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The M&A literature lacks coherence and consistency when explaining the role of CEO power in influencing post-acquisition firm performance in both theoretical and empirical terms. This study uses meta-analytic techniques to quantitatively synthesize and evaluate the impact of 11 CEO power constructs (CEO duality; compensation; ownership; founder CEO; acquisition experience; functional area experience; outside directorship; elite education; CEO celebrity; age; and tenure) on acquiring firms’ post-acquisition performance. Results of 85 independent studies show that CEO ownership, functional area experience, and tenure are significantly positive predictors for better acquisition performance. At the same time, CEO duality and CEO elite education are significantly negative predictors of different measures of acquisition performance. These findings indicate the importance of integrating different theories to enhance our understanding of the nature of strategic leadership in acquisition performance.

The extant literature provides much-needed support to understand marketing accountability and how marketing actions are related to financial performance (FP). However, we have limited understanding of the relationships between marketing actions and firms' social performance (SP) and environmental performance (EP). Understanding these links is critical to enhancing sustainable FP, SP, and EP. Moreover, the literature provides limited understanding of the measures by which SP and EP may be operationalized, or the data necessary to reach a conclusion. This study bridges these gaps by extensively reviewing the extant literature to offer a set of measures and data sources to operationalize SP and EP, and empirically show their relationships with marketing actions. We find that greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, environmental disclosure score, waste reduction, energy consumption, and recycling are prominent measures of EP, and that social disclosure score, philanthropy or community spending, and diversity of gender and race are prominent measures of SP. The KLD, ASSET4, and Bloomberg are prominent sources of data that can be used to operationalize SP, to which CDP may be added for EP. We also show that marketing actions positively affect EP and SP. This study contributes to the extant literature on SP and EP by identifying measures and data sources and linking marketing actions to both performance types. It contributes to policy development by identifying the importance of EP and SP and how marketing actions can help achieve such performance.

The internal factors that influence the decision to change dividend growth rates include two competing models: the earnings and free cash flow models. As far as each of the components of each model is considered, the informative and efficient dividend payout decisions require that managers have to focus on the significant component(s) only. This study examines the cointegration, significance, and explanatory power of those components empirically. The expected outcomes serve two objectives. First, on an academic level, it is interesting to examine the extent to which payout practices meet the premises of the earnings and free cash flow models. The latter considers dividends and financing decisions as two faces of the same coin. Second, on a professional level, the outcomes help focus the management’s efforts on the activities that can be performed when considering a change in dividend growth rates.

This study uses data for the firms listed in two indexes: Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA30) and NASDAQ100. The data cover quarterly periods from 30 June 1989 to 31 March 2011. The methodology includes (a) cointegration analysis in order to test for model specification and (b) classical regression in order to examine the explanatory power of the components of earnings and free cash flow models.

The results conclude that: (a) Dividends growth rates are cointegrated with the two models significantly; (b) Dividend growth rates are significantly and positively associated with growth in sales and cost of goods sold only. Accordingly, these are the two activities that firms’ management need to focus on when considering a decision to change dividend growth rates, (c) The components of the earnings and free cash flow models explain very little of the variations in dividends growth rates. The results are to be considered a call for further research on the external (market-level) determinants that explain the variations in dividends growth rates. Forthcoming research must separate the effects of firm-level and market-level in order to reach clear judgments on the determinants of dividends growth rates.

This study contributes to the related literature in terms of offering updated robust empirical evidence that the decision to change dividend growth rate is discretionary to a large extent. That is, dividend decisions do not match the propositions of the earnings and free cash flow models entirely. In addition, the results offer solid evidence that financing trends in the period 1989–2011 showed heavy dependence on debt financing compared to other related studies that showed heavy dependence on equity financing during the previous period 1974–1984.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate whether a firm’s cost structure (specifically, its cost stickiness) is associated with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sustainability factors of performance and disclosure.

Methodology/approach – This study uses MCSI Research KLD Stats (KLD) and Bloomberg databases for the 13-year period from 2003 to 2015 in constructing ESG performance and disclosure variables, respectively. The authors adopt the general cost stickiness models from Anderson, Banker, and Janakiraman (2003) and Banker, Basu, Byzalov, and Chen (2016) to perform the analysis.

Findings – The authors find that a firm’s level of cost stickiness is positively associated with certain sticky corporate social responsibility (CSR)/ESG activities (both overall and when separately classified as strengths or concerns) but not with other nonsticky CSR activities. The authors also show that the association between cost stickiness and ESG disclosure is incrementally stronger for firms with CSR activities classified as sticky. Furthermore, the authors provide evidence that ESG disclosure is greater when both cost stickiness and the degree of sticky CSR activities increase. The authors show that when cost stickiness is high and CSR activities are sticky, management has incentives to increase CSR/ESG sustainability disclosure to decrease information asymmetry.

Originality/value – The findings present new evidence to understand how management integrates cost management strategies with various dimensions of sustainability performance decisions and show that not all ESG activities are equally effective when it comes to cost stickiness. The authors also demonstrate that increased sustainability disclosure helps reduce information asymmetry incrementally more when both costs are sticky and CSR activities are sticky.

Purpose: This study explored technology-mediated abuse (TMA) by looking at the influence of topic exposure via education (in/formal), media (non/fictional), and personal experiences (self/close others) in shaping public knowledge, understandings, and perceptions of TMA.

Methodology: Community-sampled respondents (N = 551; n = 235 men, 263 women; aged 18–81 years, M = 27.42, SD = 12.31) reported their TMA awareness and topic exposure (n = 110; 20% of the total sample indicated prior exposure).

Findings: Results indicated TMA knowledge, understanding, and perceptions varied by prior sources of topic exposure. This suggests that TMA is a crime varying in public awareness and perceived repercussions.

Research limitations: Open-ended responses, although ideal for exploratory studies such as this one, limit the scope and power of quantitative analyses. Future work should test the current study’s conclusions in a generalizable, random sample via closed-item surveys.

Originality/value: Present findings elucidate which societal forces and education types are best suited for helping people understand TMA in all its complexity. Such understanding allows for practical considerations of the comparative in/effectiveness of formal curriculum and media in shaping cognitions regarding TMA victimization.

In this chapter, we conduct a metadata analysis of articles published in accounting, business and finance journals ranked by Australian Business Dean Council (ABDC), and benchmarked against the Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) ranking, that discuss firm- and country-level greenhouse gas (GHG) emission practices and reporting. Number of publications on GHG research, research methods, number of citations and ratio, across countries and continents are some of the topics we cover. We employ a list of articles on accounting, business and finance journals ranked A* and A in the ABDC journal rankings from 2015 to 2022. The study uses a structured literature review to analyse 74 papers on GHG reporting practices at the firm- and country level. Although this line of enquiry is still nascent and developing, the study found underrepresentation of Africa and the Middle East in GHG literature generally. In addition, majority of the articles examined also concentrate on quantitative methods. Most of the articles on GHG research are A-ranked in the ABDC ranking scheme. It was also found that few studies focus on the countries and companies with the highest emissions. While there has been some progress in interrogating GHG across the globe, there is still much room for further research. A key area of future research is exploring the GHG reporting practices in the African and the Middle Eastern sub-regions. There is also a need to examine countries and companies with high emissions. A further study needs to explore the benefits of other research methods in addition to quantitative methods, as different research methods could yield different insights that would enhance research-based conclusions.

Popular constitutionalists seek to recover the popular sovereignty foundations of American constitutionalism, bringing the people in as active participants in the constitutional enterprise as they create and refashion the Constitution by “majoritarian and populist mechanisms” (Amar, 1995, p. 89). The result is to recover an understanding, in FDR's words, of constitution as a “layman's document, not a lawyer's contract” (Kramer, 2004, p. 207). This understanding has deep roots in American constitutionalism, tracing its lineage back to the founding and, as popular constitutionalists insist, finds powerful expression in the likes of The Federalist and Abraham Lincoln (Ackerman, 1991; Tushnet, 1998). In exercising popular sovereignty, the people founded the Constitution, but they did not simply retreat from the trajectory of constitutional development. Rather, as Bruce Ackerman argues, since the Constitution of 1787 the people have spoken in a manner that has re-founded the Constitution giving us a “multiple origins originalism” (Kersch, 2006a, p. 801; see also Amar, 1998 and 2005). In turning to founding era thought and the notion of constitutional foundations, popular constitutionalists like Ackerman and Amar make common cause with conservatives who turn to original intent, but then they seek to synthesize this understanding with democratic expressions of popular will by emphasizing both formal and informal constitutional change, giving us layered “foundings,” and a more complex version of “living constitutionalism.” Such constitutional change, however, can only legitimately come from an authentic expression of “We the People.”

The authors review literature that focuses on women and minorities in the context of mergers and acquisitions (henceforth referred to as mergers for the sake of simplicity) aiming to explore how and to what extent diversity and gender issues are studied in merger research. The authors sort the reviewed research into three themes: the impact of gender on merger outcome, the impact of merger on women and minorities, and the impact of merger on diversity management and equality work. The authors suggest that it is important to conduct further studies on the topic but also assert that merger managers can learn from diversity management literature and practices how to manage employees with diverse backgrounds during the post-merger integration.