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A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently on corporate governance & CSR/environmental disclosure. Motivations for initiating disclosure of environmental liability information Jennifer Chen, Charles Cho and Dennis Patten examined potential motivations for late adopting US companies to begin disclosing environmental liability amounts in their financial statements. After reviewing 10-K reports filed from 1998 through to 2012, they identified 55 firms initiating environmental liability disclosure over the period, with all but three doing [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. What do private family firms do about paying out dividends? Sigrid Vandemaele and Mark Vancauteren applied behavioral economics to explain dividend policy in private family firms. Based on a sample of 501 Belgian firms, their results indicate that dividend payout is low when a family chief executive officer (CEO) leads the business and in the presence of a family-dominated board. The tendency of a family [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Role of Chief Sustainability Officers in top management teams Robert Strand notes that strategic leadership and corporate sustainability have recently come together through the emergence of “Chief Sustainability Officer” (CSO) roles in top management teams (TMT) among large corporations. These positions have dedicated corporate sustainability responsibilities. Strand explores the CSO phenomenon by considering two questions: Why are corporate sustainability positions being installed to the TMT? [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Do firms with responsible tax strategies have better consumer success? Yes, according to Inga Hardeck and Rebecca Hertl. These researchers looked at the effects of media reports on companies’ aggressive and responsible corporate tax strategies (CTSs) and corporate reputation, consumer purchase intention, and the consumer’s willingness to pay.  Results suggest that aggressive CTSs diminish corporate success with consumers, while responsible CTSs enhance corporate success with [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Does ethical reason sleep in for-profit education? Yes, according to Samuel Natale,  Anthony Libertella and Caroline Doran, who discuss the philosophical concerns and foundational challenges raised by a for-profit model of education. They argue that the for-profit model is governed by a business paradigm, without reference to the context in which it is found. The authors explore primary ethical questions and challenges presented by this [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Corporate responsibility affects high financial performance The growing literature on corporate responsibility (CR) has drawn attention to how different CR practices complement each other and interact in the form of configurations. This study investigated CR patterns associated with high financial performance for 466 firms in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Na Ni and colleagues identified similarities and differences across these three societies in CR [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Does having family members in the top team influence performance? Yes, according to Pankaj Patel and Danielle Cooper, who investigated the upper echelons of publicly-traded family firms that comprise both family and non-family members. Given that family members are often very influential in top teams, non-family members may participate less, thereby lowering the ability to devise strategic actions that increase performance. After examining 231 publicly-traded [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Managers’ empathy and wage cuts in difficult times Joerg Dietz and Emmanuelle Kleinlogel hypothesized that empathy affects decisions in ethical dilemmas that concern the well-being of not only the organization, but also of other stakeholders. They found that empathetic managers were less likely to comply with requests by an authority figure to cut the wages of their employees than were non-empathetic managers. However, when an [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Leader-follower trust enhances business performance Fenwick Jing and his associates reported a range of positive effects on performance in firms with trusting relationships between leaders and followers. The researchers used six measures of performance derived from surveys conducted in 100 small professional service firms: financial outcomes, staff and customer satisfaction, productivity, and staff and manager tenure. Firms with high levels of manager–follower trust outperformed their [...]

A selection of interesting research and articles we found recently. Do board age and gender diversity matter? An Australian test Muhammad Ali, Yin Ng and Carol Kulik sought to resolve some of the inconsistent findings of past board diversity research through a test of competing linear and curvilinear diversity–performance predictions. This research focuses on board age and gender diversity, and presents a positive linear prediction based on resource dependence theory, a negative linear prediction based [...]