With the development of the experience economy and the creating shared value (CSV) concept, consumers are no longer in a single relationship of transaction with firms. Instead, consumers have shifted from passive value receivers to active co-creators of value at every stage, creating unique experiences.

　The focus of the impact mechanism of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on corporate financial performance has gradually shifted from the traditional value creation centered on the enterprise (reducing costs and risks, improving productivity, etc.) to attracting the attention of consumers who care about the environment and society, and promoting their ethical consumption behaviors.

　Unlike most previous studies that focus on the impact of CSR on consumers, this article took the example of the actual responsibility measures taken by Japanese home appliance giants in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and focused on the psychological and behavioral response mechanisms that consumers exhibited after receiving CSR information.

　By constructing an empirical model, the article examined the unexplored paths, which are the relationship between consumer attributions for CSR motives and consumer perceptions of CSR (CPCSR), and the further relationship among CPCSR, the consumer minds and the behavioral intentions.

　The results showed that: (1) the positive impact of value-driven and stakeholder-driven attribution on CPCSR is greater than that of strategy-driven and self-interest-driven; (2) CPCSR positively influences consumers' behavioral responses (loyalty) via their psychological responses (mainly satisfaction and perceived value). The findings of this study not only help to elucidate the mechanism of corporate value creation through CSR activities from the consumer's perspective and fill a critical and theoretical void in the previous literature on “CSR and consumers” research in Japan, but also provide valuable implications and suggestions for consumer-oriented management initiatives to optimize sustainable corporate value through CSR.

 This paper aims to derive a new dynamic model for exploration and exploitation from a perspective of product development by reviewing previous researches on exploration and exploitation.

 Many scholars have recognized usefulness of exploration and exploitation framework presented by March (1991). However, the researchers' perspective is generally static, and the period of analysis is short-term. Thus, there is a strong tendency to grasp the temporary states of exploration and exploitation in organizations. However, there is a trade-off relationship between exploration and exploitation and its balance in organizations may change over time as the envivonment and their strategy change. Therefore, this paper first organizes researchers' premises and understandings of exploration and exploitation by reviewing previous researches on the topic. It then outlines three organizational balance approaches to the trade-off between exploration and exploitation: sequential, structural, and contextual approaches. A dynamic model is presented that illustrates the changes in exploration and exploitation in organizations engaged in product development, focusing on the gradualchanges from exploration to exploitation, and the role of the organization's frontline and its changes.

 This dynamic model allows us to grasp the gradual changes and iterativenesses of exploration and exploitation and to consider the organizational responses to these changes from a dynamic perspective. The previous researches, which have been more static in their discussion, have narrower temporal perspectives of analysis and tend to capture individual product developments, thereby assuming the coexistence of existing product exploitation and a single case of product exploration. In contrast, this model captures the development of several product lines from a long-term perspective, and thus considers the development process in which multiple explorative product lines overlap temporally.

 This study aimed to determine the collective learning processes of firms that belong to interorganizational networks. From the perspective of the innovative milieu, the study attempted to clarify how firms that belong to interorganizational networks of small- and medium-sized enterprises in industrial clusters are exploiting the knowledge acquired from these networks and other member organizations to their own mature businesses and how they are exploring new technologies and business models that will contribute to their growth.

 The discussion on exploitation and exploration has been studied from various perspectives, starting with March (1991). Although organizational learning and innovation in ambidextrous organizations have been frequently discussed in recent years, research on interorganizational networks and small- and medium-sized enterprises is limited. An industrial cluster is a type of interorganizational network. Previous studies on industrial clusters have suggested that these clusters are places that foster knowledge creation and promote learning and innovation; studies have determined that collective learning within interorganizational networks is a key aspect of clusters. However, owing to the negligible research on the reasons and motivations for forming collaborative relationships between economic entities and the lack of conceptual frameworks that theoretically discuss this phenomenon, recent studies have focused on areas such as economic geography, and more consideration is being given to the innovative milieu which has been refined as a theoretical framework.

 The results of this case study show that collaboration between firms that belong to networks facilitates the sharing of new knowledge on the individual, interorganizational, and organizational levels. This study suggests that collective learning on the individual and interorganizational levels can enable learning and innovation on an organizational level via the transmission and sharing of knowledge within the organization, thus promoting further exploration toward growth.

 The purpose of this paper is to examine how differences in product development management of integral side firms that make integral products affect competition and business outcomes in the case of repeated development competition between modular side firms that make modular products and integral side firms in an industry.

 In recent years, the horizontal division of labor in industries has been progressing along with the development of modularization of products in various industries. Prior studies have argued that integral side firms can gain competitive advantage over modular side firms by designing products with more added value and differentiation. However, the modular versus integral product development competition may not necessarily be determined by a single product design. When integral side firms make core components in-house in order to differentiate their products, the “integrated firm's dilemma” problem also arises.

 As a case study, this paper selected Hitachi Seiki and Yamazaki Mazak, integral side firms of the Japanese machine tool industry, as matched pair cases and conducted a comparative study. They developed their own Numerical Control (NC) units and competed with Fanuc's NC units on the modular side of this industry.

 This study shows that the previous studies are effective under the condition that the modular side firms do not change the design rules of their products for a long period of time, but not necessarily sufficient under the condition that the modular side firms often change the design rules and the competition is repeated. In the latter condition, for integral side firms to continue to compete and avoid the problem of the integrated firm's dilemma, this study suggests that it is effective to implement product development management such as distributing development man-hours in terms of both organization and time, conducting specific product design, and reducing the number of parts by integrating core parts with the final product.

 This study theoretically examines what perspectives are insufficient in research on outside directors and how they should be supplemented.

 Outside directors are considered a central mechanism of corporate governance. However, some existing studies on the impact of outside directors on performance have observed a positive effect, others did not find a significant effect, and others observed a negative effect.

 Therefore, this study argues that agency theory, which is the standard argument of corporate governance that predicts a positive effect, or new institutional organization theory, the decoupling argument which believes that outside directors cannot have a significant effect since they are decoupled, are not sufficient to reveal the impact of outside directors.

 Based on a review of the literature from the upper echelon's perspective, we argue that to reveal the impact of outside directors, not only to the outside directors themselves, but also to the CEO and top management team members warrant attention. When the aforementioned are monitored and evaluated by outside directors, they not only become disciplined and increase their effort input in a more desirable manner, but also change their perception of the environment and the way of information processing.

 Therefore, future research should investigate how outside directors alter the cognitive and information processing of CEOs and top management team members and, as a result, what differences emerge in their strategic decision making. Specifically, we argue that the perspective adopted in our study, combined with the threat rigidity hypothesis, can lead to interesting hypotheses about exit and corporate reform decisions that are the opposite of what standard corporate governance theory predicts. Moreover, increased monitoring by outside directors can change the CEO's regulatory focus and affect corporate risk-taking activities, such as innovation and entrepreneurial activity.