Word from the editor

This new regular issue of Management international features a range of original articles that differ in terms of their treatment of the themes addressed, the methodologies applied and the sectors or regions involved. The contributions chosen for this issue include:

Faten Lakhal, Sabrina Khemiri, Sami Bacha and Assil Guizani’s article “CEO overconfidence and tax practices: Does board gender diversity Matter?”, which finds within a sample of listed French companies that a correlation exists between CEOs’ level of overconfidence and their tendency to engage in unethical tax evasion. The discovery is made that board gender diversity mitigates such behaviours, suggesting that female directors can serve as an effective control mechanism. The findings have important implications for legislators who might consider gender diversity in leadership positions (above and beyond corporate boards) as a means of sustaining tax revenue.

Liliane Bonnal and Xavier Moinier’s contribution “Empowering connected patients: A boon for the French pharmaceutical industry” focuses on the way in which new patient negotiating processes bolster pharmacists’ relational and transactional strategies, thereby benefiting their businesses. Similarly, patients who use eHealth tools are more autonomous and better informed, hence likelier to engage in a constructive questioning of their pharmacist. Identifying these new levels of empowerment (and the impacts thereof) reveals itself to be a useful way of monitoring the courses of treatment that pharmacists prescribe.

Yihan Wang, Ekaterina Turkina and Normand Lemay’s article “Industrial competitiveness and FDI opportunities in the metropolitan periphery - Product space network analysis of Laval, Canada” assesses local industries’ complexity of knowledge and revealed comparative advantage (RTA). In turn, this can help entrepreneurs and policymakers to identify which sectors are most important to a given locale (and implement the appropriate competitive strategy) while attracting FDI flows into “structural hole” sectors characterised by types of knowledge similar to the ones where the product space network in question enjoys a RTA. To address these points, the authors perform a quantitative analysis of the Laval (Canada) product space network, along with a qualitative thematic analysis involving semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and policymakers.

Eba Amoan Edwige N’da, Chayé Danielle Larissa Domoa, Anne-Laure Boncori and Eric Braune’s article “Modalities of running and supporting mompreneur business networks: An Ivory Coast case study” starts by noting the particular attention that the academic world pays to economic and social issues associated with female entrepreneurship. One case in point is Africa, where women are increasingly viewed as a crucial pillar of development, and which has therefore witnessed the recent creation of a number of mompreneur networks. The article is a case study, within an African context, of the modalities by means of which mompreneur business networks are being supported, as well as the contributions that they then make. Based on a sample of 75 Ivory Coast mompreneurs, it both shows that networks promote psychological, professional and family support mechanisms underpinned by emotional, cognitive and conative drivers and identifies several of the moral, identity-related, transgenerational and therapeutic benefits that they bring.

Florence Crespin-Mazet, Olivier Dupouët, Karine Goglio and Marion Neukam’s article “Harnessing internal communities: the role of boundary structures” mobilises two in-depth case studies to ascertain how the new knowledge that internal communities produce can be integrated into corporate activities and procedures. The main contribution here is to highlight the crucial role performed by boundary structures located at the interface between communities and organisations’ managerial strata. Said structures interlink all of the boundary work that is needed to integrate community work (strategic alignment, managerial validation of negotiations, etc.). It is a role that goes well beyond a simple dissemination process in the sense that it combines and adapts management and community logic even as it preserves the autonomy of communities and their internal functioning. The collective nature of this integration mechanism distinguishes it from the sponsor-leader pairing found in community-related literature.

Caroline Mattelin-Pierrard, Anne-Sophie Dubey and Matthieu Battistelli’s article “Management innovations and social performance: What can we learn from looking at the adoption of liberation management practices?” starts by noting the dearth of studies in this domain. The authors then examine the benefits of freedom-form (F-form) management, an innovation intended to bridge gaps in social performance. Although employee empowerment clearly constitutes a lever for enhancing social performance in F-form companies, there is no real consensus currently regarding the ostensibly positive effects thereof. The study applies a quantitative method involving a quasi-experiment comparing two units in an industrial company: one F-form; the other not. It finds that three F-form practices have a positive effect on social performance: participatory decision-making; personalised support; and the right to make mistakes.

Ahmed Hamdi, Tarik Saikouk, Bouchaib Bahli and Amitabh Anand’s contribution, “Saved by trust: When extensive supply chain integration becomes detrimental” seeks to refine existing supply chain integration (SCI) literature by both exploring SCI’s potentially negative effects on business performance and demonstrating how these can be mitigated via trust mechanisms. Based on data collected from 152 companies in the United States, the study reveals two important findings: (1) that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between supplier onboarding and business performance; and (2) that higher levels of trust can mitigate increased integration’s negative effects on business performance. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are also analysed from a relational perspective and using transaction cost theory.

Philippe Pailot, Stéphanie Chasserio, Typhaine Lebegue and Corinne Poroli’s article “Inequalities in female entrepreneurship: a proposed two-dimensional categorical and relational framework of analysis” starts by noting that literature in this domain widely denounces the inequalities from which women suffer. It then combines a categorical approach (where inequality issues are viewed as stereotyped categorical assignations that vary from one entrepreneur subcategory to another) with a relational approach (identifying the logic of cultural devaluation and recognition denial to which women are subjected). The study concludes with an analytical matrix that takes female entrepreneurs’ diversity into account when classifying the situations of professional and social inequality that they face.

Sihem Rouane and Jamal-Eddine Azzam’s contribution “Competitive dynamics: Mutual forbearance in a deregulated sector involving single-market competitors” analyses Algeria’s mobile telephony market around the time 3G was launched - a major event that was supposed to stimulate competition. Mobilising multidimensional strategic sequences as their analytical framework, the authors find a de-escalation of competitive confrontations following 3G’s advent. This then translated into emerging mutual restraint among single-point competitors, driven by factors (and associated with mechanisms) that the article elucidates.

Fatima Shuwaikh and Joakim Dias’s contribution “The power of syndication: The innovation output of venture capital investments in the United States” demonstrates the impacts of corporate venture capital (CVC) and independent venture capital (IVC) funds’ participation on syndicated investments. The dynamics of these impacts are then explored by casting a spotlight on those industrial and geographic adjustment channels that improve innovation efficiency. Mobilising a sample of 5,182 U.S. companies that received funding between 1998 and 2017, the authors find that CVCs are superior (CVCs/IVCs) in syndication participation terms, a result that might contribute in its own way to the stimulation of innovation production. The discovery is also made that entrepreneurial firms’ innovation output increases when a good fit exists between an industry and its geographic location.

Diana Benito-Osorio, Alfredo Jiménez, Secil Bayraktar and Cuiling Jiang’s study “From ‘gender gap’ to ‘glass ceiling’: a bibliometric analysis of women’s presence on corporate boards using evolution maps” draws from 395 scientific articles published on the Web of Science platform between 1991and 2017. The goal here is to ascertain existing literature’s performance and monitor map evolutions in this domain. The finding is that whereas early studies focused on the gender gap from a purely male-female comparative perspective, things have gradually evolved, with the most recent studies depicting the specific roles that that women perform today as a reflection of their growing importance in society and in the economy.

Mathieu Alemany Oliver’s article “Every age has its glories... and failures: Using FsQCA to assess how a brand’s founding date affects attitudes towards it” addresses an almost mundane managerial question that is often wrongly given a common sense answer, to wit, whether a company or brand logo should mention (or broadly communicate) a brand’s founding date, especially when this goes back many years. The study offers a qualitative comparative analysis using fuzzy sets to demonstrate that communicating a brand’s founding date does not always induce consumers to hold a positive attitude towards it. Indeed, specifying a brand’s founding date on logos can sometimes have a deleterious effect.

We hope you enjoy reading these highly interesting articles and wish you a happy summer!