{"title":"Build or buy corporate social responsibility? Socially responsible brand acquisitions and firm CSR perceptions","authors":"Argiro Kliamenakis , Bianca Grohmann , H.Onur Bodur","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115705","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115705","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Because development of socially responsible brands is costly and risky, acquisition of socially responsible brands (SRB) has emerged as a frequently employed approach to enhancing firms’ CSR profile. This research explores the effectiveness of SRB acquisition (versus brand development) in increasing firm CSR perceptions and the moderating role of symbolic brand value in this relationship. This research demonstrates that SRB acquisition (vs. development) is generally less effective in signaling firm CSR and that the effect of SRB acquisitions on firm CSR perceptions depends on the acquired brand’s symbolic value. Seven experiments show that when symbolic brand value is high, acquisition (vs. development) of SRB harms the acquired brand’s credibility and subsequently reduces firm CSR perceptions. Two additional studies explore the role of brand architecture and communication strategies in mitigating the negative impact of highly symbolic, SRB acquisitions on consumers’ perceptions of firm CSR.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115705"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145107188","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":"Informal hierarchy and crowdsourcing team performance: The mediating effect of idea quantity and the moderating effect of team familiarity","authors":"Tengjian Zou , Xuhang Sun , Junjie Wei","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115711","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115711","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As an informal hierarchy system is widely adopted in crowdsourcing contest communities, hierarchical differentiation has become ubiquitous in crowdsourcing teams. Recent literature suggests that hierarchy can undermine team performance by discouraging low-status members from voicing their potentially valuable insights. In light of this negative effect, we draw on the framework of Motivated Information Processing in Groups (MIP-G) to investigate the mechanism underlying the hierarchy-team performance link as well as how to alleviate the detrimental effect of hierarchy. Based on analyses of archival data collected from an online crowdsourcing contest community, we find that informal hierarchy negatively affects crowdsourcing team performance and idea quantity serves as the mechanism. Furthermore, we show that this negative effect can be attenuated by two types of team familiarity: familiarity established by prior shared working experience and familiarity with hierarchical working relationships. Taken together, we contribute to the literature on crowdsourcing teams, hierarchy, and MIP-G framework.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115711"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145106635","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":"Dynamic managerial capabilities for digital transformation in innovative SMEs: What are the effects on new product development performance?","authors":"Joan Merín-Rodrigáñez , Àngels Dasí , Joaquín Alegre , Mathew Hughes","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115709","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115709","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In innovative SMEs, the CEO is the main decision-maker for digital transformation (DT). This study focuses on the specific microfoundations of CEOs’ dynamic managerial capabilities (DMCs) by examining how their general expertise, digital expertise, external connectivity, and empowering leadership influence DT. Additionally, based on upper echelons theory, we also examine how CEO tenure and age moderate the relationship between the CEO’s DMCs and DT. Finally, we investigate the link between DT and new product development (NPD) performance. Using survey and archival data from innovative Spanish SMEs, we present three main findings: (1) DMCs enable DT in a non-uniform manner, (2) CEO tenure and age impact some of the positive effects of DMCs on DT, and (3) DT improves NPD performance. Our results provide several scholarly and managerial implications and directions for future research.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115709"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145106634","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 when consumers choose formal product offerings: The role of fresh start reminders","authors":"Zhenyu Jin , Yanfen (Cindy) You , Xiaojing Yang","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115712","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115712","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Though the marketplace features products styled at varying levels of formalness, little is known about situations or factors that marketers can leverage to promote their formal (vs. casual) product offerings. This research suggests that fresh start reminders, such as calendar landmarks (e.g., a new year) or messages that remind consumers to start afresh, can increase consumer preferences for formalness in product styles. Employing various fresh start reminders readily available in consumer lives and incorporating field investigation and text analysis techniques, ten studies (including five supplementary studies) show that reminding consumers about fresh starts increases their preferences for formal (vs. casual) styles in clothing, social activities, and lifestyles. The observed effect is driven by consumers’ meaning-seeking motives evoked by fresh start reminders. This research provides marketers with novel perspectives on developing effective strategies to promote formal products and services.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115712"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145107192","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}
Alexander Mueller , Sabine Kuester , Sergej von Janda
{"title":"Socially (un)acceptable errors of AI: Consumer perceptions of different AI-induced errors","authors":"Alexander Mueller , Sabine Kuester , Sergej von Janda","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115673","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115673","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Artificial intelligence (AI) commonly errs in practice. This study investigates consumer responses to two distinct types of errors: technical errors stemming from technological disruptions in algorithmic processes and social errors, which involve violations of social norms. These distinctions are critical, as our research reveals different consumer response patterns based on error type and error severity. Grounded in the theory of mind perception and expectation disconfirmation theory, we present findings from multiple experiments demonstrating that severe errors, regardless of type, evoke negative consumer responses. In contrast, minor social errors seem anticipated and mostly elicit responses more akin to those for error-free AI performance. However, in the realm of self-learning AI, these minor social errors are problematic. They can perpetuate the stigmatization of minorities and ethnic groups, highlighting the urgent need to prevent AI from violating social norms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115673"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145106633","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 configurational approach to strategic entrepreneurship: Unlocking customer success in new ventures in emerging economies","authors":"Sayuri Wijekoon , Mahdi Vesal , Aron O’Cass","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115689","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115689","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>New ventures (NVs) in emerging economies often face significant challenges in cultivating quality customer relationships and achieving customer satisfaction. This study applies the strategic entrepreneurship framework and configurational theory to investigate how combinations of strategic behaviors, decision-making logics, resource allocation mechanisms, and leader sociocognitive characteristics influence customer-focused performance. Utilizing multi-informant data from 135 NVs (entrepreneurs and marketing managers) in Sri Lanka, our analysis reveals that NVs employing effectual decision-making and bricolage resource allocation achieve stronger alignment between entrepreneurial and market orientations, resulting in enhanced customer satisfaction and stronger relationships. Additionally, the study identifies entrepreneurs’ long-term orientation and managers’ perfectionism as critical contingency factors in these configurations. These findings offer valuable insights into the strategic configurations that drive customer success in NVs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115689"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145061019","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}
Inge M. Brokerhof , Omar N. Solinger , P. Matthijs Bal , P.G.W. Jansen
{"title":"The glorification of greed beyond the business school: how popular wall street narratives relate to future work selves","authors":"Inge M. Brokerhof , Omar N. Solinger , P. Matthijs Bal , P.G.W. Jansen","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115680","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115680","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Popular Wall Street narratives, such as <em>The Wolf of Wall Street</em>, have become large box-office successes, reaching wide audiences. In three exploratory mixed-method experiments, this study investigates how popular Wall Street narratives relate to students’ and sales employees’ future work selves – who they aspire to become in their future career. The findings indicate that characters in narratives glorifying greed are considered more desired future work selves in comparison to characters in critical or non-greed narratives. Morally ambiguous greedy characters were perceived through a “winner frame” of self-made success, and were associated with lower empathy levels, while narratives from a “victim perspective” – with characters suffering as a result of financial malpractice – were associated with higher empathy levels. This empirical study contributes to theory and practice on the appeal of greedy characters and how stories could perpetuate a culture of greed and dominant logic of shareholder-value maximization in Wall Street.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115680"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145061020","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}
Jingmei Li , Shuqin Li , Yufei Zhou , Yukun Xue , Juan Liu
{"title":"Firms under water! harmful algal blooms and corporate performance of coastal enterprises in China","authors":"Jingmei Li , Shuqin Li , Yufei Zhou , Yukun Xue , Juan Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115707","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115707","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines how harmful algal blooms (HABs), a form of environmental disaster, affect corporate performance in coastal China. Using quarterly data from A-share listed companies (2000–2020) matched with HABs disaster records, this study combines corporate operational metrics with HABs spatial–temporal characteristics to assess their impact on firm performance. The results demonstrate that HABs events significantly diminish the market valuation of coastal enterprises, with impact magnitude driven by the scale and duration of outbreaks while exhibiting no significant association with disaster intensity. The adverse impacts of HABs are dynamic and persistent, leading to destabilized corporate credit, reduced cash flow, and diminished market confidence among management and institutional investors. Notably, small and medium-sized enterprises, non-state-owned firms, and businesses in economically developed regions experience disproportionate losses in market performance and enterprise value. This research contributes to the literature by quantifying the long-term economic risks of ecological disasters on capital markets in emerging economies. Furthermore, it emphasizes the necessity of integrating natural disaster management into the risk management frameworks of coastal enterprises.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115707"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145061021","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":"Steel is real: How nostalgia shapes re-circulation","authors":"Christian Dam","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115713","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115713","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper demonstrates how nostalgia entices consumers to re-circulate objects rather than discard them. Through multimethod qualitative inquiry into the Danish vintage cycling community, this paper highlights how consumers’ nostalgic attachment to the biographies of old objects propels re-circulation. The analysis builds on three distinct modes of nostalgia: reluctant, progressive, and playful nostalgia. These modes of nostalgia entice re-circulation via curation, re-enactment, and restoration. By uncovering how nostalgia influences decisions to preserve and extend the life of objects, this paper advances existing theory by elucidating the connection between re-circulation and nostalgia.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115713"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145106704","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":"Enhancing ESG practices in supply chain operations through information disclosure: The “ETHICS” Framework","authors":"Yifan Cao , Bin Shen , Siqin Tana","doi":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115668","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115668","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices are essential to modern supply chain operations. Indeed, the legal and ethical requirements for disclosing ESG information are the subject of much debate. However, the literature is scattered and does not provide a consolidated view of “What–to Whom–When” to disclose. This motivates us to conduct a systematic review of the literature to explore the current state-of-the-art literature on sustainable and responsible information disclosure in supply chains. Based on this review, we synthesize effective strategies and propose the <em>ETHICS</em> framework (i.e., Elimination of ESG-washing, Technology-enabled communication, Holistic multi-tier view, Industry collaboration, Customization of standardized frameworks, and Synthesis of ESG metrics). The <em>ETHICS</em> framework helps manage, report, and improve ESG performance in supply chains through ESG information disclosure. We also identify five key directions for future research: (1) assessing and quantifying social information before disclosure, (2) collecting and disclosing social information in real time, (3) optimizing the timing of information flows from indirect suppliers, (4) managing social responsibility in supply chain partnerships, and (5) understanding buyers’ roles as information recipients versus senders. Our paper provides important insights into ESG information disclosure in supply chains for academics and practitioners from an operational perspective.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15123,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Business Research","volume":"201 ","pages":"Article 115668"},"PeriodicalIF":9.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145061017","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}