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Given the serious question raised by the subprime of the 2008 global financial crisis over the rising practices of excessive rewarding of executives in the USA and European firms, the executive pay-performance nexus has emerged as a popular topic of debate in the contemporary corporate finance research. Conducted mostly on the Anglo-Saxon contexts, research outcomes have been inconclusive and dichotomous. Considering this backdrop, this study aims to investigate the endogenous relationship between executive compensation and risk taking in the context of the USA.

Using a large sample of non-financial firms from 2010 to 2020 based on panel data and two-stage least square regression. In this study, the riskier corporate decision is measured as book leverage and ratio of R&D expense to total assets. Chief executive officers’ (CEO) experience and age are used as instrumental variables, and these are expected to influence compensation incentives and, hence, affect firm riskiness indirectly. Firm size, return on assets and CEO turnover are reported to affect compensation and corporate decisions, therefore, included as control variables. Given that higher executive compensation is related to riskier corporate decision in firms, this study incorporates total wealth (i.e. accumulated equity related compensation) as an additional proxy of compensation, and this selection is justifiable by the perfect contracting notion of the agency theory.

The results of this study show a significant positive and increasing nexus among compensation and riskier corporate decisions. Besides, the compensation level proxied through the percentage of each form of compensation in total compensation is very important as greater equity and greater salary diminishes risk taking.

The outcomes of this study have useful implications for firm stakeholders and policymakers.

The level of pay measured by the percentage of each type of compensation in total compensation is of utmost importance as it can increase or decrease risk taking in corporate decisions.

Based on stakeholder, agency and institutional theory, this study aims to examine the role of institutional ownership in the relationship between environmental, social and governance practices and CEO compensation.

Utilizing a fixed-effect panel regression analysis, this research utilized a panel data approach, analyzing data spanning from 2014 to 2021, focusing on US companies listed on the S&P500 stock market index. The dataset encompassed 219 companies, leading to a total of 1,533 observations.

The analysis identified that environmental scores significantly impact CEO equity-linked compensation, unlike social and governance scores. Additionally, it was found that institutional ownership acts as a moderating factor in the relationship between the environmental score and CEO equity-linked compensation, as well as the association between the social score and CEO equity-linked compensation. Interestingly, the direction of these moderating effects varied between the two relationships, suggesting a nuanced role of institutional ownership.

This research makes a unique contribution to the field of corporate governance by exploring the relatively understudied area of institutional ownership's influence on the ESG practices–CEO compensation nexus.

Previous literature has identified human resources as a key source of competitive advantage in organizations of all sizes. However, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) face difficulty in comprehensively implementing all recommended Human Resource Management (HRM) functions. In this study, we shed light on the field of HRM in SMEs by focusing on the context of Greek Small and Medium-sized Hotels (SMHs), which represent a dominant private sector employer across the country.

Using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and 34 in-depth interviews with SMHs' owners/managers, we explore the HRM conditions leading to high levels of performance, while taking into consideration the influence of internal key determinants.

We uncover three alternative successful HRM strategies that maximize business performance, namely the Compensation-based performers, the HRM developers and the HRM investors. Each strategy fits discreet organizational characteristics related to company size, ownership type and organizational structure.

To the best of the authors' knowledge this is among the first empirical studies that examine different and equifinal performance-enhancing configurations of HRM practices in SMHs.

This study is the maiden attempt to understand the effect of specific human resource practices (HRPs) on employee retention (ER) with the mediation of job satisfaction (JS) and moderation of work experience (WE) and job hopping (JH) in the context of the textile industry.

This study adopted a quantitative methodology and applied quota sampling to gather data from employees (n = 365) of leading textile companies in India. The conceptual model and hypotheses were tested with the help of Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM).

The findings of a path analysis revealed that compensation and performance appraisal (CPA) have the highest impact on JS followed by employee work participation (EWP). On the other hand, EWP had the highest impact on ER followed by grievance handling (GRH). The study revealed that JS significantly mediates between HRPs like CPA and ER. During Multi-group analysis (MGA) it was found that the importance of EWP and health and safety (HAS) was more in employee groups with higher WE, but it was the opposite in the case of CPA. In the case of JH behavior, the study observed that EWP leads to JS in loyal employees. Similarly, JS led to ER, and the effect was more pronounced for loyal employees.

In the context of the Indian textile industry, this work is the first attempt to comprehend how HRPs affect ER. Secondly, it confirmed that JS is not a guaranteed mediator between HRPs and ER, it could act as an insignificant, partial or full mediator. Additionally, this study establishes the moderating effects of WE and JH in the model through multigroup analysis.

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 aims to analyze the connection between institutional isomorphic pressures and both women serving on boards and women’s influence on boards within large American firms.

This study examines a longitudinal panel data set of all Standard and Poor’s (S&P) 500 organizations across a seven-year period from 2009 to 2015.

The analyses affirm that institutional isomorphic pressures impact the prevalence and influence of women on boards. Evidence suggests that coercive and normative pressures strongly impact the number of women serving as corporate directors, whereas the power of women directors is linked only to mimetic pressures.

The research suggests that to increase the number of women serving as directors, the industry must first increase the overall number of women serving in senior management roles. Once women directors gain a critical mass of three women on the board, the association with the total number of women directors, the number of boards upon which they concurrently serve, the power of women directors being selected to board leadership and the influence of women directors increase.

This paper extends existing board diversity work by examining institutional pressures at the international, national and firm levels. By examining the relationship between coercive, normative and mimetic pressures on both the prevalence of women on boards and the influence of women on boards, the authors illuminate certain mechanisms that shape the likelihood of board appointment and placement in more powerful positions.

This study investigates theoretical relationships among personality characteristics, preferences for different types of rewards and the propensity to choose a job in auditing by management-related higher education students. Specifically, the authors consider motivation, locus of control (internal and external) and self-efficacy (SE) as personality characteristics and financial, extrinsic, support and intrinsic as types of rewards.

Data were collected through a questionnaire targeted at management-related higher education students in Portugal. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The full sample results show that different types of motivation, locus of control and SE are related to different reward preferences. The authors also find a positive association between a preference for extrinsic rewards and the propensity to choose a job in auditing. Moreover, when the authors consider the role of working experience in the model, the authors find that the reward preferences that drive the choice of an auditing job differ according to that experience.

This study enriches the literature by assessing preferences for different types of rewards, considering multiple personality characteristics and a comprehensive set of rewards. Furthermore, the authors identify the reward preferences that drive the choice of an auditing career. This knowledge empowers auditing firms to devise recruitment strategies that resonate with candidates’ preferences, which boosts the capacity of these companies to attract new auditors.

Soft robots are known for their excellent safe interaction ability and promising in surgical applications for their lower risks of damaging the surrounding organs when operating than their rigid counterparts. To explore the potential of soft robots in cardiac surgery, this paper aims to propose an adaptive iterative learning controller for tracking the irregular motion of the beating heart.

In continuous beating heart surgery, providing a relatively stable operating environment for the operator is crucial. It is highly necessary to use position-tracking technology to keep the target and the surgical manipulator as static as possible. To address the position tracking and control challenges associated with dynamic targets, with a focus on tracking the motion of the heart, control design work has been carried out. Considering the lag error introduced by the material properties of the soft surgical robotic arm and system delays, a controller design incorporating iterative learning control with parameter estimation was used for position control. The stability of the controller was analyzed and proven through the construction of a Lyapunov function, taking into account the unique characteristics of the soft robotic system.

The tracking performance of both the proportional-derivative (PD) position controller and the adaptive iterative learning controller are conducted on the simulated heart platform. The results of these two methods are compared and analyzed. The designed adaptive iterative learning control algorithm for position control at the end effector of the soft robotic system has demonstrated improved control precision and stability compared with traditional PD controllers. It exhibits effective compensation for periodic lag caused by system delays and material characteristics.

Tracking the beating heart, which undergoes quasi-periodic and complex motion with varying accelerations, poses a significant challenge even for rigid mechanical arms that can be precisely controlled and makes tracking targets located at the surface of the heart with the soft robot fraught with considerable difficulties. This paper originally proposes an adaptive interactive learning control algorithm to cope with the dynamic object tracking problem. The algorithm has theoretically proved its convergence and experimentally validated its performance at the cable-driven soft robot test bed.

This public-sourced case describes the latest restructuring efforts by Deutsche Bank (DB) and gives a short history of prior restructuring efforts from the decade before. In July 2019, Christian Sewing, the new CEO of DB, announced a series of measures that included, among others, the elimination of global equity trading, the layoff of 18,000 employees, the creation of a “bad bank” to transfer noncore assets, and the suspension of dividends until 2022. The case describes key decisions a bank CEO makes when a bank needs to change course to return to profitability and growth. The case offers an opportunity to debate these key decisions, as well as discuss some of the prior ones during earlier restructuring efforts, and put the students in the CEO's shoes: What would you do and why? The case also describes key banking performance metrics (e.g., ROE, ROA) and other critical variables such as those reflecting capital health (Tier 1 ratio), as well as gives an overview of the bank business model and factors impacting bank profitability and value.

As women’s position in the economy and society is often explained by cultural factors, this study aims to verify whether the observed changes in female empowerment in the region of Central and East European (CEE) countries of the European Union (EU) are associated with masculinity as a cultural trait.

The authors apply the k-means clustering method to group CEE countries into clusters with similar levels of female empowerment in two time points – 2013 and 2019. Next, the authors examine the clusters and cross-reference them with the national culture’s masculinity to explore the interrelations between female empowerment and cultural traits in the CEE countries and their development in time.

The analyses reveal that female empowerment is not uniform or stable across the CEE countries. The masculinity level is not strongly related to women’s position in these countries, and changes in female empowerment are not closely linked to masculinity.

Despite the tumultuous history of women’s empowerment in the CEE countries, the issues related to gender equality and cultural traits pertaining to the region are relatively understudied in the literature. By focusing on the CEE region, the authors fill the gap in examining the independencies between female empowerment and cultural masculinity.