Despite ample research on corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR), there is a lack of consensus on the nature of the relationship between these two concepts and on how ...this relationship manifests across institutional contexts. Drawing on the national business systems approach, this article systematically reviews 218 research articles published over a 27-year period to map how CG–CSR research has evolved and progressed theoretically and methodologically across different institutional contexts. To shed light on the full gamut of the CG–CSR relationship, we categorize and explore the nature of this relationship along two strands: (a) CSR as a function of CG and (b) CG as a function of CSR. Through this review, we identify key themes where CG–CSR research has lagged and account for under-explored contexts in this domain. Finally, we put forth a comprehensive agenda for progressing future research in the field.
We advance a new theoretical framework to capture the diverse and unique institutional context of understudied economies in Africa, Middle East, East Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Our framework ...encompasses the configurational context encapsulated by state, financial markets, human capital, social capital, and corporate governance institutions operating in these regions. Using qualitative data solicited from experts to compile the institutional profiles of 68 economies, we identify seven types of institutional systems. Ultimately, we offer a more comprehensive and up-to-date taxonomy of the national institutional context operating throughout the global economy. We call this taxonomy “Varieties of Institutional Systems.”
This study posits that executive attention can significantly influence the impacts of customer‐facing electronic business (e‐Business) systems on firm performance. Using the exploration–exploitation ...perspective (EEP) as an overarching theoretical framework, and the theoretical lens of attention‐based view (ABV), we develop an integrated model to provide insights into the impacts of customer‐facing e‐Business systems on firm performance. We categorize the capabilities of customer‐facing e‐Business systems into e‐Transaction and e‐CRM (customer relationship management) capabilities as exploitation and exploration capabilities, respectively. Further, following ABV, we conceptualize focused and expansive attentions as two different types of executive attention that also incorporate exploitation and exploration orientations. We hypothesize e‐Transaction and e‐CRM capabilities to have nuanced interactive effects with focused and expansive attention on firm performance measured using return on sales and Tobin's Q. We use a panel dataset with 484 firm‐year observations from 180 firms to test our hypotheses. We estimate our models using a two‐step generalized method of moments (GMM) approach to address issues relating to endogeneity, heteroskedasticity, and serial correlation, and to produce efficient estimates. The results provide broad support for the hypotheses and are robust to the alternative measurement of dependent variables, alternative econometric model specification, and potential endogeneity from omitted covariates. The integrated model developed and empirically validated in this study serves to provide a deeper understanding of the impacts of customer‐facing e‐Business systems on firm performance. The study also highlights the need for dual attention processes on the part of senior executives to fully realize the benefits offered by these systems.
We investigate how the duality of innovation regimes in latecomer countries is institutionally shaped. We first specify the firm-level mechanism of commitment to both knowledge use and knowledge ...generation regimes with reference to the allocation of government grants across investments in machinery and equipment, and in research and development. Then, we theorize the interactive effects of global and national institutional systems on firms’ commitment to these innovation regimes. Our analysis of firm-level data from 16 latecomer countries classified as either hierarchical or collaborative national institutional systems indicates that, although firms are committed to both innovation regimes, the effect of global cultural rationalization steers firms toward the knowledge generation regime and away from the knowledge use regime. However, this movement away from the knowledge use regime due to rationalization is weaker in hierarchical systems. We contribute to the innovation regime literature by elucidating the firm-level duality in innovation regimes subject to global and national institutional effects.
•The innovation regime duality in latecomer countries is examined.•Firms commit grants to both knowledge use and generation innovation regimes.•Global institutional effects converge all firms on the knowledge generation regime.•Global effects also steer firms away from the knowledge use regime.•This avoidance of the knowledge use regime is weaker in hierarchical systems.
This study discusses the relationship between inter-organizational paradox management, national business systems and global value chains. Using case study evidence from a global value chain in the ...footwear industry (in Germany and China), we analyse how different businesses in the chain responded to the paradoxical tension arising from the competing demands to provide a living wage to workers and to uphold financial performance. Our findings highlight organizational responses to this paradox along the value chain, showing how these responses were shaped by the interplay of different types of pressures exerted by national business systems and the value chain itself. While these pressures were aligned in the German part of the chain, they were not aligned on the Chinese side. The study makes two contributions: (1) we develop a taxonomy outlining how the alignment of different types of pressures influences whether organizations choose either proactive or defensive paradox management; and (2) we argue that theorizing the impacts of cross-national distance on paradox management can be enhanced by adopting a multidimensional approach to institutional variety that extends beyond culture-based arguments.
Corruption is an important topic for management scholars and practitioners. Given the rise to economic prominence of firms from developing countries, this paper investigates how developing country ...firms engage with this challenge. Based on a content analysis of 191 codes of conduct, issued by firms from 18 developing countries, we first investigate what anti-corruption commitments developing country firms make in their codes of conduct; we then determine contextual factors at national business system level that drive differences in firm engagement. We provide evidence for a “mirror view” of corporate social responsibility, according to which companies match the quality of national-level institutions in their own anti-corruption commitments. This result stands in contrast to the basic expectation underlying the concept of corporate social responsibility that companies step in to close governance gaps and address wider societal-level challenges. Our findings thus highlight limitations to purely private governance mechanisms aimed at combatting corruption.
•The importance of business system leveraging (BSL) in supply chain business environment.•The facilitators of BSL from organizational and inter-organizational aspects.•The impacts of BSL on ...information sharing and supply chain performance (SCP).•The moderating role of process innovation in the relationship between BSL and SCP.
Rooted in the profit-seeking motives of social exchange theory, this study aims to investigate the factors that facilitate leverages of firm’s business systems and their sharing of information with group members, as well as the impacts of business systems leveraging (BSL) on information sharing and supply chain performance. Simultaneously, the moderating effects of uncertainty and the degree of process innovation on the relationship between BSL and supply chain performance are also estimated. The analytical results indicated that proactive technological orientation, information technology (IT) connectivity, supply chain member pressure, and member relationship quality encourage firms to combine their business systems with those of other business partners. Interestingly, in a situation where there is high demand and an uncertain supply, the impact of BSL on supply chain performance is low, while the moderating effect of process innovation on the relationship between BSL and supply chain performance is significant. Finally, it is suggested that firms implementing BSL work to upgrade their technology maintain tight relationships with supply chain partners and create innovation in all aspects of their business processes in order to survive in the highly competitive IT environment.
This article introduces the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the seemingly oxymoronic context of Chinese “authoritarian capitalism.” Following an introduction to the emergence of ...authoritarian capitalism, the article considers the emergence of CSR in China using Matten and Moon’s framework of explaining CSR development in terms both of a business system’s historic institutions and of the impacts of new institutionalism on corporations arising from societal pressures in their global and national environments. We find two forms of CSR in China, reflecting the “multiplexity” of its business system: one in the mainly family-owned small and medium-sized enterprise sector reflecting concern with local reputation, and another in the corporate, mainly state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector, reflecting global and national societal expectations. We investigate the dynamics of CSR in China through the interplay of the global and national societal pressures and mediating and even leading roles played by the State and the Party. We consider the conceptual integrity and practical prospects for “state-led society-driven” CSR and future research opportunities, including those opened up by the three contributing articles to this special issue.
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