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This study investigates whether corporate executives, who are university alumni, influence each other's firm corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance.

Drawing on social network theory, the authors hypothesise that a firm's CSR performance is positively associated with its peer firms' average CSR performance when the executives of the firm and its peer firms are university alumni. The study employs data from 1,685 listed firms and 4,906 executives who graduated from 585 different universities in China and runs multivariate regressions.

The results reveal a sizeable university peer influence on CSR performance. Such influence is even stronger for executives who graduated from elite universities (e.g. 985 or 211 universities), and universities or programmes that provide more opportunities for alumni reunions or networking (e.g. MBAs/EMBAs). Executives who are more influential in making firm decisions (e.g. CEOs/CFOs), as well as firms that are more likely to mimic the behaviour of others, also show higher degrees of university peer influence.

The results highlight the role of education in ethical decision-making.

This study documents evidence on a new determinant of firm CSR performance. The study sheds light on the impact of non-institutionalised personal ties, for example, university alumni networks, on CSR performance.

This study aims to shed lights on the dynamics of involving and sharing knowledge with stakeholders in the process of new service development (NSD) over time.

The paper is based on a paradigmatic case focused on the development of the digital MBA program by the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano. Primary and secondary data have been largely collected and analyzed, involving multiple stakeholders of the development process.

This study describes how several stakeholders have been involved during the phase of the NSD process, showing two variables that ruled their involvement: the level of control exerted by the School on the stakeholders and the level of flexibility of the stakeholders.

This research offers insights to the understanding of the dynamics of involving and sharing knowledge with multiple-stakeholders in NSD. From a theoretical perspective, it contributes to stakeholder theory linking it with the service management literature, highlighting the role of cyclical fluctuations in the involvement activities.

This research offers insights to managers dealing with the development of new services, offering them a novel view on how various stakeholders may be involved over time, in different moment and in different ways, to properly enhance the development process thanks to their knowledge sharing.

This paper contributes to the service management literature emphasizing the role of multiple stakeholders while providing insights and suggestions to manage the complex relationships created by their involvement and their knowledge.

Evidence from previous literature indicates that adopting a new innovative technology has a positive impact on a company’s business performance. Much less work has been carried out into examining whether a technology adoption has impact on corporate reputation. This paper aims to examine the latter topic in a context where social media is the channel used to share news about the introduction of a new technology. The empirical setting of the study consists of five retail companies located in the USA that decided to include Bitcoin as a payment platform.

Twitter data were used to measure how sharing news about the adoption of new technology could affect the reputation of the companies selected, keeping a clear distinction between the volume of data relating to social media responses and the sentiment expressed in the tweets. A panel vector autoregression model was used to incorporate series of data relating to news items, volume and sentiment.

The results show that the news about the adoption of a new technology has a positive impact on both the volume of tech-related tweets and the sentiment expressed in the tweets themselves, although the patterns of these two effects are different. The resulting impact decreases after a few days, both in volume and in sentiment.

The analysis has limitations that future research could address by extending and diversifying the examined companies and the social media used as data sources. The research suggests that managers in medium-sized companies can leverage on the introduction of new technologies that have a direct impact on their customers and gain reputational benefits in terms of immediate visibility.

The research introduces an additional dimension of analysis to the current stream of corporate reputation. Although the literature has already covered the dynamics of response to events on Twitter, by focusing on the adoption of the new Bitcoin technology, the paper provides novel insights.

This research aims to explore the role of awareness of harm and responsibility for environmental protection in reducing pollution from single-use plastic bags (SPBs) in coastal communities (CCs). To this end, this study develops and tests a unique model that explains residents’ intention to reduce the use of SPBs in coastal regions.

A questionnaire was used to collect data from 721 coastal residents in Vietnam. Structural equation modeling and moderation analysis were applied to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that awareness of the impact of SPBs on the environment and human health and awareness of the responsibility to protect the coastal environment significantly affect attitudes and intentions to reduce the use of SPBs. Moreover, such awareness of responsibility strengthens the attitude-intention relationship.

The findings suggest that CCs should not receive a lower priority in campaigns and efforts to reduce SPBs. In this regard, providing residents with free environmentally friendly bags and education programs on the impact of SPBs could be implemented.

CCs are directly impacted by pollution from SPBs. However, little is known about how this affects their polluting behavior. This study shows that CCs are not immune to polluting behaviors and that SPBs can be significant among residents. It also demonstrates that awareness of harm and feeling responsible for the environment are essential drivers of (intended) sustainable behaviors.