This study explores the relationship between eight distinct brokerage roles of middle managers and their involvement in achieving different strategic goals. The authors argue that each role contributes to different aspects of middle managers’ strategic goals and that some roles are more likely to realize brokerage advantages than others. They further suggest that bridging structural holes may not be an optimal strategy in all situations. Important implications of their model are discussed and several future research directions are proposed.

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Few readers will be unfamiliar with the controversy regarding the practical relevance of academic research. The topic has been the subject of a number of articles, books, and special issues in academic journals (i.e.,

Close similarities in the behaviour reported of host country managers in Chinese and Hungarian joint ventures have emerged from recent research. An assessment is offered of four perspectives which purport to account for managerial behaviour in these contexts, namely those referring to the system of industrial governance, the nature of industrialization, national culture and resistance to change. The system of industrial governance provides the most direct and comprehensive explanation, and is also linked with influences from national culture and industrialization. The article concludes by examining the modes of host country learning in process within the joint ventures as foreign partners endeavour to change the behaviour of local managers.

Research summary Drawing on the demographic faultline perspective and the concept of attribute‐specific faultlines, we investigate the effect of top management team (TMT) relationship‐related (gender, age, educational level) and task‐related (functional background, tenure) faultline strengths on strategic change. In a panel study (2003–2015), we find that TMT relationship‐related faultline strength (especially educational‐level) negatively influences strategic change whereas TMT task‐related faultline strength positively affects strategic change. Environmental dynamism reduces the negative effect of TMT gender and educational‐level faultline strengths on strategic change while in fact revealing a notable positive effect between TMT age‐faultline strength and strategic change. Additionally, environmental dynamism strengthens the positive effects of task‐related TMT faultline strength on strategic change. We offer theoretical and practical implications to both the demographic faultlines and upper echelons research domains. Managerial summary Top management teams (TMTs) in firms can fracture into subgroups based on demographic characteristics (e.g., age, gender, and education level) as well as based on task‐related characteristics (e.g., functional background, and tenure). We call the former relationship‐related faultlines and the latter task‐related faultlines. We predict and find that stronger relationship based faultlines hinders between subgroup cohesion, reducing TMTs' ability to initiate strategic change. We also predict and find that stronger task‐related faultlines facilitate inter‐subgroup knowledge‐sharing, improving TMTs' ability to initiate strategic change. We find that environmental dynamism reduces the negative effect of most relationship‐related faultlines (except age where this effect is positive) on strategic change, while strengthening the positive effect of task‐related faultline strengths on strategic change.

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Firms appoint CEOs with different types of human capital in order to manage resource dependencies. How CEOs are compensated thus can be conceptualized as a valuation process of how boards view the value of CEOs' human capital. Two types of human capital – international experience and political ties – have emerged as potential drivers of CEO compensation during institutional transitions. But how they impact CEO compensation has remained unclear. We develop a resource dependence‐based, contingency framework to focus on the external and internal factors that enable or constrain human capital to impact CEO compensation. Because of the tremendous regional diversity within China, externally, we focus on the level of marketization of the region in which firms are headquartered. Internally, we pay attention to two corporate governance mechanisms: politically connected outside directors and compensation committee. Data from 10,329 firm‐year observations at 94 per cent of listed firms in China largely support our framework. Overall, our study contributes to resource dependence research by extending this research to the context of institutional transitions with a focus on how human capital impacts CEO compensation.