Stephen Chen

We examine the question, “What is the effect of internationalization on the CSR performance of firms in service sectors compared to non-service sectors?”. Drawing on a stakeholder and institutional theory-based perspective, we hypothesize: (1) in non-service firms, their social performance increases steadily with increasing internationalization, while the relationship between internationalization and their environmental performance follows an S-shape pattern; (2) in service firms, internationalization has little effect on both social and environmental performance at low to medium levels of internationalization but strong positive effects at high levels of internationalization. We tested our hypotheses with panel data on 4,693 publicly listed MNEs in 41 economies from 2002 to 2021. The results supported our hypotheses.

The environmental performance (EP) of multinational enterprises (MNEs) has attracted increasing attention amid rising concerns over environmental problems such as climate change. However, questions remain about the relationship between the internationalization of MNEs and their EP. In this paper, we show that the relationship varies depending on the home country's economic development level. For MNEs from an advanced economy, there is a U‐shaped relationship between the level of internationalization and EP of MNEs such that there is a negative relationship at low levels of internationalization but a positive relationship at high levels of internationalization. For MNEs from a less advanced economy, there is an inverted U‐shaped relationship such that there is a positive relationship at low levels of internationalization but a negative relationship at high levels of internationalization.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how visionary leadership influences employees’ creativity in R&D teams in China, and the role of employee knowledge sharing and goal orientation.Design/methodology/approach: A survey was conducted on 331 professional technical engineers in R&D departments of 62 high-tech corporations in China. Hierarchical regression was used to model the relationships between visionary leadership style, employee goal orientations, knowledge sharing and employee creativity.Findings: The results show that visionary leadership is positively associated with employee creativity in Chinese organizations and the relationship is positively mediated by employee knowledge sharing. Furthermore, employee “learning goal” orientation strengthens the relationship between visionary leadership and employee knowledge sharing, whereas employee “performance-avoid goal” orientation weakens the relationship between visionary leadership and employee knowledge sharing.Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature on the effects of leadership on employee creativity by showing that, contrary to western organizations, where a less directive leadership style is generally recommended to enhance employee creativity, in Chinese organizations, visionary leadership is positively associated with employee creativity, but the effect is contingent on employees’ goal orientations and knowledge sharing.