inherent to business ownership – owner/founders must make concentrated efforts to achieve and maintain autonomy. This study aims to increase our understanding of autonomy by investigating how it is experienced, the factors that affect it, and the actions that business owners take to attain and retain it. We study these topics in the setting of an emerging market – Russia – and compare the outcomes with a similar study conducted in the Netherlands. Our cross-cultural comparison reveals that the way autonomy is experienced and attained can be viewed as an expression of survival values in Russia and of self-expression values in the Netherlands. We posit an underlying structural similarity by theorizing the level of experienced entrepreneurial autonomy to be the outcome of the balance of power and dependencies.

On the basis of a rich panel data set of large- and medium-sized Chinese manufacturing enterprises, we observe that different types of firms (i.e., state-owned enterprises [SOEs], foreign-funded ownership [FFO] of firms, Hong Kong-Macau-Taiwanese [HMT] companies and privately-owned firms) exploit different stages of the innovation – productivity chain depending on the extent of market concentration. By applying a modified CDM model, this study reveals that SOEs tend to be more active in making innovative decisions and pursuing innovative investments but are less efficient in terms of innovation output and labour productivity, whereas FFO firms have relatively high labour productivity but are less active in the first three stages of the innovation – productivity chain. Market competition favours SOEs in the production of additional innovation products. Foreign firms are efficient in labour productivity if they are operating in a concentrated market. By using the metaphor of DNA, this study explains the heterogeneity among these different forms of ownership and generates several managerial implications.

In this study, we argue that foreign subsidiaries may benefit from the corporate strategies of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in different ways in terms of knowledge transfer and strategic flexibility. From this viewpoint, we explore the relationship between product diversification and financial performance of their subsidiaries under the condition of MNE geographic diversification. Using panel data on foreign subsidiaries in European countries from 2006 to 2011, we find a U-shaped relationship between product diversification and subsidiary performance and the joint effect of product and geographic diversification. Given the importance of transition economies in international business today, we conducted a subsample test contrasting the results based on the transitional (Central and Eastern European) versus Western European countries. The contrasting results provide important implications for other transition economies like China. We validate the relationship in several ways in our robustness tests.

Drawing upon two independent samples from mainland China, we propose and investigate the deterrence function of leadership behavior focused on control. We suggest that controlling leadership, specifically, authoritarian leadership, deters employees’ deviance under certain conditions. That is, authoritarian leadership thwarts employees’ interpersonal deviance behavior when leaders send clear signals of potential punishments of non-compliance by showing low leader benevolence, and when employees are highly dependent on the leaders for important work resources. Results from two independent studies largely support our key propositions. Overall, these results add to the range of possible impacts that a leader can play in decreasing employee deviance. Theoretical implications and directions for follow-up research are discussed.

This article examines how small shareholders protected their interests from large shareholders’ expropriation by forming an alliance and taking collective action to block a convertible bonds issue by a Chinese bank that they considered harmful. Forming an alliance strengthened small shareholders’ network density, enhanced their salience (power, legitimacy, and urgency), and reduced the bank's centrality. This enabled small shareholders to change their strategy from being a subordinator to a compromiser and forced the controlling shareholders and their representatives to change their strategy from a commander to a compromiser. Apart from interest-based motives, the alliance provided small shareholders with identity-based incentives to persistently oppose expropriation by controlling shareholders. This article enriches the literature on small shareholder activism and principal-principal problem.