Yi Tang
Prof. Yi TANG
Management and Strategy
Associate Professor

3917 0017

KK 1103

Academic & Professional Qualification
  • PhD: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
  • Master: Nanjing University
  • Bachelor: Nanjing University
Biography

Yi Tang currently is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in Strategy in the Department of Management, HKU Business School. Previously, Dr. Tang was affiliated with Hong Kong Baptist University and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Yi Tang received his PhD from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in June, 2009.

Dr. Tang’s research and teaching interests reside in the areas of strategic leadership, firm innovation, corporate social responsibility, and interfirm social networks. His research output has been published in leading management journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Management, Journal of Business Venturing, among others.

Dr. Tang currently sits on the editorial boards of Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies and Journal of Management. He is also editing special issues for Journal of Management Studies, Long Range Planning, and Family Business Review. Dr. Tang is an active member of Academy of Management (AOM) and Strategic Management Society (SMS), and also serves as the representative-at-large for the International Association of Chinese Management Research (IACMR).

Dr. Tang has taught Strategic Management and its related subjects for the PhD, DBA MBA, MSc, and Undergraduate levels. Dr. Tang has been responsible for the Strategic Management area in the DBA programs at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Hong Kong Baptist University.

Teaching

Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship, International Business, Organization Theory

Research Interest

Strategic Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility; Entrepreneurship and Firm Innovation; Social Networks within and across Firms

Selected Publications
  • Chen, Y., Fu, R., Tang, Y., & Zhao, X. (equal contribution) CEOs’ Pre-career Exposure to Religion and Corporate Tax Avoidance. Journal of Management Studies, forthcoming.
  • Kowalzick, M., Ahrens, J., Lauterbach, J., Tang, Y. Overconfident CEOs in Dire Straits: How Incumbent and Successor CEOs’ Overconfidence Affects Firm Turnaround Performance. Journal of Management Studies, forthcoming.
  • Weng, D., & Tang, Y. How Do Status Differentials Affect the Unplanned Dissolution of Alliances? Journal of Management Studies, forthcoming.
  • Ren, S., Sun, H., & Tang, Y. 2023. CEO’s Hometown Identity and Corporate Social Responsibility. Journal of Management, 49(7): 2455–2489.
  • Burkhard, B., Grichnik, D., Foss, N., Hodgkinson, G., Sarala, R., Tang, Y., & van Essen, M. (equal contribution) 2023. Heuristics and Biases of Top Managers: Past, Present, and Prospect. Journal of Management Studies, 60(5): 1033-1063.
  • Xu, Z., Tang, Y., & Liu, Z. 2023. Buddhist Entrepreneurs, Managerial Attention Allocation, and New Ventures’ Access to External Resources. Journal of Management Studies, 60(2): 454-494.
  • Chen, G., Luo, S., Tang, Y., & Tong, J. (equal contribution) 2023. Back to School: CEOs’ pre-career exposure to religion, firm risk-taking, and innovation. Journal of Management, 49(3): 881-912.
  • Ouyang, B., Tang, Y., Wang, C., & Zhou, J. (equal contribution) 2022.No-fly zone in the loan office: How CEO risky hobbies affect credit stakeholders’ evaluation of the firm. Organization Science, 33(1): 414-430.
  • Fu, R., Tang, Y., & Chen, G. 2020. Chief sustainability officers and corporate social (Ir)responsibility. Strategic Management Journal, 41(4): 656-680.
  • Tang, Y., Mack, D., & Chen, G. (equal contribution) 2018. The differential effects of CEO narcissism and CEO hubris on corporate social responsibility. Strategic Management Journal, 39(5): 1370-1387.
  • Chen, G., Luo, S., Tang, Y., & Tong, Y. (equal contribution) 2015. Passing probation: Earnings management by interim CEOs and its effect on their promotion prospects. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5): 1389-1418.
  • Tang, Y., Li, J., & Yang, H. 2015. What I see, what I do: How executive hubris affects firm innovation. Journal of Management, 41(6): 1698-1723.
  • Tang, Y., Qian, C., Chen, G., & Shen, R. (equal contribution) 2015. How CEO hubris affects corporate social (Ir)responsibility. Strategic Management Journal, 36(9): 1338-1357.
  • Tang, Y., & Wezel, F. (equal contribution) 2015. Up to standard? Market positioning and performance of Hong Kong films, 1975-1997. Journal of Business Venturing, 30(3): 452-466.
  • Shen, R., Tang, Y., & Chen, G. (equal contribution) 2014. When the role fits: How firm status differentials affect corporate takeovers. Strategic Management Journal, 35(13): 2012-2030.
  • Li, J., & Tang, Y. 2010. CEO hubris and firm risk taking in China: The moderating role of managerial discretion. Academy of Management Journal, 53(1): 45-68.
Service to the University/Community

a. PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATION

Academy of Management (AOM)

Strategic Management Society (SMS)

International Association of Chinese Management Research (IACMR)

b. GUEST EDITORSHIPS

Long Range Planning, Special issue on “Emotion in the Strategic Management of Family Business”, Deadline: Dec 31, 2010

Journal of Management Studies, Special issue on “Biases and Heuristics of Top Managers”, Deadline: Feb 29, 2020

Family Business Review, Special issue on “Psychological Foundation in Family Business”, Deadline: Feb 28, 2019

c. EDITORIAL BOARDS

Organization Science, since 2023

Journal of Management, since 2020

Strategic Management Journal, since 2014

d. AD HOC REVIEWS (partial list)

Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal,  Organization Science, Journal of International Business Studies,   Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Venturing

e. DEPARTMENTAL SERVICE

Departmental Executive Committee, 2018-2019, Hong Kong Baptist University

Departmental Search Committee, 2017-2019, Hong Kong Baptist University

Departmental Staffing Committee, 2013-2017, Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Recent Publications
CEO’s Hometown Identity and Corporate Social Responsibility

This study documents the effect of CEO's identification with their hometown on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We propose that firms headquartered in their CEOs’ hometowns tend to do more CSR. This is because identification with their hometown activates CEOs’ altruistic tendency to be more prosocial and makes them more likely to have long-term goals, both of which are compatible with the nature of CSR. This hometown identity effect is stronger when the firm is more locally connected and is weaker when the firm is located in a region with more diverse dialects. Analyzing a large sample of publicly listed Chinese firms for 2009–2016, we found strong support for our predictions. The robustness of our findings is confirmed by a field survey, a difference-in-differences (DID) approach, the Heckman two-stage model, the impact threshold of confounding variables (ITCV), and alternative measures of CSR and CEO hometown identity.

Buddhist Entrepreneurs, Managerial Attention Allocation, and New Ventures’ Access to External Resources

New ventures are often short of resources crucial to their survival and development. This research sheds new light on how new ventures can obtain better access to external resources by analysing a survey of a large sample of Chinese private entrepreneurs. We found that by comparison with their non-Buddhist counterparts, Chinese Buddhist entrepreneurs tend to give greater attention to external activities and have a higher chance of gaining sociopolitical legitimacy and therefore have a better chance of accessing external resources such as bank loans. Moreover, the indirect effect on bank loans of the amount of attention allocated to external activities by Chinese Buddhist entrepreneurs is weakened by lower government intervention and better development of intermediary agencies in regions where new ventures are located, largely due to Chinese Buddhist entrepreneurs' reduced reliance on sociopolitical legitimacy to access external resources.

Back to School: CEOs’ Pre-Career Exposure to Religion, Firm’s Risk-Taking, and Innovation

Recent research has shown that a CEO's personal experiences in his or her early days have an influence on his or her decision-making as an executive later on. Our study extends this emerging stream of research by examining how CEOs’ pre-career exposure to religion affects their firms’ risk-taking and subsequent innovation performance. Drawing upon developmental psychology research and imprinting theory, we argue that CEOs who have attended a religious college are more likely to develop or reinforce their risk-averse mentality. This carries over to their professional life when they are in a top management position, and it leads to less risk-taking behavior in their firms and ultimately a lower level of firm innovation. Using a large sample of U.S. publicly listed companies, we find strong support on our hypotheses: Firms managed by CEOs who attended a religious college tend to be less risk-taking; this effect is stronger when the firm has more board members with pre-career exposure to religion; in addition, the firm's risk-taking behavior mediates the negative relationship between CEO pre-career religious exposure and firm innovation. We discuss the implications of our study for the strategic leadership literature, firm's risk-taking, and innovation research.

No-Fly Zone in the Loan Office: How Chief Executive Officers’ Risky Hobbies Affect Credit Stakeholders’ Evaluation of Firms

The extant research has often examined the work-related experiences of corporate executives, but their off-the-job activities could be just as insightful. This study employs a novel proxy for the risky hobbies of chief executive officers (CEOs)—CEOs’ hobby of piloting a private aircraft—and investigates its effect on credit stakeholders’ evaluation of the firms led by the CEOs as reflected in bank loan contracting. Using a longitudinal data set on CEOs of large United States-listed firms across multiple industries between 1993 and 2010, we obtain strong evidence that bank loans to firms steered by CEOs who fly private jets as a hobby tend to incur a higher cost of debt, to be secured, to have more covenants, and to be syndicated. These effects are mainly driven by banks, which perceive such firms as having a higher default risk. These relationships become stronger when the CEO is more important to the firm and/or can exercise stronger control over decision making. Supplemented by field interviews, our results are also robust to various endogeneity checks using different experimental designs, the Heckman two-stage model, a propensity score-matching approach, a difference-in-differences test, and the impact threshold of confounding variables.

Chief Sustainability Officers and Corporate Social (Ir)responsibility

How will a chief sustainability officer (CSO) influence corporate social performance? Building upon the upper echelons perspective and the attention‐based view, this study argues that while a CSO helps channel managerial attention to a firm's social domain, managerial attention is more likely to be directed to negative issues than to positive issues. In addition, such relationships are contingent on the focal firm's governance design and its industry culpability. Analysis of a sample of S&P 500 firms for the period of 2005–2014 largely renders support to our predictions.