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This research employs a behavioural approach to investigate the determinants of CEO disclosure tone inconsistency. By examining CEO characteristics and psychological attributes, the study aims to unravel the complexities underlying tone variations in Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) reports. Through this exploration, the research seeks to contribute to understanding ethical considerations in corporate communications and provide insights into the nuanced interplay between personal, job-related and psychological factors influencing CEO disclosure tone.

The study utilises a dataset comprising 1,411 MD&A reports from 143 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange between 2012 and 2021. Multiple regression analyses with year- and industry-fixed effects are employed to examine the relationships between CEO gender, tenure, duality, ability and psychological attributes such as narcissism, myopia, overconfidence and tone inconsistency. Data analysis involves MAXQDA software for analysing MD&A reports and Rahavard Novin software for document analysis, supplemented by audited financial statements.

The findings reveal significant relationships between CEO characteristics, psychological attributes and tone inconsistency. Female CEOs exhibit reduced tone inconsistency, contrasting with previous research trends. CEO tenure correlates negatively with tone inconsistency, whereas CEO ability shows a positive correlation, indicating a nuanced relationship with performance. However, CEO duality does not exhibit a significant association. Psychological attributes such as narcissism and myopia are positively associated with tone inconsistency, while no substantial connection is found with managerial overconfidence.

This research contributes to the inaugural exploration of CEO disclosure tone inconsistency through a behavioural lens, advancing measurement precision in the field. By delving into CEO characteristics and psychological attributes, the study offers unique insights into the roots of tone inconsistency. Applying comprehensive lexicon and phraseology enriches the methodological approach, fostering dialogue among diverse stakeholders and adding distinct perspectives to the discourse on ethical issues in business. Through its meticulous examination of behavioural underpinnings, this study becomes a catalyst for reflection, dialogue and progress in corporate communications and ethical considerations.

The present research conducts a thorough review of published literature relevant to earnings management (EM) practices in family firms (FFs), utilizing the Scopus database, intending to identify potential directions for future research.

Through a systematic review, this study focuses on identifying and summarizing trends in publications over the years, the journal outlets, geographical contexts, research methodologies, the temporal evolution of theories and the specific constructs under investigation.

Earlier empirical studies suggest that corporate governance enhances integrity and transparency in FFs, thereby reducing EM practices. Contrarily, compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) seems to offer managers more opportunities for convenient EM rather than restricting such practices. Notably, corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices do not appear to mitigate EM practices consistently. The literature, however, reveals inclusive results and areas requiring deeper exploration for more definitive results. For instance, certain corporate governance mechanisms, such as family-specific social and cultural business characteristics, subjective measures of family businesses, behavioral approaches to family owners' decision-making and directors' personal, psychological and social factors, remain largely untested. Additionally, there is a notable research gap concerning the relationship between IFRS, capital structure and EM.

This study’s contributions lie in its comprehensive literature review, identification of research trends and gaps, and its potential to guide future research endeavors in the domain of EM practices in FFs.

This study aims to explore the auditors’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt, with a focus on how their demographic characteristics – specifically gender, work experience and audit firm size – affect their ability to identify key audit matters (KAMs).

The study used exploratory factor analysis to develop an index for evaluating auditors’ proficiency in distinguishing KAMs from non-KAMs, followed by multivariate regression analysis to analyze the impact of auditors’ demographics on this ability.

The study’s findings are significant as they highlight the influence of auditors’ gender and work experience on their capability to correctly classify KAMs. However, the size of the audit firm showed no significant effect on the auditors’ decision-making efficacy in identifying KAMs.

While the study illuminates critical aspects of audit judgment during unprecedented times, it acknowledges limitations, including its geographical focus on Egypt and reliance on self-reported data. The implications stress the need for audit firms and regulators to consider auditors’ demographic characteristics when formulating policies to enhance audit quality and reliability during crises.

This research breaks new ground in the auditing literature by shedding light on the distinct role of auditor demographics in shaping audit opinion during crises. It is one of the pioneering studies to quantitatively assess the impact of auditors’ gender, experience and firm size on KAM identification in a global health crisis. It provides a unique perspective on audit practices in emerging economies.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and risk-taking in Chinese A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2020. It seeks to understand the influence of CER on risk-taking behavior and explore potential moderating factors.

A quantitative approach is used, using data from Chinese A-share listed companies over the specified period. Regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between CER and risk-taking, while considering moderating variables such as performance aspiration, environmental enrichment and contextual factors.

The findings indicate that CER positively influences corporate risk-taking, with significant impacts on information asymmetry and corporate reputation. Moreover, positive performance aspiration strengthens the effect of CER on risk-taking, while negative performance aspiration and environmental enrichment weaken this effect. Cross-sectional analysis shows that the positive association between CER and risk-taking is more prominent for firms located in areas with strict environmental regulation, for nonstate-owned firms, and for firms with higher levels of internal control.

This research contributes to the literature by providing insights into the dynamics between CER and risk-taking in the Chinese market context. It expands existing knowledge by considering the influence of performance aspiration on this relationship, offering practical implications for firms seeking to enhance corporate performance through strategic management of environmental responsibilities.

Managers must make numerous strategic decisions in order to initiate and implement a business model innovation (BMI). This paper examines how managers perceive the management team interacts when making BMI decisions. The paper also investigates how group biases and board members’ risk willingness affect this process.

Empirical data were collected through 26 in-depth interviews with German managing directors from 13 companies in four industries (mobility, manufacturing, healthcare and energy) to explore three research questions: (1) What group effects are prevalent in BMI group decision-making? (2) What are the key characteristics of BMI group decisions? And (3) what are the potential relationships between BMI group decision-making and managers' risk willingness? A thematic analysis based on Gioia's guidelines was conducted to identify themes in the comprehensive dataset.

First, the results show four typical group biases in BMI group decisions: Groupthink, social influence, hidden profile and group polarization. Findings show that the hidden profile paradigm and groupthink theory are essential in the context of BMI decisions. Second, we developed a BMI decision matrix, including the following key characteristics of BMI group decision-making managerial cohesion, conflict readiness and information- and emotion-based decision behavior. Third, in contrast to previous literature, we found that individual risk aversion can improve the quality of BMI decisions.

This paper provides managers with an opportunity to become aware of group biases that may impede their strategic BMI decisions. Specifically, it points out that managers should consider the key cognitive constraints due to their interactions when making BMI decisions. This work also highlights the importance of risk-averse decision-makers on boards.

This qualitative study contributes to the literature on decision-making by revealing key cognitive group biases in strategic decision-making. This study also enriches the behavioral science research stream of the BMI literature by attributing a critical influence on the quality of BMI decisions to managers' group interactions. In addition, this article provides new perspectives on managers' risk aversion in strategic decision-making.

This study aims to examine the influence of managerial myopia on the excessive financialization behavior of listed firms on Bursa Malaysia.

Through a sample of 313 firms from 2015 to 2021, the author examine whether managerial myopia promotes or inhibits corporate financialization. The author uses ordinary least squares and Logit as the baseline models and addresses potential endogeneity through the dynamic-panel generalized method of moments. The results are also robust to alternative measures of financialization and managerial myopia.

The results show a significant positive effect of managerial myopia on the excessive financialization of enterprises. Furthermore, the findings indicate that the impact of managerial myopia on the over-financialization of enterprises is more prominent in periods of low economic policy uncertainty. However, the relationship between excessive financialization and managerial myopia is weakened in the presence of female chief executive officers.

The empirical results have useful policy implications. First, firms should establish scientific managerial assessment and supervision systems to avoid excessive financial investment behavior by myopic managers caused by assessments that place too much emphasis on short-term performance. Second, regulators and policymakers should encourage firms to appoint women to top management positions, which may inhibit short-sighted financialization behavior. Finally, the regulatory authorities should undertake the necessary measures driving companies to disclose the investment direction of the funds so that shareholders and investors can understand the use direction of the funds in a timely manner, which can effectively prevent the economy “from the real to the virtual” and promote the development of the real economy.

This paper expands the existing research on corporate financialization behavior and provides a new theoretical basis for the underlying factors of excessive financialization. It studies the influence of corporate financialization from the perspective of short-run managerial actions and deepens the understanding of managerial myopia and companies’ financialization levels.

The investigation into the influence of psychological capital on innovative behavior has typically been grounded in self-efficacy theory. However, individuals with high self-efficacy may encounter obstacles such as overconfidence and reluctance to accept feedback, potentially hindering successful innovation outcomes. Acknowledging the significance of collaborative efforts among organizational members in promoting innovation success, this study aims to examine the association between psychological capital and innovative behavior, with particular attention to the mediating influence of social capital.

The data utilized in this study were obtained from 6,409 participants enrolled in the Independent Study program “Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka” in 2022. Data collection employed an online survey approach, while data analysis was conducted using Structural Equation Modeling through the SEM-PLS application.

Social capital serves as a mediator in the relationship between psychological capital and innovative behavior. The results highlight the importance of understanding innovation as an outcome emerging from intricate interactions between psychological and social factors.

This investigation, utilizing social capital theory, furnishes preliminary empirical insights into the intermediary role of social capital between psychological capital and innovative behavior, thereby augmenting the scholarly discourse within this field and paving the way for further scholarly inquiry.

Are there smart ways to find heuristics? What are the common principles behind heuristics? We propose an integrative definition of heuristics, based on insights that apply to all heuristics, and put forward meta-heuristics for discovering heuristics.

We employ Herbert Simon’s metaphor that human behavior is shaped by the scissors of the mind and its environment. We present heuristics from different domains and multiple sources, including scholarly literature, practitioner-reports and ancient texts.

Heuristics are simple, actionable principles for behavior that can take different forms, including that of computational algorithms and qualitative rules-of-thumb, cast into proverbs or folk-wisdom. We introduce heuristics for tasks ranging from management to writing and warfare. We report 13 meta-heuristics for discovering new heuristics and identify four principles behind them and all other heuristics: Those principles concern the (1) plurality, (2) correspondence, (3) connectedness of heuristics and environments and (4) the interdisciplinary nature of the scissors’ blades with respect to research fields and methodology.

We take a fresh look at Simon’s scissors-metaphor and employ it to derive an integrative perspective that includes a study of meta-heuristics.

Gillette’s historically successful “razor and blade” business model (RBM) has been a promising benchmark for multiple businesses across diverse industries worldwide in the past several decades. The extant literature deals with very few nuances of this business model notwithstanding the fact that there are several variants of this business model being put to practical use by firms in diverse industries in grossly metaphorically equivalent situations.

This study adopts the 2 × 2 truth table framework from the domains of mathematical logic and combinatorics in fleshing out all possible (four logical possibilities) variants of the razor and blade business model for further analysis. This application presents four mutually exclusive yet collectively exhaustive possibilities on any chosen dimension. Two major dimensions (viz., provision of subsidy and intra- or extra-firm involvement in the making of razors or blades or both) form part of the discussion in this paper. In addition, this study synthesizes and streamlines entrepreneurial wisdom from multiple intra-industry and inter-industry benchmarks in terms of real-time firms explicitly or implicitly adopting several variants of the RBM that suit their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of evolution in situations that are grossly reflective of the metaphorically equivalent scenario of razor and recurrent blades. Inductive method of research is carried out with real-time cases from diverse industries with a pivotally common pattern of razor and blade model in some form or the other.

Several new variants of the razor and blade model (much beyond what the extant literature explicitly projects) have been discovered from the multiple metaphorically equivalent cases of RBM across industries. All of these expand the portfolio of options that relevant entrepreneurial firms can explore and exploit the best possible option chosen from them, given their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of growth.

This study has enriched the literature by presenting and analyzing a more inclusive or perhaps comprehensive palette of explicit choices in the form of several variants of the RBM for the relevant entrepreneurial firms to choose from. Future research can undertake the task of comparing these variants of RBM with those of upcoming servitization business models such as guaranteed availability, subscription and performance-based contracting and exploring the prospects of diverse combinations.

Smart entrepreneurial firms identify and adopt inspiring benchmarks (like razor and blade model whenever appropriate) duly tweaked and blended into a gestalt benchmark for optimal profits and attractive market shares. They target diverse market segments for tied-goods with different variants or combinations of the relevant benchmarks in the form of variegated customer value propositions (CVPs) that have unique and enticing appeal to the respective market segments.

Value-sensitive customers on the rise globally choose the option that best suits them from among multiple alternatives offered by competing firms in the market. As long as the ratio of utility to price of such an offer is among the highest, even a no-frills CVP may be most appealing to one market segment while a plush CVP may be tempting to yet another market segment simultaneously. While professional business firms embrace resource leverage practices consciously, amateur customers do so subconsciously. Each party subliminally desires to have the maximum bang-to-buck ratio as the optimal return on investment, given their priorities ceteris paribus.

Prior studies on the RBM have explicitly captured only a few variants of the razor and blade model. This study is perhaps the first of its kind that ferrets out many other variants (more than ten) of the razor and blade model with due simplification and exemplification, justification and demystification.

This paper is a response to the failure of construction firms to use sufficient attention to their working capital management (WCM) practices, resulting in operational challenges, and leading to the collapse of firms in most developing countries. Hence, this study aims to explore the empirical perspective of WCM practices among large building construction firms (LBCFs) in Ghana, to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 9.

The study collected primary data through structured survey questionnaires from LBCFs in Ghana. The CEOs/Directors, General Managers and Accountant/Finance of LBCFs in Ghana formed the unit of analysis based on a simple random sampling technique. Mean score, standard deviation and one-sample t-test were used to perform the empirical analysis of the study.

According to this study's empirical results, LBCFs appear to have effective WCM practices in place. This was evidenced in the surveyed responses which indicate that the sector’s WCM practices sound good based on the mean scores and statistically significant as the t-values > 1.664. Notably, LBCFs in Ghana pay their suppliers early to reduce the fear of adverse effect of late payments on their credit history, making them conservative in their approach toward financial management.

This is a pioneering paper in a developing country like Ghana, highlighting the significance of gaining an in-depth understanding of WCM practices among LBCFs. The findings of this study are expected to provide valuable information to industry players toward ensuring WCM efficiencies and can serve as a solid foundation for further empirical studies.