Eurasian Business Review

The study examines the feedback effect of innovation outcomes on access to finance, as an extension to the existing literature which suggests financial access drives firms to innovate. The study applies the theory of planned behaviors integrated with the signaling theory to evaluate financial access of Vietnamese firms in connection to their innovation with a particular focus on planned innovation activities—innovation activities that started out with an entrepreneurial intention to innovate. Applying the multilevel mixed-effects logistic (MELOGIT) regression for panel and the two-stage probit model within the conditional mixed process (CMP) to the data on Vietnamese small and medium firms, for the period 2005–2015, the study shows that firms with innovation outcomes appear to have better access to finance. More interestingly, the effect is stronger for planned innovation. These findings assert the signaling role of planned innovation to potential lenders on a comprehensive resource commitment guiding the innovation activity to success. The study offers interdisciplinary arguments from both financial risk perspective and theory of planned behavior integrated with the signaling view.

Annual surveys were conducted among a small business panel of 300 businesses during the four-year period 2007 to 2010 aimed at examining small business survival and mortality. By contrasting the profiles of successful businesses with those that closed their doors, a second objective was also attained, namely the identification of principle reasons for small business survival and sustainability. The survey data were applied in a categorical regression model with business survival as dependent variable and several independent variables related to competitive environment, entrepreneurial endowment and comparative advantages as independent variables. The analysis identified the human factor in small businesses and specifically entrepreneurial actions and business management skills as the strongest predictors of small business survival. Businesses portraying these characteristics should be the focus of small business support strategies.

Even the most rudimentary training from Economics 101 starts with demand curves going down and supply curves going up. They are so ‘natural’ that they sound even more obvious than the Euclidian postulates in mathematics. But are they? What do they actually mean? Start with “demand curves”. Are they hypothetical ‘psychological constructs’ on individual preferences? Propositions on aggregation over them? Reduced forms of actual dynamic proposition of time profiles of prices and demanded quantities? Similar considerations apply to “supply curves” The point here, drawing upon the chapter by Kirman and Dosi, in Dosi (Dosi, Foundations of Complex Evolving Economies Innovation, Organization and Industrial Dynamics, Oxford University Press, 2023), is that the forest of demand and supply curves is basically there to populate the analysis with double axiomatic notions of equilibria, both ‘in the head’ of individual agents, and in environments in which they operate. Supply and demand “curves”, I am arguing, are one of the three major methodological stumbling blocks on the way of progress in economics, the other related ones being ‘utility functions’ and ‘production functions’. There is an alternative: represent markets and industries how they actually works, and model them both via fully fledged Agent Based Models and via lower dimensional dynamical systems.

This study investigates the effects of the investment-based presence of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on poverty in developing countries. The relationship is decomposed into different pathways corresponding to various facets of firms’ presence and activities, and monetary and multidimensional poverty. We hypothesize that depending on the pathways, the effects can be positive or negative in terms of poverty alleviation, and an overall conclusion has to be nuanced. The hypotheses are tested across 431 Indonesian administrative districts, observed in 2008, 2014 and 2018. Pooled instrumental variable regressions show that a higher presence of foreign MNEs does not reduce the number of people below the poverty line. It raises the depth and severity of poverty, and the population is also more exposed to pollutions. These results inform the ongoing debate, and offer important implications for policy makers eager to attract foreign direct investments, as well as for MNEs’ managers concerned with social responsibility and achieving sustainable development goals in host developing countries.

In high-technology industries, employee spinouts have increasingly been identified as attractive targets for acquisitions. Yet employee spinouts may originate from different knowledge contexts. This study adopts a resource base perspective to examine the impact of both the knowledge heritage and the product strategy of spinouts originating from different contexts (i.e. from the same industry or from a related downstream industry) on the potential to be acquired by firms in the same industry or in related industries. Our findings, based on data from the semiconductor industry and its related downstream industries, show that spinouts from firms in a focal industry represent appealing targets for a broad range of buyer firms from within the focal industry or from related, downstream industries, independent of their product strategy at entry. By contrast, spinouts from downstream, user industries that enter into an upstream industry, tend to appeal to a more limited set of buyers. Our study suggests that managers and academics should consider the acquisition of spinouts whose founders have origins in related industries as a channel to access critical knowledge from upstream or downstream contexts. Yet because many of the critical knowledge resources that spinouts possess are embodied in their founders, such acquisitions also require careful management of personnel decisions post-acquisition.

Previous studies have clearly documented the shareholder advantages and disadvantages of political connections. However, evidence of the role of political connections in ethical investment is scarce. This study investigates the relationship between political connections and the reconstructions of the Sharia index in Indonesia. Using the event study methodology, I evaluate the abnormal returns surrounding the announcement of the inclusion or exclusion of firms in or from the Indonesia Sharia Stock Index (ISSI). I further conducted a regression analysis to enhance the identification of the relationship between political connections and Sharia compliance. Neither the inclusion nor exclusion of firms in or from the ISSI yields abnormal returns, indicating that investors are not very concerned about ISSI reconstitutions. Political connections increase firm value before their inclusion in the ISSI. However, the benefits of such connections are lost after their inclusion in the ISSI. Meanwhile, I find no evidence of a relationship between political connections and the market reaction surrounding the exclusion of firms from the ISSI.

This paper examines the link between privatization of state ownership and corporate social responsibility performance. Using a sample of Chinese listed companies between 2010 and 2015, we find evidence that privatization is negatively associated with firms’ social performance but this negative relationship is weaker for firms that have politically connected board members. These results suggest that the firm’s likelihood to engage in social activities results primarily from political connections and from significant government control over the firm’s decisions, as such firms are subject to higher pressure than other firms are. Moreover, our findings have important implications for policymakers in understanding companies’ social behavior in an emerging market.

The paper aims to recognize how managers perceive a firm’s relational strategy content by identification of strategic choices made within it. The paper presents theoretical assumptions of the relational view of strategy based on identified fundamental strategic choices that form the content of relational strategy, presents hypotheses that link this content with the relational view of a firm, as well as ‘enterprise logic’, understood as the way in which top managers conceptualize their firm and its relationships with stakeholders. The research was conducted in 53 companies based in Poland using semi-structured interviews with executives. Both content and statistical analyses are to be used. The research results made it possible to discern key strategic choices that make up the content of relational strategy. These, in the opinion of managers, should include choices regarding the process of creating and appropriating value, selecting a partner and their significance, and the associated interorganizational dynamics as well as the way of forming interorganizational relationships.

Despite the growing prevalence of employee exemplification in the workplace, there is limited understanding of this assertive self-focused tactic. This study proposes to expand the exemplification research domain by exploring the emotional and behavioral conditions under which this impression management tactic is effective. Data analysis from 206 supervisor–employee dyads reveals that the indirect relationship between exemplification and individual performance through a supervisor’s liking is conditional on an employee’s emotional intelligence. Specifically, the exemplification effect on performance is sharply negative when a salesperson’s emotional intelligence is low, and it becomes insignificant when a salesperson is highly emotionally intelligent. This moderating effect is also strengthened by a supervisor’s age. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.