Liudmyla Svystunova

Although state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are recognized as important economic actors, the literature to date has assumed close state control over SOEs and, therefore, their passive stance towards institutions. Drawing on the institutional work and historical institutionalism literatures, we challenge this view. We develop a multilevel framework of SOE top management teams’ (TMTs’) embedded agency, spanning the national macro-institutional level, the meso-level of regimes of state-SOE relations, and sector-specific institutions. We then derive propositions regarding the factors across these multiple levels that shape SOE TMTs’ motivation, resources, and scope for institutional work. This framework allows us to explain the leeway for and likelihood of SOE TMTs’ engagement in institutional work across institutional contexts.

This paper re-visits the relationship between disadvantages and advantages of foreignness, local embeddedness and strategic agency and contributes to the debate on the ability of multinational corporations (MNCs) to introduce change in host countries. By drawing on international business literature and recent developments in neo-institutional theory, we examine the dynamic interplay between MNC embeddedness within the host market environment and MNC capacity for pro-active strategizing towards institutions. We propose that MNCs propensity and ability to exercise agency towards host market institutions is limited when it is weakly embedded as well as when it is strongly embedded, but there is an optimal–or moderate–level of embeddedness at which an MNC may emerge as an agent for change. The theoretical arguments are tested and supported through a qualitative study of 26 MNCs operating in Russia.

In this paper, we leverage the concept of organizational field, currently under-explored in international business literature, to understand how Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) from developed markets (DMs) strategically manage their institutional context in emerging markets (EMs). To develop theoretical arguments, we focus on institutional strategies and theorize how and to what extent MNEs in central, peripheral, and intermediate field positions engage with host country institutions in EMs. Using an international business perspective, organizational theory, and illustrations from EMs, we develop a dynamic view of field positions to identify how MNEs’ intermediate repositioning trajectories in between the field’s center and the periphery, driven by environmental and corporate factors, lead to the associated changes in the form and scope of institutional strategies deployed in EMs. In doing so, we offer testable propositions for future research.

Although state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are recognized as important economic actors, the literature to date has assumed close state control over SOEs and therefore their passive stance towards institutions. Drawing on the institutional work and historical institutionalism literatures, we challenge this view. We develop a multilevel framework of SOEs top management teams’ (TMTs’) embedded agency, spanning the national macro-institutional level, the meso-level of regimes of state-SOE relations, and sector-specific institutions. We then derive propositions regarding the factors across these multiple levels that shape SOE TMTs’ motivation, resources, and scope for institutional work. This framework allows us to explain the leeway for and likelihood of SOE TMTs’ engagement in institutional work across institutional contexts.

Although state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are recognized as important economic actors, the literature to date has assumed close state control over SOEs and, therefore, their passive stance towards institutions. Drawing on the institutional work and historical institutionalism literatures, we challenge this view. We develop a multilevel framework of SOE top management teams' (TMTs') embedded agency, spanning the national macro-institutional level, the meso-level of regimes of state-SOE relations, and sector-specific institutions. We then derive propositions regarding the factors across these multiple levels that shape SOE TMTs' motivation, resources, and scope for institutional work. This framework allows us to explain the leeway for and likelihood of SOE TMTs' engagement in institutional work across institutional contexts.

In their recent essay, Gond and Moser (2019) have proposed that micro-CSR research has the potential to “matter” and transform business practices as it engages closely with how individuals in companies work with and experience corporate social responsibility (CSR). But can micro-CSR research in its current form realize this transformative potential and serve social justice? Adopting an intellectual activist position, we argue that the transformative potential of micro-CSR is severely limited by its predominant focus on CSR as defined, presented, and promoted by companies themselves, thereby serving to sustain the hegemony of the business case for CSR, promoting narrow interests and maintaining managerial control over corporate responsibilities. We propose that micro-CSR researchers broaden the scope of their research to cultivate the potential of alternative ideas, voices, and activities found in organizational life. In so doing we lay out a research agenda that embraces employee ac...