CHAPTER 6: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
6.5 NEXT STEPS
Currently, there are two manuscripts planned. The first manuscript is an empirical paper based on the quantitative study in the dissertation. The main goal of this paper will be to explore the role of a firm’s institutional and economic embeddedness in its global business network with regards to the decision to adopt CSR practices. The second
manuscript is a survey-based study of the adoption of innovative managerial practices by emerging market firms. Innovative managerial practices are defined as practices that are new to the firm. This study would also draw on interviews with and surveys of firm managers. It would be based on the main theoretical insights developed in the
dissertation. One benefit of this approach is that it allows collecting focal firm’s partners- specific performance data, thus addressing one of this dissertation’s main limitations. This manuscript would also focus on managerial cognitive processes that contribute to shaping firm’s interpretation of the social and economic forces to which it is exposed in the global business network. Thus, another benefit of this approach is that it would offer a more nuanced investigation at the level of the individual firm whose characteristics contribute to the phenomenon under investigation. In addition, this study would
investigate the role of a firm’s embeddedness in its global business network for a sample of non-U.S. firms, thus addressing the sample-related concern associated with the
dissertation that was discussed above. I believe that a population sample with greater variation in terms of the countries of origin of the organizations would help to better understand the role of ties to business partners located in countries with more stringent
154
institutional requirements with regards to a firm’s decision to adopt innovative
managerial practices. While the related variables included in my study already provide an indication of the importance of this construct, I believe that the effects would be even stronger when one considers firms headquartered in emerging markets.
There are other areas for future research on related topics. While I focus on the adoption of broadly defined CSR practices, future studies could investigate the global business network-related drivers of the adoption of specific sets of CSR practices as captured by the KLD database (e.g., community relations, diversity, corporate governance, employee relations, environment, human rights, and product quality and safety). This would be interesting as there are important differences in the way these practices tend to be regulated within each country, a condition that could affect the relative importance of global business network-related forces vis-à-vis firm’s adoption decisions. Finally, it would also be interesting to investigate the unique effects associated with the firm’s economic relationships with business partners located in countries with less stringent CSR-related institutional requirements than those of the firm’s home country on its adoption decisions. While a small number of studies has begun unpacking the varying effects of firm’s embeddedness in more and less stringent institutional contexts relative to the firm’s home country, scholars agree that more research is needed to disentangle these effects (e.g., Dau, 2013; Ramamurty & Singh, 2009).
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