Previous studies have found that media coverage of a firm's corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) often delays or blocks the completion of a cross-border acquisition when the acquiror is a multinational enterprise (MNE) from an emerging market. Drawing from the attention-based view, we argue that the effects of Chinese MNEs’ CSiR on deal completion vary depending on several contextual factors, as these factors garner more attention by making the deals more salient to stakeholders. Using a sample of cross-border acquisitions by Chinese MNEs from 2013 to 2020, we find that CSiR media coverage per se does not decrease the likelihood of a deal's completion. However, consistent with attention-based arguments, we find that CSiR media coverage negatively affects the deal's completion when the acquirors are state-owned enterprises and when the target country has high institutional quality. Our findings enhance our understanding of the effects of CSiR on cross-border acquisitions by highlighting the moderating roles of contextual factors related to stakeholder attention. Thus, it is important for MNEs to recognize the boundary conditions that may influence the potential sanctions from local stakeholders. Based on these findings, this study contributes to the literature on CSiR, cross-border acquisitions, and stakeholder attention.

This article investigates the internationalization process of incubating, parenting, and eventually spinning-off overseas entrepreneurial ventures originating from emerging markets. In a comparative case study of Chinese high-tech firms, we leveraged multiple sources of data to reveal (1) how the exploitation of parent firms’ technological and platform resources enables them to initiate, support, and eventually profit from the international growth of foreign ventures that autonomously engage in the exploration of product and market innovations, and (2) how ambidextrous synergy was created through the continuous exchange, combination, and reconfiguration of knowledge and resources between parent firms and foreign ventures. These findings extend our understanding of how Chinese high-tech firms manage the learning process in overseas venturing. We draw implications of these findings for research and practice.

We examine how the central government's management of subnational governments' agency influences the smartness of the latter's industrial specialization choices. Based on smart industrial specialization theory and agency theory, we hypothesize how two central government tools governing subnational governments' agency – facilitating their organizational efficacy and promoting their officials to higher ranks – explain recent industrial specialization choices by China's 31 provincial governments. We find that provincial governments with greater organizational efficacy, measured by access to better-resourced local state-owned enterprises in focal industries, make smarter specialization policies. In addition, we show that provincial governments with greater numbers of officials previously promoted to the central government make, contrary to conventional wisdom, potentially less smart specialization policies. Our research extends smart specialization theory by explaining that central government tools governing subnational agency problems can have knock-on effects making subnational governments' industrial specialization choices smart or unsmart.

Although some organizations encourage employees to generate radical ideas by implementing stretch goals, the relationship between stretch goals and radical creativity is complicated. Unfortunately, existing research has not adequately addressed this issue. Therefore, we integrate signaling theory with creativity-related research and propose that the interaction between stretch goals and cognitive flexibility predicts employees' willingness to take risks, thereby influencing their engagement in radical creative activities and ultimately affecting their radical creativity. To test our hypotheses, we conduct two empirical studies. The results suggest that, for employees with high cognitive flexibility, stretch goals increase their willingness to assume risks, thus leading to improved engagement in radical creative activities and enhancing their radical creativity. Conversely, for employees with low cognitive flexibility, stretch goals decrease their willingness to take risks, which hampers their engagement in radical creative activities and their radical creativity. The theoretical contributions and practical implications of this study are also discussed.