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The worldwide imposition of lockdown measures to control the 2020 coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has shifted most executive communications with external stakeholders online, resulting in quick responses from stakeholders. This study aims to understand how presentational styles exhibited in online communication induce immediate audience responses and empirically test the effectiveness of reactive impression management tactics.

The authors analyze presentational styles using MP3 files containing executive utterances during earnings call conferences held by S&P 100-listed firms after June 2020, the quarter after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Using timestamps, the authors link each utterance to a 1-minute interval change in the ask/bid prices of the stocks that occurs a minute after the corresponding utterance begins.

Exhibiting an informational presentation style in earnings calls leads to positive and immediate audience responses. Managers tend to increase their reliance on promotional presentation styles rather than on informational ones when quarterly earnings exceed market forecasts.

Drawing on organizational genre theory, this research identifies the discrepancy between the presentation styles that audiences positively respond to and those that managers tend to exhibit in earnings calls and provides a reactive impression management typology for immediate responses from online audiences.

Drawing on the social presence theory, this study aims to explore how supplier–customer social media interactions influence supplier observers’ trust in the customers and what mechanisms contribute to variation in trust experience.

A total of 36 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese suppliers using WeChat for business-to-business interactions. Data were analyzed in three steps: open coding, axial coding and selective coding.

Findings reveal that varied trust is based not only on the categories of social presence of interaction – whether social presence is embedded in informative interactions – but also on the perceived selectivity in social presence. Observer suppliers who experience selectivity during social and affective interactions create a perception of hidden information and an unhealthy relationship atmosphere, and report a sense of emotional vulnerability, thus eroding cognitive and affective trust.

The findings contribute new understandings to social presence theory by exploring the social presence of interactions in a supplier–supplier–customer triad and offer valuable insights into business-to-business social media literature by adopting a suppliers’ viewpoint to unpack the mechanisms of how social presence of interaction positively and negatively influences suppliers’ trust and behavioral responses.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between CEOs' inside debt holdings (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and the operating leverage of the firms they manage, with the aim to examine whether CEO incentives play a role in corporate risk-taking.

The authors investigate the relation between CEO inside debt holdings (CIDH) (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and the operating leverage (DOL) of the firms they manage. Using a sample of 11,145 US firm-year observations over the period 2006–2017, the authors find a strong negative association between CIDH and DOL. Additional analyses reveal that the relationship between CIDH and DOL is more pronounced in firms with heightened agency issues, powerful CEOs and for CEOs with stronger professional networks. The results are robust to various sensitivity and endogeneity tests.

The authors find strong evidence confirming the expected negative association between CEO inside debt and DOL suggesting that firms with higher inside debt tend to maintain lower levels of operating leverage. These findings continue to hold with the alternative measure for the inside debt and operating leverage, and across a range of tests designed to rule out the possibility that the primary findings are in any way driven by potential endogeneity. In addition, the findings demonstrate that the presence of manager-shareholder agency conflicts can strengthen the inside debt–DOL relationship suggesting the strong role of inside debt in reducing firm risk.

Findings in this paper have implications for design of compensation structures so that corporate boards can establish incentives as a tool for risk management. A limitation of this study is that it is focused on one market, i.e. US listed companies, so the findings may not be applicable on a global scale.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that links firm-level management of operating leverage through design of CEO inside debt incentives (two obvious choices for risk-reduction at the CEOs’ disposal include reducing financial risk through reduction of firm leverage and reducing operating risk through reduction of operating leverage). While use of firm leverage as an instrument of choice has been explored in the past, use of operating leverage to achieve risk reduction when CEO possess high inside holding, has received very little attention.

This research investigates how consumers who are most active on Facebook during the day vs in the evening differ, differ in their ad consumption, and how advertising effects vary as a function of a key moderator: gender.

Using a survey of 281 people, the research identifies Facebook users who are more intensely using mobile social media during the day versus in the evening, and measures five Facebook mobile advertising outcomes: brand and product recall, clicking on ads, acting on ads and purchases.

The results show that women who are using social media more intensely during the day are more likely to use Facebook to seek information, hence, Facebook mobile ads tend to be more effective for these users compared to those in the evening.

This contributes to the literature by analyzing how the time of day affects social media behavior in relation to mobile advertising effectiveness, and broadening the scope of mobile advertising effectiveness research from other than just clicks on ads to include measures like brand and product recall.

By analyzing the effectiveness of mobile advertising on social media as a function of the time of day, advertisers can be more targeted in their media buys, and so better use their social media budgets, i.e. advertising is more effective for women who use social media (Facebook) more intensely during the day than for those who use social media more intensely in the evening as the former tend to seek more information than the latter.

This research extends media ecology theory by drawing on circadian rhythm research to provide a first demonstration of how the time of day relates to different uses of mobile social media, which in turn relate to social media mobile advertising consumption.

While research on social media advertising has been steadily increasing, little has been explored on how users consume ads when they engage with social media at different periods along the day. This paper extends media ecology theory by investigating time of day, drawing on the circadian rhythm literature, and how it relates to social media usage.

To promote gender equality, world leaders at the UN came up with Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5). It proposes to eliminate discrimination against women by providing them with similar opportunities for reaching leadership positions. Hence, this study aims to examine the contribution made by women transformational leaders to their employees’ performance. The study seeks to emphasize the role played by female leaders in the on-job performance of employees and their mental well-being by encouraging intrinsic motivation among them.

For the purpose of data collection, a questionnaire was sent through Google Forms to the employees who had females as their superiors or in the decision-making position. Data from a final sample of 517 respondents was gathered, on which SEM was applied to analyze the direct impact of transformational women’s leadership on employee performance and the indirect impact through the mediation of intrinsic motivation.

The study found that by having feminine traits, women are stronger transformational leaders as they encourage individuals to be self-motivated instead of getting stimulated because of some external incentive. Also, such a leadership style ensures better work performance and mentally healthier employees. In addition, transformational women's leadership creates a better work environment by inspiring a teamwork culture instead of individualism.

The study has implications for not just researchers but other stakeholders as well. The study is useful for organizations as it directs them to hire and promote more women for leadership positions. Also, the results hint that people prefer working for women-led organizations as it will ensure a healthier work atmosphere.

There are many studies from earlier times related to transformational leadership. However, female leadership and the role it plays for employees have not gotten their fair share of attention. Thus, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present work is one of the very few where contributions made by women transformational leaders have been assessed.

The study aims to determine the outcomes of mentorship in an online game system, as well as the characteristics of good mentors.

A combination of anonymized survey measures and in-game behavioral measures were used to power longitudinal analysis over an 11-month period in which protégés and non-mentored new players could be compared for their performance, social connections and retention.

Successful people were more likely to mentor others, and mentors increased protégés' skill. Protégés had significantly better retention, were more active and much more successful as players than non-protégés. Contrary to expectations, younger, less wealthy and educated people were more likely to be mentors and mentors did not transfer their longevity. Many of the qualities of the mentor remain largely irrelevant—what mattered most was the time spent together.

This is a study of an online game, which has unknown generalizability to other games and to offline settings.

The results show that getting mentors to spend dedicated time with protégés matters more than their characteristics.

Good mentorship does not require age or resources to provide real benefits.

This is the first study of mentorship to use survey and objective outcome measures together, over time, online.

This study aims to investigate contextual factors affecting the deployment of strategy-driven manufacturing accounting techniques (SMAT), as well as the impact of SMAT usage on organisational competitiveness. Seven major SMAT were investigated, namely, benchmarking, integrated performance measurement, environmental management accounting, strategic costing, strategic pricing, strategic investment and life cycle costing.

By using multi-informant strategy, structured questionnaire was used to gather survey data from 129 senior accounting, finance and production personnel of publicly quoted manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Data was analysed using structural equation modelling and propensity score matching.

Result shows that the usage rate of the SMAT is generally moderate. Market orientation and deliberate strategy formulation are notable determinants of SMAT usage. The inability of competition intensity and perceived environmental uncertainty to notably affect SMAT usage suggests that external environmental pressure to use SMAT is weak.

Although the impact of SMAT usage on organisational competitiveness is positive and statistically significant, it is conceivable that the impact of SMAT could have been more assuming SMAT recorded extensive usage. Thus, the lack of competitiveness of manufacturing companies in Nigeria may not be unconnected to the superficial usage of SMAT.

The study contributes to knowledge in three ways. First, it extends studies on the contingency theory that contextual factors influence the adoption of management accounting innovations. Second, it exposes the contextual factors affecting the adoption of SMAT in a developing country. Third, it provides evidence on the value relevance of management accounting innovation in enhancing organisational competitiveness.

This study aims to adopt a systematic review approach to examine the existing literature on law and LLMs.It involves analyzing and synthesizing relevant research papers, reports and scholarly articles that discuss the use of LLMs in the legal domain. The review encompasses various aspects, including an analysis of LLMs, legal natural language processing (NLP), model tuning techniques, data processing strategies and frameworks for addressing the challenges associated with legal question-and-answer (Q&A) systems. Additionally, the study explores potential applications and services that can benefit from the integration of LLMs in the field of intelligent justice.

This paper surveys the state-of-the-art research on law LLMs and their application in the field of intelligent justice. The study aims to identify the challenges associated with developing Q&A systems based on LLMs and explores potential directions for future research and development. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the advancement of intelligent justice by effectively leveraging LLMs.

To effectively apply a law LLM, systematic research on LLM, legal NLP and model adjustment technology is required.

This study contributes to the field of intelligent justice by providing a comprehensive review of the current state of research on law LLMs.