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Environmental disclosure within company annual reports has become an increasing expectation of environmental regulators and campaigners in industrial countries. It is an indicator of business commitment to environmental improvement to the extent that the disclosures report progress in implementing environmental programmes. Perhaps more important, disclosure is a source of documentary evidence that can be used by external parties to evaluate company performance. The willingness by company managers to open the organisation to external scrutiny is often viewed as a necessary first step in obtaining business commitment to environmentally sustainable forms of business activity. This paper compares Western experience with environmental disclosure to that in Singapore. Information on environmental disclosure in Singapore is presented from a review of company annual reports (covering two years 1995/96 and 1996/97) and the responses to a questionnaire survey covering all public listed companies in Singapore. The surveys reveal a low commitment to environmental disclosure amongst Singapore organisations. Reasons for the low interest in disclosure are explained. Possible public policy responses and options for changing current business attitudes toward disclosure are outlined.

Drawing on the literature on dynamic skills, this study builds upon and empirically tests a conceptual model that connects business and political ties, organizational unlearning, organizational learning and firm performance. Specifically, this study suggests that business ties enable and political ties inhibit organizational unlearning (i.e. regenerative dynamic capability), which may, in turn, affect exploratory (i.e. renewing dynamic capability) and exploitative (i.e. incremental dynamic capability) innovation behaviors of the firm. Thus, the purpose of this study is to offer a theoretical framework in which organizational unlearning and learning act as mediating mechanisms between business and political ties and firm performance.

Structural equation modeling and mediation analyzes were used on a sample of 302 small and medium-size enterprises in Turkey.

This study found that business ties enable organizational unlearning while political ties impede it. This study further demonstrates that business ties positively and political ties negatively relate to organizational learning through organizational unlearning. In addition, this study shows that political ties are mostly negatively and indirectly related to firm performance through organizational learning while business ties positively and indirectly relate to firm performance.

The findings demonstrate the critical role that personal networks play in organizational learning and firm performance. This study provides evidence to the need to recognize and evaluate the potential and undesirable impacts of political ties on cultivating innovation skills and firm performance. In addition, this study recommends managers to embrace the significance of organizational unlearning in strategic renewal, particularly as it applies to building renewing and incremental dynamic skills for enhanced firm performance.

This study offers a deeper perspective of the dissected relations of social ties in emerging economies to firm performance by considering organizational unlearning and learning behaviors as mediating mechanisms.

The Communist revolution in China has led to the appearance in this country of increasing numbers of Chinese books in Russian translation. The Chinese names in Cyrillic transcription have presented many librarians and students with a new problem, that of identifying the Cyrillic form of a name with the customary Wade‐Giles transcription. The average cataloguer, the first to meet the problem, has two obvious lines of action, and neither is satisfactory. He can save up the names until he has a chance to consult an expert in Chinese. Apart altogether from the delay, the expert, confronted with a few isolated names, might simply reply that he could do nothing without the Chinese characters, and it is only rarely that Soviet books supply them. Alternatively, he can transliterate the Cyrillic letters according to the system in use in his library and leave the matter there for fear of making bad worse. As long as the writers are not well known, he may feel only faintly uneasy; but the appearance of Chzhou Ėn‐lai (or Čžou En‐laj) upsets his equanimity. Obviously this must be entered under Chou; and we must have Mao Tse‐tung and not Mao Tsze‐dun, Ch'en Po‐ta and not Chėn' Bo‐da. But what happens when we have another . . . We can hardly write Ch'en unless we know how to represent the remaining elements in the name; yet we are loth to write Ch'en in one name and Chėn' in another.

This paper aims to examine alliance governance at different hierarchical levels.

The data is collected from both top-level and operating-level managers in 286 strategic alliances in China (a total of 572 managers). Hierarchical moderated regression models are adopted to test the hypotheses and two-stage regression analyzes are used to correct for endogeneity.

This paper finds that relational governance has a greater impact on alliance performance than contract utilization at the top level. Furthermore, the simultaneous use of relational governance at the top and operating levels have a detrimental impact on alliance performance. Finally, top-level contract utilization has a negative interaction with operating-level relational governance but a positive interaction with operating-level contract utilization.

First, the cross-sectional nature of the data collection approach provides only a snapshot of how each type of governance mechanism and its interactions affect alliance performance. Second, the sample is limited to firms located in emerging markets.

Managers should realize that the effectiveness of contract and relational governance mechanisms varies across different management levels and they should be cautious about the cross-level governance mechanism alignment.

This study advances the interfirm governance literature in that this paper examined alliance governance at different hierarchical levels and provides new insights into the ongoing debate on whether the contract and relational governance mechanisms function as complements or substitutes by exploring the governance alignment across different alliance hierarchies.

Given the great upheaval in the international situation and the increasing operating risk in international business, research on corporate diplomacy is thriving. However, it still lacks clear conceptualization and operationalization. Based on social capital theory, our study conceptualizes corporate diplomacy as a three-dimensional construct and quantifies its distinct and combined impacts on multinational enterprises’ (MNE) subsidiary performance.

This research analyzes 134 responses collected from a questionnaire survey among key informants in Chinese MNEs using the regression method.

This research finds that corporate diplomacy is positively correlated with MNEs’ subsidiary performance. Specifically, compatriot-oriented diplomacy is the most effective, followed sequentially by host-partner-oriented and host-regulator-oriented diplomacy. In addition, compatriot-oriented diplomacy substitutes for host-partner-oriented diplomacy but complements host-regulator-oriented diplomacy in enhancing subsidiary performance.

Our research enriches the conceptualization and operationalization of corporate diplomacy and provides a nuanced view of its distinct and combined effects on MNEs’ subsidiary performance.

This paper identifies the development of and gaps in knowledge in various management disciplines, including international marketing in relation to political ties in emerging markets, based on a systematic review of the related literature. The paper develops a synthesized integrative framework and provides a research agenda and pathways for future research.

The study adopts the systematic literature review protocol to investigate the ways in which political ties have been examined in the management literature in various disciplines, such as international business, marketing, entrepreneurship, strategy, innovation, and organization. In total, 114 articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 2000 to 2022 were analyzed.

The authors believe that studying the impact of political ties on firm outcomes is timely and important as interest in this area of research is growing rapidly. The review reveals that the diverse conceptual and methodological approaches adopted in different management disciplines have resulted in inconclusive and mixed findings on the relationship between political ties and performance.

This is one of the few systematic literature reviews of political ties and firm performance in emerging markets. The authors clarify some of the ambiguities around the subject and offer a path forward for developing current understanding and insights. The study also highlights the major perspectives in management and clarify the similarities and differences in the conceptualization of political ties. In addition, the authors develop an integrative framework of the political ties–performance link in emerging markets.

Utilizing transaction cost economics (TCE) theory as the theoretical underpinning, this article aims to describe the costs of interpersonal helping and governing mechanisms that individuals may use to alleviate helping costs.

A theoretical analysis was performed by drawing upon TCE and related research.

Through the lens of TCE, the authors propose the following: First, as the costs of helping increase, interpersonal helping shifts from being triggered by an autonomous motivation to being regulated by contextual contingencies. Second, the helper is likely to utilize reciprocity to mitigate helping costs by acquiring specific assets possessed by the recipient when asset specificity is high. Third, the helper is likely to utilize organizationally sanctioned procedures and rules to mitigate helping costs by eliminating unwanted resource consumptions when outcome uncertainty is high. Finally, the helper is likely to utilize group norms to mitigate helping costs by involving others in helping or discouraging requests for recurrent help when the frequency of helping is high.

From a theoretical standpoint, this article complements previous research that focuses on the dark side of interpersonal helping. Practically, the authors offer several implications that help managers minimize the costs of helping in the organization.

Social media usage has been documented to affect the psychological well-being of its users. This study aims to examine how social media overload influences cognitive fatigue among individuals in Malaysia.

This study employed a comprehensive research framework based on the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) model to examine how perceived overload affects social media cognitive fatigue through emotional exhaustion and anxiety. Survey data were gathered from 451 social media users in Malaysia, and data analysis was performed using PLS-SEM.

The findings revealed that information overload, communication overload and interruption overload are antecedents of emotional exhaustion. Communication overload, interruption overload and cognitive overload were identified as antecedents of anxiety, while emotional exhaustion and anxiety were confirmed as predictors of social media cognitive fatigue. However, pathway analysis indicated no relationship between emotional exhaustion and anxiety.

Our study contributes to the literature on media technology and media psychology by examining the psychological mechanisms (emotional exhaustion and anxiety). The findings offer implications for service providers, practitioners and social media users, as they facilitate measures and strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of social media while elevating psychological well-being.

This study aims to examine the effects of formal and informal institutional factors (i.e. marketization and guanxi culture) on interorganizational conflicts (IOCs) and their interaction effects.

Drawing on IOC literature and an institution-based view, the authors use a sample of 12,022 Chinese firms from the World Bank’s Investment Climate Survey. A zero-inflated negative binomial regression was used to analyze the data.

The results suggest that guanxi culture has U-shaped effects, but marketization does not negatively affect IOCs. Furthermore, a low level of marketization weakens the U-shaped effect of guanxi culture on IOCs. A moderate level of guanxi culture can enable marketization to reduce IOCs.

This study provides a better understanding of the management of IOCs. Managers should fully understand the differential effects of the institutional environment in different regions and their interactions by adopting different response strategies.

This study enriches the literature on IOCs’ antecedents and contextual factors by examining the institutions’ direct and interaction effects on IOCs.

The aim of this paper is to investigate (1) whether the different dimensions of internationalization experience have different effects on internationalization speed? (2) And how the degree of digitalization plays a moderating role in these relationships?

The authors test the hypotheses on a sample of 431 Chinese listed companies export data from 2007 to 2016, using multiple regression analysis.

The international expansion experience to developed economies will accelerate the internationalization speed of MNCs, while international expansion experience to emerging economies has an inverted U-shaped relationship with internationalization speed. The digitalization degree weakens the relationship between international experience and internationalization speed, whether it is international expansion experience to developed or emerging economies.

By decomposing the dimensions of international experience and considering the degree of digitalization as a new moderating variable, the paper helps to clarify the debate on the relationship between international experience and speed of internationalization, thus contributing to the internationalization speed literature and the digital technology perspective. Revealing the process of international experience affecting internationalization speed has implications for MNCs to achieve high-quality and rapid internationalization.