Purpose: This research investigates how and why firms adopt inclusive diversity activities, identifying the mechanisms behind firms involved in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)–friendly pursuits. By integrating resource dependence theory, institutional theory and stakeholder theory, the authors argue that a firm's LGBT friendliness is affected by marketing orientation and the external political environment.Design/methodology/approach: This study uses the Corporate Equality Index, as reported by the Human Rights Campaign, of 460 (1,540 firm-year observations) firms in the United States between 2006 and 2019.Findings: This study finds a significant, positive relationship between a firm's marketing orientation and LGBT-friendly activities. This research also determines that this relationship is weakened by state-level diversity policies and country-level political uncertainty.Originality/value: The study results provide unique theoretical and practical implications for the debate on inclusive corporate policy in similar global markets.

This study explores how slack resources can enhance firms’ sustainable competitive advantage by combining economics and organizational behavior within a strategic management framework. Specifically, we examine the relationships between three types of slack resources—available, recoverable, and potential—and three environmental dimensions: munificence, dynamism, and complexity. Our dataset comprises 34,261 observations from 4,045 listed firms across 34 provincial-level administrative regions in China, spanning the years 1993 to 2021. The results indicate that each type of slack resource has an inverted U-shaped relationship with performance, suggesting the existence of a Pareto optimal level of resource allocation. However, this relationship and the position of the Pareto optimal point are not constant. Environmental factors moderate the relationship between slack resources and performance, leading to fluctuations in Pareto optimal values and per-unit value. By expanding and integrating the resource-based view and the structure–conduct–performance paradigm, we explain the relationships between various slack resources and different industrial environments. Based on our findings, we provide suggestions for enhancing sustainable competitive advantage.

China has a large number of gas stations, with which thousands of workers are associated. There is abundant online literature documenting the various occupational health risks these workers face. However, this literature has many flaws to address, and it falls short of suggesting measures to manage these risks. This study strives to fill that gap, and aims to improve the occupational health of gas station workers through comprehensive risk management and performance analysis. To this end, a reasonable volume of reliable data, i.e., 208 completed questionnaires, were analyzed through current statistical routines, viz., fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Importance Performance Analysis (IPA). These methods were employed to hierarchically organize the main factors and sub-factors of physical risk management, chemical risk management, biological risk management, physiological risk management and psychological risk management according to their appraised importance, and screen out the risk management stratagem for priority improvement. Research findings reveal that chemical risk and biological risk response schemes have the lowest performance, and need to be prioritized for improvement. Furthermore, this study argues that we can safeguard the occupational health of gas station workers through appropriate risk management strategies. It also elaborates on implications, limitations and future research directions.

In Pakistan, the fisheries sector is capable of making a significant contribution to the national economy. However, the proper and sustainable development of this sector is essential to its success, and we need to be aware of all the risks that it faces. At present, there is a dearth of comprehensive research that details, compares, and proposes applied measures to mitigate the risks facing the fisheries sector. Thus, this study is the first novel attempt to fill this gap. The data were collected through a survey and analyzed by multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). The study postulates that Sindh fisheries are affected by five main risk factors, namely technical, market, ecological, natural, and management. These risk factors are arranged from least to most significant. With regard to the performances of the main risk factors, management risk was ranked as the greatest risk, followed by ecological risk, natural risk, and technical risk. The findings of this study provide a road map for managerial decisions. Furthermore, this study also presents some potential limitations related to the scale of the data and analysis methods. Future studies may therefore use data collected on a large scale and alternative quantitative approaches.

COVID-19 has impeded the internationalization of enterprises and sustainable digital economic growth. This situation has led to enterprises adopting divestment strategies to deal with multiple risks. However, the successful implementation of strategies depends on understanding the perceptible risks. Due to risk management failures or unexpected risks, strategic management has attributed withdrawal to production costs or marketing, but risk management has never addressed it. Moreover, small enterprises are more vulnerable to risks than large ones. For the first time, this study fills a gap in the literature by combining Dunning’s investment motives theory with the COSO risk management process theory to examine small enterprise risk perception in China. China has seen a growing number of foreign direct investment (FDI) withdraw. Different risks should have been faced and managed if these were determined to be efficiency-seekers or market-seekers. This research context led to a survey of 498 FDIs, including market-seeking or efficiency-seeking types, to identify perceived risk, managed risk, and value risk outcomes. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 18.0 program was used for frequency analysis of general characteristics and exploration of factor analysis, whereas, Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) 18.0 was used to perform a confirmatory factor analysis and develop a structural equation model. The obtained results indicate that market efficiency-oriented enterprises can modify their strategies by implementing digital transformation and localization strategies. In contrast, production efficiency-oriented enterprises will divest because of risks, without finding a better strategy.

This paper investigates how cultural distance, the local experience of a foreign subsidiary, and the intensity of local competition jointly affect the staff localization of MNEs’ subsidiaries. While previous studies on the effects of cultural distance have mainly focused on the gap between home and host countries, we extend the existing “home-host” country perspective to the home-intermediary-host country relationship. This study regards Korea as an intermediary country and utilizes 520 observations from a unique survey conducted by the Export-Import Bank of Korea from 2006 to 2013. The results suggest that the impact of cultural distance on staff localization is a function of local experience and competitive environment in the home-intermediate-host relationship structure. This paper makes a theoretical contribution to our understanding of the behavior of multinational corporations by expanding the cultural distance perspective between the home and host countries explored in previous research to the home-subsidiary-subsidiary structure.