Purpose The significant performance implications of individual-focused and group-focused transformational leadership have been documented for established firms, but the issue of whether they are complementary or substitutive still remains a puzzle, and whether their relationship differs in new firms remains unanswered. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between individual-focused and group-focused transformational leadership in different organizational structures in new firms. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on survey data of 209 questionnaires from 63 teams in 63 new firms in China. Findings The results suggest that individual-focused and group-focused transformational leadership are substitutive when the organizational structure is mechanistic, and are complementary when the structure is organic. Originality/value The study contributes to the debate on the relationship between individual-focused and group-focused transformational leadership by comparing organizational structure characteristics and offering a comprehensive understanding of the issue.

In recent years, entrepreneurial bricolage acts as an effective way to solve the problem of resource constraint in new firms, and then gradually attracted attention from related scholars in entrepreneurship field. However, the existing literatures have an obviously insufficient of the implementation and driving factor of entrepreneurial bricolage behavior. Therefore, in this paper, we integrate entrepreneurial bricolage theory with transformational leadership theory to construct a theory model among dual-level (i.e., individual-focused and group-focused) transformational leadership, entrepreneurial bricolage and new firm performance by means of 194 questionnaires to empirical analysis. The results show that the entrepreneurial bricolage has the mediated role in the relationship between dual-level transformational leadership and new firm performance.

Cognition and emotion exert a powerful influence on human behavior. Based on cognitive psychology and organizational behavior theory, this paper examines the role of cognition and emotion in participative budgeting and corporate performance using a questionnaire survey. The questionnaires were sent to 345 listed companies in China. The results support the hypothesis that human cognition and emotion have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between participative budgeting and corporate performance. Cognition and emotion can promote the effect of participative budgeting on corporate performance. Furthermore, according to the theory of artificial intelligence (AI), this paper designs an AI-based cognition and emotion identification system. This system can help managers identify the budget participants’ cognitive and emotional states and undertake the interventions necessary to improving corporate performance.