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Over the past years, business strategies have been designed to improve ‘firms' financial and non-financial performances and achieve sustainable development, leading to corporate sustainability. This article is a bibliometric analysis of two decades of the relationship between corporate sustainability and firm performance, identifying the research focus and the gaps for future research.

The bibliometric review of corporate sustainability and performance research is between January 2004 and June 2023. As per the Web of Science database, the theme's research commenced around 2004, growing gradually till 2023. Five hundred thirty-nine published articles by peer-reviewed ABDC-indexed A and A* journals in English have been reviewed. The bibliometrix package in R software is used with VOSviewer for the bibliometric analysis.

The study's findings indicate a lack of research on the theme from developed and underdeveloped nations. Further, the analysis reveals five clusters of research: (1) business sustainability, (2) corporate sustainability reporting, (3) corporate sustainability, strategy, and innovation, (4) stakeholder and corporate sustainability, and e) corporate sustainability assessment.

The future research areas proposed are on two major themes, namely, corporate sustainability and organizational competitive advantage, including sub-themes such as “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and financial performance” and “greenhouse-gas emissions” and “market orientations,” respectively. There is a need for more research in developing markets, a comprehensive definition of corporate sustainability, and further exploration of the theme linking strategy and innovation.

This study aims to conceptualize, rethink and systematize methods used for measurement and evaluation (M&E) corporate communication.

The reflection is based on 462 key English-language books and papers devoted to M&E in the fields of corporate communication and public relations from the 1970th to 2023. Keywords in the titles and abstracts found the necessary materials. A critical analysis of the central concepts, models and methods described in the literature was conducted. As a result, a new model that unifies and structures the M&E toolkit is proposed for discussion.

Despite the significant contribution to developing a wide range of M&E models, they are still not perfect and universal. In addition, this system of approaches is continuously self-evolving and changing under the influence of digital innovations, so it requires steady rethinking and updating. On the other hand, most previous studies focused on communication management processes, losing focus on communication aspects. This led to the need for an alternative view based on proven theories to fill this gap. The proposed model combines quantitative and qualitative M&E methods for the five main components of corporate communication (communicator, audience, content, channels and result), covering a wide range of tools, from statistical and sociological research to big data analysis and neuro research.

This work contributes to developing the M&E theory of corporate communication, systematizing existing methods and opening new research perspectives. From a practical point of view, companies can use the presented approach for a more accurate and objective internal evaluation of the main components of corporate communication.

This study aims to investigate the impact of board skill diversity (BSD) on corporate environmental responsibility (CER). In addition, this study explores the moderating effects of formal regulatory pressure and informal media pressure.

This study uses Chinese high polluting companies as the sample and uses regression analysis. Robustness checks, including instrumental variable regression, Heckman two-stage model and propensity score matching method, are performed to test the robustness of the results.

The findings suggest that BSD significantly improves CER performance. Both formal regulatory pressure and informal media pressure strengthen the positive impact of BSD on CER. Further channel analyses reveal that BSD improves CER performance by promoting corporate proenvironmental behaviors rather than by restricting environmental violations; skill diversity of executive directors has a more significant effect on CER than that of independent directors. Finally, the moderating effect of regulatory pressure is only significant after the implementation of the Environmental Protection Law, and the moderating effect of media pressure mainly concentrates on negative media coverage.

The involvement of directors with more diverse skills is essential to improve corporate proenvironmental behaviors. Companies should select qualified directors with different skills to further improve their performance on environmental protection and sustainable development.

Regulators and standard-setters should develop efficient guidelines on corporate board governance to enhance the positive role of companies in environmental and sustainable development.

This study broadens the research on the determinants of CER by examining the influence of BSD on CER and the moderating roles of various stakeholder pressures, thereby providing a deeper understanding of corporate environmental performance and sustainable development.

This study examined the influence of university corporate social responsibility (University CSR) on university corporate brand legitimacy through the lens of university brand trust.

The study utilized a cross-sectional research design with a quantitative approach to gather data from a sample of 398 university students. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The findings of the study suggest that University CSR has a significant influence on the legitimacy of a university's corporate brand. Moreover, the study identified the mediating role of university brand trust in the proposed relationship.

The study was conducted in the context of higher education in Tanzania. As a result, the generalizability of the findings to other contexts that significantly differ from Tanzania, a developing country, may be limited.

The study recommends that the management of higher education institutions in developing countries should include CSR practices in the strategic plans of universities. Additionally, faculty members should be empowered to play a significant role as initiators and implementers of CSR programs.

This study is one of the few attempts to examine the interplay between university CSR, corporate brand trust and university corporate brand legitimacy. The study contributes to the state of knowledge in the education sector by highlighting the role of university CSR in building social acceptance, which is a crucial pillar in empowering universities to play a role in social and economic development.

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.

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.

As of now, the digitization of corporate finance presents a paradigm shift in business strategy, innovation, financing and managerial capability around the globe. However, the prevailing finance scholarly works hardly document the impact of the digitalization of corporate finance on firm performance with global evidence and analysis. Hence, the contemporary debate on whether firm performance is genuinely stimulated because of the digitalization of corporate finance or not has been a pressing issue in the relevant literature. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify a data-driven, concise response to an unaddressed finance issue if the performance of high-digitalized firms (HDFs) outperforms that of their counterpart peers for wealth maximization.

The first stage test models examine the firm performance of relatively high-digitalized firms as opposed to low-digitalized firms based on the system GMM. The second stage test of the probabilistic (logit) model infers that the probability of being HDFs explores because of better performance. Then, the authors execute robust checks based on the different quantile regressions and Z-score-based system GMM. In addition, the authors recheck and present the test results of the fixed effect and random effect to capture time-invariant individual heterogeneity. Finally, the supplementary test findings of firms’ credit strength by using Altman five- and four-factor Z-score models are presented.

By using cross-country panel analysis as 15 years’ test bed for HDFs and low digitalized firms (LDFs), the test results indicate that the overall firm performance of a digitalized firm is significantly better than that of a non-digitalized firm. The global evidence documents that HDFs are exposed to higher values and are financially more persistent as compared to their counterparts. The finding is remarkably concomitant across several possible subsample analysis, such as country–industry–size–period analysis.

This study can be remarkably effective in encouraging managers, policymakers and investors to acknowledge the need for adopting the required digitalization. Overall, this original study addresses a core research gap in the corporate finance literature and remarkably provides further direction to rethink the assumptions of firm digitalization on additive value and thereby identify optimal decisions for wealth maximization. The findings also imply that investors require an additional risk premium if they invest in relatively LDFs, which have relatively lower market value and weaker firm performance.

From an investors point of view, the academic novelty contributes to an innovative and unsettled issue on the impact of digitization of corporate finance on firm performance because there is a new question of high or low digitization of corporate finance in the global market. Hence, this academic novelty contributes to sharing global evidence of the digitalization of corporate finance and its effect on firm performances. In addition, an intensive critical review analysis is conducted based on the most recent and relevant scholarly works published in the top-tier journals of finance and business stream to fix the hypothesis. Overall, this study addresses a core research gap in the corporate finance literature; notably provides further direction to rethink firm digitalization; and thereby identifies optimal decisions for shareholders’ wealth maximization.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between corporate tax avoidance and environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and the moderating effect of financial constraints on the relationship between corporate tax avoidance and ESG performance.

The sample consists of a global data set involving 24,259 firm-year observations from 49 countries for the years 2011–2020. Corporate ESG performance was extracted from the Thomson Reuters database. The book-tax difference model was used for measuring corporate tax avoidance, while financially constrained firms were identified using the Kaplan and Zingales (1997) index.

The results show that firms with higher tax avoidance are associated with higher ESG performance, but lower ESG performance is shown for firms with higher financial constraints. The results further indicate that the positive impact of corporate tax avoidance on ESG performance becomes weaker for firms with higher financial constraints.

The findings imply that policymakers and regulators should focus on mechanisms to promote more internal funds to assist firms in pursuing ESG-related initiatives, such as through tax incentives. Investors should understand the “smokescreen” effect of corporate tax avoidance on ESG performance, especially for firms with financial constraints.

This analysis provides international evidence on the link between tax avoidance and ESG and considers the joint effect of pressures for internal funds, through tax and financing constraints, on corporate ESG performance.

This research investigates the influence of corporate–NGO collaborations on corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure measured in three different ways (i.e. extent, level and quality) in low-income developing economies. Additionally, it examines the moderating effect of corporate profitability in the relationship between corporate–NGO collaborations and CSR disclosure.

This research uses multivariate regression analysis based on data collected from 201 non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSE).

The findings reveal that corporations with NGO partnerships are more likely to disclose CSR information and provide high-quality information regarding workers, the environment and community-related issues. Further, corporate profitability positively moderates the corporate–NGO collaborations and CSR disclosure relationship.

Research limitations are presented in the conclusion section.

The findings underline the crucial significance of NGOs and their associated normative isomorphism logics for CSR disclosure in low-income countries with weak law enforcement and relatively ineffective state institutions, which were previously believed to lack such institutions.

While some research has suggested that companies in developing countries perceive significant pressure from NGOs to adopt social disclosure, no study has specifically explored how internally driven corporate–NGO collaboration (as opposed to external NGO activist pressures) promotes CSR disclosure specifically in developing economies.

Corporate site visits increase labor investment efficiency.

Our empirical model for the baseline analysis follows those of Jung et al. (2014) and Ghaly et al. (2020).

We show that corporate site visits are associated with significantly higher labor investment efficiency; more specifically, site visits reduce both over-hiring and under-hiring of employees. The effect of site visits on labor investment efficiency is more pronounced for firms with higher labor adjustment costs, greater financial constraints, weaker corporate governance and lower financial reporting quality. We also find that site visits mitigate labor cost stickiness.

First, while the literature has suggested how the presence of institutional investors and analysts may affect labor investment decisions, we focus on institutional investors and analysts’ activities and interactions with firm executives. We provide direct evidence that institutional investors and analysts may use corporate site visits to improve labor investment efficiency. Second, our study adds to a line of recent studies on how corporate site visits reduce information asymmetry and agency conflicts. We show that corporate site visits allow institutional investors and analysts to influence labor investment efficiency. We also provide new evidence that corporate site visits reduce labor cost stickiness.