CEO Characteristics and Budgeting Practices in Emerging Market SMEs*

Customer pressure and environmental stewardship: The moderator role of perceived benefit by managers

Nowadays, environmental issues and cleaner products are interest to many customers, considering whether to buy or continue using a product. This will affect the perception, attitude of upper managers in the process of strategic choices and operational management behavior. This study is based on the Upper Echelon Theory, research under the influence of customer pressure to attitude toward the environmental, decision choices for cleaner production strategies, implementation of environmental management accounting towards achieving green competitive advantage of Vietnamese manufacturing enterprises. In addition, the role of two moderator variables: (1) perceived benefit of cleaner production strategies and (2) perceived benefit of environmental management accounting in the research model is also considered. This study surveyed 234 CEOs of Vietnamese manufacturing enterprises. This study employed PLS-SEM, version 3 for data analysis. Results have shown that all relationships are statistically significant. Moderator variables have a statistically significant and positive impact in relationships in which they play a moderator role. This study helps CEOs realize the importance of producing products that are customer-oriented, environmentally friendly, and the implementation of environmental management accounting will have a strong impact on achieving a sustainable competitive advantage.

The Impact of Interactive Control in Budget Management on Innovation Performance of Enterprises: From the Perspective of Manager Role Stress

This study aimed to study the influence of the interactive budget on enterprise innovation performance from the perspective of managerial psychology, and to examine the mediating effect of managers' stress and the moderating effect of environmental turbulence in this influence. The study collected 228 managers' data in the Yangtze River Delta region of China through online questionnaires; the structural equation model is constructed by IBM SPSS Amos 24.0, and the data is analyzed by Mplus 7.4 and IBM SPSS 23.0. The results showed that: (1) an interactive budget positively affects enterprise innovation performance; (2) the role stress of managers plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between an interactive budget and enterprise innovation performance; (3) environmental turbulence positively moderates the relationship between the interactive budget and enterprise innovation performance; and (4) the positive effect of the interactive budget on enterprise innovation performance is more significant in enterprises with a high proportion of female managers, and the negative effect on the role stress of managers is more significant in high-tech enterprises. In theory, the results enrich the research on the impact of an interactive budget on individual managers' psychology, and further reveals the "black box" of the impact of an interactive budget on enterprise innovation performance; in practice, the results make enterprises attach importance to the influence of control environments on the psychological health of managers, and provides a reference for enterprises to use control methods rationally to promote innovation in budget management.

Responsible innovation in emerging markets’ SMEs: The role of alliance learning and absorptive capacity

This paper presents an examination of the role played by alliance learning in enabling emerging market small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to develop responsible innovation. SMEs based in emerging markets face significant challenges due to their weak resource base and the limited support they receive from formal institutions. In such a context, we argued that alliance learning takes a more prominent role in enabling these firms to develop responsible innovation via their absorptive capacity and sense-making competency. Drawn from 176 survey responses from SMEs originating from Pakistan, our findings shed light on the vital role played by alliance learning in enhancing SMEs’ responsible innovation. Specifically, the findings indicate that absorptive capacity acts as an important mechanism between alliance learning and responsible innovation. In addition, sense-making competency emerges as an important boundary condition and as a vital dynamic capability under which the effects of alliance learning on responsible innovation are stronger through the mediating mechanisms of absorptive capacity. These moderating-mediating findings contribute to the literature on dynamic capabilities and responsible innovation and provide important insights into the mechanisms and boundary conditions of responsible innovation in the context of emerging Asian markets.

Managerial characteristics and budget use in festival organizations

Festivals are an important part of popular culture and have increased in popularity in recent decades. However, they remain relatively unexplored in the accounting literature, and understanding of the use of management control tools in this context is low. This study aims to investigate the use of budgets in festivals. Informed by upper echelons theory, it investigates how individual and observable characteristics of festival managers are associated with variations in the use of budgets. The study is based on a survey of 61 festival managers from 40 festivals. The findings suggest that festival budgets are particularly important in the planning and coordination process but used less frequently for ex post evaluations. The findings also indicate a positive association between a business educational background and the use of budgets for most purposes, with the exceptions of performance evaluation and reward. This paper contributes to the literature on accounting in popular culture in general and in festivals specifically. Through its application of upper echelons theory, it also contributes to the management accounting and control literature, showing how individual characteristics of managers influence the use of budgets.

Contemplating the Impact of the Moderators Agency Cost and Number of Supervisors on Corporate Sustainability Under the Aegis of a Cognitive CEO

The social cognitive theory emphasizes the risk-taking behavior of an entrepreneur, which leads him to make the right decisions. In this regard, this study formulates the concept of the cognitive CEO through the DAE statistical technique. Specifically, CEO attributes such as CEO age, CEO compensation, CEO tenure, goodwill, and the number of CEO-attended meetings are used as inputs that influence the intangible assets, the output. Chinese SMEs have been selected for empirical analysis for the years 2014-2018. The empirical results reveal that having a cognitive CEO augmented corporate sustainability, while agency cost and the number of supervisors strongly diminished corporate sustainability. Meanwhile, high earnings per share and high total assets are vehicles for maintaining the sustainable growth of firms. Additionally, it is indicated that firms with a loan burden cannot maintain sustainable corporate growth. Lastly, the execution of 2SLS and GMM instrumental regressions authenticate the veracity of results.