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This study investigates the relationship between media and social media sentiment and the likelihood of CEO pay cuts. The purpose is to examine whether and how these pay cuts influence market reactions. The study aims to provide insights into how external sentiment affects corporate decision-making and market perceptions, particularly in the context of CEO compensation.

Using a sample of 6,331 firm-year observations from 2015 to 2021, this paper employs quantitative analysis to assess the association between media and social media sentiment and CEO pay cuts. We utilise company DEF14A SEC filings to identify CEO pay cut dates and capture traditional media and Twitter sentiment 30-days prior to these filing dates.

We find a negative association between media and social media sentiment and CEO pay cuts, indicating that firms facing more negative sentiment are more likely to engage in pay cuts. We find evidence that CEO pay cuts are negatively correlated with market reactions, suggesting markets generally do not seem to favour decisions to cut CEO pay. This relationship, however, is complex and influenced by multiple factors, including the nature of sentiment and the specific components of CEO compensation.

The study faces limitations in identifying the varying degrees of pay cuts and their motivations. Additionally, the content of news articles and Twitter posts used to measure sentiment was not specifically identified, which may affect the accuracy of sentiment measurement.

This research offers valuable insights for managers and corporate decision-makers, highlighting the potential impact of public sentiment on critical executive compensation decisions.

The study underscores the influence of media and social media in shaping public opinion and driving corporate actions, highlighting the growing intersection between social perceptions and corporate governance. This has broader implications for how firms engage with media platforms and manage their public image, particularly in the realm of executive compensation.

We are the first to study the impact of media and social media sentiment on CEO compensation decisions and market reactions. By employing DEF14A filings as event dates for market reaction studies, we offer a novel approach to analysing the impact of executive compensation changes on market behaviour.

This case examines critical ethical accounting practice issues surrounding a request for proposal for audit services at Aviary Corporation based on a real Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement action. Audit and tax partners at Western Accounting Firm, a large international public accounting firm, used confidential information obtained from the company’s Chief Audit Officer to modify their proposal for audit services. In response to their actions, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined the auditing firm, the partners, and the Chief Audit Executive. The authors used publicly available information and adopted fictitious names to develop a teaching case that instructors can implement in a variety of accounting and ethics classes to increase students’ understanding of professional codes of conduct and independence guidance.

This study aims to explore the evolutionary trajectory of American corporations and their governance over the past few centuries, using a multidisciplinary investigative approach. The research focuses on the American business landscape because it has played a pivotal role in shaping the field of corporate governance theory and practice.

The author thoroughly investigates archival records, legal documents, academic publications, reputable databases and pertinent literature to unearth valuable insights into the key events that have influenced the evolutionary path of American corporations and their governance throughout history.

Delving into the evolutionary journey of American corporations and their governance reveals a multifaceted narrative, enhancing our comprehension of the impact of the external socio-economic environment, and the effectiveness and limitations of established corporate governance paradigms in addressing such transformations. This introspection establishes the groundwork for ongoing discussions concerning how corporate governance should adapt to meet the evolving needs and expectations of stakeholders and society as a whole, with a specific focus on the pivotal role that boardrooms could play in this regard.

The insights gained from this analysis offer practitioners a foundational resource to understand corporate governance in a complex business landscape. Armed with this understanding, practitioners can better align governance strategies with both historical context and contemporary requirements.

The research has significant social implications in the sense that history highlights the importance of the society in influencing corporate governance practices. It specifically emphasizes the need for the board of directors to consider both shareholder value and social responsibility, while also fostering public trust and confidence.

Many corporate governance concepts are often used with limited understanding of their initial intent, resulting in their unquestioned adoption. In this paper, the author offers a contextual exploration of historical events that have contributed to the development of these diverse corporate perspectives. To the best of the author’s knowledge, there are exceedingly few, if any, papers that present comparably insightful and multidisciplinary insights into the evolutionary path of corporations and their governance, especially within a dynamic and influential market like that of the USA.

This study analyzes the performance implications of adopting blockchain to support supply chain business processes. The technology holds as many promises as implementation challenges, so interest in its impact on operational performance has grown steadily over the last few years.

Drawing on transaction cost economics and the contingency theory, we built a set of hypotheses. These were tested through a long-term event study and an ordinary least squares regression involving 130 adopters listed in North America.

Compared with the control sample, adopters displayed significant abnormal performance in terms of labor productivity, operating cycle and profitability, whereas sales appeared unaffected. Firms in regulated settings and closer to the end customer showed more positive effects. Neither industry-level competition nor the early involvement of a project partner emerged as relevant contextual factors.

This research presents the first extensive analysis of operational performance based on objective measures. In contrast to previous studies and theoretical predictions, the results indicate that blockchain adoption is not associated with sales improvement. This can be explained considering that secure data storage and sharing do not guarantee the factual credibility of recorded data, which needs to be proved to customers in alternative ways. Conversely, improvements in other operational performance dimensions confirm that blockchain can support inter-organizational transactions more efficiently. The results are relevant in times when, following hype, there are signs of disengagement with the technology.

The rising number of food recalls has raised concerns about complexity, globalization and weak governance in the food supply chain. This paper aims to investigate the recall of plant-based products with data from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Introducing the structural topic modeling method allowed us to test theories on recall in the context of sustainable food consumption, enhancing the understanding of food recall processes. This approach helps identify latent topics of product recalls and their interwoven relationships with various stakeholders.

The results answer a standing research call for empirical investigation in a nascent food industry to identify stakeholders’ engagements for food safety crisis management for corporate social responsibility practices. This finding provides novel insights on managing threats to food safety at an industry level to extend existing antecedents and consequences of product recall at a micro level.

For practitioners, this empirical finding may provide insights into stakeholder management and develop evidence-based strategies to prevent threats to food safety. For public policymakers, this analysis may help identify patterns of recalls and assist guidelines and alarm systems (e.g. EU’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed) on threats in the food supply chain.

Two detected clusters, such as opportunisms of market actors in the plant-based food system and food culture, from the analysis help understand corporate social responsibility and food safety in the plant-based food industry.

The purpose of the study is to investigate, synthesize and critically evaluate empirical research findings on the behavioral traits of fund managers from 1994 to 2024. The ultimate goal is to provide a unified body of literature on three broad topics: first, fund managers' demographic and professional characteristics, such as age, gender, level of education and years of industry experience; second, fund managers' social and political connections; and third, fund managers' behavioral biases that lead to irrational investment decisions.

The relevant papers from selected journals were discovered and manually validated using the Scopus database. From 317 retrieved documents, 57 relevant articles were chosen and analyzed after the forward and backward search of the existing articles.

This paper presents a categorized summary of behavioral factors that have gained a foothold in influencing the behavior of fund managers in fund management research, with several studies demonstrating their significance leading to improved prediction and model precision, as this review indicates. In addition, the study summarized the contributions of prior empirical studies within the aforementioned three major categories and illustrated their consequences.

The present study contributes to the understanding of the effects of behavioral finance theories on fund managers by providing meaningful explanations of their behavioral traits based on empirical evidence and existing trends and knowledge gaps, both of which can influence the future direction of research.

This whistleblowing case study engages students in discussions about when and how to disclose differences of opinion on a revenue recognition matter with higher-ups in an organization. Factors to consider include the morality of whistleblowing, confidentiality obligations, the rules of conduct in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Code, Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), Dodd–Frank, and the US Supreme Court ruling in Digital Realty, Inc. v. Somers that addresses when to report matters to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Case questions are designed to promote students’ critical thinking skills, ethical reasoning skills, and decision-making. A flowchart of AICPA ethics rule 2.130.020 (Subordination of Judgment) provides the framework for making decisions when differences exist in financial reporting. The case provides learning objectives, implementation guidance, and teaching notes. The case was used in an accounting ethics course taught at the undergraduate senior level but can also be used in auditing, fraud examination, and advanced financial reporting courses.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, the author conducts the first detailed review on the impact of ownership variables on corporate tax avoidance, based on 69 archival studies over the two last decades.

Referring to an agency-theoretical framework, the author differentiates between six categories of ownership (institutional, state, family, foreign, managerial and cross-ownership/ownership concentration). The author also includes research on ownership proxies as moderators of other determinants of tax avoidance.

The review indicates that most research refers to institutional, state and family ownership. Moreover, except for state ownership, no clear tendencies on the impact of included ownership types can be found in line with the author’s agency-theoretical framework.

Regarding research recommendations, among others, the author stresses the urgent need for recognizing heterogeneity within and interactions between ownership proxies. Researchers should also properly address endogeneity concerns by advanced econometric models (e.g. by the difference-in-difference approach).

As international standard setters have implemented massive reform initiatives on both tax avoidance and corporate governance, this literature review underlines the huge interaction between those topics. Firms should carefully analyze their ownership structure and change their tax planning due to owners' individual tax preferences.

This analysis makes useful contributions to prior research by focusing on six categories of ownership and their impact on tax avoidance in (multinational) firms and moderating effects. The author provides a detailed overview about current archival research and likes to guide researchers to focus on ownership heterogeneity and endogeneity concerns.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in economic and financial hardships on firms, forcing them to make tough decisions regarding their social and ethical behavior. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the COVID-19 pandemic affected the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and disclosures of the US S&P 500 firms. In particular, this study examined the relationship between both CSR performance and COVID-19 and the relationship between CSR disclosures and COVID-19 along with the dimensions of environmental, social, and governance. Using t-tests and panel data analysis for the years 2018 through 2021, we found that CSR performance and CSR disclosure increased after the start of the pandemic for total CSR and for the dimensions of environmental, social, and governance. We also found that CSR performance was impacted by a larger change than CSR disclosures for all dimensions of CSR. This study is one of the first to examine the impact of COVID-19 on CSR and helps stakeholders understand the role that it played on firm decisions. The results further illustrate the importance that firms’ managements place on CSR performance and disclosures, even during a time of significant challenge and uncertainty.