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This paper aims to investigate whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) are more or less likely than local firms to violate their employees’ human rights in emerging economies, whether regional institutional pressures influence the likelihood of violating employee human rights and whether the density of MNEs in a region affects the likelihood of employees’ human rights violation by local firms.

Building on neo-institutional theory, this paper hypothesizes that, in an emerging economy, MNEs violate their employees’ human rights significantly less than local firms do. Moreover, it is hypothesized that the quality of regional institutions only influences the social behavior of local firms toward their employees. In addition, it is hypothesized that the density of MNEs in a region has a positive effect on local firms’ attitudes toward employee human rights. These hypotheses are examined using a sample of 1,211,638 respondent–year observations in 32 Mexican regions between 2005 and 2014.

This paper shows that MNEs are less likely to violate their employees’ human rights than local firms are. It also provides evidence that regional institutions do not influence MNE behavior toward employee human rights violation, but affect local firms. Furthermore, contrary to what was hypothesized, the density of MNEs in a region has a negative rather than positive influence on local firms’ respect of employee human rights.

This paper advances understanding of the behavior of MNEs in an emerging economy setting and contributes to the ongoing debate in the literature on their social impact.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight different strategy–business model (BM) alignments using Miles and Snow’s strategic framework and analyze the performance implications of these different alignments.

The paper develops a composite conceptual model combining Miles and Snow’s strategy typology with Demil and Lecocq’s BM framework to explore the performance implications of strategy–BM fit. This model is empirically examined using a sample of 156 French small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector.

The results first highlight a limited set of BM configurations across strategic profiles, confirming that a BM reflects a firm’s strategy as a means of realizing strategic choices. Second, they reveal that deviating from ideal strategy–BM alignments negatively affects performance. Finally, they shed light on the dynamics of Miles and Snow’s typology, from intended to implemented strategy.

The intrinsic characteristics of surveyed SMEs led to the hybridization of empirically derived profiles, which allowed to partially associate them with theoretically predicted configurations of BMs.

The paper suggests the patterns of predictive strategy–BM alignment that allow managers and entrepreneurs to monitor the dynamic consistency between strategic choices and their implementation.

Do you need a strategy if you have a BM? Adopting a fit and performance perspective, this paper addresses this question and complements other studies emphasizing the need to connect strategies and BMs.

This study explores the relationship between intense exposure to entrepreneurship education and training (EET), defined as the deliberate practice of entrepreneurial learning, and self-efficacy, for entrepreneurs in the post-creation stage. When analyzing this relationship, we account for individuals' entrepreneurial experience gained through parental ties with entrepreneurs as a moderating variable. In doing so, our research aims to contribute to the literature on the relationship between EET and entrepreneurial self-efficacy in several ways. First, we address the relationship by bridging the gap between intention and action in the context of actual entrepreneurs engaged in the early stages of their new ventures. In doing so and drawing on the theory of planned behavior, we complement the important stream of research on entrepreneurial intention by highlighting antecedents of entrepreneurial self-efficacy in the post-creation stage. Second, when analyzing the relationship between EET and self-efficacy for actual entrepreneurs, we approach EET as a deliberate practice of voluntary exposure to new entrepreneurial knowledge. Third, we provide new insights into the EET–self-efficacy relationship by exploring the moderating effect of entrepreneurial vicarious learning and, more specifically, the individual's embeddedness in an entrepreneurial parental environment. Finally, drawing from Kirkpatrick's (1959a, b, 1960a, b, 1996) reference framework on training and education evaluation, we provide empirical observations of EET outcomes evaluated in the later (“behavior” and “results”) stages.

Drawing on the theory of planned behavior as well as role modeling and absorptive capacity, we develop hypotheses that we examine using a sample of 76 French entrepreneurs who have created new ventures since less than five years.

The results show no significant direct influence of the intensity of EET on the different dimensions used to measure entrepreneurial self-efficacy. However, we find that entrepreneurial parental environment and non-entrepreneurial parental environment constitute two distinct moderating learning contexts leading to opposite EET intensity–self-efficacy relationships.

Our research has several implications for both scholars and practitioners. From a theoretical standpoint, we extend the debate on direct and vicarious experiences and their respective impact on self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977; Baron and Henry, 2010). In the context of actual entrepreneurs in the post-creation stage, our results neither support nor invalidate the superiority of one specific type of experience. In our research, vicarious experience appears fully effective when interacted with other sources of learning such as EET. As such, theoretical attention should shift from the stand-alone effect of vicarious experience on self-efficacy to its fostering effect on other learning sources. Rather than opposing these two (direct and vicarious) types of experiences, future research should theorize their joint effect on entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Moreover, in showing the importance of entrepreneurial parental environment, our research responds to the call to further study the contingent factors enhancing the impact of EET (and deliberate practice of entrepreneurial learning) on entrepreneurial self-efficacy (Fayolle and Gailly, 2015; Litzky et al., 2020; Rideout and Gray, 2013). From a practical standpoint, our results help formulate recommendations on how to design EET programs to enhance nascent and actual entrepreneurs' self-efficacy. Given the central role of an entrepreneurial parental environment in developing self-efficacy, we suggest that, in addition to teaching traditional entrepreneurial academic content, EET programs should allow students to vicariously experience the entrepreneur's curriculum through in-depth role modeling. More precisely, this role modeling should go beyond mere testimonials and engage students in trusted, intense, repeated interactions with inspiring instructors, both entrepreneurs and lecturers, to create and activate the fostering conditions of an entrepreneurial (parental) environment. In simulating quasi-parental role modeling within EET programs, academic institutions can contextualize the positive impact of EET on entrepreneurial venturing.

Which courses of action and levers are used by companies in the quest for renewal? Do renewal initiatives create value for the company? Can successful renewal initiatives provide models for managers committed to change, enabling them to identify certain levers that can be exploited in their own drives for renewal? This paper aims at providing answers to these questions by describing different aspects (implementation and corporate value creation perspectives) of the renewal experience conducted in 1993 by a large French electrical engineering company, Spie-Trindel. In this company, a competence building process was identified and analyzed as a driving force behind renewal. Thanks to an analysis of different performance measures (return on investment, return on equity and stock market prices) of Spie-Trindel, the competence building process was studied as a transformational leverage and its impact on the resulting value creation of the company was put into light. Moreover, this paper provides a concrete and detailed description of a specific competence building process which led the company to both alter the hierarchy of competences (see “reordering mechanisms”) and institutionalize new competences (see “institutionalization and routinization mechanisms”) within its core competence portfolio.

During the 1990s, new theories emerged in the field of strategy. In particular, the resource-based and competence-based views of the firm developed in reaction to Porter and the entire current derived from the industrial economy. However, these approaches have their own limitations: they are difficult to put into practice and are partially similar to the industrial approach.

This article has two aims: (a) to make a clearer distinction between the classical approach on the one hand, and the resource- and competence-based approach on the other hand; and (b) to overcome the opposition between these two models in order to grasp their complementarities. First of all, a critical analysis of the literature is presented, in order to understand how these two approaches fit into thinking. This theoretical framework is then illustrated by a case study of Air Liquide, which, in some of its activities, adopted a competence-based strategy and structure. The case study clearly identifies the points of divergence such as the complementarities between the two approaches, thereby showing how one can overcome their oppositions as well as their respective limitations.

Past theorizing and empirical work suggest that long-standing strategic leaders generate harmful attention and information-processing effects in their organizations, which in turn impair organizational learning and performance. In contrast, our argument is that longevity and its attendant inertia foster useful transformational and strategic persistence for organizations pursuing stretch goals. Through attentional vigilance and restricted focus, inertia may create the cognitive profile necessary for effective learning when organizations pursue the seemingly impossible. We empirically examine our ideas in the context of the French royal navy and the naval battles it had with the British in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More specifically, we focus on two distinct but related stretch periods during which the French royal navy was tasked with building a powerful naval force and using it to gain naval supremacy over Great Britain. Given its exceptionally weak starting position at the beginning of the two studied periods and its desire to displace the established and advantaged navy of the era, the French had a lofty task. Our results are supportive of the stability argument, with leader longevity and inertia being positive for outcomes.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

It is one of the curious aspects of business that, despite the fact commerce has been around for millennia, the study of it is barely 100 years old. Whether it is the first business school (nineteenth century) or the first business journal (twentieth century), there is no rich tradition in the academic study for it. As a result – at least in scholarly circles – some academics can be a bit sniffy about it as a research pursuit, arguing it is merely an “applied” area, as opposed to the “pure” areas such as mathematics or chemistry.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.