Purpose: Institutional theory is a reasonable explanation for the motives of corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviours (e.g. corporate green innovation). The existing literature defines institutional pressure as threats for legitimacy when firms operate within a country or a region; one...

Purpose: The literature lacks a specific mechanism that may help to explain the variation in corporate innovation. This research helps to explain a specific mechanism that affects corporate innovation. Design/methodology/approach: Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression has been used to analyse...

This study examines whether and how the famine experiences of board chairs influence the innovation of their firms. Results using a sample comprising 8882 firm‐year observations from Chinese firms during the period 2003 to 2017 reveal that the board chair's famine experience has a negative...

Drawing on imprinting theory, we propose that early-life famine experiences created an imprint of survival threat among board chairs who survived the Great Chinese Famine (1959–1961). We show how temporal perception shapes famine-experienced chair behavior to adopt different strategies when...