{"title":"Not all voices are equal: stakeholder environmental pressures and corporate green innovation strategies","authors":"Yuting Dong , Ziyuan Sun , Yiqiang Zhou","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115793","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115793","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Whether firms adopt differentiated green innovation strategies in response to varying stakeholder environmental pressures has become a pressing question. This study examines how green investors and the public shape firms’ green innovation strategies based on stakeholder salience and stakeholder-agency theories. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms, green innovation is categorized into source-prevention and end-of-pipe types based on pollution treatment approaches. The results show that green investors promote source-prevention innovation, whereas public environmental attention drives end-of-pipe innovation. This disparity stems from green investors’ ability to raise managerial environmental awareness, alleviate managerial myopia, and improve cash flow—capacities that the public lacks. Additionally, internal characteristics and the external environment influence firms’ responses to stakeholder pressures. Further analysis reveals that source-prevention innovation improves financial and environmental performance, while end-of-pipe innovation primarily enhances social performance. Overall, these findings suggest that firms adjust green innovation strategies based on perceived stakeholder salience.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115793"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145359889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From motivation to outcome: a structured narrative review of the literature on corporate activism","authors":"Selma Saracevic , Bodo B. Schlegelmilch","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115797","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115797","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Corporate Activism (CA) has emerged as a significant trend, with companies increasingly taking public stances on divisive sociopolitical issues, marking a departure from traditional corporate neutrality. This paper situates CA within related concepts, such as corporate social responsibility, and provides a comprehensive structured narrative review of the academic literature on the topic. It examines the drivers of CA, its varied manifestations across industries and countries, and its outcomes for businesses, while highlighting the limited evidence regarding societal outcomes. The review identifies key research gaps, including the need for deeper insights into CA’s societal effects, the role of national and industry-specific factors, and the alignment of corporate values with activist actions. Future research is also encouraged to explore the connections between CA and emerging developments, particularly in the context of geopolitical and military conflicts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115797"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145359373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Flubber teams: The emergence of dynamic platform-enabled teams in business organizations","authors":"Mike Szymanski , Ivan Smagin , Evgeny Kaganer","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115795","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115795","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Digitalization is changing how organizations do business and organize their activities. New digital technologies have transformed sales, marketing, human resource management and other organizational processes. In this study, we examine the effect of digital transformation and the introduction of platform-enabled collaboration on the functioning of teams in organizations. Through a qualitative case study of a leading gas and oil company, which has introduced a proprietary freelance platform, we demonstrate a novel approach to project and teamwork management resulting in the formation of a new form of collaboration, which we call <em>flubber teaming</em>. Such teams have the ability to dynamically change their shape, form, hierarchy, and other properties, making these structures an attractive approach to teaming for large organizations. However, their emergence introduces additional pressures on organizational structures and culture.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115795"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145359891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Collateral damage or effortless win? Spillover effects of competent and warm leader brands on copycats following product-harm crises","authors":"Man Chen , Jiaojie Ouyang , Feng Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115791","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115791","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite the prevalence of brand imitation in the marketplace, little is known about how product-harm crises faced by different types of leader brands affect evaluations of their copycats. We conducted five experiments, revealing that a product-harm crisis involving a competent (or warm) leader brand decreases evaluations of feature (or theme) copycats while increasing evaluations of theme (or feature) copycats. Further analysis revealed a significant interaction: following a crisis of competent leader brand, theme copycats are evaluated more favourably than feature copycats; conversely, in the case of a warm leader brand’s crisis, feature copycats are evaluated more favourably than theme copycats. Moreover, this interaction is mediated by perceived risk and attenuated among consumers with independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal. These findings extend the literature on brand imitation and product-harm crises, offering important implications for branding strategy and crisis management.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115791"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145359369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Syed Mahmudur Rahman , Jamie Carlson , Noman H. Chowdhury , Siegfried P. Gudergan , Martin Wetzels , Christian M. Ringle , Dhruv Grewal
{"title":"Omnichannel safe customer experience: how should it be measured? Does it affect customer well-being and retailers’ performance?","authors":"Syed Mahmudur Rahman , Jamie Carlson , Noman H. Chowdhury , Siegfried P. Gudergan , Martin Wetzels , Christian M. Ringle , Dhruv Grewal","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115760","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115760","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Customer safety is a fundamental need, so for customer-centric omnichannel retailers operating in competitive and technologically intensive markets, a critical question arises: do customers’ perceptions of a safe customer experience determine their sense of well-being, as well as the retailers’ performance? To offer insights into these questions, the current research relies on mixed methods across five studies in six phases to develop a multidimensional scale for safe customer experiences (SafeCX). The formative SafeCX scale, which can be adopted as either a full 48-item or a condensed 12-item version, contains 12 critical safety dimensions that constitute essential considerations for managers, as well as key concepts for researchers dedicated to customer safety considerations. Among these dimensions, several directly capture in-store technologies, such as payment systems, surveillance cameras, and technology-mediated order fulfillment processes. Other dimensions reflect online technologies, such as data protection, social media safety, and practices that bridge physical and digital channels, offering a comprehensive perspective on customer safety. Complementing SafeCX, we also develop a two-dimensional, 8-item customer well-being scale: individual well-being, reflecting effects on one’s own mental, emotional, social, and physical life; and community well-being, reflecting effects on family, friends, and the broader community. This scale enables researchers and retail managers to assess how safety perceptions translate into personal and societal value in omnichannel contexts. In turn, this research establishes that customers who indicate positive appraisals on the SafeCX scale also exhibit a higher share of wallet and stronger intentions to influence others, effects that are mediated by their well-being appraisal.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115760"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145359371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Brianna JeeWon Paulich , Yichen Cheng , Denish Shah
{"title":"Managing conversions of anonymous online users: a privacy-compliant framework (JOBR-D-24-07633.R1)","authors":"Brianna JeeWon Paulich , Yichen Cheng , Denish Shah","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115772","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115772","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Privacy concerns are on the rise. Privacy protection efforts and regulations pose technical challenges for extant digital marketing practices. The study finds that prospective customers tend to browse websites with different intents and therefore proposes a semi-supervised machine learning model to infer the browsing intent of each user while fully preserving the confidentiality of user-level browsing data. The authors field test the methodology at a large financial services firm and observe a significant lift in engagement and conversion rates relative to conventional approaches. The study contributes to the theory and practice of online marketing by (a) developing a mechanism to anonymously infer the browsing intent(s) of prospective customers, (b) further building upon the theory of flow, and (c) proposing a novel methodology-based framework to improve website performance in the age of increasingly stringent privacy regulations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115772"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145359890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How, when and why leader-team cognitive style incongruence stimulates team creativity","authors":"Long Ye , Songlin Yang , Ling Yuan , Ye Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115792","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115792","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Based on the motivated information processing theory, we investigated how leader-team cognitive style configurations affect team creativity. We also examined the mediating role of team information elaboration and the moderating effect of team goal interdependence. We conducted a variance analysis in a simulation experiment (Study 1) and a response surface analysis in a three-wave study (Study 2). The results indicated: (a) team creativity increases as the cognitive styles of the leader and the team become more incongruent; (b) when the cognitive styles are congruent, intuitive team exhibits greater creativity compared to analytical team; (c) team information elaboration mediates the relationship between leader-team cognitive style congruence/incongruence and team creativity; (d) team goal interdependence moderates the indirect effects of leader-team cognitive style (in)congruence on team creativity via team information elaboration. Specifically, cooperative goal interdependence enhances the positive relationship between cognitive style configurations and information elaboration, while competitive goal interdependence weakens it.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115792"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145359370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Polina Landgraf , Jonathan Luffarelli , Antonios Stamatogiannakis
{"title":"Meaningless brand names can spark consumer curiosity and improve brand evaluations","authors":"Polina Landgraf , Jonathan Luffarelli , Antonios Stamatogiannakis","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115767","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115767","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Marketers are often advised to choose meaningful brand names (e.g., Leaf). Yet, many brands have non-semantic names—those that lack specific meaning (e.g., Leuf). When is such a name choice advantageous? The authors argue that non-semantic names can stimulate consumer curiosity, which increases the persuasiveness of compelling information and improves brand evaluations. They evaluate these propositions in the context of technology brands. Study 1 considers 6,487 Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns and shows that brands with non-semantic names tend to raise more funding. Study 2 replicates this effect experimentally, while Study 3 demonstrates a curiosity-based underlying process. Study 4 reveals that the effect of non-semantic names is attenuated when compelling brand information is absent. This research complements extant literature by offering a curiosity-based framework for understanding brand name effects and provides actionable recommendations for practitioners.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115767"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145359372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The ESG-productivity paradox: how ESG performance expectation gaps impede total factor productivity","authors":"Xiaonan Dong","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115775","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115775","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite extensive studies on expectation gaps in financial performance, the impact of ESG performance expectation gaps (ESGNGAP) remains underexplored. Based on data from Chinese listed manufacturers (2011–2023), this study examines how ESGNGAP affect firms’ total factor productivity (TFP), offering novel insights into the non-financial drivers of productivity. The findings demonstrate that larger ESGNGAP significantly reduce TFP by intensifying hidden executive corruption (exemplified by excessive on-the-job consumption) and weakening green innovation. This negative effect is mitigated by firms’ digital transformation, executives’ environmental backgrounds, and regional fintech development. Additional analysis reveals that the impact of ESGNGAP on productivity varies across ownership structures and industries. This study enriches the ESG performance feedback literature by revealing the effects of ESGNGAP on productivity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115775"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ave Le Blanc , Ross Gordon , Sue Ann Barratt , Lisa Schuster
{"title":"“Yasss queen! towards an intersectional understanding of the social media influencer domain”","authors":"Ave Le Blanc , Ross Gordon , Sue Ann Barratt , Lisa Schuster","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115699","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115699","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Researchers have emphasised the importance of enhancing our theoretical understandings about how gender, as an intersectional identity, influences both the content created by social media influencers (SMIs) and consumer engagement. This study addresses this gap by exploring how SMIs shape their influence on social media platforms, whilst navigating both emancipatory and subjugatory forces in their interactions with consumers. Through analysis of SMIs’ content and consumer responses, we interrogate the recurring feminine archetype “Queen”, used to highlight valued representations of femininity as legitimate and privileged. This archetype becomes rooted in social identity frames that foreground varying gendered ideals for women, depending on how these intersect with other social identities such as race, class, and age. We interpret this rootedness through a Caribbean feminist lens, using Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis. The study shows how assessments of SMIs’ potential depend on the complexity of the social identities that frame their content and persona.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115699"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}