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This paper aims to examine the effect of critical mass of women managers on corporate boards on the voluntary disclosure of climate change in a developing country in which the regulations on climate change disclosure is an area of growing research interest.

This study uses logistic panel regression models with a sample of 1,001 firm-years for companies in the Borsa Istanbul 100 Index that were asked to disclose voluntary climate change indicators over the seven-year period from 2014 to 2020 through the Carbon Disclosure Project.

This paper provides evidence from an emerging country that the critical mass of women on the board has no impact on voluntary climate change disclosure. In addition, the presence of independent managers on the board was found to have a significant impact on climate change disclosure. In addition, the results show that larger companies are more likely to report their climate change activities. Large companies are more visible due to their size, are perceived by stakeholders as more polluting and are, therefore, more likely to report on the environment.

The results show that the critical mass of women on the board has no effect on voluntary disclosure of climate change. Empirical tests are still needed to strengthen the overall validity of the critical mass of at least three women on boards in Türkiye.

Despite many valuable insights provided by critical mass theory, very few studies directly address critical mass and voluntary disclosure of climate change. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical and comprehensive paper in the Turkish context evaluating critical masses and voluntary corporate climate change giving a comparison between firms listed on financial industry and nonfinancial industry.

Despite the well-recognized importance of recycled water, the study of industry-peer pressure on recycled water is relatively new. This study investigates how organizations experience and react to industry-peer pressure to set recycled water targets. Additionally, this study investigates the role of board chairs involved in sustainability committees in contributing to responses to industry-peer pressure.

Using Eviews 12, this study employed a pooled logistic regression model to analyze data from 1,346 firms on Taiwan and Taipei exchanges (2017–2020).

The findings revealed that frequency-based imitation drives recycled water target-setting diffusion. However, there is no direct relationship between outcome-based imitation and recycled water target-setting. Notably, outcome-based imitation drives the adoption of recycled water target-setting of firms with board-chair membership in sustainability committees.

This study faces certain data limitations. First, this study primarily focuses on water recycling. Future research could explore other ways to reduce water usage, such as using water-efficient equipment. Second, this study gathered information solely on the presence or absence of a board chairperson on the sustainability committee. Future researchers could explore the impact of the composition of sustainability committee on recycled water target-setting. Lastly, the sample used in this study is restricted to Taiwan's corporations that existed during 2017–2020. Future researchers may consider adopting a longitudinal design in other economies to address this limitation.

The findings of this study offer several guidelines and implications for recycled water target-setting and the composition of sustainability committees. It responds to an urgent call for solutions to water shortages when pressure from governments and nongovernmental organizations is relatively absent. The number of industry peers that have already set recycled water targets is indispensable for motivating firms to set their own recycled water targets. In terms of insufficient water-related regulatory pressure and normative pressure, this study found evidence suggesting that the direct motivation for setting recycled water targets stems from mimetic pressures via frequency-based imitation. The evidence in this study suggests that policymakers should require companies to disclose their peers’ recycled water target information, as doing so serves as an alternative means to achieving SDG 6.3.

Recycled water target-setting might be challenging. Water recycling practices may face strong resistance and require substantial additional resources (Zhang and Tang, 2019; Gao et al., 2019; Gu et al., 2023). Therefore, this study suggests that firms should ensure the mindfulness of board members in promoting the welfare of the natural environment when making recycled water target-setting decisions. To reap the second-mover advantage, firms must consider the conditions in which board members can more effectively play their role. Corporations may help their chairpersons in setting recycled water targets by recruiting them as members of sustainability committees. Meanwhile, chairpersons tend to activate accurate mental models when the water conservation performance of pioneering industry peers is strong enough to indicate the potential benefits of adopting recycled water target-setting. Investors’ and stakeholders’ understanding of how the composition of sustainability committees is related to recycled water target-setting may help to identify the potential drivers of firms’ water responsibility. Investors and stakeholders should distinguish firms in terms of the board chair’s membership of their sustainability committee and focus on water-use reduction outcomes in the industry. This study provides insights into circumstances whereby chairpersons help to restore the water ecosystem.

This study explains how frequency-based and outcome-based imitation are two prominent mechanisms underlying the industry-peer pressure concerning recycled water target-setting. Moreover, this study fills literature gaps related to the moderating roles of board-chair membership in sustainability committees concerning industry-peer pressure on recycled water target-setting.

The rapid expansion of internet usage and device connectivity has underscored the importance of understanding the public’s cyber behavior and knowledge. Despite this, there is little research that examines the public’s objective knowledge of secure information security practices. The purpose of this study is to examine how objective cyber awareness is distributed throughout society.

This study draws on a large national survey of adults to examine the relationship between individual factors – such as demographic attributes and socioeconomic resources – and information security awareness. The study estimates several statistical models using weighted logistic regression to model objective information security awareness.

The results indicate that socioeconomic resources such as income and education have a significant effect on individuals’ information security awareness with richer and more highly educated individuals exhibiting greater awareness of important security practices and tools. Additionally, age and gender represent consistent and clear informational gaps in society as older individuals and females are significantly less knowledgeable about an array of information security practices than younger individuals and males, respectively.

The findings have important implications for our understanding of information security behavior and user vulnerability in an increasingly digital and connected society. Despite the growing importance of cybersecurity for all individuals in nearly all domains of daily life, there is substantial inequality in awareness about secure cyber practices and the tools and techniques used to protect one’s self from attacks. While digital technology will continue to permeate many aspects of daily life – from financial transactions to health services to social interactions – the findings here indicate that some users may be far more exposed and vulnerable to attack than others.

This study contributes to our understanding of general user information security awareness using a large survey and statistical models to generalize about the public’s information security awareness across multiple domains and stimulates future research on public knowledge of information security. The findings indicate that some users may be far more exposed and vulnerable to attack than others. Despite the growing importance of cybersecurity for all individuals in nearly all domains of daily life, there is substantial inequality in awareness about secure cyber practices and the tools and techniques used to protect one’s self from attacks.

This study aims to examine the impact of corporate governance (CG) on anti-corruption disclosure (A-CD), paying particular attention to the FTSE 100. Notably, it examines how board and audit committees’ characteristics affect the quantity and quality of anti-corruption disclosure.

Data from FTSE 100 firms, spanning the period from 2014 to 2020, were analysed using the regression of the Poisson fixed effect and GEE analyses.

The findings show that gender diversity, audit committee expertise and the independence of the audit committee are positively associated with both quantity and quality of anti-corruption disclosure. Notably, no statistically significant relationships were identified between anti-corruption disclosure and factors such as board size, role duality or board meetings.

The findings provide valuable insights for decision-makers and regulatory bodies, shedding light on the elements that compel UK companies to enhance their anti-corruption disclosure and governance protocols to alleviate corruption and propel efforts towards ethical behaviour.

This study makes a notable contribution to the sparse body of evidence by examining the influence of board and audit committee attributes on anti-corruption disclosure subsequent to the implementation of the UK Bribery Act in 2010. Specifically, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study assesses for the first time the impact of board and audit committee mechanisms on both the quantity and quality of anti-corruption disclosure.

This study investigates CSR reporting’s role in debt access and cost of debt with the moderating role of external assurance and GRI adoption in emerging markets. Such an investigation will help facilitate external fund flow to firms in better terms.

We collected data from 16 emerging markets between 2008 and 2019 from the Thomson Reuters Eikon and ran fixed effects regression analysis and robustness tests by addressing endogeneity concerns, adopting alternative sample and integrating additional control variables.

The results show that CSR reporting has a positive association with access to debt and a negative association with the cost of debt. Furthermore, both external assurance and GRI adoption do not significantly moderate between CSR reporting and access to debt and cost of debt. Hence, creditors in emerging markets are not interested in CSR report assurance and GRI framework adoption and do not integrate them into their lending decisions.

Emerging markets are unique settings characterized by high growth rates, limited capital availability, high debt costs and weak institutional environments. Thus, reaching debt with convenient conditions is critical for emerging market firms to finance their growth. Hence, our study will help emerging market firms reach external funding more easily and in better terms via CSR transparency. Besides, our investigation is based on a broad sample of emerging markets, and hence updates prior emerging market studies conducted in single-country settings. Lastly, we test the complementarity of third-party assurance and GRI adoption to CSR reporting in loan contracting.

This paper aims to analyse the influence of workforce diversity on the firm’s likelihood to develop organisational innovations. Operationalising human resources diversity is not straightforward, and its effect has been rather overlooked in the context of non-technological innovations. This study analyses the impact of task-related diversity among research and development (R&D) unit workers and women R&D workers, in particular.

To estimate the impact of task-related diversity on firm propensity to undertake organisational innovation, this study uses a generalised linear model (GLM) – with a binomial family and log–log extension. GLMs are used to control problems of over-dispersion, which, in models with binary response variables, could generate inaccurate standard error estimates and provide inconsistent results.

This paper provides three important results. Firstly, employee diversity increases the firm’s propensity to engage in organisational innovations. Secondly, the influence of each facet of task-related diversity varies depending on the type of organisational innovation considered. Thirdly, gender has an effect on the innovation process; this study shows that women play a different role in the production of non-technological innovations.

This paper makes several contributions to the literature. Firstly, it makes a theoretical contribution to research on innovation management by considering the influence of human resources diversity on the development of non-technological innovations. Secondly, this study analyses the role of workforce diversity in an R&D department context to clarify the contribution made by women R&D workers.

This study aims to focus on key approaches to education for sustainability (EfS) leadership development in the context of Malaysian and Japanese universities. The authors identify key indicators of effective EfS leadership development approaches using both descriptive and inferential analyses, identify and compare the preferred leadership learning methods of academics and examine the impact of marital status, country of residence and administrative position on the three EfS leadership development approaches.

The study is quantitative in approach and survey in design. Data were collected from 664 academics and analysed using the efficient partial least squares (PLSe2) methodology. To provide higher education researchers with more analytical insights, the authors re-estimated the models based on the maximum likelihood methodology and compared the results across the two methods.

The inferential results underscored the significance of four EfS leadership learning methods, namely, “Involvement in professional leadership groups or associations, including those concerned with EfS”, “Being involved in a formal mentoring/coaching program”, “Completing formal leadership programs provided by my institution” and “Participating in higher education leadership seminars”. Additionally, the authors noted a significant impact of country of residence on the three approaches to EfS leadership development. Furthermore, although marital status emerged as a predictor for self-managed learning and formal leadership development (with little practical relevance), administrative position did not exhibit any influence on the three approaches.

In addition to the theoretical and methodological implications drawn from the findings, the authors emphasize a number of practical implications, namely, exploring the applicability of the results to other East Asian countries, the adaptation of current higher education leadership development programmes focused on the key challenges faced by successful leaders in similar roles, and the consideration of a range of independent variables including marital status, administrative position and country of residence in the formulation of policies related to EfS leadership development.

This study represents an inaugural international comparative analysis that specifically examines EfS leadership learning methods. The investigation uses the research approach and conceptual framework used in the international Turnaround Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education initiative and uses the PLSe2 methodology to inferentially pinpoint key learning methods and test the formulated hypotheses.

This research investigates how consumers who are most active on Facebook during the day vs in the evening differ, differ in their ad consumption, and how advertising effects vary as a function of a key moderator: gender.

Using a survey of 281 people, the research identifies Facebook users who are more intensely using mobile social media during the day versus in the evening, and measures five Facebook mobile advertising outcomes: brand and product recall, clicking on ads, acting on ads and purchases.

The results show that women who are using social media more intensely during the day are more likely to use Facebook to seek information, hence, Facebook mobile ads tend to be more effective for these users compared to those in the evening.

This contributes to the literature by analyzing how the time of day affects social media behavior in relation to mobile advertising effectiveness, and broadening the scope of mobile advertising effectiveness research from other than just clicks on ads to include measures like brand and product recall.

By analyzing the effectiveness of mobile advertising on social media as a function of the time of day, advertisers can be more targeted in their media buys, and so better use their social media budgets, i.e. advertising is more effective for women who use social media (Facebook) more intensely during the day than for those who use social media more intensely in the evening as the former tend to seek more information than the latter.

This research extends media ecology theory by drawing on circadian rhythm research to provide a first demonstration of how the time of day relates to different uses of mobile social media, which in turn relate to social media mobile advertising consumption.

While research on social media advertising has been steadily increasing, little has been explored on how users consume ads when they engage with social media at different periods along the day. This paper extends media ecology theory by investigating time of day, drawing on the circadian rhythm literature, and how it relates to social media usage.

The current advancements in technologies and the internet industry provide users with many innovative digital devices for entertainment, communication and trade. However, simultaneous development and the rising sophistication of cybercrimes bring new challenges. Micro businesses use technology like how people use it at home, but face higher cyber risks during riskier transactions, with human error playing a significant role. Moreover, information security researchers have often studied individuals’ adherence to compliance behaviour in response to cyber threats. The study aims to examine the protection motivation theory (PMT)-based model to understand individuals’ tendency to adopt secure behaviours.

The study focuses on Australian micro businesses since they are more susceptible to cyberattacks due to the least security measures in place. Out of 877 questionnaires distributed online to Australian micro business owners through survey panel provider “Dynata,” 502 (N = 502) complete responses were included. Structural equational modelling was used to analyse the relationships among the variables.

The results indicate that all constructs of the protection motivation, except threat susceptibility, successfully predict the user protective behaviours. Also, increased cybersecurity costs negatively impact users’ safe cyber practices.

The study has critical implications for understanding micro business owners’ cyber security behaviours. The study contributes to the current knowledge of cyber security in micro businesses through the lens of PMT.

In recent times, stakeholders have called on corporate organizations especially those charged with governance to embrace full disclosure on non-financial issues, especially sustainability reporting. Based on this premise, this study aims to examine the influence of corporate board and assurance on sustainability reporting practices (SRP) of selected 80 firms from 8 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

To measure the corporate board, the authors use both board variables and audit committee variables. Also, the authors adapted the sustainability score model as used by previous authors in the field of sustainability disclosure to measure SRPs. The analysis was done using both ordered logistic regression and probit regression models.

The results show that the combination of board corporate and assurance has a positive and significant impact on the sustainability reporting practice of selected firms in sub-Saharan Africa.

The study places emphasis on the need for strong collaboration between the corporate board and external assurance in evaluating and enhancing the quality of sustainability disclosure.

The study bridged the gap in the literature in the area of corporate board, assurance and SRP of corporate firms which has received little attention within sub-Saharan Africa.