The effect of political turnover on firms’ strategic change in the emerging economies: The moderating role of political connections and financial resources

Abstract Do external uncertainties hold back or accelerate firms’ strategic change? To examine this issue, we develop a theoretical framework on the relationship between policy uncertainty caused by political turnover and the level of a firm’s strategic change and also theorize how political connections and financial resources affect firms’ response in the form of strategic change to environmental uncertainty. We test our framework with 16,451 firm-year observations of listed firms in China from 2008 to 2015 and find that political turnover has a negative influence on the level of a firm’s strategic change. Moreover, this influence is mitigated by political connections and/or financial resources.