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This paper aims to examine whether chief executive officer’s (CEO) information technology (IT) background can affect enterprises’ continuous green innovation (CGI).

This study uses the data of China’s listed enterprises from 2011 to 2019.

The statistical results reveal that when a company hires a CEO with an IT background, its CGI can be higher. Firm ownership, firm digitization and industry bias alter the impact of CEO’s IT background on firms’ CGI. This effect is most pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), high-digitalized enterprises and skill-biased industries, while not in SOEs, low-digitalized enterprises and labor-biased industries.

This study has practical implications, as it measures CGI of enterprises. It also points to the necessity for a CEO’s IT background to enhance CGI.

The findings provide new strategies for incentivizing sustainable development and green innovation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to discuss the association between CEO’s IT background and enterprises’ CGI. The conclusions enrich both upper echelons theory and enterprise green innovation literature.

This paper aims to explore the impact of corporate financialization (CF) on green innovation (GI) and further disclose the moderating role of CEO’s individual characteristics in such relationship from the perspective of corporate governance.

This paper uses empirical research methods to study the impact of CF on GI based on the evidence from China capital market.

The findings indicate that: CF has a significant inhibiting effect on GI; female CEOs weaken the inhibiting effect of CF on GI compared to male CEOs; and CEO’s financial background positively moderates the inhibiting effect of CF on GI.

This paper, first, supplements the research literature on the economic consequences of CF and influencing factors of GI in non-financial firms. Then, it opens up the internal impact mechanism of CF on GI, which is moderated by the individual characteristics of corporate CEOs. Finally, it provides important reference for how to suppress CF of non-financial firms, cultivate CEOs that meet the needs of corporate development and promote GI development of enterprises through empirical evidence from China.

The authors examine if CEO education level and quality impacts firm's corporate social performance (CSP). Additionally, the authors investigate whether other CEO characteristics such as age, busyness, compensation and firm's governance quality moderate the relationship between CEO education and CSP.

The authors use panel regression framework amid set of controls for their analysis. The authors additionally use two-stage least squares regression (2SLS) for robustness tests.

The authors show that CEOs with a post-graduate business degree (PGBUS) impact firm's CSP positively, whereas other educational degree directly do not influence CSP. However, CEO's age, busyness, compensation and firm's governance quality are found negatively moderating such relationship. The results survive set of robustness tests, and results are consistent the roles of upper echelons in Indian firms' strategic behaviors.

The results seek for an integration of more ethics and social responsibility discussions in the different education levels including undergraduate degree in India to help engender a stronger sense of moral consciousness toward firms' stakeholders as the Indian economy continues to develop.

This research describes the adoption and the usage of Internet commerce technologies (EC) in a small to medium‐sized business (SME) in New Zealand. The case study is part of the aerial mapping industry. By relying on the technological innovation theories in the context of small business, this research looks at determinants of EC adoption and success in this SME. The findings in this research highlight the importance of the technological factors in general and the relative advantage characteristic specifically in driving the EC phenomenon in the case study. The individual context has further endorsed the central role of the CEO and his characteristics in adopting new technological innovations. However, EC usage in business in the case study was limited and its success expected to happen in the long terms projections only. The research addresses both theoretical as well as professional contributions and highlights implications in EC research in the case study.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the pay and performance of chief executive officers (CEOs) in Portuguese, non‐profit organizations (NPOs), focusing on the role played by the economic performance of the organization, together with that played by the structure of the board and the individual characteristics of the manager. If the CEO can influence the board structure, agency problems arise, which in turn allow the CEO to extract rent and demand compensation in excess of the equilibrium level.

An ordinary least squares (OLS) model and an instrumental variable (IV) models are estimated for comparative purposes. The IV permits to account for endogenous variables in the regression.

It is concluded that governance is important in the Portuguese non‐profit sector. Several variables affect the CEO, namely, organization performance variables, board composition variables and individual variables. This result highlights the urgent need for a code of governance practice to be introduced in this sector. Moreover, the paper integrates human capital in the definition of the earnings, concluding that this also contributes to earnings.

This paper has two limitations. The first is related to the data set and the second with the method adopted. With the reference to the data set, the span is limited and therefore the generalization of this result is questionable. A larger data span is needed to confirm the present results. Relative to the method, the OLS is unable to handle endogeneity variables in a regression. The instrumental variables (IV) can overcome this result, but some critics to this method have appear recently, when there are heterogeneous across subjects and local IV are needed.

A governance code should be adopted, involving NPO managers in their definition. A regulatory agency that will be the watch dog of the process should be implemented to enforce the modernization of Portuguese NPO.

This is the first paper analyzing governance issues on Portuguese NPO and the second paper at European level on NPO governance. It clarifies two issues, the absence of governance principles in Portuguese NPO and the need of a regulatory agency in this context.

The purpose of this paper is to use tenets of the complexity theory in order to study the effect of various determinants of firm’s performance, such as CEO’s compensation and age, for the case of 72 insurance companies.

The authors identify the asymmetries in the data set by creating quantiles and using contrarian analysis. Instead of ignoring this information and use a main effects approach, all the available information in the data set is taken into account. For this purpose, the authors use qualitative comparative analysis to find alternative equifinal routes toward high firm performance.

Five configurations are found which lead to high performance. Every one of the five configurations is found to be sufficient but not necessary for high firm performance.

The research findings contribute to a better understanding of the determinants of firm’s performance taking into account the asymmetries in the data set. The authors identify alternative paths toward high firm performance, which could be vital information for the decision maker inside a firm.

This paper aims to examine the influence that family firms’ top management team (TMT) behavior and characteristics exert on their innovation opportunity realization.

Data were collected through a survey addressed to a representative sample of Italian firms. The analyzed sample consists of 237 firms, 120 of which are family firms. A series of ordinary least squares models were used to test the four hypotheses.

Family firms realize fewer innovation opportunities than non-family firms. This result is fully mediated by the knowledge exchange in the TMT as follows: in family firms, the TMT exchanges less knowledge than in non-family firms, which drives their lower realization of innovation opportunities. In family firms TMT, the increase in the non-family members positively influences the TMT knowledge exchange, but only when the time the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) spends in searching for innovation opportunities outside the firm is low. The more the CEO search increases, the more this positive influence decreases, up to the point it becomes negative.

The study contributes to the literature on innovation, knowledge management and organizational design in family firms. Nevertheless, data were collected at a single point in time and in a single country.

The study suggests family firms on how to foster the realization of innovation opportunities. A greater TMT knowledge exchange allows to realize more innovation opportunities and the TMT characteristics emerged as the drivers of this TMT knowledge exchange. As such, family firms should examine the interaction of their TMT composition in terms of non-family and family members with the effort that the CEO deploys to search for innovation opportunities outside the firm.

Empirical investigation of the link between family ownership, absorptive capacity and innovation performance by considering TMT behavior and characteristics.

The authors investigate the effects of Chinese acquirer’s chief executive officer (CEO) risk preference on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) payment method and the moderating roles played by acquirer’s ownership, industry relatedness and whether the M&A is cross-border.

Using 4,624 worldwide M&A deals conducted by Chinese firms from 2009 to 2021, the authors conduct multiple linear regression and ordered probit regression. And comprehensive indexes constructed based on the observed features of acquirer’s CEOs are used to be the proxy for CEO risk preference.

The results show that the higher-level Chinese acquirer’s CEO risk preference is overall positively associated with using more stock in payment. Moreover, the above relationship is strengthened if the ownership of the acquirer is state-owned.

The authors highlight the importance of the non-economic factors and demonstrate a relationship between the Chinese acquirer’s CEO risk preference and the M&A payment method, providing support for and enriching the upper echelons theory (UET). Moreover, the unique risk priorities of Chinese acquirers’ CEOs are revealed.

This paper aims to conduct a comparative study between the historical development of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in both the USA and China. It is motivated by the phenomenon that CSR is developing in two different directions (global vs local).

A comparative study on sustainability-linked compensation illustrates how CSR in the USA is driven by firm-level economic decisions, in which the manifestations of CSR are usually those which prove to be the most profitable financially. Moreover, a case analysis on the green bond market in China contrarily illustrates how CSR in China is usually based more on alignment with top-down, state-led initiatives in which the state directs the ways in which CSR is manifested.

This paper reveals that despite globalizing trends are attempting to unify definitions of CSR, they inevitably become localized to fit the societal needs in which they are located.

By understanding how CSR development in these two countries has changed over time, this paper shows that future developments in CSR will likely be influenced more by local practices than by converging global forces.

The motivation behind Section 953(b) of Dodd–Frank Act was the increasing pay inequality and supposed CEOs' rent extraction. It required public companies to disclose CEO-to-employee pay ratios. Using the ratios reported by S&P 1500 firms in 2017–18, this paper examines whether companies led by women and minority CEOs have lower ratios than those led by white male CEOs.

This paper uses multivariate regression along with a matched sample analysis to examine whether female and minority CEOs have higher CEO-to-employee pay ratios compared to male and white CEOs, controlling for other determinants of pay ratios.

Results indicate that CEO-to-employee pay ratios are 22–28% higher for female CEOs compared to their male counterparts, controlling for other determinants of pay ratios. There is, however, no statistically significant difference between the pay ratios of minority vs white male CEOs. Minority female CEOs have lower CEO-to-employee pay ratios than white female CEOs. Consistent with literature, larger and more profitable firms have higher CEO-to-employee pay ratios.

While prior studies on determinants of CEO-to-employee pay ratios have used either industry-level or self-reported data for a small subset of firms (resulting in selection bias), this paper uses firm-level data that are available for all S&P 1500 firms due to new disclosure requirements due to the Dodd–Frank Act Section 953(b). Moreover, this is the first paper to test whether gender or ethnicity of a CEO affects within-firm pay inequality.