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Identity has emerged as a compelling force in understanding leadership. Situated within the identity approach to leadership, this study explored identity within the context of leadership for both assigned (i.e., positional) and emergent (i.e., nonpositional) student leaders. Findings from this study suggest that a distinct set of a leader’s identities is active in college student leadership and that personal identities are most salient to leaders. By making connections between identity and leadership, educators and practitioners may strengthen their understanding of how their curriculum and workshops may serve as identity workspaces for leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of political instability at the local level on foreign firms in China. Building on the literature on political embeddedness and business power, the authors propose a theoretical framework to explain how political turnover can affect foreign firms’ performance and how they respond to such challenges by leveraging their power bases.

To test the hypotheses, the authors apply fixed effects regression to an unbalanced panel data set comprising 13,360 foreign firms from 1998 to 2013 and the political replacement that involved changes in provincial governors.

The findings confirm that political turnover incidents have a negative impact on the performance of foreign firms in China. However, the authors also found that this negative relationship is weaker for firms that can choose various types of power sources. Specifically, the study reveals that foreign firms with large firm size, government ownership and a strong foreign direct investment community are better qualified to mitigate the negative effects of political instability.

This study contributes to the literature by developing the understanding of how political uncertainties and risks affect the performance of foreign firms in China and the importance of firms’ power in counterbalancing these effects. The research provides valuable insights into how multinational corporations can exploit their power to manage the effects of local political turnover, which has practical implications for the strategy and management of foreign firms operating in China.