Purpose The purpose of this paper is to broaden the national-level construct of managerial discretion and to investigate the effect of cultural practices on executive discretion. Design/methodology/approach Based on a sample of six Arabian countries and using a panel of prominent cross-cultural scholars who provided 262 discretion scores for the sample countries, the authors replicate and extend the national framework of Crossland and Hambrick (2011) in a new cultural context. The cultural dimensions were measured using survey responses of middle managers based on House et al.’s (2004) cultural practices scale. Findings The authors extend the national-level framework of managerial discretion and find that an encompassing array of cultural practices plays a crucial role in shaping the degree of discretion provided to CEOs. The authors empirically demonstrate that power distance, future and performance orientation, along with gender egalitarianism and assertiveness have positive relationships with managerial discretion. However, institutional collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and humane orientation negatively affect the degree of discretion provided to CEOs. Originality/value The study fills a gap in the literature regarding the national-level framework of managerial discretion. The results indicate that executives can take idiosyncratic and bold actions to the extent to which the cultural environment allows them to do so. Also, the authors discover new national-level antecedents of managerial discretion that have not been considered in earlier studies and confirm the context dependency of this concept.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the generalizability of national-level managerial discretion and to assess whether the national context play a role in changing mainstream research findings. Based on a sample of three Arabian countries and using a panel of prominent cross-cultural scholars who provided 138 discretion scores for the sampled countries, we replicate the national framework of Crossland and Hambrick (2011) (2011), we demonstrate that individualism and uncertainty tolerance have the same positive effect on CEOs discretion even in a different cultural setting. In contrast, we show that power distance has a positive and significant effect on managerial discretion. Our results indicate that executives can take idiosyncratic and bold actions to the extent to which the cultural environment allows them to do so. Accordingly, we contribute by showing the importance of the national setting in affecting the generalizability of discretion findings.

Purpose: A recent study by Jon Aarun Andersen argued that corporate governance research will improve if it abandons the concept of managerial discretion due to the lack of an empirical definition and measurement of the concept. In this paper, we comment on Andersen (2017) by suggesting that the theoretical reasoning employed in his work is not adequate and that the concept of managerial discretion is one of the core dimensions that should be studied when researching corporate governance.Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses theoretical frameworks from recent literature, definitions and empirical studies on the concept of managerial discretion and corporate governance.Findings: Several studies have empirical tested and measured the concept of managerial discretion and that other attempts have provided validity and reliability of the concept, other have showed the direct impact of discretion on firm performance. Practical implications:Research on managerial discretion provides owners and board of directors a clear advice on how much discretion can be granted to top executives by taking into consideration the different dimensions of the external and internal environment.Originality/value: This paper concludes that corporate governance research will not improve if it abandons the concept of managerial discretion.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the national-level predictors of country competitiveness using the concept of managerial discretion. The objective is to empirically link the strategic management discipline particularly the upper echelon theory to the concept of country performance measured by competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach This paper tests the proposed relationship between managerial discretion and country competitiveness using a sample of 18 countries from 6 different regional clusters. Discretion scores are generated from survey responses of prominent senior management consultants, while country competitiveness is measured via the Global Competitiveness Index developed by the World Economic Forum. A multi-level regression analysis on the panel data set spanning 10 years of national competitiveness levels is used to empirically demonstrate the association between managerial discretion and country competitiveness. Findings The authors show that managerial discretion is a direct predictor of national competitiveness through its ability to provide CEOs with a wider array of actions to innovate and enhance firm performance which will ultimately contribute to country competitiveness. Practical implications The positive influence of managerial discretion on country competitiveness provide an interesting framework to examine the influence of firms over public policy-making. Additionally, with businesses becoming increasingly globalized, the profile of countries becomes of a great importance and can become a tool for corporate strategic decisions, such as: market entry strategies. Originality/value By linking the well-known term of competitiveness to the concept of managerial discretion, the authors provide a totally new approach to assess country performance. Additionally, this paper contributes to the growing literature of managerial discretion by discovering new national-level consequences.