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This secondary source case is based mainly on legislative documents (that tracked the initiation and progress of the Parental Rights in Education bill that later became an Act), corporate documents (published by The Walt Disney Company) and news articles from publications such as The New York Times and Bloomberg. All sources are cited in the case narrative and as end notes.

In April 2022, The Walt Disney Company and its CEO, Robert Chapek, were at the center of a controversy over the company’s opposition to the State of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill. The bill, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by its critics, prohibited instruction on sexual identity and gender orientation in the state’s elementary schools. The controversy stemmed from Disney’s initial non-reaction to the bill and its later strident opposition and call for its repeal. Chapek was pressured by negative media publicity and employee disgruntlement on the one hand and adverse economic consequences for opposing the bill by the state’s Governor, Ron DeSantis. Chapek and the Board had to respond to the political threats to Disney’s economic well-being while appeasing its employees and other stakeholders who wanted the company to be a corporate champion in diversity, equity and inclusion.

The case is best suited for advanced undergraduate or graduate leadership, strategic management and marketing courses. From a leadership and strategic management perspective, the case is well-suited for demonstrating the evolving expectations of leaders and corporate social responsibility, as well as the concepts of issue framing and nonmarket management. Instructors may also leverage the case in marketing courses (e.g. brand management), as CEO activism (i.e. messaging and practice) is one characteristic of brand activism (Animation Guild, 2022).

This study aims to examine how employee advocacy, via the value and credibility of their professional social media content, affects their followers’ attitudes toward the brand through the mediating role of parasocial relationships.

A quantitative research was used, and questionnaires were answered by LinkedIn users who follow at least one person they consider to be an employee advocate. A total of 390 responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results suggest that the credibility of an employee advocate positively impacts the parasocial relationship between the user and the employee, which, in turn, impacts the user’s attitude toward the brand represented by the employee advocate.

The results of this study suggest that employee advocacy on LinkedIn can shape positive attitudes toward the advocate’s brand. These findings suggest that organizations should consider employee content and credibility as strategic tools in marketing communications.

This study delineates the linkages between the credibility and content value of the employee advocate, the parasocial relationship they have with followers and their attitude toward the brand. This research contributes to the literature on employee advocacy and studies on the concepts of parasocial interactions and relationships.

Based on Lasswell’s communication model, this study investigates how four categories of factors (i.e. the source, content, medium and receiver) conjointly affect the relational, financial and social outcomes (i.e. what effect) of CSA communication.

With a survey (N = 366), this study found configurations of core CSA communication factors leading to three different CSA communication outcomes.

While this study found multiways to yield three different CSA outcomes, combinational logic indicated the combined effects from source, content, medium and receiver. With content and medium, individuals’ connectedness (receiver) to a CSA issue is a core factor leading to a high level of purchase intention and issue advocacy. This study also found that message strategies (i.e. informativeness, factual tone, no promotional tone) are core factors leading to a high level of trust and issue advocacy.

With the theoretical guidance, this research contributes to strategic communication practice for various entities involved in advocacy communication by enabling an improved understanding of advocacy communication factors and triggering different communication outcomes.

As CSA communication involves multiple strategies, conventional research agenda focusing on correlational and path analysis approaches provide limited understanding of communication practice. To fill this void, this study adopts a configurational approach to understand current CSA communication practices holistically.

This paper aims to empirically examine the impact of mandatory CSR disclosure on the CEO pay performance sensitivity.

Using the mandatory requirement of CSR disclosure as an exogenous shock, the authors compare the changes in CEO pay performance sensitivity for treatment firms with control firms through a difference-in-difference (DiD) approach.

The authors find that mandatory CSR disclosure enhances CEO pay performance sensitivity. The results also show that monitoring CEO power is a conduit through which mandatory CSR disclosure affects CEO pay performance sensitivity. The positive impact is more profound in firms with a powerful CEO, i.e. one who is politically well-connected, holds dual roles as both CEO and Chairman, and/or has had a long tenure. Furthermore, the increased CEO pay performance sensitivity after the mandate is prominent among state-owned enterprises (SOEs) only.

The findings of this paper have implications for other economies with similar institutional backgrounds as China. Although the mandatory CSR disclosure does not require firms to spend on CSR investment, the mandatory CSR disclosure alters firm behaviour, and mitigates agency problems.

This paper contributes to the studies on the impact of CSR disclosure on firms' behaviour. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of mandatory CSR disclosure on CEO pay performance sensitivity using the quasi-natural experiment settings.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between employer and employees in a public power sector undertaking through the validation of CODE (compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment) and PLE (workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement) model.

A hypothesized research model was developed and validated by using structural equation modeling (AMOS 20). In total, 303 responses were accumulated by administering a structured questionnaire among the employees of a state-owned power sector.

The results revealed that a harmonious climate of employee relations is prevailing in the public power utility. Additionally, the findings suggest that the CODE and PLE model of employee relations are found to be positive and significant by investigating the impact of compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment as the predictors; and workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement as the critical outcomes of employee relations.

The study recommends some plausible insights for practitioners, decision-makers and policy formulators to develop strategies and policies for nurturing congenial employee relations and also to cultivate a facilitative work environment for generating contented and competent manpower.

Validation of CODE and PLE model of employee relations in the new perspective of power sector undertaking is an epoch-making and novel contribution that offers significant empirical evidence to the extant literature. Moreover, the exploration of employer–employee relations in this context is a unique and innovative effort toward existing research.

This study investigates the relationship between female CEOs and SMEs’ financing decisions. The study also examined the moderating role of ownership structure (female, foreign, and state ownership) in female CEO-SMEs’ financing decisions.

The study has applied Generalized Least Square (GLS) and Binomial Logistic Regression. The study has used firm-level data from 2,700 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Chinese economy.

The results suggest that female CEOs use debt financing. However, the financing decision of female CEOs varies if we account for female ownership, foreign ownership, state ownership, firm association with big firms, and the industry in which the firm operates. This study also provides robust evidence that female CEOs utilize debt financing under certain conditions and that female CEOs prefer long-term debt financing to short-term debt financing when considering debt maturity choices.

Recent studies report a negative relationship between female CEOs and financing decisions based on the rationale that females are risk-averse and choose less risky financing compared to their male counterparts. This study posits new evidence that female CEO financing decisions are not always risk averse if we consider female ownership, foreign ownership, state ownership, firm association with big firms, and the industry in which the firm operates. Thus, we contribute to the corporate governance literature, and this study implies a corporate financing policy.

This study aims to examine how woman leadership (i.e., woman board chairperson, woman chief executive officer (CEO) and board gender diversity) affects audit fee and also ascertained the interactive effect of woman leadership and gender diversity on audit committee on audit fee.

The study applied ordinary least square and fixed-effect estimators on the data of 21 universal banks in Ghana for the period 2010–2021 to estimate the empirical results.

It is revealed that under the leadership of women (woman CEO and board gender diversity), higher external audit quality is ensured as higher audit fee is paid. Interestingly, it was found that with the presence of women on the audit committee, the integrity of internal controls and internal audit procedures are enhanced, which leads to quality financial reporting, calls for lower audit effort, hence lower audit fee.

The result indicates that firms can rely on the leadership of women in ensuring quality external audit and quality financial reporting, which ultimately helps to minimize the information risk to all stakeholders.

The paper contributes to extant literature by establishing that, under the leadership of women in banking entities from a developing country context, external audit quality and financial reporting are achieved.

This study aims to examine the role of different forms of corporate social advocacy (CSA) in shaping individuals’ attitudinal and behavioral intentions towards companies taking their public stand on controversial socio-political issues. With an online experiment as the research method, this study tests whether depicting nonpolitical or political behaviors in CSA messages increases individuals’ positive behavioral intentions.

This study uses a single factor between subject online experiment. A total of 135 US young adults were recruited through a Qualtrics online panel. Three social media mockups were created to manipulate three levels of actions in CSA messages (no action, nonpolitical action and political action). Participants viewed one of those social media posts depicting presented actions to counter anti-LGBTQ + legislation in the USA and answered questions about values-driven motives behind CSA, brand preference and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) intention.

Participants displayed higher levels of brand preference when they viewed CSA messages depicting the company’s political action intended to repel anti-LGBTQ + legislation. Participants showed more positive WOM intentions towards the company when they perceived its political actions as more values-driven.

The findings of this study offer practical insights to companies when designing CSA messages and strategies. The results of this study indicate that the presence of political actions in CSA communication increases individuals’ positive behaviors towards companies. The results also suggest that depicting altruistic motives behind CSA leads individuals to talk about companies more in positive ways.

This study is one of the early studies investigating the impact of various forms of CSA on individuals’ attitudinal and behavioral intentions to companies practicing CSA. This study provides practical implications on how to effectively appeal individuals’ favorable attitudes and behaviors towards CSA. In particular, this research presents the importance of action aspects in individuals’ attitudes toward corporations’ CSA messages.

The modern corporation is evaluated by many measures that go beyond profit, which was the emphasis for years previously. Today’s corporation is weighed against expectations of many stakeholders, including not just customers but employees, investors, the government and even the public at large with no discernible financial or other tie to a company. As such, corporate boards necessarily must be concerned with more than financial performance, including corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the increasing emphasis on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics. Given that public relations scholars and practitioners have long been concerned with stakeholder relationships, social responsibility and other non-financial indicators, it would make sense that public relations has a more obvious presence on corporate boards.

This study examined the 25 companies in the Fortune Modern Board 25 to determine how many board members had a background or expertise in public relations that would contribute to the leadership necessary for the concerns of the modern corporation, and whether the boards had a committee designated to public relations or related functions.

Results show that there are few corporate boards that have public relations represented prominently in either their members or committees. The same is true for executive leadership teams. Public relations or communications executives do appear to play some role in ESG, CSR and DEI reporting, but often there are staff members with those specific titles and roles.

The study was limited to 25 corporations on a Forbes list that ranked them as best in communicating ESG, CSR and DEI. The method examined publicly available literature which was revealing to the research questions, but more could be learned by interview or survey with CCOs.

The study shows the current presence of public relations capacity in terms of members of corporate boards, corporate committees and among the C-suite is not significant. Also, rather than PR as a function owning modern concerns of DEI, ESG and CSR, there are professionals with specific expertise in those areas who are responsible for those corporate issues.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), ESG (environmental, social, governance) and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) have recently been stressed as important for corporations to measure and report. The role of the public relations profession in managing and/or communicating in these areas is important to consider in terms of public expectations and satisfaction of communication on these subjects.

This paper is unique in integrating public relations theory and practice with board theory and the current management concerns with ESG, CSR and DEI. Little if any previous research has considered which professions are in charge of communicating on these concerns.

Corporate leadership and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance are closely intertwined, as effective corporate leadership can facilitate the achievement of strong ESG performance. Thus, the purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of corporate board leadership on the ESG performance of listed firms.

The sample has been taken from the listed firms of the Nifty 500 index spanning the period of 10 years from 2012 to 2022. Dynamic panel data estimations are applied through a fixed effect model.

The findings of this study revealed that board size, board independence and board qualification have a significant positive influence on ESG performance. It is evident that good corporate governance practices can positively influence ESG performance by fostering accountability, transparency and ethical behavior, as well as better integrating ESG considerations into their decision-making processes and ensuring that ESG issues are prioritized at the highest levels of management. Further findings also revealed that chief executive officer (CEO) duality has a significant negative relationship with ESG performance, which goes against the belief of stakeholder theory.

It has practical implications for policymakers, as they can enact new regulations pertaining to the CEO’s position in the organizations to make corporate governance responsible for improved sustainability and ESG performance.

There are very few studies analyzing the impact of corporate board structure on ESG performance related to emerging markets. Thus, this study contributes to that literature by using the methodology GMM panel data for the first time as per our knowledge