R. Duane Ireland’s research while affiliated with Texas A&M University and other places

We welcome work on lifestyle entrepreneurship - defined as "the creation of new ventures to engage in activities that the entrepreneurs find rewarding and/or to allow them to live in desired locations” (Ivanycheva, Schulze, Lundmark and Chirico, 2024: 2257, JMS) - that reflects its tradition and academic foundations and that draws from research in the entrepreneurship, strategic management, and management domains to do so. We are confident that work designed and completed with this framing will advance our academic understanding of lifestyle entrepreneurship as well as inform entrepreneurial and managerial practice associated with this type of entrepreneurship. We encourage scholars to submit either empirical or conceptual papers to the special issue.

This collection of articles from Academy of Management archives features work highlighting the impact of context on management phenomena, recent advances in treating context, and examples of effective contextualization of management theories, and identifies unresolved issues, gaps, and limitations. Spanning several management subfields, multiple levels of analysis, a variety of contextual dimensions, and nearly five decades of scholarship, the 18 articles examined converge on one important common denominator: they move contextual thinking from the fringes to the center of management theory and research. Collectively, the articles reveal four important trends: (a) a shift from universalism toward a more contingent view of management phenomena reflecting the increasing complexity, volatility, and diversity of the environments in which organizations operate; (b) the adoption of multilevel lenses and research designs that illuminate the dynamic interplay between micro, meso, and macro levels; (c) a need to move toward a “polycontextual” approach in management theory and research that considers multiple contextual dimensions and their interdependencies; and (c) a trend toward phenomenon-based research that integrates the richness of context into the framing of theoretical arguments and leads to more relevant and actionable insights by shifting attention to societal problems and their implications for management and organizations.

This paper explores how Guanxi shapes different levels of entrepreneurial behaviour of family businesses in China. Extant research draws on network theory, suggesting that firms focusing on less intimate social relationships are more entrepreneurial than those focusing on intimate social networks. However, this notion of networks neglects Guanxi’s indigenous cultural roots that promote intimacy in social relationships, thus limiting our understanding of why some firms in China demonstrate a higher level of entrepreneurial behaviour than others. Through an in‐depth multi‐case study analysis of eight family firms in China, we find that Guanxi is a multi‐dimensional concept that can only be effective through intimate relationship building. This study contributes to the social network literature on entrepreneurial behaviour by incorporating the gift exchange theoretical perspective and demonstrating that political Guanxi in China can only facilitate entrepreneurial behaviour when it is built around a significant level of intimacy. We also contribute to family business research by demonstrating that family ties are multi‐dimensional. Different cultural values may inform different dimensions of family ties via differences in family business governance structures, which can give rise to different levels of entrepreneurial outcomes. This study offers theoretical and practical implications alongside avenues for future research.

Strategic entrepreneurship integrates the fields of strategy and entrepreneurship to consider firms’ simultaneous engagement in opportunity- and advantage-seeking behaviors to create wealth. Since its conceptualization in the early 2000s, the study of SE has gained considerable momentum. At the same time, some scholars criticize SE and question its comprehensiveness as a way to understand the strategic application of entrepreneurship. We present a comprehensive review and integration of research related to the study of SE as a construct, theoretical model, and research domain. In doing this, we offer a research agenda across these different approaches to the study of SE.

By integrating organizational learning theory with the family firm literature, we seek to enhance our understanding of radical innovation in (multi)family-owned firms. We theorize that the goal diversity and path dependency that multifamily ownership creates negatively affects the positive relationship between knowledge integration and radical innovation. However, this is not the case for multifamily-owned firms in which family members embrace a commitment to change. We contend that commitment to change mitigates the negative moderating effect of multifamily ownership by ensuring the effective translation of integrated knowledge into radical innovation within the firm. Overall, our results highlight the complexity of radical innovation in (multi)family-owned firms as a product of the joint effect of knowledge integration, the number of unrelated owning families, and a commitment to change.

Research Summary This special issue advances the global strategy and entrepreneurship fields by providing a better understanding of the linkage between institutions and entrepreneurship. We provide an overview of existing literature in three key research areas: (a) the impact of institutions (types and complexity) on entrepreneurship, (b) the effect of institutional evolution (overall evolution and interplay among institutions) on entrepreneurship, and (c) the coevolution of institutions and entrepreneurship. We introduce the eight articles appearing in this special issue, examine the relationship between institutions and entrepreneurship in a non-ergodic world, and highlight meaningful and promising avenues for future research in each of the three key research areas in the domain of institutions and entrepreneurship. Managerial Summary This study clarifies the complex relationship between institutions (the rules and norms that govern economic transactions) and entrepreneurship. Our discussion of existing literature, special issue articles, institutions and entrepreneurship in a world of significant change, and several promising avenues for future research highlights to entrepreneurs and their stakeholders the critical role that institutions play in entrepreneurial strategies and actions in three ways. First, the types of institutions and their complexity in a location alter entrepreneurs' incentives and ability to create new ventures. Second, the continued changes in institutions - some in favor of free-market relationships and others restricting them - alter entrepreneurs' behaviors. Third, the entrepreneurial spirit and the creation of new ventures can drive the transformation of institutions that govern future market transactions.

This chapter assesses the current state of research on corporate growth, which remains an important strategic outcome and a much studied topic in strategic management. In the corporate setting, organizations can use three key modes to achieve growth: organic, alliance, and acquisitions. This chapter focuses on the acquisition mode as a critical way to spur growth. In doing so, the chapter takes stock of the current research on corporate growth. Based on this review, the chapter then offers a future research agenda to advance the research on acquisitive corporate growth.

Management researchers rely frequently on theoretical perspectives originating in North American and European contexts. Given the influences context has on scholarship, the question becomes if using primarily Western theories provides researchers with the design insights needed to capture the robust context of the setting in which they conduct their studies. Herein, we seek to establish a foundation for developing fertile exchanges of ideas regarding contextualized management research. To do this, we examine some of the main theories in management studies through the heuristic lens of an “open systems” framework that allows us to build on comparative management and institutional theories. We discuss existing theory advances in selected areas of management studies, including corporate governance, strategic management, entrepreneurship, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to offer avenues for future research. Completing studies with a solid grounding in contextualized management theories has the potential to provide novel research avenues and opportunities to integrate diverse theoretical perspectives. We also identify a need for multidisciplinary research, epistemological openness, and methodological pluralism.

Research and development (R&D) is a key contributor to organizations’ pursuit of innovation. In turn, CEOs can influence important decisions related to changes in R&D spending—the kind of spending with the potential to lead to innovation. We seek to understand the motivation and conditions under which CEOs may influence R&D spending changes. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, this study investigates how CEO motivation affects changes in firm R&D spending. We explore the effect of CEO promotion and prevention foci on yearly R&D increase. We use a panel dataset of 688 S&P 1500 firms to test our hypotheses. Our findings suggest a negative relationship between CEO prevention focus and R&D increase, while CEO promotion focus produces no meaningful effect. We further test CEO compensation as a moderating mechanism, testing both incentive and fixed CEO compensation. We find that incentive compensation negatively moderates the relationship between CEO promotion focus and R&D increase, and positively moderates the relationship between CEO prevention focus and R&D increase. Additionally, CEO fixed income negatively moderates the relationship between CEO prevention focus and R&D increase. Based on these results we discuss theoretical implications of our findings, including differing effects of CEO regulatory focus on firm risk-taking behavior and how compensation packages may alter those effects. We further discuss the practical necessity for boards of directors to understand both the R&D goals of an organization and the individual motivational orientation of CEOs when crafting compensation packages.