A chief executive officer (CEO) acting as the firm's transformational leader is typically viewed as instrumental to corporate entrepreneurship in established firms, but how exactly does a higher level of corporate entrepreneurship come about, given a transformational CEO's actions? We suggest that organizational ambidexterity can function as a core mediating mechanism between transformational CEOs and the observed level of corporate entrepreneurship and that the effectiveness of this mediating process varies as a function of critical contingencies related to characteristics of the top management team (TMT), the environment and the organization's design. Our empirical evidence, based on a sample of 145 Chinese private sector firms, and using three primary sources of data (145 CEOs, 506 TMT members, and 1,981 middle managers), provides support for a moderated mediation process. We find that the mediating pathway from transformational leadership to corporate entrepreneurship through organizational ambidexterity is not significant when boundary conditions are ignored. However, when environmental dynamism, TMT collectivism, and structural differentiation are included as moderators, CEO transformational leadership does affect corporate entrepreneurship via the creation and effective functioning of organizational ambidexterity.

This study contributes to an emic understanding of how different types of social obligations may help or hinder the formation of initial organizational trust within collectivist cultures. We extend prior social categorization insights by challenging the expectation that in-group favouritism automatically facilitates higher levels of initial trust among collectivists. We theorize and test the asymmetric effects of two different types of social obligations toward members of distinct social categories (kinship and friendship in-groups) on the formation of initial organizational trust. Using a quasi-experimental research design in a collectivist culture (Japan), we hypothesize and show that in ambivalent situations, voluntary social obligations toward members of friendship in-groups encourage early trust in trustees' organizations; however, involuntary social obligations toward members of kinship in-groups discourage early trust development toward the organization these trustees represent. The effects of (in)voluntary social obligations on initial organizational trust are contingent on how collectivists perceive each encounter: voluntary social obligations are more conducive to trust-building at lower levels of perceived opportunity; involuntary social obligations have stronger effects on initial organizational trust at higher levels of perceived risk.

In a cross-cultural experiment, we examined how task interdependence influences the importance of organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) in employee performance evaluations in China and the USA. A total of 150 graduate students in China and 154 in the USA (a total of 304), who serve as evaluators, participated in the experiment. Participants were exposed to a task interdependence manipulation and then rated the importance of OCB in their overall performance evaluations of employees. Results support the moderating effects of national culture (both using a country proxy and as a measure of collectivism) on the affects of task interdependence. Although among evaluators from the USA perceptions of the importance of OCB increased as task interdependence increased, the effects of task interdependence were significandy attenuated among evaluators from China. Implications of these results for research and practice are discussed.