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This paper studies the effects of a firm's financial performance (FP) and chief executive officer's (CEO) duality on the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in the context of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) among Chinese A-share-registered companies. The results depict a negative relationship between CEO duality and CSR disclosure. Our results demonstrate that better-performing firms disclose CSR information more frequently and of higher quality compared with firms with poor financial performance. This role of financial performance in the quality of CSR disclosure is generally valuable in public enterprises; however, it is relatively sluggish in state-owned enterprises the outcomes indicate that the dual leadership structure reduces assessments and renders CEOs less liable to their stakeholders. Therefore, this study offers valuable information and details for regulators to improve corporate governance and CSR from the perspective of stakeholder theory.

This research delves into the intricate interplay between green innovation performance (GIP), firm performance (FP), and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, leveraging enterprise life stage performance as a pivotal moderator. Analyzing a robust sample of 5450 firm-year observations spanning from 2015 to 2021, this study employs OLS regressions with panel data sourced from the CSMAR and HEXUN databases to validate prevailing research hypotheses. The findings underscore the pivotal role of CSR reporting in augmenting corporate value while concurrently mitigating inadequacies within the system. Moreover, this study uncovers a nuanced relationship between CSR reporting, GIP, and FP in the context of China, revealing a significant moderation effect attributed to the enterprise life cycle. These revelations carry profound implications for CSR reporting stakeholders, including academics, practitioners, and regulators. Notably, they provide valuable insights to authorities and boards of directors concerning the growth potential of enterprises and states. A distinctive facet of this study lies in its exploration of the moderating influence of an enterprise’s life stage on the relationship between CSR reporting and GIP or FP.

This paper examines the heterogeneous links between board gender diversity and corporate social performance in different industries across China. OLS regression models are approximated using the data of Chinese industries from 2009 to 2015. Robustness test and two-stage least square (2SLS) methods are incorporated to cater for robustness and endogeneity. Board gender diversity (BGD) stimulates corporate social performance (CSP) of firms with environmental and social risk exposure regardless of critical mass and directors’ independence. It does so for firms with governance risk exposure while incorporating the critical mass effect and the director’s independence. Overall, the positive effect of BGD is prevalent in different industries at an aggregate level while considering firms with an overall ESG risk exposure. The findings imply that BGD can mitigate the ESG risk exposure in terms of enhancing the CSP and the advantage can be transpired with the inclusion of even one female director (independent or executive) to the board. The study also highlights that BGD enhances CSP in industries with more environmental and social risk exposure while doing so in industries with governance risk exposure after complementation by critical mass and independent director effects.

PurposeThis study empirically evaluates the effect of China’s 2016 Green Financial System (GFS) framework on corporate green development, focusing on the role of green investment in achieving sustainability.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a quasinatural experiment design to combine difference-in-difference and propensity score matching methods for analysis. It examines 799 polluting and 1,130 nonpolluting firms from 2013 to 2020, enabling a comprehensive assessment of the GFS framework’s influence.FindingsThis study affirms a statistically significant positive influence of the GFS framework on escalating green investment levels in polluting firms. Robust sensitivity analyses, encompassing parallel trend assessment, entropy balancing test, and alternative proxies, corroborate these findings. A mediation analysis identifies the implementation of an environmental management system as the potential underlying mechanism. A cross-sectional analysis identifies high financial slack, high profitability, mandatory CSR regulations, and marketization level as the influencing factors.Research limitations/implicationsThe study’s findings have critical implications for policymakers, regulators, and companies. Demonstrating the effectiveness of the GFS framework in driving green investment underscores the importance of aligning financial systems with sustainability goals.Originality/valueThis study contributes novel empirical evidence on the positive effect of China’s GFS framework on corporate green development. The quasinatural experiment design, coupled with comprehensive sensitivity analyses, strengthens the robustness of the findings.

The context of China fosters different contextual factors, which influences the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in comparison to firms across the rest of the world. Political ties at a corporate level are one of these vital factors. This paper studies the influence of firm-level political ties (PT) and executive turnover (ET) on the quality of CSR disclosure in the context of shareholding status of departing executive in Chinese listed A-share firms. Stakeholder and Agency theories are applied to the dissemination of CSR disclosures in Chinese firms whereby we used 20,578 firm-years interpretations of Chinese registered companies between 2012 and 2019. The results foster a negative link between executive turnover and quality of CSR disclosures. In addition, a negative relationship has been found between political ties and the quality of CSR disclosure. The findings disclose that the shareholding status of departing executive moderate the relationship between the impact of political ties and executive turnover on firms quality of CSR disclosure, whilst the effect of executive turnover on the quality of CSR disclosure was found more pronounced for firms whose departing executive held larger shareholding (SH). This study contributed to the literature on the quality of CSR disclosure while recognizing the negative effect of executive turnover on a firm’s quality of CSR disclosure for politically tied firms with a reinforcing moderating role of the shareholding status of departing executive.

The increasing pressure on people to do something for society, in combination with the need for financial turnover in order to survive, is seen as one of the dominant factors for the rise of social enterprises. However, there is still debate on how social enterprises create social value in addition to economic value and how this is reflected in the business model. In this case study research, we investigate how the key components of the business model of social enterprises contribute to the creation of social and economic value. The cases in this research create social and economic value through the mutually interacting operation of key components and their sub-components. This interacting effect focuses on the one hand on the alignment of the internal architecture, market and financial management with the mission. The mission statement serves as a guiding principle. Furthermore, realizing the highest possible profit is not a goal in itself for social entrepreneurs. Generating profit serves the continuity of the company and the realization of social value. We also found that social enterprises can be configured as either market hybrids, blending hybrids, bridging hybrids or coupling hybrids.

This study pursues to clarify the effect of environmental management systems (EMS) comprehensiveness on environmental performance and financial performance using an extensive quantitative dataset obtained in Brazil over an eight-year period. It is recognized that the implementation of environmental management differs per company varying in how many environmental practices are adopted and hence how comprehensive the EMS is. The relationship between EMS comprehensiveness, environmental performance, and financial performance proves to be complex. First of all, the overall negative effect of environmental performance on financial performance may indicate that the resources needed to realize an improved environmental performance do not outweigh the cost reductions resulting from eco-efficiency or improved reputation. The effect of EMS comprehensiveness on financial performance is in line with that, indicating that an above average EMS comprehensiveness results in lower financial performance, which may correspond to high environmental management- and overhead costs. Across sectors, the companies operating in sector industries have high quality EMS comprehensiveness, while the companies in agriculture, commerce, and services exhibit a lower EMS.

The corona crisis caused discontinuity within the financial sector, which has further increased the importance of innovation for sustainability and the capability to manage discontinuity. The aim of this research is to investigate how the corona crisis affected the relationship between sustainability-oriented innovation, sustainable entrepreneurial orientation, and absorptive capacity in the financial sector. Empirical research was carried out in the Dutch financial sector during the corona crisis by means of semi-structured interviews with senior managers, semi-structured group interviews with employees, observations, and documentation. The results of this qualitative exploratory case-study research show that the corona crisis has caused discontinuity for the case organization, which has led to an increase in uncertainty and a decrease in risk appetite. However, the degree of proactivity, innovativeness, knowledge adaptation, knowledge acquisition, knowledge exploitation, and knowledge transformation have also increased as a result of the corona crisis. Therefore, the case organization was able to manage discontinuity and realize more sustainability-oriented innovation. Findings seem to indicate that for the case organization, the corona crisis had a predominantly positive effect on (the relationship between) sustainability-oriented innovation, sustainable entrepreneurial orientation, and absorptive capacity. This research has several theoretical and practical implications and contains recommendations for further research and practice.

EU border regions continue to face economic and social disadvantages compared to other regions in the same country. Since 1990, the European Commission has been implementing extensive territorial cooperation programs to support EU border regions in solving regional problems and building social cohesion. This study offers a contribution for decreasing the economic and social disadvantages of EU border regions by investigating the complementarity between institutional EU cross-border cooperation and social entrepreneurship. We argue that both concepts build upon similar drivers and characteristics with the aim of creating impact and bringing about change. We test and improve our initially literature-based framework to provide a better insight into how institutional and entrepreneurial processes could benefit from each other. We conduct interviews with experts operating at different governance levels and in various EU countries and border regions. The complementarity between both concepts is confirmed considering a differentiation between governance levels and fields of expertise. The results show that complementarity between the concepts mainly exists in terms of taking advantage of opportunities for a certain effect. The commercial activities of social enterprises are seen as effective, but it is necessary for social enterprises to establish sustainable EU cross-border cooperation and to improve regional social and economic development.

This study investigates the drivers of pressures from various institutions in the nonmarket environment and the responses of MNEs to these pressures in a host country. By taking a broad institutional perspective, this study pairs and integrates the economic perspective of new institutionalism and the sociological perspective of neo institutionalism with the corporate political strategy perspective. This research provides a systematic review of the drivers underlying pressures from various types of nonmarket institutions that explain the preference of firms to use a transactional or relational strategy to deal with these pressures. The evidence is based on research involving MNEs in the Netherlands. The nonmarket institutions that exert the greatest pressures at the national level pushing MNEs to use transactional more than relational strategies and tactics are regulatory and standards agencies. The pressures of political institutions, interest groups, and the media, in contrast, trigger MNEs to employ relational rather than transactional strategies and tactics.