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During the 2020 election cycle, 2,276 super PACs spent over $2.1 billion in federal elections. This chapter argues that changes made to the US campaign finance system brought about by the Citizens United v. FEC (2010) and SpeechNow.org v. FEC (2010) cases have destabilized the American political system by fueling tensions between right-wing and left-wing populist factions and by contributing to congressional corruption. By moving away from the political corruption standard and toward the free speech standard in Citizens United, polarizing wealthy mega-donors and dark money sources have come to play a dominant role in congressional elections. These cases also helped to contribute to a two-tiered campaign finance regulatory structure that distinguishes between campaign contributions given directly to federal candidates and political money contributed to super PACs to support or oppose federal candidates. In the 2020 congressional elections, PACs and super PACS outspent both major party candidates combined in 35 House and Senate races. Super PACs are serving as “shadow parties” by targeting competitive races for the purpose of swaying partisan control of Congress. This study also shows that an exceedingly high percentage of super PAC money is spent on negative advertising that further divides rather than unifies the nation. This chapter also highlights the corrupting influence of congressional leadership PACs and examines how super PACs have enabled foreign and dark money sources to illegally influence congressional campaigns.

Mead was one of the first university professors of Finance in North America. The purpose of this article ia to document his career at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania from 1900 to 1944.

This research used traditional historical interpretation of rare archival documents, drew from the autobiography of Mead's more famous daughter, Margaret Mead, and includes an analysis of Mead's published work in Finance.

The findings are reported as an intellectual biography. The paper reports on Mead's life and career as a pioneer Finance scholar.

There has been almost nothing published about the history of the Finance discipline and nothing published about the contributions of Edward Sherwood Mead.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

This study investigates the reaction to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) 2010 interpretative guidance on climate risk disclosures. Issued on February 8, 2010, the release represents one of the few examples of authoritative requirements for environmental disclosure in filers’ 10-K reports. As such, we attempt to determine the effect of the new requirement on companies’ disclosures as well as how the market reacted to the guidance announcement. Based on a sample of 155 large companies drawn randomly from the Fortune 500, we find first, that, as expected, climate change disclosures increased significantly following the release, but overall, the information provision remained quite limited. We further find that, presumably as intended, companies from industries facing greater climate change exposures exhibited significantly larger increases in disclosure (controlling for prior levels of information provision). Finally, we document that the market reaction to the release of the SEC guidance was significantly positive and driven by more positive returns from firms in climate risk industries. We interpret these unexpected findings as potentially being due to investors believing the new requirements were less demanding than might have been anticipated or that they believe firms facing climate risks were in a better position to respond than other companies.

The study examined voluntary disclosure of contributions towards SDG-6 achievement by premium board companies in the Nigerian Stock Exchange. It employed a qualitative research design in which data were collected from the sustainability/annual reports of these companies and subjected to content analysis. The analysis shows overall poor quality as the disclosures are not linked to indicators that can help measure the extent of meeting the UN set target for SDG-6. Two tangible indicators disclosed are water use efficiency and construction of boreholes. However, there is no disclosure of the proportion of the population that gained access to clean water through these initiatives. Similarly, poor quality exists when compliance with GRI-303 on water information disclosure was assessed. The motivation behind the disclosures points to a continuation of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The objective is to gain a social licence to operate, and legitimation as opposed to signalling superior SDG-6 performance.

This paper aims to examine the differences in quality and quantity of disclosures dealing with greenhouse gas emissions among companies with a relatively large or small carbon footprint. It also considers whether disclosures are being included in the primary report to stakeholders (an integrated report) or in a secondary source (a sustainability report).

A comprehensive carbon disclosure checklist was constructed based on professional and academic literature to identify and categorise carbon disclosures. Quality is gauged according to a multi-dimensional assessment derived from prior research based on density of reporting, disclosure attributes, management orientation, integration of information, ease of analysis, reporting on strategy, use of independent assurance and repetition. A content analysis is used to gauge the quantity and quality of carbon disclosures of 50 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Differences in the quantity and quality scores of high- and low-carbon companies are tested using a Mann–Whitney U test.

Carbon disclosures are used as part of a legitimacy management exercise. This involves not just the use of additional environmental disclosure to placate stakeholders as environmental impact grows. The quality of reporting and location of disclosures are, perhaps, more important for understanding how companies are responding to stakeholder expectations for reporting on carbon emissions and climate change.

Despite mounting scientific evidence on the risks posed by climate changes, companies remain reluctant to commit to high-quality reporting on specific steps being taken to reduce carbon emissions. Even when disclosures are being targeted at key stakeholders, the possibility of impression management remains. It may, therefore, be necessary to have carbon reporting regulated and independently assured. More guidance on how companies should be managing and reporting on carbon emissions and climate change may also be required.

Despite mounting scientific evidence on the risks posed by climate changes, companies remain reluctant to commit to high-quality reporting on specific steps being taken to reduce carbon emissions. Even when disclosures are being targeted at key stakeholders, the possibility of impression management remains. It may, therefore, be necessary to have carbon reporting regulated and independently assured. More guidance on how companies should be managing and reporting on carbon emissions and climate change may also be required.

The study merges the traditional approach of focusing on the quantity of disclosures to illustrate the application of legitimacy theory in a sustainability/integrated reporting setting with less-seldom-studied quality and location of reporting. This result provides a more nuanced perspective of how carbon disclosures are being used to manage stakeholders’ reporting expectations.

This study examines the effects of a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative on its employees’ organizational attachment and intent to leave. We propose that employees’ perceived authenticity of their firm’s CSR activity mediates the effects of a firm’s CSR initiative on employees’ attachment to the firm and intent to leave. We also hypothesize that employees understand the authenticity of their firm’s CSR initiative based on internal and external attribution mechanisms. We propose that internal attribution enhances authenticity, while external attribution reduces it.

We surveyed a sample of 450 employees from 38 Korean companies that were included in the 2009 Dow Jones Sustainability Index Korea (DJSI Korea). To test the theoretical model, we employed a linear structural equation modeling which allows the causal estimation of theoretical constructs after taking into account their measurement errors.

As predicted, internal attribution significantly increases employees’ perceptions of their firm’s CSR authenticity, whereas external attribution significantly reduces such perceptions. Employees’ perceptions of authenticity, in turn, increase their affective attachment and decrease their intent to leave. In addition, the effects of the two attribution mechanisms on organizational attachment and intent to leave were mediated by employees’ perceptions on authenticity.

Research on authenticity has been case studies or narrative ones. This is one of the first studies investigating the role of authentic management empirically.

We demonstrate that a firm’s CSR initiative is a double-edged sword. When employees perceive inauthenticity of their firm’s CSR initiative, the CSR initiative could be detrimental to employees’ attachment to the firm. This study calls attention to the importance of authentic management of CSR.

Informational transparency through social network services become the foundational reality to the contemporary management. To maintain competitive edge in this changing world, every stakeholder of a firm including managers, employees, customers, shareholders, government, and communities should collaborate and help each other live the principle of authenticity.