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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of executive compensation on the propensity to manage earnings. In particular, the authors examine an executive contractual clause known as a golden parachute (hereafter GP is interchangeably used). Usually, the triggering of a GP occurs for the following reasons: in a takeover, in termination of employment, and if the executive remains with the company through a recessionary cycle. Specifically, the authors ask the following questions: for firms that their CEO have a GP, do these firms manage earnings more? Does the age of the CEO matter for firms that have adopted a GP concerning the managing earnings?

The sample is based on a review of the literature on GPs and managed earnings. the authors’ data come from COMPUSTAT, CRSP, EXECUCOMP and Risk Metrics, and consist of 1,184 US firms from 1992 to 2011. A GP is binary, whereas the authors represent managed earnings through accruals and real activity.

The authors find that the propensity to manage earnings varies on the type of methods strategically used. However, controlling for the effect of SOX reveals that GP firms are more likely to manage earnings. Younger CEOs are less likely to exacerbate earnings upward.

The authors are limited to small sample based on when the data were collected.

The evidence shows that GP alleviates CEOs’ concerns on short-term profits. However, it entrenches CEOs. Particularly, CEOs with a GP are more likely to exacerbate earnings. Thus, there is a need for compensation committees to give considerable attention to how GPs are assigned.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the effect of a GP on a firm’s propensity to manage earnings.

The authors revisit the inquiry into the primacy of shareholders vis-à-vis stakeholders that has been debated since 19th Century. The authors consider B-business firms as the closest groups of firms that have considerable similarities to stakeholders' firms. The authors model the impact of being certified as stakeholders (B-business) firms in a worldwide environment.

Employing daily returns data of B-corporations in a global setting during 2010–2021, the authors quantify and compare the firms' performance in the pre- and post-certified periods, measure the effect of their environmental social governance (ESG) scores on their performance and gauge the entire results on a standardized approach that yields easy interpretation.

Subject to some caveats arising from limited coverage and the lack of data on proper control variables, the findings, based on the statistical significance of the estimated coefficients, do not indicate any changes in B-corporations' performance in their post-certification dates. Notwithstanding that, market factor appears to be the driving force consistently.

Prior studies on B-corporations are overwhelmingly qualitative. The current study is the first study that evaluate performance of B-corporations' returns at firm level with daily data.

This study examines the efficacy of compensation in encouraging corporate executives to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR). In particular, it closely examines the effect of a golden parachute (GP) on an executive's behavior toward CSR.

This study uses longitudinal data on 1,301 US firms for the period from 1993 to 2013. The data comes from Compustat, MSCI ESG STATS, RiskMetrics and ExecuComp.

We find an inverse association between current and long-term compensations and GP on firms' CSR. However, a test on the moderating effect discloses that a GP and long-term compensation jointly and positively increase the firms' CSR performance. This increase supports the idea that executives with a GP seek to maximize their long-term wealth by approving CSR projects that add value. The results also show that female executives are more likely to promote CSR than their male counterparts, and older executives are less willing to engage in CSR projects.

Adding a GP contractual clause to the executive compensation package could encourage greater engagement in CSR projects. The CEO with a GP will ensure that the firm engages in only value-enhancing CSR projects; this should align the interest of the society (greater firm engagement in CSR) with the interest of the firm (value maximization).

This study contributes to the literature by examining the moderating effect of a GP on the association between CSR and executive compensation.

A seemingly certain commonality in the extant literature is that firms that engage in the practice of managing earnings do so to massage their performance. The purpose of this paper is to examine the pecuniary effect of the prior cost of capital and a firm’s location on the propensity for firms to manage earnings.

This study uses longitudinal data for US firms from COMPUSTAT and Center for Research in Security Prices from 1980 to 2010 for an average of 1,627 firms. The authors apply several regression methods – namely: least squares regressions, quantile, interaction-terms, seemingly unrelated and endogeneity test – and come to similar conclusions.

The authors find that managed earnings behavior varies depending on the prior cost of capital. Managers positively exacerbate earnings when the firms’ prior cost of debt is high. Managers inverse its exacerbation of earnings when the firms’ prior cost of equity is high. This effect remains the same in all regression techniques applied in this paper.

The authors contribute to the literature primarily in three areas. First, by considering the effect of a firm’s location jointly on a firm’s prior cost of capital, the authors show that a firm’s environment amplifies the managers’ discretionary actions. Second, by showing that the prior cost of capital which a firm pursues can inundate the managers to pursue and exacerbate earnings. Finally, the evidence suggests that adjustment in previous years for debt obligated firms and that location affects managed earnings behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate board co-option and employee welfare practices.

The authors employ several analysis techniques including univariate analysis, OLS regressions, Poisson regressions, and propensity score matching methodology. The sample consists of US public firms for the period of 1996–2017. The variables of interest are the employee welfare index (EWI) proposed by Ghaly et al. (2015) and the co-option ratio proposed by Coles et al. (2014).

The authors find that firms with a higher fraction of co-opted directors on their boards are less committed to the firms' employee well-being. The empirical results support the argument that the interests of co-opted directors are more closely aligned with the interests of the CEO who had an influence on selecting them to the board, which compromises their monitoring role.

This paper contributes in several ways to the literature on corporate governance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by linking board co-option to employee welfare. By focusing on board co-option to explain the degree of firms' involvement in employee welfare, which is one of the crucial components of CSR performance, the authors provide pinpointed and detailed findings on a timely issue of CSR.

Talented managers arguably remain quintessential to firm value and performance. While the literature offers evidence for the long-term orientation of talented managers, there is a paucity of evidence on the short-term performance of managers. Here, we examine the relationship between managerial talent and working capital management (WCM).

This study primarily employs a panel fixed-effect method controlling for firm-year and firm-industry for non-financial and non-utility firms for the years 1980 through 2016. Also, the authors control of potential bias that may impact the result. These controls include social capital, financial constraints and tests for endogeneity and spurious correlation.

The authors find the association between managerial talent and WCM to be positive and significant. The results indicate that talented managers have a higher cash conversion cycle. The empirical evidence still holds after controlling for social capital, religiosity and financial constraints. Also, the evidence still holds by employing an interaction term between Tobin's Q as a proxy for investment opportunities and talented managers.

The finding may lend credence to executive contracts. Human nature, by default, is only vested on a net benefit for self-aggrandization. Self-aggrandization can be evident through structures in managerial contracts. These contracts usually tie consequences to long-term growths. If a benefit is offered based on short-term operational goals, talented managers may do more to the management of working capital.

In the managerial talent literature, talents reflect a holistic picture of one that can succeed in both the short-term and long-term goals of a company. Here, the authors show that talented managers are inefficient in meeting short-term goal – working capital management. Thus, the authors add to the research by providing evidence that talented managers are myopic.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of bank structure and earnings management on bank performance in international markets. Specifically, the authors empirically examine non-foreign banks in the following emerging countries: Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, and South Africa.

A review of loan loss portfolio and bank’s power structure is examined to formulate testable conjectures. The authors used data collected from Bankscope for the aforementioned countries. The data range is from 1997 to 2009.

The results suggest that: first, bank market structure and earnings management have a significantly negative influence on bank performance. Second, the negative influence is more pronounced in banks with higher level of concentration and earnings management.

The evidence suggest that banks with monopoly power have a greater incentive to establish lending relationships, and monopoly enhancing regulation in the financial sector at the time of the Civil War contributed to industrialization in the USA. The evidence in the emerging market suggest that monopoly power (bank structure) and propensity to manage earnings leads to lower bank performance. As such, helping bankers in understanding the effect of their bank structure in relation to their performance.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that explores the determinants of managed earnings and bank structure on bank performance in emerging markets.

Recent studies on construction supply chain management (CSCM) evaluated its vulnerability and challenging factors, but studies that have identified and examined the possible corrective measures of CSCM are rare. This study sets out to bridge this gap by identifying and evaluating the most effective CSCM corrective measures that will benefit the global construction industry.

A methodology was designed to obtain the corrective measures of CSCM. Data were collected from 68 experts who served as research participants in this study, through a questionnaire survey and were analyzed statistically using the severity index analysis, Mann–Whitney test and factor analysis which includes KMO and Barlett's test, commonalities, total variance pattern matrix.

The findings of the study revealed that free exchange of information between parties from both suppliers and site/firm is the best CSCM corrective measures, according to the research participant's opinion using the severity index analysis. Further analysis revealed seven underlying factors of CSCM corrective measures.

The findings of this study have identified the most critical solutions to the lapses of CSCM. These will serve as adequate corrective measures to the challenges of CSCM and benefit the global construction industry.

This study contributed seven underlying factors of CSCM corrective measures which can be adopted as adequate corrective measures to the lapses of CSCM. The study further contributed to CSCM research theory.

The implementation of smart maintenance (SM) has greatly benefited facility managers, construction project managers and other stakeholders within the built environment. Unfortunately, its actualization for stakeholders in the built environment in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era remains a challenge. To reduce the challenge, this study aims at conducting a bibliometric analysis to unearth the critical success factors supporting SM implementation. The future direction and practice of SM in the construction industry were also explored.

A bibliometric approach was adopted for reviewing articles extracted from the Scopus database. Keywords such as (“smart maintenance“) OR (“intelligent maintenance”) OR (“technological maintenance”) OR (“automated maintenance”) OR (“computerized maintenance”) were used to extract articles from the Scopus database. The studies were restricted between 2006 and 2021 to capture the 4IR era. The initial extracted papers were 1,048; however, 288 papers were selected and analysed using VOSviewer software.

The findings revealed that the critical success factors supporting the implementation of SM in the 4IR era are collaboration, digital twin design, energy management system and decentralized data management system. Regarding the future practice of SM in the 4IR era, it was also revealed that SM is possible to evolve into maintenance 4.0. This will support the autonomous maintenance of infrastructures in the built environment.

The use of a single database contributed to the limitation of the findings from this study.

Despite the limitations, the findings of this study contributed to practice and research by providing stakeholders in the built environment with the direction of SM practice.

Stakeholders in the built environment have clamoured to implement SM in the 4IR era. This study provided the critical success factors for adopting SM, guaranteeing the 4IR era. It also provides the research trends and direction of SM practice.

This study aims to promote the idea that social equity is a significant objective that needs to be achieved to attain a smart city and further reveal the current research focus of smart city in relation to social equity. Also, it will propose determinants of social equity for smart city development.

The first part of this study was conducted by reviewing ten existing smart city models and assessing their elements, in a bid to find a relationship between the existing smart city models and social equity. These models were sorts from scholarly publications such as books, journals and other related articles sourced from google scholar and Scopus database. To give more credence to this study, a second aspect of this study was necessary; this was conducted using a bibliometric approach, and the data was gathered from the Scopus database. Keywords such as “smart-city” OR “Digital-city” OR “Intelligent-city” OR “Computer-city” OR “Technology-city” AND “Social-equity” were used for article extraction. VOSview was used to analyse the bibliographic data obtained.

This research revealed that studies that relate, link or discuss the idea that social equity is a significant objective that needs to be achieved to attain a smart city are low considering that only 48 articles were extracted, and most of the studies did not specifically focus on social equity in smart city development. Further findings revealed that the ten reviewed smart city models never linked or discussed the idea of social equity in smart city development. Additionally, this study revealed that emerging countries aiming to develop smart cities, particularly in Africa, are not paying much attention to the importance of creating social equity policies to attain smart cities.

This study revealed a knowledge gap in the study of smart cities in developing countries. Governments of various developing countries can implement the ideas from this study by creating and applying social equity policies to drive sustainable development, which will positively influence smart city attainment.

The contribution of this study is that it promotes the idea that social equity is a significant objective that needs to be achieved to attain smart cities. This study’s further originality and value lie in adopting a bibliometric approach of analysis that has not been used in this form in previous studies.