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The construction industry and its activities harmfully affect the environment. Hence, adopting green building (GRB) practices can be helpful in achieving sustainable development goals. Therefore, this study aims to identify the factors affecting the intention to adopt GRB practices by extending theory of planned behavior (TPB).

Using non-probability purposive sampling technique, data was gathered from consultant and contractor engineers in the construction industry through a questionnaire. The analysis was done using partial least square-structural equation modeling technique on a useful sample of 290.

Findings revealed that the core constructs of TPB [i.e. attitude (AT), subjective norms (SUBN) and perceived behavioral control (PBC)] significantly affect the intention to adopt GRB practices. Moreover, government support and knowledge of green practices (KNGP) were found to be critical influencing factors on AT, SUBNs and PBC. Lastly, the findings confirmed that environmental concerns (ENC) play as a moderating between SUBN and intention to adopt GRB practices, as well as AT and intention to adopt GRB practices.

This study contributes to existing knowledge on GRB, offering evidence base for policy choices regarding climate change adaptation and mitigation in the construction industry.

This study provides insights from the perspective of a developing economy and confirms the applicability of TPB in the adoption of GRB practices. Moreover, this study confirms the moderation role of ENC in between TPB constructs and intention to GRB that is not tested earlier in the context of GRB. This study also confirms that government sustainable support positively affects PBC, and KNGP significantly affects SUBNs.

This study aims to investigate whether social reputation via corporate social responsibility (CSR) awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt and whether governance mechanisms moderate this relationship.

The sample covers the period between 2002 and 2021, during which CSR award data were available in the Thomson Reuters Eikon/Refinitiv database. The empirical models are based on country, industry and year fixed-effects regression.

While the main findings produced an insignificant result for access to debt, they indicated strong evidence for the positive relationship between CSR awarding and the cost of debt. Moreover, the moderating effect highlights that while the sustainability committee helps CSR-awarded companies access debt more easily, independent directors help firms decrease the cost of debt via CSR awarding. Furthermore, the results differ between the US and the non-US samples, earlier and recent periods, high- and low-leverage firms and large and small firms.

For the first time, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the authors assess whether social reputation via CSR awarding facilitates access to debt and decreases the cost of debt in an international and cross-industry sample. Little is known about the effect of social reputation on loan contracting, although social reputation conveys broader information that goes beyond the firm’s internal (performance) and external (reporting) CSR practices. The authors also draw attention to the differing roles of distinct governance mechanisms in leveraging social reputation for loan contracting.

This paper aims to discuss the emergence of science, technology and innovation (STI) institutions in Indonesia during the Dutch East Indies colonial period in 1778–1941. The emergence of these institutions reflected the dynamics of science and technology development and innovation in that era.

This paper navigates a historiographical approach. Data collection techniques use “secondary data research,” with archival investigation published by official sources in the Dutch East Indies in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as other reference sources, and data analysis techniques use “supplementary analysis.”

This research indicates that the STI institution during the Dutch East Indies colonial period was formed to maximize the natural resources of the Dutch East Indies. The STI institution at that time was constructed as part of Buitenzorg’s Plantentuin the lands, plantations, solutions for health, astronomy, geology, forestry and culture.

The limitations of this research, as well as future research. Relying too much on “secondary data” is a limitation of this study. Therefore, it is necessary to collect primary data through in-depth interviews with historical scientists studying STIs in Indonesia in future research.

This study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, considered the first study, reveals the dynamics of STI in Indonesia during the Dutch East Indies colonial era by examining the dynamics of the institution. In addition, this study succeeded in dividing five institutional STI clusters in the Dutch East Indies Colonial period 1778–1941, namely, units/institutions formed as part of Planuntungin te Buitenzorg; units/institutions formed based on plantations, initiated by private plantations to find solutions to the pests and diseases that attack their crops; units/institutions formed to seek solutions in the health sector; units/institutions formed based on astronomy, geology and forestry; and units/ institutions regarded as scientific councils/associations.

This study explores how to develop high-tech industries in Hunan province and enhance regional competitiveness. Through the comprehensive quantitative analysis of the development status of the high-tech industry in Hunan province, this paper provides a reference for the development of the high-tech industry in China and the world.

This study constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system of regional competitiveness in Hunan province from the five dimensions of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing of the “new development concept.” Through the screening and analysis of relevant economic indicators in Hunan province from 2011 to 2020, the principal component analysis method is used to measure the five development dimensions, verify the hypotheses in the study and finally draw the conclusion.

Hunan's high-tech industry is positively correlated with Hunan's regional innovation development competitiveness, regional coordinated development competitiveness, regional green development competitiveness, regional open development competitiveness and regional shared development competitiveness. Among them, the promotion effect on innovation development is the best, followed by the promotion effect on green development, coordinated development and shared development dimension. In contrast, the promotion effect on the open development dimension is relatively weak.

The statistical data selected in this study have certain timeliness. At the same time, the current economic environment is affected by the new corona pneumonia epidemic, showing specific particularity. In this context, it is bound to cause changes in the impact of high-tech industries on regional competitiveness. In addition, this paper studies the regional competitiveness of Hunan's high-tech industry from a macro perspective. Although relevant studies are conducted from five dimensions, there is a lack of micro-level research.

From five aspects of the new development concept, this study provides suggestions for developing high-tech industries in Hunan province and even China and the path to enhance regional competitiveness.

Up to now, no article measures regional competitiveness with the five development dimensions of new development: innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing, and quantitatively analyses regional competitiveness on this basis.

This study aims to examine the impact of sustainable practices as proxied by the environmental, social and governance (ESG) score on capital structure. It also investigates whether ESG performance influences the speed of adjustment (SOA) to target leverage in firms.

The sample covers 116 non-financial firms listed on the main stock exchanges from five Southeast ASEAN countries (Bursa Malaysia, Indonesia Stock Exchange, Philippines Stock Exchange, Singapore Stock Exchange and Stock Exchange of Thailand) over the period 2012–2019. The study adopts the OLS regression and system-GMM estimators to perform the data analysis.

The authors show that the ESG score is positively associated with book leverage, suggesting that firms increase their debt capital through sustainable practices. However, they find that the ESG score is negatively associated with market leverage across our model estimations. The authors also reveal that environmental, social and governance pillar scores produce about 7.82%, 2.88% and 0.47% SOAs, respectively, higher than the SOA of the traditional SOA without the ESG factor. The aggregate ESG score has about 3.41% SOA higher than the baseline SOA without the ESG factor.

This study is of interest to investors, corporate firms and policymakers. The study demonstrates that the ESG score increases the firm’s SOA to target leverage. By disaggregating the ESG score, the authors establish that ESG pillar scores produce higher SOAs than the traditional SOA (without ESG), with the environmental score inducing the fastest SOA. Practically, the study implies that environmentally sustainable activities reduce environmental transaction costs, benefit firms through better information transparency and enhance a trustful climate between the firm and suppliers of capital. Therefore, this study demonstrates that firms do not only incur the cost of disseminating ESG information but also benefit from lower information asymmetry and a higher SOA with better tax-deductible advantages.

The findings have combined advantages for both stakeholders and directors who monitor and manage the firms’ resources to improve the quality of ESG practices and initiatives.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to establish that sustainable practices induce higher debt capital. Secondly, unlike prior research focusing on the cost of capital, the authors examine whether ESG performance affects capital structure patterns. Thirdly, it documents the extent to which sustainable practices influence the SOA towards target leverage in firms. The authors contribute to corporate finance literature that firms reach faster to their target leverage in the presence of ESG performance. Theoretically, through the notion of the stakeholder proposition, the study establishes that the firms’ pursuance of stakeholder goals further enhances the prediction of the trade-off theory.

Exposure to a public health threat of significant proportions made current models inadequate to explain the failure phenomenon in small businesses. Hence, the need to reimagine the phenomenon. Borrowing from the principles of biology, this study extended theoretical and empirical perspectives on the failure phenomenon by unpacking its constituent elements and the measurement metrics using the regeneration lens.

Based on a cohort tracked over time, the study estimated the survival probabilities of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) with and without regeneration using the Kaplan–Meier method. The study investigated the factors that predict enterprise regenerative capacity using the multivariate Cox proportional hazard ratios.

Rates of interruption in business activity, by month, ranged between 0% and 18% during the follow-up period. True mortality rates hovered between 0% and 4% over the same period. Over three in five SMEs that experienced interruption in business activity without ceasing operations regenerated at some point in time during the follow-up period. The survival probabilities beyond the follow-up period were 0.85 and 0.44 with and without regeneration effects, respectively. Fresh capital injection (+), the introduction of new/improved processes or products/services (+), perceived business outlook (+) and the presence of debt (−) influenced the capacity to regenerate.

The cohort was followed for only six months. There is a need to continue interrogating the failure phenomenon in other contexts over longer periods using the regeneration lens. Bringing on board academia, financial institutions and other SME-related ecosystem players will be strategic.

The approach provides a more nuanced understanding of the life and well-being of enterprises under conditions of disruption. Improving the precision and validity of failure-related statistics enhances their utility in policy and remediation-related discussions.

The results did not show significant differences in SME mortality rates between male and female-owned enterprises. The results provide further evidence that the failure phenomenon is ungendered. As such, financial institutions and the SME ecosystem at large must eliminate perceptual gender biases in the financing and other support to SMEs.

The study used the principles of biology to reimagine the failure phenomenon in small businesses. The approach breathes life into entrepreneurship research and policy.

This study analyzes whether industry relatedness between a corporate borrower and its group peers significantly affects that firm's borrowing cost.

A regression analysis is run on bank-loan data of a sample of Indonesian companies for 2010–2020. The main variables of interest are the natural logarithms of the borrowing firm's number of affiliates classified within either similar 2- or 4-digit GICS industries, and the Caves weighted index of these firms' related diversification. This index measures how firms in a group are diversified in relation to the borrower. The dependent variable is the all-in credit spread, stated in basis points, over the LIBOR or similar benchmark, as of the loan issuance date.

Findings support the industry-relatedness hypothesis and contradict the risk-reduction hypothesis and show that banks charge lower loan spreads on a borrowing firm that either operates within a similar industry as its affiliate or diversifies into related sectors or industries. Consistent with the co-insurance-effect hypothesis, the results also underline the importance of the parent and first-layer firms as supporting instead of the tunneling vehicles within business groups. These conclusions hold even after segregating the sample and using the loan maturity as the dependent variable.

This study uses a unique diversification measurement based on the borrowing firm's sector or industry, relative to other group members, and offers new insights on business group diversification and bank loan costs.

This study aims to address the unanswered question of whether corporate sustainability has an impact on auditors’ overall judgment and to provide incremental evidence that corporate sustainability reporting has significant effect on financial auditors’ judgment.

Following prior research, the authors, respectively, apply auditors’ decisions on going-concern opinions and three discretionary accrual measures as proxies for auditor conservatism over financial risk and financial reporting risk. The authors collect corporate sustainability reporting and sustainability assurance data of U.S. firms from the global reporting initiative (GRI) database to construct and measure firms’ sustainability reporting activities.

The authors find that nonreporting firms are more likely to receive going-concern opinions than the reporting firms. In addition, reporting firms have a larger scale of discretionary accruals than their nonreporting counterparts. The authors also obtain consistent findings that sustainability assurance or accounting assurance providers strengthen the effect of sustainability reporting on auditors’ judgment.

First, using discretionary accruals as measures of auditor conservatism is controversial, as accruals are the joint product by auditors and clients. Second, binary variables as a measure of sustainability reporting activities limit the inference. Lastly, the findings based on limited samples may weaken the external validity.

The findings imply that firms engaging in sustainability activities are lower in financial or financial reporting risk. Firms can influence audit practitioners’ overall judgment through sustainability reports. Sustainability commitments and reporting have become a part of firms’ risk management.

The findings imply that sustainability reporting could become an integrated part of regulated corporate disclosure. Sustainability assurance reduces social costs by lending credibility to sustainability reports.

This paper provides incremental evidence that sustainability reports provide useful information and signals that influence auditors’ professional judgment. The findings also suggest that sustainability assurance strengthens auditors’ confidence in using sustainability information, thus amplifying the effect of sustainability reporting on auditors’ judgment.