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This study investigates the impact of managerial ability and auditor report readability on the cost of debt and corporate liquidity in Omani-listed industrial companies.

The study uses data from the S&P Capital IQ database and audited annual reports published on Muscat Securities Market. The sample consists of 35 firms (175 firm-year observations) from 2015 to 2019. Managerial ability is measured using the data envelopment analysis proposed by Demerjian et al. (2012a, b). Auditor report readability is measured as a log of the auditor report digital file size proposed by Loughran and McDonald (2014).

This study finds that a company's managerial ability reduces the cost of debt lending support to upper echelons and agency theory. Highly able managers of industrial companies are associated with increased corporate liquidity consistent with the precautionary motive of holding cash. In addition, less-readable auditor reports contribute to higher debt costs and reduce corporate liquidity.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, few studies have explored the influence of managerial ability and auditor reporting readability on firms' financial policy. For industrial-sector firms, this study demonstrates the managerial ability and readability of auditor readability as significant determinants of the cost of debt and corporate liquidity, especially during periods of uncertainty. Thus, the findings can be generalized to other non-financial sector firms in the country and the Middle East.

The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of managerial ability on voluntary environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure and assurance. By focusing on managerial ability, this study provides a more nuanced understanding of the factors influencing a firm’s ESG disclosure and assurance practices. This study contributes to a relatively unexplored area of study regarding the role of top management in promoting ESG reporting.

This study draws on a sample of publicly listed firms from 2014 to 2019 in Taiwan and applies the data envelopment analysis method to measure managerial ability. Heckman’s (1979) two-step model is used to estimate the primary models to prevent the results from being affected by possible bias because of self-selection.

The empirical evidence suggests that managerial ability is positively related to voluntary ESG disclosure and intention to seek third-party assurance of the report. Overall, managerial ability determines whether a firm will use voluntary ESG disclosure and assurance as a corporate strategy to respond effectively to stakeholders’ needs. The findings are robust after using alternative measures of managerial ability.

Investors and other stakeholders keen on seeking ESG information offered by companies could find the findings of this study valuable. By better comprehending how managerial competence impacts voluntary ESG disclosure and assurance, stakeholders may be better equipped to hold companies responsible for their ESG disclosure practices and make informed investment decisions.

In the ESG decision-making process, managers with better abilities have a higher tendency to use voluntary disclosure and assurance as a part of the company’s sustainable policy.

Unlike previous studies of the determinant factors of ESG disclosure, which mainly explore factors at the national or corporate level, this study focuses on factors at the individual level (i.e. managerial ability) to fill the gap in the literature. This study also presents empirical evidence that corroborates the idea that managerial competence can influence not only ESG disclosure but also the voluntary assurance of ESG information.

This study investigates the association between managerial ability and earnings quality in firms listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange and how the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) influences the association.

This study uses a sample of firms listed on the Iraq Stock Exchange over the period 2012–2018. Managerial ability is quantified using data envelopment analysis, and earnings quality is measured by earnings restatement, earnings persistence, accruals quality and earnings response coefficient. Panel regression analysis is used to examine the research hypotheses.

The findings indicate that managerial ability positively affects earnings quality of Iraqi firms and that ISIS weakens the relationship between managerial ability and earnings quality. These findings are robust to the alternative measures of managerial ability, as well as to various approaches used to address endogeneity including propensity-score matching and a difference-in-differences analysis.

This study provides insight into the impact of managerial ability on earnings quality in an under-studied emerging market. Furthermore, this study broadens the existing literature about the financial consequences of a modern terrorist group, ISIS.

This study aims to explore the strategies corporations use in engaging stakeholders to sustain healthy corporate partnerships and create value for the corporate entity and the society in which they operate and their influence on the corporate manager’s cognitive abilities and decision-making.

The authors used an interpretive research approach leveraging the strengths of qualitative method of content analysis and comparative and critical analyses to report the results. Interpretive methods incorporate social theories and standpoints that view reality as the social construction of understandable events in the context of organizational communication.

The findings of this study suggest that corporations are assumed to follow and execute the principles of engaging stakeholders to achieve corporate social responsibility (CSR) claiming to manage a sustainable and responsible business practices that recognize local cultures, human rights and protect the environment. However, little attention has been paid to the cognitive reasoning of the individuals responsible for CSR and corporate sustainability (CS) as opposed to the growing concerns about strategies corporations use in engaging stakeholders to sustain healthy corporate partnerships and create value – especially the processes that take place during engagement and decision-making including cognitive offloading.

Stakeholder engagement requires practical approaches that enable corporations and individuals charged with decision-making responsibilities to understand, respond and fulfill their CSRs. To achieve CSRs, corporations and managers responsible for relevant decision-making would need to involve stakeholders in social performance planning, as social reporting/auditing has long been advocating for preventing managerial biasness, groupthink and increased information dissemination via detailed reporting practices toward more collaborative stakeholder relationships. Thus, it is crucial for corporations to implement enhanced stakeholder and managerial decision-making strategies such as integrative approaches to achieve balance in the trio elements of sustainability as well as the growing use of paradox perspective to understand the nature of the tensions being sought to balance and, in the process, provide opportunity for a better evaluation of complex sustainability issues for innovative approach to resolving them. While cognitive decision-making is at play, in practice, managers tasked with making decisions must ensure the most effective stakeholder engagement strategies that are transparent and inclusive are used.

The main contribution of this study is its argument regarding the tools corporations use in engaging key stakeholders and the cognitive reasoning of the individuals responsible for CSR and CS. The study further contributes to interpreting the integrative approach to achieving balance in the trio elements of sustainability as well as the growing use of paradox perspective to understand the nature of the tensions being sought to balance and, in the process, provide an opportunity for a better evaluation of complex sustainability issues for an innovative approach to resolving them.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of enterprise is influenced by the enterprise digital transformation. In addition, this study explains how enterprise digital transformation affects ESG performance.

The sample covers 4,646 nonfinancial companies listed on China’s A-share market from 2009 to 2021. The study adopts the fixed-effects multiple linear regression to perform the data analysis.

The study finds that enterprise digital transformation has a significant inverted U-shaped impact on ESG performance. Moderate digital transformation can improve enterprise ESG performance, whereas excessive digital transformation will bring new organizational conflicts and increase enterprise costs, which is detrimental to ESG performance. This inverted U-shaped effect is more pronounced in industrial cities, manufacturing industries and enterprises with less financing constraints and executives with financial backgrounds. Enterprise digital transformation mainly affects ESG performance by affecting the level of internal information communication and disclosure, the level of internal control and the principal-agent cost.

The government should take multiple measures to encourage enterprises to choose appropriate digital transformation based on their own production behaviors and development strategies, encourage them to innovate and upgrade their organizational management and development models in conjunction with digital transformation and guide them to use digital technology to improve ESG performance.

This study shows that irrational digital transformation cannot effectively improve the ESG performance of enterprises and promote the sustainable development of the country. Enterprises should carry out reasonable digital transformation according to their own development needs and finally improve the green and sustainable development ability of enterprises and promote the sustainable development of society.

This study examines the relationship between enterprise digital transformation and ESG performance. Different from the linear relationship between the two in previous major studies, this study proves the inverse U-shaped relationship between enterprise digital transformation and ESG performance through mathematical theoretical model derivation and empirical test. This study also explores in detail how corporate digital transformation affects ESG performance, as well as discusses heterogeneity at the city, industry and firm levels. It is proposed that enterprises should take into account their own characteristics and carry out reasonable digital transformation according to their development needs.

This study aims to propose a model that delineated the diffusion process of product-harm misinformation on social media. Drawing on theoretical insights from cue diagnosticity and corporate associations, the proposed model mapped out how consumers' information skepticism and perceived content credibility influence their perceived diagnosticity of the product-harm misinformation and corporate ability (CA) associations with the company being impacted, which in turn influenced their trust toward the company and negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) intention.

A survey was conducted with 504 US consumers to empirically test the proposed model. Following the survey, in-depth interviews were conducted with 11 communication professionals regarding the applicability of the model.

When exposed to product-harm misinformation on social media, consumers' perceived diagnosticity of misinformation was negatively impacted by their information skepticism and positively impacted by perceived content credibility of misinformation. Perceived diagnosticity of product-harm misinformation negatively impacted consumers' CA associations, which then led to decreased trust and increased NWOM intention. Findings from the interviews further supported the diffusion process and provided insights on strategies to combat product-harm misinformation. Strategies shared by the interviewees included preparedness and social listening, proactive outreach and building strong CA associations as preventative measures.

This study incorporates the theoretical frameworks of cue diagnosticity and corporate associations into the scholarship of misinformation and specifically addresses the unique diffusion process of product-harm misinformation on social media. This study provides insights and tangible recommendations for communication professionals to combat product-harm misinformation.

This study aims to examine the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) adoption on differentiation and cost leadership strategies and how governance structure moderates this CSR–strategy relationship.

The study data were retrieved from Thomson Reuters for non-financial firms between 2013 and 2019, and a fixed-effects panel regression analysis was executed.

The results indicate that CSR fosters cost leadership strategy but weakens differentiation strategy. This result supports the value generation school for cost leaders but also confirms the agency theory perspective for differentiators. Moreover, the governance structure does not moderate the relationship between a firm's CSR engagement and its business strategy, which implies a lack of corporate policies that concurrently consider both its CSR investment and strategies.

The findings of this study imply that cost leaders can integrate CSR practices into their business strategy and use their CSR engagement to increase their competitive position by stimulating cost efficiency and creating greater turnover. On the contrary, for differentiators, there is a trade-off between environmental and social engagement and business strategies. Thus, they are advised to enrich their unique product development abilities through the integration of environmental and social practices and reinforce their competitive position by addressing stakeholders' interests. The practical implication of the moderation analysis is that there is no rooted corporate policy behind the connection between CSR and firm strategy for both cost leaders and differentiators, which constitutes a missing link.

The findings of this study are of critical importance for firms, offering justification for the integration of two vital perspectives: social and environmental sustainability and financial sustainability. The moderating effect of governance performance tests the upper echelon's role in maintaining both sustainability perspectives concurrently and strengthening the legitimacy of the firms in society. Although maintaining a business strategy is important for shareholders' interests, pursuing a social and environmental sustainability strategy is crucial for meeting the expectations of all stakeholders.

This paper aims to examine the effects of managerial ability (MA) on the likelihood and the timeliness of goodwill impairment and explore whether the desirable effect of MA vary with the degree of agency problems.

The authors propose a unified framework to simultaneously examine the effects of MA on the likelihood and the timeliness of goodwill impairment by incorporating a market-based impairment indicator (denoted as BTM), MA and the interaction of BTM with MA to this study’s regression model to account for the likelihood of goodwill impairment. BTM addresses the timeliness of goodwill impairment.

This study finds that firms with higher MA have lower likelihood of goodwill impairment, and such firms are more likely to recognize goodwill impairment in a timely manner when the underlying value of goodwill is economically impaired. This desirable effect of MA is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprise (SOEs) and firms without chief executive officer (CEO) duality.

Firms can reduce the losses arising from goodwill impairment by enhancing the ability of their management teams combined with improved corporate governance structure.

This paper provides novel insights on understanding the role of MA in not only reducing the likelihood but also enhancing the timeliness of goodwill impairment. The findings help advance the upper echelons theory by uncovering the heterogenous effects of executives with different levels of ability.

The paper aims to craft a non-parametric composite value for the board quality of Indian banks where the weights can be assigned endogenously.

The study employed a non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based novel extension known as the benefit of doubt approach. To measure the strength of the Indian bank corporate board in terms of board efficiency (BEF), the study used a mixed approach, i.e. first, the study calculates the percentile ranks of the five attributes that the study assumes are the characteristics of the strong board including board size, number of outside directors, frequency of meetings, non-duality leadership and board gender diversity. Thereafter, the study performs the benefit-to-doubt approach to finally measure the efficiency of the board.

The findings of the study establish that the methodological framework present in the study to measure the strength of the board in terms of BEF has been a much superior method over the other weighted and non-weighted linear average methods.

This methodology aids the shareholders, investors and regulatory bodies in rating the Indian banks based on their strength in terms of better monitoring boards and ensuring a smooth agent–owner relationship.

The benefit of doubt approach has been a unique and novel methodology to craft the composite value for any multidimensional phenomenon. One of the major benefits of using this approach is that it assigns the weights endogenously to each dimension and thereafter collectively determines the efficiency of such a phenomenon.

The present study aims to explore the concepts involved in the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and customer and employee satisfaction in service industries.

The research literature over the recent decade has been analyzed using a systematic review. Through thematic analysis and coding the findings of the final selected articles, the authors presented an integrative framework of the relationship between CSR and the satisfaction of critical stakeholders of service companies, namely, customers and employees.

The research framework encompasses six main categories called CSR, satisfaction, moderators, conditional variables, contextual variables and satisfaction outcomes. All categories but CSR are divided into customer and employee sections to make the research framework further comprehensible.

The results show that in service industries, employees need as much attention as customers, and CSR efforts to satisfy customers and employees can lead to several positive outputs for companies.

Failure of service companies to commit to their social responsibility may harm the environment, society’s ethics and laws and long-term corporate profitability. On the other hand, adherence to CSR can lead to social development and economic growth.

This study is one of the most comprehensive studies in the field of CSR and satisfaction, which simultaneously considers the two key stakeholders of a service company. In addition, it provides valuable avenues for further studies.