This study extends the extant literature on executive pay dispersion by exploring the cultural-cognitive social determinants. We investigate how religious institutional environments, including Buddhism- and Confucianism-based institutions, shape vertical executive pay dispersion. We theorize that a Buddhism-based institutional environment is negatively related to vertical executive pay dispersion. In contrast, we propose competing hypotheses regarding how a Confucianism-based institutional environment affects vertical executive pay dispersion. With a sample of Chinese public firms, we find that both Buddhism- and Confucianism-based institutional environments are negatively associated with a firm's vertical executive pay dispersion. Supplementary analyses show that the aforementioned main effects are attenuated when a firm is embedded by a communist party branch and has a younger CEO.

Whereas emerging market firms (EMFs) face severe legitimacy barriers when entering global markets, whether and under what conditions green innovation can help them gain legitimacy remains under-examined. This article argues that green innovation can help EMFs obtain regulatory and social legitimacy in host countries and consequently boost their exports. Based on a panel dataset populated by 254 Chinese-listed manufacturing companies from 2011 through 2017, this article finds that green innovation is positively associated with EMF export performance. Moreover, this positive relationship is stronger when host-country political risk is lower or host-country buyer sophistication is higher but becomes weaker for state-owned EMFs. These findings enrich the legitimacy-based view and international business literature by identifying the role of green innovation in boosting EMF export performance and specifying important institutional contingencies.

In 2018, in the Dialogue, Debate, and Discussion section of MOR 14.3, an interesting series of articles was published in the ‘Forum on Tesla and the Global Automotive Industry’, where researchers discussed the future dynamics of the global automotive sector. In their work, Perkins and Murmann (2018) contended that, based on Tesla's success, a well-funded company could develop a new electric vehicle (EV) from scratch and move it into production within three to five years if it would invest one to two billion USD in design, development, and manufacturing. Expressing a contrasting view, MacDuffie (2018) questioned this possibility, arguing that EV product architecture is unlikely to become substantially more modular and any new entrant would therefore have to develop the ordinary capabilities that current automotive original equipment manufacturers possess, and there is no guarantee that a firm can develop such capabilities. Teece (2018) joined the debate by proposing a capability-based framework within which to analyze four paradigm shifts that have marked progress in the global automotive industry: EVs, autonomous vehicles, connected cars, and personal mobility services. He argues that these paradigm shifts have created opportunities for new entrants while posing challenges to incumbent firms. To navigate through the uncertainty associated with these paradigm shifts, incumbent firms need to enhance and refine their dynamic capabilities and leverage their integration skills. Jiang and Lu (2018) based their contribution to this debate on the development of the Chinese EV market. In MOR 15.1, published in 2019, Teece (2019) further elaborated his framework to facilitate analysis of the prospects for Chinese firms seeking a stronger foothold in the global automobile market. All these articles have been well received by MOR readers and were ranked among the top 20 articles in full-text view times between June 2021 and June 2022.