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Prior literature on the cultural determinants of cash holdings focuses on time-invariant cultural variables measured at the geographical level. These measures of culture do not capture the firm-level variation in corporate culture. Using a validated time-variant measure of firm-level corporate culture, specifically teamwork, we examine the effect of teamwork on a firm's cash holdings.

In this paper, we explore the effect of corporate teamwork culture on firms' cash holdings. Using sudden CEO turnover as an exogenous shock to a firm's teamwork culture, we find teamwork increases cash holdings. Also, we test and find two channels—financial constraint and agency—and two new labour-related channels—human capital quality and labour inefficiency—through which teamwork culture affects cash holdings. Our results are robust to endogeneity tests.

We find that teamwork increases the cash holdings of firms. We find that a firm with a high teamwork culture has higher cash holdings: an increase of one standard deviation in teamwork leads to a 14.6% rise in the mean cash holdings.

To our knowledge, our study is the first to introduce the firm-level teamwork cultural construct as a determinant of cash holdings.

This paper aims to understand whether, and if so how, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) influence large companies’ adoption and implementation of a broader corporate purpose, beyond profit maximization.

Adopting a multiple-case study method, data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 28 managers from 16 large companies in Australia and Japan, and from secondary sources. Grounded theory methods were used to analyze the data and draw out key findings.

The study revealed the influence of the SDGs on corporate purpose depends on the SDG integration level: where and how the SDGs are integrated into management practices. The influence was more significant when the companies implemented the SDGs at a normative level compared to those implementing the SDGs at a strategic and/or operational level.

Due to the exploratory nature of the study, the sample size is limited and covers only companies in two countries. Future studies could examine the validity of the findings and the explanatory model by testing with a larger sample and expanding the scope into different countries. The study provides practical implications on how large companies’ could scale up their contributions to achieving the SDGs.

While the extant literature suggests a simple relationship between sustainability (the SDGs) and corporate purpose, this paper identified a more complex relationship. It presents in a multi-pathway model that explains the relationship, based on empirical evidence from 16 large companies in two different institutional contexts.

Taking advantage of a unique measure of corporate culture obtained from advanced machine learning algorithms, this study aims to explore how corporate culture strength is influenced by board independence, which is one of the most crucial aspects of the board of directors. Because of their independence from the corporation, outside independent directors are more likely to be unbiased. As a result, board independence is commonly used as a proxy for board quality.

In addition to the standard regression analysis, the authors execute a variety of additional tests, i.e. propensity score matching, an instrumental variable analysis, Lewbel’s (2012) heteroscedastic identification and Oster’s (2019) testing for coefficient stability.

The results show that stronger board independence, measured by a higher proportion of independent directors, is significantly associated with corporate culture. In particular, a rise in board independence by one standard deviation results in an improvement in corporate culture by 32.8%.

Conducting empirical research on corporate culture is incredibly difficult due to the inherent difficulties in recognizing and assessing corporate culture, resulting in a lack of empirical research on corporate culture in the literature. The authors fill this important void in the literature. Exploiting a novel measure of corporate culture based on textual analysis, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to link corporate culture to corporate governance with a specific focus on board independence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of physical environment design (PED) and its antecedents on consumers’ emotional well-being (EWB). Drawing on place identity and emotional theories, the study aims to provide a new perspective to retail store experiences.

A survey of 800 respondents was conducted in London, out of which 764 responses were constructively used. The data was collected from international retail outlets, and structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The empirical results show that PED has a positive effect on consumers’ EWB. Among the antecedents, visual identity does not have any significant effect on PED and EWB. In contrast, communication had a significant effect on PED but did not have any effect on EWB, and further, cultural heritage had a positive effect on both PED and EWB. Further, moderator analysis identifies the boundary conditions under which specific theories hold.

The value of this paper lies in its potential to be used for creating the perfect design planning in retail stores. Significant implications for managers and researchers are highlighted.

This paper presents an innovative approach to develop the principles of retail store’s PED to support the EWB of consumers.

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.

As cross-cultural mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have learning effects on organisations, assessing their impacts on corporate performance is crucial. This study aims to explore the impact of inter-firm cultural differences on long-term post-M&A stock market performance.

The authors select domestic M&A transactions of Chinese listed companies during 2010–2021 as the sample. Then, the authors use the partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) to construct the latent variable of cultural differences in four dimensions to explore long-term stock market performance.

Cultural differences first positively and then negatively impact post-M&A performance. Three transmissions mechanisms are identified: investor sentiment, takeover premiums and information disclosure quality. Further analysis reveals that acquirer stock performance improves with higher analyst coverage and non-local shareholders but worsens if there are business affiliations between the acquirer and target firms.

This study can help optimise information disclosure systems in M&A transactions for regulatory authorities and aid investors’ understanding of post-M&A performance changes. Furthermore, it can improve acquirers’ understanding of the risks and opportunities in cross-cultural M&A, thereby facilitating the adaptation of management practices to the im-pacts of cultural differences.

By integrating the theories of resource dependence and transaction costs, this study examines the reversal effect of cultural differences between merging companies on post-M&A performance. The authors use a PLS-SEM to empirically analyse the main effects and reveal three transmission mechanisms.

This paper aims to examine the consistency between firms’ stakeholder-friendly responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and their environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings. Consistent firms are those with high prior ESG ratings that actively support stakeholders during the COVID-19 crisis.

The authors use data from JUST Capital, which tracks Russell 1000 firms’ actions in response to the pandemic, to examine the relationship between pre-pandemic ESG ratings and their COVID responses towards employees, customers and communities. The authors also analyse the impact of firms’ consistency between pre-pandemic ESG ratings and stakeholder-friendly COVID responses on ESG ratings and stock returns.

This study finds that firms with higher pre-pandemic ESG ratings are more likely to support their stakeholders during the pandemic. The authors also find that firms with high ESG ratings before the pandemic experience a decline in their ESG ratings if they do not actively support their communities during the COVID-19 crisis, although insufficient employee/customer support does not impact their ESG ratings. Finally, the authors find that firms with higher pre-pandemic ESG ratings that continue to uphold their ESG commitments through community assistance during the pandemic achieve higher stock returns compared to inconsistent firms.

The results reveal gaps in how comprehensively ESG agencies assess firms’ crisis responses, highlighting areas for rating improvements. The findings contribute to sustainable development by revealing the importance of firms upholding their ESG commitments during crises to maintain stakeholder trust and drive long-term value creation.

The findings underscore the need for responsive, transparent ESG rating processes to support the integration of sustainability considerations into corporate practices and investment decisions, particularly during evolving societal expectations during crises.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate how pre-pandemic ESG ratings explain firms’ stakeholder-friendly responses during the COVID-19 pandemic and analyse the integration of these responses and pandemic risks into ESG ratings during the crisis.

This paper examines the relationship between open innovation (measured by exploratory and exploitative linkages) and firm-level innovative activity in the offshore renewable energy (ORE) sector.

A unique, purpose-built survey that targeted firms operating in the ORE sector and its supply chain was used. The data provides novel insights into the research activities and networking capabilities of an industry in its infant stages of development. Regression models are used to estimate the relationship between firm-level external linkages and innovative activity.

Exploratory linkages are positively related to more innovative activity. This relationship is subject to diminishing returns, distinguishing the ORE sector from other sectors. Collaborating with suppliers and accessing scientific journals are conducive to research and development (R&D) activity and process innovation, whilst collaborating with customers is associated with the decision to introduce new products and processes.

This study provides evidence of a positive, but curvilinear, relationship between external knowledge linkages and innovative activity, adding novel insights into the relationship between open innovation (OI) strategies, research and innovation outcomes for firms predominantly in the introductory stages of the technological life cycle with limited commercialisation experience. The nuanced finding that specific linkages matter for certain research and innovation (R&I) outcomes adds deeper complexity to March’s (1991) framework, where tailoring certain exploratory or exploitative linkages to specific innovation activities is important.

This paper aims to examine how managers make non-generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) exclusion decisions depending on the regulatory guidance provided and their motivations. Guidance detail is a double-edged sword: resolving uncertainty but risking rule-based compliance over principled judgment.

This paper uses the context of non-GAAP measures in reporting, given the history of Securities and Exchange Commission changes in guidance detail. Drawing on theories of epistemic motivation and process accountability, this paper manipulates the goal of management (informativeness vs. opportunism) and guidance detail to examine effects on management decisions to exclude an ambiguous charge.

The 2×2 between participants experiment with 132 managers reveals that more detailed guidance increases likelihood of exclusion of an ambiguous charge. This paper further finds that this exclusion is more likely when management is given an informativeness goal, a result of a mediating effect of epistemic motivation. However, these findings only hold at low levels of process accountability.

The findings regarding the psychological concepts recognize the influence of perceived decision uncertainty by suggesting how managers respond to the level of regulatory guidance detail, offering regulators and auditors a basis for understanding and anticipating managerial reporting choices. Also, awareness of heightened epistemic motivation under the informativeness goal provides a nuanced practical understanding of non-GAAP decision drivers. Finally, the finding that effects are more pronounced for managers with lower process accountability highlights the significance of organizational accountability structures in guiding managerial choices, which can inform board-level governance and control decisions.

Pragmatically, this paper finds that detailed guidance leads to more appropriate exclusion decisions under a goal of informativeness but finds no such evidence where the goal is opportunism. No prior study has examined how the level of detail in guidance affects managers’ disclosure choices.