Knowledge that Transforms

AbstractThe individualism‐collectivism culture represents an important and well‐researched distinction across cultures. Yet research is less clear about how the different levels of individualistic cultures in host countries affect the success of an increasingly important firm strategy – cross‐border mergers and acquisitions (CBMAs). This study addresses this key research question in the context of Chinese firms’ CBMAs, as Chinese firms are increasingly acquiring targets outside of China in the New Normal global business landscape. This study further theorizes and tests how the Chinese acquirer CEOs’ characteristics moderate the wealth creation relationship. In an analysis of 404 Chinese firms’ CBMAs, we found that an individualistic culture in the host country is negatively associated with Chinese acquirers’ CBMA wealth creation. We also demonstrate that Chinese CEOs’ exposure to foreign culture and female gender weaken that negative relationship, while CEO duality strengthens this negative relationship. Our research thus suggests that culture in host countries can negatively affect acquirers’ CBMA performance, but CEOs may be able to manage the effects of the culture to increase their CBMA performance.

AbstractA critical but overlooked issue in Weick’s seminal work,The Social Psychology of Organizing(1969/1979), concerns ‘the heat’ of organizing processes, namely, the underground emotional processes underpinning the organizing of conflictual work relationships. We present a qualitative case study of psychiatric agencies mandated by public policy to collaborate but instead engaged in persistent conflict despite its deleterious effects on their working relationship and on the wellbeing of the clients they intended to serve. To explain these conflictual features of organizing, we integrate Weick’s organizing theory with systems psychodynamics to deepen the understanding of emotions in organizing, specifically the motivational forces underpinning sensemaking and actions between interacting psychiatric agencies. This integration of theories reveals a critical feature of the relationship between the conscious and unconscious organizing processes: When a threat is involved, sensemaking and action are overtaken by social defences, resulting in dysfunctional organizing of the primary task. Drawing on these findings, we enrich Weick’s seminal work by developing a model that portrays organizing as the ritualized interaction of emotions, sensemaking and behavioural responses.

AbstractThe integration–performance link created during post‐acquisition integration has defied satisfactory theoretical explanation. To address this gap, we conduct a functional analysis to explore the intermediating mechanisms between the level of integration – which represents the extent of the target firm’s integration with the acquirer – and acquisition performance. We use six in‐depth acquisition case studies in the medical technology industry to develop an integrated model with which to untangle the integration–performance link. First, our model connects the level of integration to specific functional integration strategies, which refer to the approaches acquirers employ to manage functional resources. Second, we identify value creation and value leakage as the two routes through which functional integration strategies impact acquisition performance. Finally, we propose two qualitative measures of acquisition performance: value gap and time delay. Our study suggests that a functional analysis of the integration–performance link may help resolve long‐standing conflicts within the literature.

AbstractThis study develops the concept of Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (Strategic CSR) by meta‐analyzing the available empirical evidence on the relationship between CSR and corporate financial performance (CFP). Using meta‐analytic structural equation modeling on effect size data from 344 primary studies, our study documents four empirical mechanisms explaining how CSR positively affects CFP: by 1) enhancing firm reputation, 2) increasing stakeholder reciprocation, 3) mitigating firm risk, and 4) strengthening innovation capacity. We propose these four mechanisms to identify four causally relevant attributes that allow us to conceptually distinguish Strategic CSR from CSR more generally. Our findings indicate that the four mechanisms combined explain 20 per cent of the CSR‐CFP relationship, suggesting that considerable room remains for future empirical research. The development of an empirically informed, causal conceptualization of Strategic CSR responds to a long‐heard call for better‐specified concepts in empirical CSR research.

AbstractIn much contemporary institutional scholarship, the term ‘actor’ is used as a shorthand for any entity imbued with agency. Talking about actors in institutions thus serves the necessity of allocating agency before returning to the analysis of institutional structures and processes. We find this approach to actorhood limiting, conceptually and normatively. Grounded in the perspective of pragmatist phenomenology, we assert the need for distinguishing between persons and actors, and the value of integrating the person into institutional analysis. We conceive of persons as humans with a reflective capacity and sense of self, who engage with multiple institutions through the performance of institutional roles. People may acquire actorhood by temporarily aligning their self with what is expected from a particular actor‐role in an institutional order. Conversely, institutions enter people’s lifeworld as they are personified in people’s social performances. We outline this perspective and examine conceptual and normative implications that arise from the integration of human experience in institutional analysis.

AbstractIn this article, we argue that integrative literature reviews are among the most useful vehicles for advancing knowledge and furthering research in a topic domain. Integrative literature reviews are strongly anchored in a representative description of a field, but add new insights via a critical analysis and synthesis of the field’s literature. Based on this definition, we explicate the ways that scholars can (1) define the ‘space’ for an integrative review (i.e., how they can justify and bound an integrative review), and (2) synthesize insights gained from the review to develop a new perspective or point of view on the literature. We illustrate these points with several of the most highly‐cited manuscripts published in the Academy of Management Annals. Finally, we close by arguing why these points make integrative reviews most useful for advancing knowledge and furthering research in the area of management.

AbstractThis study advances a theory of how different aspects of emotion regulation influence individual leader emergence in the intensely emotional context of nascent venture teams. Despite the growing amount of research on the role of leadership in the entrepreneurial process, the emergence of leaders in nascent venture teams has rarely been explored. Drawing on theories and research on leadership emergence and emotion regulation, we argue that the two aspects of emotion regulation (i.e., reappraisal and suppression) exert opposite effects on the degree to which nascent venture team members come to perceive an individual as a leader. We also theorize that team emotions arising from affective events moderate the relationship between reappraisal and leader emergence in such teams. Data from 103 nascent venture teams without prior leaders show a negative relationship between individuals’ trait disposition to suppress emotions and their emergence as leaders, and a positive relationship between their trait disposition to reappraise emotions and their emergence as leaders. Moreover, we find that negative team emotions magnify the positive association between reappraisal and leader emergence, while positive team emotions mitigate it. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on entrepreneurial leadership, entrepreneurial emotions, and leadership in general.