Hua, Huan
(2024)
Executives’ characteristics and innovation performance of emerging market enterprises: the role of imprinting effects.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
Innovation plays a crucial role for ensuring a firm’s long-term growth and competitiveness, particularly within high-tech industries. Executives’ characteristics matter in determining important organization outcomes - innovation performance because organizational decisions and outcomes can be viewed as reflections of the values and cognitive base of top managers. While prior research has explored the relationship between executives’ characteristics and innovation performance, the empirical results remain equivocal. This study aims to address this gap by suggesting that such inconsistent findings arise because the literature has not considered important contingency factors, namely, firm- and individual-level imprinting effects. Drawing on the imprinting perspective, this thesis suggests that both organizations and individuals are particularly susceptible to external influences during specific sensitive periods, such as the founding period for organizations and the early-life and career periods for individuals, as they seek to adapt to their environment and manage uncertainties. This leads to a diversity in characteristics and outcomes among both firms and individuals.
Accordingly, the thesis develops a conceptual framework and several hypotheses that examine how such organizational-level imprints and individual-level imprints influence the relationship between different executives’ characteristics and firm innovation performance. Specifically, this thesis investigates the impact of three key executive characteristics, namely, political ties, tenure and succession on firm innovation performance and the moderating role of imprinting effects in the Chapter Two, Three and Four respectively, using the samples of Chinese high-tech manufactory listed firms over the period of 2000 to 2020.
Chapter Two focuses on organizational-level founding imprints and examines how executive political ties affect firm innovation performance depending on the conditions of the firm's different founding conditions. This chapter finds that executive political ties are more likely to benefit the innovation performance of firms that were founded in the less open and market-oriented period (before 1992) as well as state-owned-enterprises (SOEs), while less beneficial for firms that were founded in the more open and market-oriented period (after 1992) as well as are not state-owned-enterprises (non-SOEs). The level of firm internationalization further shapes the strength of firm-level founding imprints differently. This study provides new boundary conditions - firm-level founding conditions imprints, under which the positive view of executive political ties gains more explanatory power than the negative view and influences the effectiveness of executives’ political ties in enhancing innovation performance. It also addresses the “black box” of the imprinting process by examining how the level of firm internationalization shapes imprint decay and persistence.
Chapter Three focuses on individual-level imprints and explores the relationship between CEO tenure and firm innovation performance as well as the moderating influence of CEOs’ early life and career imprints. This chapter finds that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between CEO tenure and firm innovation performance. Both the positive effect of short-tenured CEO on innovation performance and the negative effect of long-tenured CEO on innovation performance will be lower if the CEO was raised in a region with a higher level of economic development and the CEO with international experience. This study extends the upper echelons theory by considering CEOs’ early life and career imprints as important contingent factors influencing the relationship between CEO tenure and firm innovation performance. It also enriches imprinting literature by examining the imprinting effects from early life environment and international experience, which is argued to influence CEOs’ risk preferences, and consequently influencing firm innovation performance.
Chapter Four also focuses on individual-level imprints and examines the impact of outside CEO succession on firm innovation performance as well as the moderating effects of CEOs’ early life and early career imprints. This chapter finds that outside CEO successors have a negatively association with firm innovation performance and this negative effect will be stronger for CEOs who have childhood poverty experience and early-career recession experience. This study extends executive succession theory by examining outside CEO successors with different imprints could impact firm innovation performance. It also enriches imprinting theory by examining the imprinting effects from early life poverty and early career recession experiences, which we conceptualize as impacting on CEOs’ risk propensity and subsequently influencing firm innovation performance.
Overall, this thesis enhances understanding of the relationship between three executives’ characteristics and firm innovation performance by suggesting, and empirically confirming, that the direction and strength of this relationship depends on the organizational- as well as individual-level imprints.
| Item Type: |
Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
(PhD)
|
| Supervisors: |
Desai, Malay
Wang, Chengqi
Wang, Jinmin |
| Keywords: |
Executives’ Characteristics, Innovation Performance, Imprinting Effects |
| Subjects: |
H Social sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor |
| Faculties/Schools: |
UK Campuses > Faculty of Social Sciences, Law and Education > Nottingham University Business School |
| Item ID: |
78538 |
| Depositing User: |
Hua, Huan
|
| Date Deposited: |
02 Jun 2025 14:40 |
| Last Modified: |
02 Jun 2025 14:40 |
| URI: |
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/78538 |
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