Grounded in stakeholder theory and a resource-based view of the firm, this longitudinal research demonstrates the evolution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm reputation over time. Drawing on a 5-year sample of 285 major U.S. firms obtained from the KLD database and Fortune’s Most Admired Companies, we find that the proposed dynamic relationship predicts evolving stakeholder expectations to incite organizations to improve their social performance to earn reputational benefits. Contrary to the often labeled stickiness of reputation, we find a “Red Queen” effect that supports reputation as a dynamic construct where the change in CSR does predict a change in corporate reputation. Similarly, we find that the change in reputation over time varies by industry, being most pronounced for manufacturing. From a practical perspective, this relationship across time may incite managers to create sustainable competitive advantage by continuously investing in doing good to reap the benefits of looking good and looking even better with time.

This study examines the role of team political skill in predicting team effectiveness. Extending the current paradigm of individual political skill and contributing to the team effectiveness literature, we offer a theoretical framework for team political skill composition and test a model whereby task and social cohesion mediate the relationship between team political skill and team performance. On the basis of the results obtained from 189 student project teams and 28 business work teams, we demonstrate that team political skill benefits extend to groups. In both samples, team political skill directly related to subjective and objective team performance. Among several team political skill composition models, the interaction between the group skill mean and standard deviation (“skill strength”) was found to be the best predictor of team emergent states and outcomes. Team political skill was related to objective team performance via social and task cohesion in the student teams and via task cohesion in the work teams. Finally, we investigated the potential dark side of high team political skill but failed to support the too-much-of-a-good-thing hypothesis. Given the social focus of the construct, an aim for future research is to further understand how the composition of individual political skill influences team dynamics and outcomes. Multiple organizational implications extend to recruitment, training, development, and team building.

This study examined the relations between shared leadership in teams, team trust, potency, and performance. Forty-nine teams participating in a business simulation game rated their team potency, trust, and team leadership styles. Team potency and trust were positively related to shared transformational leadership and negatively related to passive avoidant leadership, but only the latter was significantly negatively related to team performance in the business strategy simulation. These results suggest that teams might not always benefit from transformational leadership qualities, but that “negative” leadership styles might be detrimental to performance and to the trust and confidence in the team.

Manuscript Type: EmpiricalResearch Question/Issue: Does the ownership structure of a firm, specifically the aggregation of the different ownership types within each firm, relate with the composition of its board? Research Findings/Insights: Using archival data from a sample comprising 1,487 U.S. firms, we find that the composition of the individual profiles of directors on corporate boards (i.e., independent, affiliated, or insider) match a firm's aggregated ownership configuration (institutional, corporate parent, family-entrepreneur control) even after parsing out the impact of CEO characteristics, firm size, and performance. Further analyses elaborate on the specific relationship between each director profile and ownership types present within the firm. Theoretical/Academic Implications: This study builds upon three conceptual perspectives: agency, resource dependency, and behavioral. We argue that each type of ownership has differing imperatives and may prefer different types of directors to fulfill their governance needs. The paper illustrates that the relationship between corporate governance, specifically board composition, and ownership is a comprehensive phenomenon that is best understood through multiple theoretical lenses. Practitioner/Policy Implications: This study shows that ownership and board composition are not substitutable governance mechanisms as commonly understood, but might be complementary mechanisms. A finding that governance mechanisms are complementary implies that regulatory or institutional pressures to modify board composition with the addition of directors with similar profiles may affect the governance in unforeseen ways.

This research expands the study of political skill, a construct developed in North America, to other cultures. We examine the psychometric properties of the Political Skill Inventory (PSI) and test the measurement equivalence of the scale in a non-American context. Respondents were 1511 employees from China, Germany, Russia, Turkey, and the United States. The cross-cultural generalizability of the construct is established through consistent evidence of multi-group invariance in an increasingly stringent series of analyses of mean and covariance structures. Overall, the study provides systematic evidence that political skill can be treated as a stable construct among diverse cultural groups. Furthermore, our findings demonstrate that translated PSI measures operationalize the construct similarly. With some exceptions, the item loadings and intercepts are invariant for the US and non-US responses, suggesting partial measurement equivalence. After verifying the accuracy of item translation, we conclude that any differences can be explained by variation in the cultural value of uncertainly avoidance and cultural differences on a low-to-high context continuum. Detected dissimilarities are addressed, and some suggestions regarding the correct use across borders of the instrument by managers and researchers are provided.