دانلود رایگان مقاله نقش مدیر عامل شرکت در تصمیم گیری

ABSTRACT

Internationalization decisions represent major objects of international business research; in this context, the respective role of decision-makers, i.e., strategic actors has been under study for now nearly 50 years. However, some important individual characteristics of strategic actors, which seem to influence individual decision-making in a significant way, have been – in contrast to general management research – widely disregarded. Among those characteristics, narcissism plays a decisive role. Trying to provide a first attempt to fill this research gap our paper aims at theorizing on as well as empirically analyzing potential relationships between narcissistic tendencies of CEOs and their internationalization decisions. The empirical study of major German manufacturing firms over the period 2004–2013 shows that CEOs with a high degree of narcissism tend to intensify business activities abroad in general while the expected effect on intensified activities in markets with a high psychic distance cannot be identified. These research results help to better understand the drivers of firms’ internationalization, stress the importance of recognizing managerial decision-making in the context of analyzing business activities abroad, and improve the prediction of CEOs’ decision-making behavior in general.

5. Conclusion

5.1. Discussion Managerial influences on the international evolution of a firm display a widely disregarded research field in international business (Aharoni et al., 2011). In addition, a major aspect of latest research efforts in general management literature – narcissistic tendencies of CEOs as predictor of firms’ behavior – has not been analyzed in the context of a firm’s international activities up to now. Our study addresses the need for a more detailed understanding of managerial influences on internationalization decisions by introducing the concept of narcissism in the field of international business research. We state that narcissistic decision-making by CEOs exerts a noteworthy influence in this context as it affects a manager’s tendency of pursuing personal goals as well as individual risk perception. Our research focuses on two main consequences for the international evolution of a firm: the growth of the DOI and the growth of “high-risk” foreign sales