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This paper aims to examine the impact of corruption on firm performance considering the interventional role of cash policy in the emerging market of Greece.

The current study utilizes a sample of 142,079 firm-year observations for the period 2006–2014. Descriptive statistics, multiple regression analyses and robustness checks are used to test the study's hypotheses.

The results reveal that firm performance is positively related to the control of institutional corruption, implying that firms perform better when operating in a low-corruption environment. All other things being equal, we also find that firm cash holding strengthens the positive association between control of corruption and corporate financial performance.

This research paper takes a more holistic approach by considering institutional factors in conjunction with corporate financial policies and outcomes. In a pervasive corrupt environment, the article illustrates how firm-level mechanisms can preclude political rent-seeking to improve corporate performance. The study's main limitation is that it focuses exclusively on a single country setting, based on the extreme-critical case's logic.

The findings might be useful for business executives and regulators seeking a better understanding of the planning and implementation of firms' asset allocation strategies and anti-corruption policies.

The study augments the relevant literature on the firm-level implications of corruption by providing empirical evidence for the interventional role of cash management in the relation between corruption and firm performance, in the context of an emerging economy.

The purpose of this study is to explore the association between cash holdings and business strategy for nonfinancial and nonutility US firms over the period from 1970 to 2016.

The authors have used Miles and Snow's (1978, 2003) theoretical background and followed Bentley et al. (2013) to construct a strategy index. Thus, the authors have distinguished two extreme corporate strategies, prospectors and defenders, based on a firm's resource allocation and investment behavior patterns. Following the methodology of Bates et al. (2009), the authors have used the multiple regression analysis to explore the relationship between business strategy and corporate cash holdings.

The empirical results show that business strategy is positively related to cash holdings. Prospectors are more likely to hold higher cash levels than defenders. Furthermore, the authors have found that cash holding's speed of adjustment (SOA) is slower for prospectors than for defenders, suggesting that business strategy influences cash holding's trend. Interestingly, the results show that the market value of cash increases significantly only for the firms that pursue a defender strategy.

The results of this work have valuable implications for researchers, by unveiling the relationship between corporate strategy and firm's cash holdings. This study, however, is limited to a sample of US firms; empirical evidence based on international samples of firms would add value to the current literature.

The findings could be useful to financial managers and investment strategists, who seek to maximize firm value through the adoption of an effective liquidity policy. What is more, this study provides support for the view that strategic choice and optimal cash management are of great importance for firms' market value.

This study enriches the knowledge of business strategy's impact on financing policy of firms and contributes to the empirical literature of cash holdings' determinants. In addition, it complements previous studies on US firms by documenting the effect of business strategy on the SOA in cash holdings and firm value.

This paper seeks to show that capital subsidies are used as instruments of long‐term corporate strategy. Previous research indicates that capital subsidies do not improve firm performance, as this is reflected by measures of productivity growth or by financial measures of profitability and improved capital structure.

The paper shows that a large, publicly available database of firms in the Greek food and beverages, covering a significant time span, is used to evaluate the effects of capital subsidies on strategic performance. Strategic performance is reflected by three novel indicators capturing a firm's orientation towards market power and leadership.

The paper finds that capital subsidies have a positive impact on firms' long‐term strategic orientations such as the firms' net market growth and the optimal scale of operation. The provision of capital subsidies assists firms to overcome the cost disadvantages coming from operation at a sub‐optimal scale of output and fixed capital, and increase their net market share.

The paper shows that more measures of long‐term strategic corporate performance should be employed in order to provide more research evidence that is required to detail the exact impacts of capital subsidies on corporate strategy.

The paper shows that the capital subsidies have an impact on strategic performance and thus their provision should be the outcome of careful design from the point of view of both the individual manager and the policy authorities.

In this paper three new indicators of a firm's strategic orientation are employed and provide the first empirical evidence of the impacts of capital subsidies on corporate strategy.

This work sets out to explore the effects of ISO 9001 on productive efficiency of firms.

A sample of 1,572 firms from three Greek manufacturing industries is used for empirical work. The firms are from the food and beverages industries, the machineries industries as well as from the electrical and electronics appliances manufacturing industries and include both adopters and non‐adopters of ISO 9001. A stochastic frontier methodological approach is adopted and the effects of ISO 9001 can be modeled in four ways: as a managerial input alongside the conventional inputs of capital and labor, as a factor affecting technical inefficiency, as an input and a factor affecting technical inefficiency and as having no effect at all.

ISO 9001 operates as a factor affecting technical inefficiency with non‐neutral effects on capital and labor. The combined effect of ISO 9001 with capital increases the level of technical inefficiency reflecting adjustment costs incurred when ISO 9001 is adopted. The combined effect of ISO 9001 with labor decreases the level of technical inefficiency reflecting the positive result of ISO 9001 on reducing x‐inefficiency.

The analysis isolates the effects of ISO 9001 on capital and labor but specific case studies are necessary in order to reveal managerial best practices that confront negative and support positive effects of ISO 9001 adoption within firms.

The paper illustrates that ISO 9001 is a managerial factor reducing productive inefficiency.

Capital subsidization is a widespread instrument of regional and industrial policy in Europe. A number of recent works have examined the influence of capital subsidization on the total factor productivity of recipient sectors and firms, and have provided strong evidence of neutral or even negative effects. The present study examines the effect of capital subsidization on four dimensions of the financial performance of firms, that is efficiency, profitability, capital structure, and growth, and provides evidence that capital subsidization affects solely firm growth.

The recent performance literature suggests that policies that enhance corporate environmental performance are more likely to lead to sustainable development, as these strategies are connected to superior technical efficiency. This paper aims to investigate the possible link between the environmental performance achieved by Greek listed firms and the level of their technical efficiency, using financial reporting information as a proxy for environmental performance.

Data extracted from the financial statements of the most polluting firms listed in Athens Stock Exchange were used. An econometric framework based on stochastic frontier analysis was developed to estimate the probable linkage between the level of environmental performance, measured by environmental performance indicators (EPIs), and efficiency.

The empirical findings reveal that improved environmental performance is a potential source of competitive advantage leading to more efficient processes, improvements in productivity, lower costs of compliance and new market opportunities.

This research was based on corporate financial data coming from the firms listed in Athens Stock Exchange whose activities can be considered as environmentally harmful.

From the stock market investor's perspective, the combination of financial and environmental information can lead to decisions with prosper future growth, whereas regulating authorities and managers can adopt useful policies for sustainable development.

In this paper content analysis approach was used on financial and environmental reporting data to measure the level of corporate environmental performance. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study conducted with Greek firm level data that explores the relationship between EPIs and productivity, an issue which has not been lucidly investigated in the academic literature.

This paper aims to consider the effect of the chief executive officer’s (CEO) ability on the amount of cash stock at the firm level.

The empirical hypothesis is examined via fixed-effect regression models using data from US incorporated firms.

Consistent with the upper echelon theory and cash holding motives, the results reveal that able CEOs are associated with an increased level of cash stock, ceteris paribus. Further analysis shows that the association between CEO ability and firm cash holding is more profound for financially sound firms. The authors also demonstrate that firm size significantly affects the relationship between CEO ability and cash management. The results are robust to various sensitivity analyses and additional tests.

This work is subject to limitations inherent in the use of relevant proxies. Thus, the study implements several model specifications to ensure the validity of findings in a more generic context. Future research should investigate the board structure’s role and the monitoring procedures on the CEOs’ cash holding behavior as a natural extension to this study.

The insights derived from the study are expected to advance the decision-making process of cash policies and CEO selection for shareholders, business executives and investment strategists.

Overall, the study provides new evidence that CEO ability is a contingent factor of corporate cash stock.