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The aim of this study is to apply the concept of social norm dynamics to explain how corporate governance soft law is enforced.

Using data of German listed stock companies and of economic media coverage between 2001 and 2010, the authors observe the complex relationship between sanctions and behavior in the social context of corporate governance soft law.

The authors find the public discussion of normative demands related to corporate governance issues increases if firms do not comply with the German Corporate Governance Code. The authors show that groups of actors, such as DAX companies, represent the addressees of normative demands, i.e. targets of expectations about what is appropriate and what is not. The authors also find that normative demands tend to be personalized, as public discussion is greater when initiated by a specific individual or firm. Finally, the authors demonstrate that social control in terms of public sanctioning positively influences a firm’s compliance with the soft law whereby negative statements (disapproval) outweigh the effects of positive statements (approval).

We corroborate the social character of normative demands in the context of corporate governance soft law, and contribute to a better understanding of why soft law can work, despite it having no legally binding force. The results of our study suggest that sanction mechanisms in the context of social norms underpin the strength of soft law as an alternative to, or extension of, hard law.

The purpose of this paper is to find out whether, which and how international corporations use their codes of conduct to guide employees double‐bound by contradicting cultural norms.

The paper draws on integrative social contracts theory to content‐analyse the codes of conduct of the “Fortune Global 500” and the “UNCTAD 100”.

The vast majority of international corporations' codes either does not acknowledge contradictions between equally binding norms, or lacks priority rules for employees to resolve them. Nonetheless, several codes of conduct describe how norms might contradict, give clear priority to one set of norms (local or corporate) and provide specific examples to employees of when and how to apply a priority rule.

The paper identifies the 33 codes of conduct which can serve as best practices for international corporations' employee and corporate communication.

Contradictions between cultural norms are unacknowledged or unresolved in communication practice and little explored in corporate communication research. This paper assesses the scope of this caveat in communication practice and offers solutions in the form of an existing normative theory and of newly identified best practices.

The purpose of this paper is to pursue the following two objectives. First, this study examines how social capital indicators (reciprocal norm and social network) cause ethical consumption behavior by conceptualizing it as value co-creation specific to socially responsible firms. Second, it aims to verify whether corporate trust, which is another core indicator of social capital, mediates between social capital indicators and ethical consumption behavior.

For study subjects, the author selected general public located in the city of Seoul. A total of 307 respondents were used for statistical analysis after discarding unusable questionnaires. For the purpose of judgment sampling, the author selected those respondents who had prior purchase experience of the products or services provided by socially responsible firms.

This study tested core elements of social capital (reciprocal norm, social network and corporate trust) as predictors of ethical consumption behavior. In particular, the study newly conceptualized and validated ethical consumption behavior as one encompassing the civic engagement behavior whose premise is well encapsulated by value co-creation principle. The results demonstrate that the social network and reciprocal norm significantly influence ethical consumption behavior directly as well as indirectly through corporate trust.

The significance of this study may be that it adds to current literature on ethical consumption behavior by validating an empirical model of ethical consumption behavior from the perspective of consumer engagement paradigm. No previous studies of ethical consumption behavior empirically tested this model previously, only offering conceptual similarity between ethical consumption and consumer engagement. The study’s result may provide some insights as to the utility of value co-creation strategy for socially responsible firms as a useful way to promote ethical consumption behavior.

This study’s result may provide some useful insights as to how socially responsible firms can improve their performance by understanding what makes their customers voluntarily engage in favor of the firms to create shared values. In particular, the finding on the corporate trust mediating between bonding network and ethical consumption behavior sheds useful insights for the firms on how they should garner customer trust to trigger ethical consumption behavior. In this sense, socially responsible firms need to focus their resources on publicity or endorsements by highly respected celebrities designed to stress the firms’ trustworthiness and create favorable corporate image.

The finding that reciprocal norm has a significant impact on ethical consumption behavior also provides strategic implications on how to enhance the effectiveness of corporate messages. That is, the socially responsible firms should implement some corporate strategies designed to raise authentic corporate image of the firms by hiring the socially disadvantaged and returning some portion of profit back to society. By doing this, the socially responsible firms can expect to instill some sense of reciprocity into their current as well as potential customers.

Despite this conceived linkage, no previous research has empirically approached ethical consumption from the perspective of civic engagement to examine whether ethical consumers voluntarily engage in firm-specific engagement behavior that fulfills their civic responsibility. Therefore, the present research embarks on a new approach to conceptualize ethical consumption as a construct that embodies civic engagement that is conceptually encapsulated by the principle of value co-creation.

Objectively, this study aims to recognise the antecedents that influence the managers’ environmental practices behavioural intention and its impact on their companies’ performance, namely, environmental and perceived future financial performance.

Standardised structured questionnaires are distributed through the investor relations department where the targeted respondents must be ranked manager position and above. A total of 107 usable responses were collected. To analyse the data collected, partial least square structural equation modelling is use.

Empirically, subjective and corporate norms are positively influencing the managers’ environmental practices intention. Corporate norm has the greatest effects among the antecedents. Furthermore, managers’ environmental practices intention is also found influential to their behaviour. Subsequently, the managers’ environmental practices behaviour is also positively influencing both environmental and perceived future financial performance. In which, managers’ environmental practices behaviour has a larger effect on their companies’ environmental performance. Finally, environmental performance is also positively influencing the perceived future financial performance.

This study enhance the theoretical framework by integrating the extended theory of planned behaviour and norm activation model and extend the original theory of planned behaviour. Also, the greatest effect on corporate norm suggests companies to embrace corporate responsibilities internally to protect the environment. Practically, this study also provides few suggestions to the management so that they can cultivate environmentally friendly behaviour among the employees.

This study is integrating the extended theory of planned behaviour and norm activation model to examine the antecedents to the environmental practices intention among managers of the Malaysia listed companies and extends the original theory of planned behaviour to examine the impact of environmental practices behaviour to companies’ performance.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the influence of individual and organisational factors on pro-environmental behaviours of the employees at the workplace.

A model explaining pro-environmental behaviours at workplace has been proposed based on contemporary literature related to value-belief-norm (VBN) theory, corporate environmentalism framework and norm. A cross-sectional survey was carried out in 20 manufacturing organisations in India and 383 useful individual responses were collected. The proposed model has been tested with the help of structural regression analysis.

The results of the study show that both individual characteristics as well as organisational efforts influence employees’ pro-environmental behaviours. However, the effect varies as per the type of behaviour. Personal norm mediates the relationship between subjective social norm and two types of pro-environmental behaviours.

An individual faces subjective or objective constraints while exhibiting pro-environmental behaviours. The effect of subjective or the objective constraint needs to be explored in future studies.

To explain pro-environmental behaviours at workplace the authors tested VBN theory, as it was overlooked till date in management literature. It also contributes to the VBN literature by extending it to include organisational variables like corporate environmentalism and social psychological variable like social norm.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the role that law plays for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in substance, action and reporting, including whether CSR functions as informal law.

The theoretical point of departure is based in legal science. Through a discussion of various contexts of CSR in which law and legal standards feature, the article questions the conception that CSR is to do “more than the law requires”. CSR is discussed with the triple bottom line as a point of departure, focussing on social (esp. labour and human rights) and environmental dimensions.

It is argued that CSR functions as informal law, and that important principles of law function as part of a general set of values that guide much action on CSR. Furthermore, it is argued that aspects of law in the abstract as well as in the statutory sense and as self‐regulation influence the substance, implementation and communication of CSR, and that the current normative regime of CSR in terms of demands on multinational corporations may constitute pre‐formal law.

Through its discussion, observations and examples of the role played in CSR by law in the abstract as well as the statutory sense, by international, supranational and national soft and hard law and documents, and by public regulation as well as corporate self‐regulation, the paper is of value to corporate managers, public regulators, NGOs and individuals with an interest in CSR, including as an aspect of corporate governance.

This study examines how community norms, such as religious atmosphere and economic pressures, affect corporate philanthropic giving. Grounded in upper echelon theory, the authors further focus on how the women on board of directors (BODs) play an important role in the relationship between community norms and corporate philanthropic giving.

This study utilizes a two-stage Heckman selection model to control the sample-selection bias. The final sample includes 8,566 observations for the first stage and 5,575 observations for the second stage. Then, by using a sample of Chinese listed firms in 2010–2014, this study establishes a strong and robust support for the hypotheses.

This study finds that religious atmosphere is significantly and positively associated with corporate philanthropic giving, whereas the relationship between economic pressure and corporate philanthropy is negative. Furthermore, women on BODs not only strengthen the relationship between religious atmosphere and corporate philanthropic giving but also strengthen the relationship between economic pressure and corporate philanthropic giving.

First, the authors contribute to community literature by developing a subdivided perspective. The authors provide the first attempt to empirically investigate the hidden association between the two perspectives of community (religious atmosphere and economic pressure) and corporate philanthropic giving. Second, the authors contribute to the literature on corporate philanthropy by expanding the antecedents of corporate philanthropic giving to communities where firms are headquartered. Third, by capturing the multiple identities of women, the authors enrich the study of the influence of minority groups on corporate decision-making. The authors find that gender diversity on BODs strengthen the influence of community norms on corporate philanthropic giving.

This paper aims to examine corporate governance and consequences of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in the US from a socio‐political perspective.

The author employs neo‐liberalism and its related mentality of governmentality to develop an analysis of how corporate governance and reforms such as SOX are socially constructed through autonomous agents, including managers and accountants, and various power relationships that comprise government.

This paper theorizes that legislative reform, such as SOX, represents pervasive mechanisms of disclosure, surveillance and power, and an insurance rationality designed to manage the new and significant risks of corporate governance. A framework is established which conceptualizes SOX as the intersection of neo‐liberalism, political rationalities and governmental techniques, and accounting practices which lead to the elements of security, quantification and shareholder value. Through this framework a model of risk as governance is developed that examines SOX through technologies of the self, calculation and insurance, designed to act upon managers using knowledge about control or financial statement weaknesses. Such mechanisms identify corporate governance risks, which can be acted upon by outside experts, such as accountants.

The major inference from this paper is that corporate governance research in accounting should pursue new lines of inquiry, which will permit the more profitable extension of existing research. Such inquiry should focus less on empirical corporate governance factors and more on the relationships, and power constructs of corporate governance, as well as how legislative reforms employ tactics to normalize the behaviour of not only managers, but also accountants.

The past few decades have seen a gradual convergence in corporate governance norms the world over, entailing a discernible shift towards shareholder primacy models. It holds particularly true of developing countries, many of which have steadily amended corporate governance norms to enhance the scope of shareholder rights. This is usually justified through the rationale that increasing protection for foreign investors and shareholders would mean greater investment in capital market and overall financial market development. In India, the shift coincides with a series of fundamental economic and financial policy reforms initiated in the 1990s: collectively and loosely referred to as “liberalisation”, this process marks a paradigm-shift from a tightly controlled welfare economy to one considerably more laissez-faire in its orientation. A fallout of which was that the need to attract and sustain foreign investments acquired an unprecedented significance. The purpose of this paper is to help the readers understand in this larger context the corporate law reform initiatives in India, particularly those pertaining to shareholder rights and allied issues.

This paper empirically tests the hypothesis that enhanced shareholder protection leads to greater levels of investments, and financial developments generally. It then uses regression analysis to detect if the change in corporate governance, making it more shareholder-friendly, has had any effect on growth in financial market. It is divided into two broad parts. The first tracks the evolution of corporate governance norms in India. A robust qualitative and quantitative analysis is used to determine the tilt towards a shareholder primacy regime that Indian corporate governance regime now displays. The second chapter deals with the regression analysis where the outcome variable is financial market growth, and explanatory variable is the change in the governance regime with relevant control variables.

The authors find that change in shareholder primacy corporate governance has little effect on financial market growth in India. The authors would suggest that instead of changing the law in books, more emphasis should be given to implement those regulations and increase the overall rule of law.

This is the first time that such a wide-scale study has been conducted in India, using Bayesian methods. It ought to be of immense value to professionals and academics both.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is a global divergence or convergence with regard to the ethics of corporate governance.

Regional perspectives on the ethics of corporate governance from four regions, namely, Africa, Asia, Continental Europe and North America are first briefly introduced and characterized in terms of distinctions between the ethics of governance and the governance of ethics, internal and external corporate governance, and shareholder and stakeholder orientations to corporate governance. Thereafter these regional perspectives are compared in order to determine whether there is a global divergence or convergence with regard to the ethics of corporate governance amongst these four regions of the world.

There are four factors that potentially may have an impact on the ethics of corporate governance, namely, patterns of ownership, the prevailing view of the role of the firm in a society, cultural and societal norms, and socio‐political priorities. The influence of these factors makes a global convergence on the ethics of corporate governance neither likely nor desirable.

Not all regions of the world were included in this comparative study. Regions that need to be included in future studies are Latin America, Central Asia and the Middle East.

The main finding, namely, that a global convergence on the ethics of corporate governance is neither likely nor desirable, should be taken into consideration by promoters of global corporate governance standards.

Based on regional perspectives from Africa, Asia, Continental Europe and North America, the paper provides a global perspective on the question of whether there is global divergence or convergence with regard to the ethics of corporate governance amongst these four regions of the world.