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Managerial ties, strategic initiatives, and firm performance in Central Asia and the Caucasus

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Abstract

Managerial ties are an area commanding managers’ attention in emerging economies. However, no previous study has drawn on cross-country data to address a crucial question: Are more developed market-supporting institutions associated with less use of managerial ties in emerging economies? Further, to strive for better performance, firms also need to develop market-based strategic initiatives. How do these initiatives impact performance? What role do managerial ties play in the relationship? Addressing these questions, this article extends research on managerial ties in emerging economies to an underexplored region—Central Asia and the Caucasus.

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Notes

  1. One of the authors has conducted numerous interviews with managers in Central Asia and the Caucasus and worked with them. Our selection of the measures has been driven in part by such experience of direct interaction with managers.

  2. Accessed at http://econ.worldbank.org.

  3. The selected dimensions corresponded most closely to the perceptual measures of governance included in BEEPS, namely, governmental efficiency, regulatory efficiency, legal system efficiency, and corruption.

  4. One Central Asian country, Turkmenistan, missing due to not being included in the BEEPS survey.

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Academy of Management in Philadelphia and won Best Paper Award Honorable Mention in the International Management Division (August 2007). It was also presented at the Managing Favors Conference at Northeastern University (October 2010) and the Academy of Management in Boston (August 2012). We thank Sheila Puffer and Dan McCarthy for helpful comments. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation of the United States (CAREER SES 0552089), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (project no. 71072060), and the Jindal Chair at UT Dallas. All views are ours and not necessarily those of the sponsors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Bent Hall 423, St. John’s University, The Peter J. Tobin College of Business, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Queens, NY, 11439, USA

    Kiran M. Ismail

  2. Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas, P.O. Box 830688, SM 43, Richardson, TX, 75083, USA

    David L. Ford Jr. & Mike W. Peng

  3. Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200052, China

    Qingsheng Wu

Authors
  1. Kiran M. Ismail
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  2. David L. Ford Jr.
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  3. Qingsheng Wu
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  4. Mike W. Peng
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Correspondence to Qingsheng Wu.

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Ismail, K.M., Ford, D.L., Wu, Q. et al. Managerial ties, strategic initiatives, and firm performance in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Asia Pac J Manag 30, 433–446 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-012-9322-8

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