While research on the disclosure of CSR (corporate social responsibility) recognizes the influence of government regulations and guidelines, less attention has been given to the co-existence of conflicting pressures from the state. We develop a framework wherein CSR reporting is viewed as an organizational response to institutional complexity that arises from the conflicting demands from the central government and local governments, and apply it to publicly listed firms in China after the central government agencies issued guidelines on CSR reporting. Some provincial governments' high priority given to short-term GDP growth created tension with the central government's expectations on CSR reporting. Firms with attributes that increase scrutiny from both institutional constituencies experienced heightened tension, and they responded with early adoption but low-quality reports. Our framework was supported through a longitudinal analysis between 2008 and 2011. Our study contributes to the literature on CSR disclosure by uncovering the impact of conflicting government pressures, and advances research on institutional complexity by identifying a specific decoupling response.

We examine the role of particularistic relationships (such as family and prior social ties) in business groups during institutional transition and test how particularistic ties between top leaders affect business group performance in Taiwan, where such ties have been central to the functioning of business groups. We propose that during market-oriented transition, family and prior social ties could improve group performance by providing informal norms that strengthen the intermediation within business groups and that family relationships could reduce strategic restructuring and generate performance benefits. Results of a longitudinal study over 24 years show that market transition enhanced the contribution of family and prior social relationships but not that of common-identity relationships, such as being from the same hometown, which do not involve prior direct personal contact. We also found that during transition, the positive contribution of family members would rise up to a threshold, after which additional family members tended to derail group performance, possibly due to informational disadvantages and a legitimacy discount in the eyes of foreign investors. The study helps to make sense of different predictions about the role of particularistic ties in business group performance and makes an initial attempt at revealing how social structure affects performance. Our findings have implications for research on the value of business groups in institutional transition, interorganizational relationships, and the contingencies of social relationships.

Despite increased attention given to family firms in the theory of organization and management, the value of family governance in emerging markets is not clearly understood. We draw insights from agency and institutional economics perspectives to address the debate on whether family governance fills or abuses the void left by weaker market and legal institutions. We propose a dual focus on the pattern of family control and weak institutions to reconcile these opposed assessments. We analyze how various combinations of family control over ownership, strategy, and operations yield different benefits and costs for the operational performance of firms in the absence of strong market and legal institutions. The uneven development of market institutions across industries and the impact of independent directors reinforce the importance of separating different patterns of family control. We find support for our hypotheses when tested on a data set consisting of all publicly listed firms in Taiwan between 1996 and 2005. Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of family businesses in emerging markets, highlights the importance of weak institutions in shaping relative agency costs, and illuminates the differential effects of independent directors.

A significant gap exists in our understanding of what explains the varying responses of multinational corporations (MNCs) to social issues in emerging markets. Arguably, in a setting where both market institutions and regulations and norms of corporate social responsibility are underdeveloped, it is more difficult for corporations to take actions beyond those that serve their immediate economic interests. Proposing a social movement perspective on MNCs' responsiveness to social issues in emerging markets, we identify the mechanisms by which online activists grab firms' attention and force them to become more socially responsive. A perception of organizational vulnerability and a home-country institutional logic that is consistent with the demands of the online campaign provide political opportunity structures that hasten the corporate response but affect the magnitude of firm response differently. We test our framework in the empirical context of corporate philanthropic action following the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province in China, which triggered an online campaign that questioned MNCs' donations to the disaster relief effort. Our study contributes to the literature on heterogeneous organizational responses to social movements, a better understanding of the antecedents for MNCs' social responsiveness in emerging markets, and research on MNCs.

We develop a theory of how state officials’ political incentives can affect corporate behavior. In the pursuit of multiple goals, such as social stability and economic development, the state designs criteria to evaluate its officials’ performance. Those officials may be motivated to prioritize different goals at different stages of their careers and to mobilize firms to help them achieve those goals. We test our theory in the context of Chinese publicly listed firms’ diversification between 2001 and 2011, when the state faced economic and social ramifications of bankrupt state-owned enterprises (SOEs) laying off large numbers of workers. Our results show that when large layoffs occurred, some firms diversified into industries unrelated to their core business by acquiring bankrupt SOEs and reemploying their workers. This was more likely to occur when the governor of the firm’s home province was closer to retirement, as social stability was more important than economic development for the retiring governor’s career objective. The effect of career stage was weaker for Communist Party leaders, who more consistently prioritized social stability, and when a provincial state experienced intense collective actions that made social stability a stronger immediate focus. The effect was strengthened for firms more vulnerable to officials’ influence, such as those with a strong socialist imprint and those dependent on government resources. Our study extends the Weberian state literature and the political economy research on incentives, and it offers a political explanation for corporate diversification in a major transitional economy.