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This article attempts to determine whether stretch goals disrupt organizations and, if so, how organizations minimize those disruptions. We consider how two different kinds of justice climates − interpersonal and informational − interact to influence employees’ unethical behavior and relationship conflicts in the face of stretch goals. The results from 117 departments (including a total of 351 employees and 117 managers) in six Chinese banks support our hypotheses that stretch goals foster unethical behavior and intensify relationship conflict among employees. Furthermore, we find that informational-justice climates greatly reduce the disruptive effect of stretch goals on unethical behavior, and we find that interpersonal-justice climates greatly reduce the disruptive effect of stretch goals on relationship conflict. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This study seeks to explain why firms respond in different ways to similar external administrative pressures, such as government demands for charitable giving, particularly in a transitional economy such as China's. Taking the perspective of the CEO's representation on external demands, the study explores the relationship between political affiliation and corporate giving, stimulated by powerful and politically affiliated CEOs, who are the government's natural constituency and who comply with governmental demands for donation. The study introduces contingent factors that influence the CEO's perception of how to satisfy government demands, and that moderate the relationship between political affiliation and corporate giving. Using firm-level data of corporate contributions following the Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008, we find that corporations with CEOs who hold political affiliations have a significantly higher probability of donation and also more cash giving. This relationship is moderated by contingent factors such as government ownership, financial condition, and concentration of voting rights.

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Consumers often observe how other consumers interact with brands to inform their own brand judgments. This research demonstrates that brand relationship quality-indicating cues, such as brand nicknames (e.g., Mickey D’s for McDonald’s and Wally World for Walmart), enhance perceived information authenticity in online communication. An analysis of historical Twitter data followed by six experiments (using both real and fictitious brands across different online platforms, e.g., online reviews and social media posts) show that brand nickname use in user-generated content signals a writer’s relationship quality with the target brand from the reader’s perspective, which the authors term inferred brand attachment (IBA). The authors demonstrate that IBA boosts perceived information authenticity and leads to positive downstream consequences, such as purchase willingness and information sharing. The authors also find that this effect is attenuated when brand nicknames are used in firm-generated content. How consumers’ relationships with brands are portrayed and perceived in a social context (e.g., via brand nickname use) serves as a novel context to examine user-generated content and provides valuable managerial insight regarding how to leverage consumers’ brand attachment cues in brand strategy and online information management.