Word from the editor

The 13 articles comprising this new regular issue of Management International are the result of several highly rigorous evaluation processes mobilising more than thirty evaluators in total – all of whom have our deepest gratitude. Many international management themes are addressed here: classics in the field, including how an international context affects family businesses with respect to issues like succession, conflict, divestment, strategy-making or equity holdings; but also more contemporary themes such as management in a post-Covid context, e-health, online behaviour and entrepreneurial ethics. The 11 articles are all thought-provoking and lend themselves to numerous areas of reflection that readers are heartily welcomed to explore.

Jessica Lichy, Tatiana Khvatova and Mauro Jose de Oliveira’s contribution - “BRICs & clicks: an overview of the sociomateriality of social media consumption”- responds to a dearth of comparative research in Brazil, Russia, India and China on social media consumption and Internet user behaviour. Collecting data via surveys and interviews, the authors identify a variety of user behaviours and develop a digital culture model that reveals both the effects of cultural context on the socio-material environment and how such factors might explain internet user behaviour. The findings form a contemporary vision that can then be used to inform companies operating in these markets and help them exploit digital interactivity opportunities.

In the view of Caroline Ruiller, Emmanuelle Fromont, Frédérique Chédotel and Gulliver Lux, contemporary literature may feature robust conceptualisations and validated scales measuring employee morale but little if anything has been done in relation to senior managers. Hence their article “CEOs’ mood: A conceptualisation proposal”, which uses 20 individual interviews (and 350 questionnaires) of French executives to suggest ways of conceptualising and measuring this particular class of respondents. The findings highlight specific differences in the ways that CEOs and employees construct their state of mind; the multidimensionality of such processes; the influence of personal and professional factors; a duality of emotional valence; and the non-gendered nature of this phenomenon.

Roxana Ologeanu-Taddei, Cameron Guthrie and Samuel Fosso-Wamba’s article - “Beyond TAM: The impact of trust, privacy controls and trustworthiness on individual intent to use a Covid contract tracing app” – tries to overcome the paucity of empirical studies of factors influencing behaviour in this domain. The authors propose an integrated model rooted in technology acceptance, trust, privacy control and trustworthiness literature. The hypotheses are tested on a representative sample of 1,000 French citizens who have installed the app in question. The findings start with the discovery that trust not only has a strong and direct effect on usage intentions but also mediates the relationship between ease of use and intentionality. Other findings include the influence of reliability on perceived usability, and of privacy controls on perceived utility.

François Grima, Pauline de Becdelievre and Ludovic Taphanel’s article – evocatively entitled “Coping with professional misidentification: The case of slashers in France” – is a qualitative research paper that uses interviews to ascertain the forms of misidentification experienced by a sample of 38 slashers along with the different ways they have found to manage such situations. The findings reveal that various types of professional misidentification produce effects that can differ in intensity terms. Three response strategies are identified: militancy; a search for authenticity; and clandestinity. Slashers tend to proactively seek validation for their dual professional identities, mobilising towards this end whatever relational, economic and academic resources they have available. The paper enhances understanding of identity dynamics – both for one’s self and for others – which enriching current debates about new forms of employment.

Hedi Yezza, Didier Chabaud and Céline Barrédy’s article - “Conflict dynamics, context and family structures in succession situations: An exploratory study of Tunisian SMEs” – is a four-year longitudinal qualitative study of five Tunisian family businesses involved in such processes. The findings reveal the crucial role that family structure plays, and more specifically, the paradoxical place assumed by fathers, who can sometimes be a source of authority and stability yet on other occasions generate succession conflicts due to their inability to let go. Socio-cultural context and religion also play an important role in these conflict dynamics.

Imene Zarrouki and Aymen Habib’s article “Family involvement and its influence on the divestment decision” uses a sample of 338 domestic divestment operations conducted by listed French companies to study the relationship in question. It discovers that family businesses are less engaged than their non-family counterparts in operations of this nature – an outcome ostensibly explained by the influence that family involvement exerts on divestment decisions. To measure involvement and the effects thereof, the paper applies a F-PEC scale and more specifically the power and experience constructs found therein. The ultimate lesson here is that divestment decisions are affected differentially by factors such as the power and the experience by which a given business family is characterised.

Lingfang Song’s empirical paper – “To what extent does a local-plus approach improve returnee satisfaction? An empirical study invoking a social comparison perspective” – starts with the premise that returnees are valuable managerial and technical assets for multinational corporations (MNCs). To motivate and retain these individuals, some MNCs will compensate them using a local-plus approach. The study finds significant variations in returnees’ level of satisfaction with such approaches and tries to identify the main factors explaining their responses, discovering along the way that any correlation with individuals’ remuneration interests is patchy at best. Four social comparison factors influencing returnee satisfaction end up being identified here: personal identity; self-esteem; company policy; and expatriation conditions.

Franck Biétry, Jordan Creusier, Séverine Quillerier and Sophie Szymkowiak’s paper - “Restoring well-being at work to its set point: An international test in France and Japan” - scrutinises hedonic adaptation theory’s external validity and premise that notwithstanding events, levels of well-being gradually tend to always return to their original settings – an assertion that had heretofore been largely substantiated, empirically at least, within the English-speaking world. Revealing similar outcomes for employees who change jobs in France but not in Japan, the study generates two original findings: that hedonic adaptation is asymmetrical; and that it is at least partially contingent in nature.

Farouk Nassiri and Mohamed Ouiakoub’s paper - “Strategising in family firms: a social objectivation approach” - aims to develop a conceptual representation of how a family’s social influence impacts its strategy-making. Analysing the strategic discourse held by leading and other family members in three Moroccan family-run businesses, the paper develops a “family-driven social objectification” construct to account for the ways that strategy tends to be constructed in contexts of this kind. The focus here is on a family’s ability to inject a modicum of objectivity into its strategic vision, thereby promoting a wider social group’s acceptance thereof (and commitment thereto). The ultimate finding is that families practice social objectification by willfully producing discourses and narratives that a wider social group is then meant to adopt.

Pascal Paillé and Patrick Valéau’s paper - “Senior managers’ role in strengthening links between performance evaluation, organisational support and pro-environmental behaviour” - uses social exchange and motivational reinforcement constructs to examine how environmental assessment practice effects on individual pro-environmental initiatives reflect the level of environmental support provided by an organisation and by an employee’s immediate hierarchical superior. The findings reveal that evaluation practices’ indirect effects on pro-environmental initiatives – mediated by employees’ perception of organisational support – are stronger when people feel environmentally supported by their immediate supervisor. It also discovers, at a managerial level, that the evaluation function of efforts in this domain can be bolstered by resource exchanges, further motivating people to take part in pro-environmental initiatives. Lastly, the paper adopts a culturalist perspective to discuss its theoretical contributions.

Céline Berard, Martine Seville and Armance Martinot-Lagarde’s article - “Perceived effectiveness of international support services: A configurational study of the interplay between the types of knowledge provided by such programmes and managers’ inherited knowledge” - starts with the observation that research into international support programmes’ effectiveness tends to neglect the role of managerial cognition. The paper mobilises a configurational approach to study interactions between managers’ own inherited knowledge and the types of knowledge provided by such programmes, the goal being to explain the perceived effectiveness thereof. The findings reveal that the ability to acquire network knowledge is a necessary yet insufficient condition for the perception that the programmes are effective. A further finding is that a manager’s sense that s/he needs to use them to acquire diversified knowledge also depends on his/her level of international (non-specific or country-specific) experience.

The empirical findings produced in Afef Slama, Faten Lakhal and Ramzi Benkraiem’s paper - “Institutional investor heterogeneity and the liquid assets: The moderating effect of family control” - reveal that institutional investors characterised by long-term investment horizons and large equity participations are more likely to both control and restrict the accumulation of liquid assets. Having said that, in those instances where institutional investors engage in more passive investment behaviour, managers will tend to focus more on their own personal interests and try to extract higher rents by accumulating liquid assets. A further finding is that family control can moderate institutional activism and amplify investor passivity. This is because family businesses will work with passive institutional investors to create a control coalition making it easier to expropriate minority shareholders’ interests and undermine active investors’ power.

Claude Roussillon Soyer, Marylène Gagne and David Balkin’s paper - “Social sources of work motivation related to healthcare workers’ emotional engagement, absenteeism and turnover during the COVID-19 pandemic” - examines the effect of caregivers’ social controlled motivations on their absenteeism or leave intentions in a context shaped by the coronavirus. The authors use self-determination theory to analyse controlled motivation’s effects whenever external social regulations are mediated by an emotional engagement translating into either absenteeism or an intention to leave. Data is compiled using surveys and archive data based on 303 caregivers working in ten French nursing homes. The findings reveal that external social regulation relates positively with emotional engagement, inducing in turn a negative relationship with caregivers’ intention to leave and/or commit absenteeism. The analysis section focuses on how social support mechanisms can promote caregiver retention.

Happy reading!