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Motivated by legitimacy theory, this paper aims to examine comprehensively corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure in Southeast Asian (Association of Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN]) countries with the aim of disentangling whether such disclosures are the result of a proactive stance or a reaction to regulations.

After a content analysis of CSR stand-alone reports that relies on the Global Reporting Initiative as the basis for comparison, a multivariate analysis is carried out while controlling for firm-specific incentives and industry, country and year fixed effects.

The paper finds that CSR disclosure increased across the entire ASEAN. Although this increase cannot be directly ascribed to the introduction of regulations in Indonesia and Malaysia, the latter may have impacted choices of disclosure media. In countries where reporting requirements have become mandated, mandatory reporters show low levels, and voluntary reporters high levels, of CSR disclosure. The paper also finds that the attainment of CSR awards is related to disclosure. Additional analyses reveal a substitution effect between voluntary and mandatory incentives in countries with high levels of law enforcement.

The evidence suggests that the introduction of regulations can be effective in improving the level and breadth of CSR reporting only in the presence of institutions that ensure the enforcement of the disclosure regulations.

The evidence suggests that organizations are reluctant to report on issues such as child labor, human rights and corruption. Organizations opportunistically employ related disclosure strategies that deviate from the underlying CSR performance.

The paper analyzes not only the level and breadth of CSR disclosure but also the motivation for its use across the still under-investigated ASEAN area, thus allowing an examination of the influence of institutional incentives above and beyond the firm-specific factors that drive CSR activities.

Different mechanisms allow intellectual capital (IC) to affect performance. This paper aims to analyze the value of relations for the academic performance effect of IC and explore how the university’s reliance on digital technologies facilitates the contribution of IC to the overall academic performance.

The authors develop a model linking elements of IC to academic performance in the form of teaching, research and entrepreneurial activity. The model is centered on relational capital (RC) that is supposed to directly fuel performance and mediate the link between the other two IC dimensions and performance. From a methodological point of view, the authors base the empirical investigation on a sample of Italian public universities and applied structural equation modeling to test the mediation and a group comparison to disentangle the effect of universities’ digitalization.

The authors find a significant and positive effect of RC on performance. RC fully mediates the relationship between structural capital and academic performance, whereas it only partially mediates the link between human capital and academic performance. The authors also suggest that digital technologies guide the prominence of the relationship in the university’s ability to fulfill teaching, research and entrepreneurship missions through IC.

This study offers a representation of how the relational dimension of IC is the mean through which the stock of knowledge inside IC can be translated into entrepreneurial, education and research achievements and how digital technologies are essential for the exploitation of the performance effect of IC in the digital era.

The use of digital technologies in the financial service industry has brought new complexities to the corporate governance in banks. Relying on the agency perspective of the shareholder, debtholder and societal governance in banks, this research examines the impact of financial technology innovation (FinTech) on banks' performance by enlightening the monitoring role of female independent directors.

Relying on a sample of Italian banks observed during the period 2016–2020, the authors hand-collected data on the use of FinTech by considering (1) the in-house provisions of FinTech solutions, (2) the collaboration with external FinTech firms and (3) a combination of both measures. The authors run a panel data regression analysis with fixed effects, measuring bank performance through bank competitiveness and bank riskiness.

The authors find that FinTech increases bank competitiveness in gathering money from depositors and that independent women on board mitigate the negative relationship between FinTech and the riskiness of banks' assets, ameliorating the conflicting interests among shareholders, debtholder and societal governance.

This study emphasizes the complexities of bank governance when dealing with FinTech in the wider perspective of equity governance, debt governance and the societal governance spotlighting the importance of appointing female directors in independent positions to enhance the bright sides of financial innovation. The authors enrich the literature on FinTech with a finer understanding of the drivers and implications of in-house provisions of FinTech solutions versus the collaboration with external FinTech firms.

This paper aims to provide insights on the gender-performance relationship, this paper studies the impact of board gender diversity on firm performance, by taking into account the “critical mass” of women directors and their educational level.

The hypotheses are tested on a unique dataset of 211 European Union publicly listed companies in 2012 belonging to the construction industry from 28 different countries through a set of ordinary least squares regressions.

The evidence shows that the “critical mass” rather than the simple presence of women has an incremental benefit on firm performance. In addition, results show that the educational level of women directors negatively affects firm performance, as it might impact the dynamics within the boardroom.

The quantitative nature of the study does not allow drawing strong inferences on behavioral processes and dynamics in and around the boardroom. Nevertheless, this study will open new research insights on exploring the educational level on board.

Regulators and policymakers that should be aware of the influence of women as a group on firm performance and that this role is differential across industries.

The novelty of this paper is that it investigates the role of women in a high masculine gender-specific industry and explores a still poorly understood demographic variable (i.e. the educational level) of women directors.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a panoramic and systematic view of 10 Sustainable Campus Network (SCN) universities’ internal entities in charge of the sustainability effort – such as offices, committees, units, programs, or other, showing how some institutions have gained increasing deployment and momentum. However, their appearance and growth pathways have had significant disparities.

Global and local agendas have had a strong influence on Chilean higher education institutions. A relevant signal has been the creation of the SCN, formed by 21 Chilean universities, whose vision is to help shape a fair and environmentally healthy civilization contributing from the higher education realm. This work adopts a survey design methodological approach. It describes the following resulting components obtained from the aggregated data: (a) emergence processes and environments, (b) governance models and operational mechanisms, (c) networks and collaboration, and (d) final products generated, for sustainability governing entities within universities in Chile.

The main findings indicate that at the institutional level, the Cleaner Production Agreement for higher education institutions and the creation of the SCN have been key drivers in the formalization of several entities leading the sustainability efforts within Chilean universities. Also, regarding the degree of commitment to sustainability, the most active internal stakeholder corresponds to students.

The present work represents a pioneering effort in the Chilean context to identify and systematize the challenges, organizational structures, and key accomplishments of sustainability governing entities in higher education nationwide.

This study investigated the viability of using a Pan‐European approach for professional service offerings in Europe by first establishing measurement equivalence and then exploring the influence of culture on service quality and customer satisfaction. Utilizing scenarios involving a dental office visit, respondents from Portugal, France, and Germany participated in a 2X2 factorial experiment in which the researchers manipulated both expectations (low/high) and service performance (low/high). Respondents from France and Portugal expressed similar levels of customer satisfaction and perceived service quality, which were significantly different from those of the German respondents except when both expectations and performance were low.

This paper aims to better understand community of practice (CoP)’s dynamics with a focus on the hotel sector and perceived benefits to members and business performance.

This is a case study research focusing on a successful experience within a CoP found in the hotel sector. The study reports in detail how a CoP was created and how it evolved to a digital platform to give birth to a fully co-designed tourism product. It analyzes this CoP’s social dynamics, processes of communication and interaction, as well as digital evolution. To collect rich data, method triangulation was applied by mixing quantitative and qualitative analyses.

The community is highly participated and valued because it is perceived as a dynamic system contributing to rapid information exchange and diffusion, efficient context for knowledge transfer and individual responsiveness to daily professional activities and challenges. The reasons why members perceive Amigas do Trade as a distinctive community include shared values and attitudes; professional area and position; and group composition. The majority of members acknowledged that belonging to this CoP has helped in making an informed decision with impact on business practice. The sub-theme more intensely participated and discussed concentrated on human resources issues.

A case study brings useful insights into the understanding of CoP members’ behaviour; however, findings are not generalizable to other communities.

This study contributes in several ways to business practice and management. Hotel businesses pertain to a sector in which CoPs easily thrive. This seems to happen because businesses in the tourism and hospitality industry are highly dependent on networks, people, communication channels and technologies. Engagement with technological platforms is stimulated because of the unproblematic integration of these digital platforms into other technologies members already use in their daily work and life. Moreover, digital platforms are not expensive and potentially increase motivation levels within CoP, and consequently in companies. This example inspires the use of digital platforms to exchange knowledge in other CoPs in the hotel sector.

CoPs are contexts of good interaction within a group of people by nurturing a good value system (comprehending trust, cohesion and good communication climate). Thus, a non-hierarchical and non-biased approach to CoP by managers could be accomplished by fostering an organizational culture based on joint innovation, coopetition and open communication principles. Expectedly, in this respect, intensive use of digital technologies in the business arena will keep playing a key role.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study on CoP applied to the hotel sector. Additionally, it is also the first time a CoP composed only by women working in the hotel sector was analyzed. One other element of novelty links to the fact that a CoP with physical and virtual dimensions was studied, introducing the use of digital platforms to the analysis of CoP dynamics.