{"title":"How supervisor bottom-line mentality transfers to abusive behavior: An objectification perspective","authors":"Jinyun Duan , Liya Qi , Ying Lu , Sixian Li","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115776","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115776","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Drawing on objectification theory, we propose that supervisors’ bottom-line mentality (BLM) can lead to abusive behavior toward subordinates by evoking an objectification mindset, with perceived subordinate performance as a moderator. Specifically, we suggest that supervisors who focus solely on bottom-line outcomes may view their subordinates as mere instruments for achieve goals, ultimately resulting in abusive behavior. Perceived low subordinate performance will exacerbate this relationship. We conducted a three-wave, multi-source field survey (Study 1, <em>N</em> = 300) and a vignette-based experiment (Study 2, <em>N</em> = 173), both of which consistently supported for our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115776"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322645","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}
Amanda Spry , Zoe Lee , Marian Makkar , Cassandra France
{"title":"Care-based corporate sociopolitical activism: identifying dark sides and envisioning an ethical framework","authors":"Amanda Spry , Zoe Lee , Marian Makkar , Cassandra France","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115788","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115788","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA) has gained traction in research and practice, little is known about its potential dark sides − especially from the consumer’s perspective. We address this gap by examining how CSA can burden or harm consumers, beyond typical economic risks to firms. We identify and categorise six dark sides into two overarching themes: (1) emotional and cognitive burden (individual level) and (2) public division and harm (societal level). These underscore the ethical complexities of CSA and the need for a revised, more responsible approach. Inspired by emerging CSA practices that prioritise empathy and connectedness over neoliberal logics, we introduce an ‘ethics of care’ to the CSA literature as an alternative moral guideline. A care-based CSA approach is proposed, including an audit tool and strategic solutions to manage negative consequences. This reimagines CSA as a form of moral responsibility that emphasises relationships, interdependence and responsiveness in ethical deliberations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115788"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322648","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":"Objectives and key results as a tool for middle managers to enhance the process of strategy implementation","authors":"Christine Wowerath","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115774","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115774","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In today’s fast-changing business environment, middle managers play critical, increasingly multifaceted roles in translating strategy into action. This article examines how objectives and key results (OKRs)—a goal-setting framework stemming from the management-by-objectives approach—can support middle managers to facilitate critical sensemaking and sensegiving, translate strategic goals into actionable steps, and thereby foster intra-organization alignment. Qualitative research with experts from 22 organizations revealed how OKRs promote key mechanisms by reinforcing goal orientation, fostering reflection, encouraging feedback, empowering employees, enhancing and requiring transparency, and facilitating communication. Those mechanisms, in supporting middle managers in their interpretive and communicative roles, influence the continuous interplay of critical sensemaking and sensegiving, in a dynamic that enhances strategy implementation by enhancing coordination, commitment, and competency. Overall, the article contributes to the literature on strategy implementation by positioning OKRs as a key tool for middle managers that shapes a formative context to enhance the strategy implementation process.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115774"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322644","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}
Nina Michaelidou , Ioannis Kostopoulos , Emily Lowe
{"title":"The dawn of ‘deinfluencing’ as a vehicle for moral responsibility and anti-consumption","authors":"Nina Michaelidou , Ioannis Kostopoulos , Emily Lowe","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115773","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115773","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Deinfluencing reflects a novel practice by a content creator on social media that encourages followers not to buy or to buy less. In this study, we draw on fifteen in-depth interviews with TikTok users to capture their perceptions of deinfluencing, and how it affects their consumption patterns. Our findings show that deinfluencing encompasses authenticity (in the content and content creator, i.e. deinfluencer), it is perceived as a ‘morally responsible practice’ that focuses on social issues and serves as a catalyst for followers in their consumption, empowering them to make more informed choices (e.g., more environmentally friendly choices, alternative product options), while also urging them to consume less. We also find that deinfluencing has positive effects on the self, as it challenges beauty standards and ideals of ‘perfection’, with individuals feeling better and more comfortable in themselves because of deinfluencing content. Our study advances knowledge of deinfluencing and its effects on consumption, while positioning it as a crucial concept in the domain of social media marketing. We also contribute to current debates about the effects of social media content creators on followers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115773"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322616","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":"A Coal in the Snow or the Icing on the Cake? China’s development zone upgrading and regional economic resilience","authors":"Lu Zhu, Yong He, Chunfeng Chen, Nuo Liao","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115771","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115771","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the context of globalization-induced uncertainty, economic resilience has attracted increasing attention as a key indicator of an economy’s capacity to resist shocks. This study investigates how China’s provincial-to-national development zone upgrading policy influences regional economic resilience. Our findings reveal that: Development zone upgrades significantly enhance regional economic resilience. Digital infrastructure, digital financial inclusion, advanced industrial structure, market linkages, human capital, and intellectual capital positively drive policy effectiveness. Policy effects exhibit distinct spatiotemporal heterogeneity, with more pronounced impacts during 2008–2012 and 2018–2021, in Eastern and Northeastern regions, the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and small-to-medium non-central, non-provincial capital cities. The catch-up effect exists in both policy effects and driving factors, with greater impacts on cities with lower economic resilience. Economic and technological development zone upgrades show stronger effects than high-tech industrial development zones, with multiple zone upgrades outperforming single zone upgrades, and cities with both types of zones benefiting more.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115771"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322647","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}
Chengcheng Liu , Mingrui Zhang , Yu-En Lin , Qing Li
{"title":"Brand capital development, climate risk, and corporate investment efficiency","authors":"Chengcheng Liu , Mingrui Zhang , Yu-En Lin , Qing Li","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115762","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115762","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using data on Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2022, we empirically examine the impact of brand capital development on corporate investment efficiency as well as the moderating effect of climate risk. The findings show that brand capital development significantly improves corporate investment efficiency and that climate risk intensifies the positive impact of brand capital development on corporate investment efficiency. Further analyses reveal that the efficiency-increasing effect of brand capital development is more pronounced for firms with fewer financing constraints, better managerial abilities, and lower marketing capabilities. Our results remain robust to alternative measures of brand capital development, climate risk, and corporate investment efficiency and are not driven by endogeneity issues. This study contributes to the literature on brand capital, which emphasizes the importance of customer value for investment and connects the front and back ends of corporate value creation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115762"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322628","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":"Understanding customer grief in brand relationships","authors":"Adele D. Berndt , Kieran D. Tierney","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115758","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115758","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Brands are key in building customer-brand relationships, yet organisations change their product lines by reformulating or discontinuing brands. This results in negative customer emotions, including pain and grief. While identified in marketing, grief has received little academic attention. Thus, this research seeks to explore and develop an understanding of customer grief as pain. The empirical context is the change of a breakfast cereal. By applying netnographic research to eight customer-brand fora, this qualitative study analysed 4,080 online customer posts to understand customer grief. Applying the stages of the Kübler-Ross grief model, this study shows that grief is associated with a misalignment of customers’ expectations, practices, and emotions in response to an unexpected brand change. This generates a more fine-grained understanding of customer grief, providing theoretical and practical implications for organisations in managing their brand relationships.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115758"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322627","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 dynamics of selective environmental disclosure: Earnings pressure and environmental committee","authors":"Cheng Chi, Yang Cheng","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115766","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115766","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In an era where environmental information holds growing importance for stakeholders, the phenomenon of selective environmental disclosure remains underexplored in literature. This study centers on this phenomenon and posits that it serves as a catalyst for environmental irresponsibility. Drawing on stakeholder-agency theory, we examine how earnings pressure, measured as the discrepancy between analyst forecast consensus and actual performance, influences a firm’s propensity for selective environmental disclosure. We further investigate the moderating role of environmental committees and their characteristics in shaping the relationship between earnings pressure and selective environmental disclosure. Using data from 1,321 U.S. publicly listed firms from 2005 to 2021, our analysis reveals that earnings pressure significantly increases managers’ engagement in selective environmental disclosure; and the presences of an environmental committee and a CEO serving on that committee amplify this effect. Our findings contribute to the discourse on sustainable operations and offer insights for managerial practices and policy formulation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115766"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322631","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}
Aaron van Klyton , Diego Fernando Carbonell Garcia , Camilo Restrepo-Estrada
{"title":"An anatomy of business model innovation in Latin America- a fuzzy extended analytic hierarchy process application","authors":"Aaron van Klyton , Diego Fernando Carbonell Garcia , Camilo Restrepo-Estrada","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115769","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115769","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates how internal and external factors interact under conditions of complexity to shape business model innovation (BMI) in Latin America. While firms in emerging markets face growing pressure to innovate, they must do so within structurally volatile environments marked by institutional fragmentation, limited resources, and cultural resistance to failure. Existing literature on BMI often isolates internal and external drivers or assumes stable conditions typical of developed economies, leaving a gap in understanding how firms adapt to dynamic, interdependent constraints. Drawing on complexity theory—particularly concepts such as requisite variety, semiautonomous agency, and collaborative complexity—this study employs the Fuzzy Extended Analytic Hierarchy Process (FEAHP) to identify and prioritise 31 interrelated factors affecting BMI. Data were collected from Latin American innovation experts across multiple countries, yielding a regionally grounded hierarchy of strategic priorities. The results show that internal complexity—especially entrepreneurial orientation and organisational learning—forms the core of firms’ adaptive capacity, while collaborative complexity can only amplify innovation when these internal foundations are coherent. Fear of failure, hierarchical cultures, and fragmented learning systems emerged as key barriers. The study contributes to BMI and emerging market strategy literature by showing that firms in resource-constrained environments manage complexity not through discrete interventions, but through interdependent, evolving capabilities. Methodologically, it extends complexity theory through a hierarchical, evidence-based approach to factor prioritisation under uncertainty. Practically, it offers a structured framework to support firms and policymakers navigating innovation amid systemic turbulence.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115769"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322632","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":"Mitigating financial loss from global supply chain ESG regulations: Can ESG performance help?","authors":"Qinghua Zhu , Jinyu Yang , Yuan Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115765","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115765","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Drawing on signaling theory, we examine how supply chain ESG regulations such as the Germany’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (SCDDA) and the European Union’s (EU’s) Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) affect firms’ financial performance, and whether prior ESG efforts moderate this effect. Using an event study approach, we analyze stock market reactions to 39 Chinese firms operating in Europe and 86 EU firms operating in China following three events: the SCDDA approval, its implementation, and the CSDDD approval. A consistent response appears across both samples, shifting from negative to positive and eventually neutral. For Chinese firms, superior social performance mitigates the initial negative response to the SCDDA approval and amplifies the positive reaction to the SCDDA’s implementation. These findings suggest multinational firms can leverage strong social performance to buffer negative investor responses and strengthen resilience to future ESG mandates, offering insights into ESG preparedness amid rising regulatory uncertainty.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"202 ","pages":"Article 115765"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145322630","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}