Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
3-2025
Abstract
The behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF) emphasizes the goal-directed logic in explaining firms’ risk-taking.Scholars in this tradition typically conceptualize how performance feedback indicates problems and triggers risk-taking behaviors. Yet, the theory remains underdeveloped in understanding decision-makers’ attention to forward-looking goals, such as market expansion, and its impact on firm risk-taking. In this study, we theorize performance feedback as an antecedent to decision-makers’ attention to forward-looking goals, and firm risktaking as a consequence of such attention. Focusing on market expansion as a critical forward-looking goal, we first theorize how performance feedback influences decision-makers’ attention to market expansion. Then, we examine how such attention drives a firm’s risk-taking, contingent on how competitive the firm’s industry is. Using panel data on Chinese listed firms, we find that negative feedback exerts a stronger negative influence than positive feedback on decision-maker attention to market expansion. Moreover, attention to market expansion promotes firm risk-taking only when the focal firm’s industry competitive intensity is weaker. Our study extends the BTOF literature by providing novel insights and evidence that performance feedback drives firms’ attention to forward-looking goals and such attention influences firms’ risk-taking.
Keywords
The behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF), Attention-based view (ABV), Market expansion, Performance feedback, Firm risk-taking
Discipline
Organizational Behavior and Theory | Strategic Management Policy
Research Areas
Strategy and Organisation
Publication
Journal of Business Research
Volume
192
First Page
1
Last Page
14
ISSN
0148-2963
Identifier
10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115322
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
GAO, Renfei; ZHANG, Man; HE, Xiaogang; and LI, Zhengyu.
Attention to market expansion: Aspirational antecedent and risk-taking consequence. (2025). Journal of Business Research. 192, 1-14.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/7691
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115322
