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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.

Racial stigma and racial criminalization have been centralizing pillars of the construction of Blackness in the United States. Taking such systemic injustice and racism as a given, then question then becomes how these macro-level arrangements are reflected in micro-level processes. This work uses radical interactionism and stigma theory to explore the potential implications for racialized identity construction and the development of “criminalized subjectivity” among Black undergraduate students at a predominately white university in the Midwest. I use semistructured interviews to explore the implications of racial stigma and criminalization on micro-level identity construction and how understandings of these issues can change across space and over the course of one's life. Findings demonstrate that Black university students are keenly aware of this particular stigma and its consequences in increasingly complex ways from the time they are school-aged children. They were aware of this stigma as a social fact but did not internalize it as a true reflection of themselves; said internalization was thwarted through strong self-concept and racial socialization. This increasingly complex awareness is also informed by an intersectional lens for some interviewees. I argue not only that the concept of stigma must be explicitly placed within these larger systems but also that understanding and identity-building are both rooted in ever-evolving processes of interaction and meaning-making. This research contributes to scholarship that applies a critical lens to Goffmanian stigma rooted in Black sociology and criminology and from the perspectives of the stigmatized themselves.

This study, rooted in affordance-actualization theory and communication theory, aims to critically examine how ChatGPT influences users’ transition from new adopters to loyal advocates within the context of travel decision-making. It incorporates constructs including communication quality, personalization, anthropomorphism, cognitive and emotional trust (ET), loyalty and intention to adopt into a comprehensive model.

This study used quantitative methods to analyze data from 477 respondents, collected online through a self-administered questionnaire by Embrain, a leading market research company in South Korea. Lavaan package within R studio was used for evaluating the measurement model through confirmatory factor analysis and using structural equation modeling to examine the proposed hypotheses.

The findings reveal a pivotal need for enhancing ChatGPT’s communication quality, particularly in terms of accuracy, currency and understandability. Personalization emerges as a key driver for cognitive trust, while anthropomorphism significantly impacts ET. Interestingly, the study unveils that in the context of travel recommendations, users’ trust in ChatGPT predominantly operates at the cognitive level, significantly impacting loyalty and subsequent adoption intentions.

The findings of this research provide valuable insights for improving Generative AI (GenAI) technology and management practices in travel recommendations.

As one of the few empirical research papers in the burgeoning field of GenAI, this study proposes a highly explanatory model for the process from affordance to actualization in the context of using ChatGPT for travel recommendations.

Previous studies focus on the direct effects of marketing analytics on entrepreneurial performance, but few explore the underlying mechanisms. Drawing on affordance theory, this study explores pathways through new product innovation (NPI) for the effects of marketing analytics on business performance. NPI is a market-based innovation concept comprising customer- and competitor-driven NPD and incremental innovation.

Using survey data collected from UK-based entrepreneurial firms operating in the IT and telecoms industries, we apply confirmatory factor analysis and a sequential structural equation model to test the mediating role of NPI in the effect of marketing analytics on market performance and financial performance.

The results show that marketing analytics enhances business performance through competitor-driven but not customer-driven NPD. Although using marketing analytics to generate customer knowledge for existing product innovation may enhance market performance, this positive effect becomes negative when competitor-driven NPD is undertaken to improve existing product innovation.

This study makes significant contributions to the innovation and NPD literature. It delves deeper into the existing view on the positive contributions of customer engagement to business value creation, revealing the significance of competitor knowledge to enhance business performance through marketing analytics, particularly in the context of IT and telecoms entrepreneurial firms.

The COVID-19 pandemic was an eye-opening experience that put to the test our crisis management competencies across many institutions, including those offered by institutions of higher education. This study aims to review the literature on international business (IB) risks and IB education (IBE) to question whether business graduates are equipped to make decisions in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) marketplace.

While the IB literature has discussed the importance of various sources of risks on global business operations, IBE did not effectively adopt an integrative approach to building the needed risk management competencies related to those risks into our education. The authors argue that this integrative approach to teaching IB is critically needed to prepare future global managers for addressing crises, like that of the pandemic and others. Specifically, this study proposes that this integrated risk management competency can be developed through the building of “synergistic mindsets”.

This study presents a conceptual framework for the components of the synergistic mindset, with intelligence that directly links to present IB risks. These components are cultural intelligence (CQ), emotional intelligence (EQ), public policy intelligence (PPQ), digital intelligence (DQ) and orchestration intelligence (OQ).

Insights related to IBE effectiveness in addressing today’s VUCA market demands and IB risks are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that affect managers’ ethical decision-making in export-oriented readymade garments in Bangladesh.

This is an empirical study based on the quantitative approach undertaking a cross-sectional survey method where a convenience sampling technique was applied. The analysis was done using partial least square structural equation model applying Smart-PLS version 3.0.

This study confirmed that all the components of cognitive appraisal processes, including perceived severity, perceived vulnerability, response efficacy and self-efficacy, have a significant influence on attitude. Attitude, in turn, mediates the relationship between these variables and the behavioural intention of ethical practice, except for perceived vulnerability. Besides, moral obligation is found to mediate the relationship between attitude, self-efficacy and the behavioural intention of ethical decision-making. The study also found that ethical climate and subjective norms have a direct influence on behavioural intention. Furthermore, behavioural intention, ethical climate and self-efficacy are positively related to actual decision-making behaviour. However, this study did not find any direct effect of subjective norms on moral obligation.

The organization should include an emphasis on building ethical culture and setting an ethical code of conduct within the organization to sustain ethical practice within employees. However, the practitioner should work on enhancing self-efficacy to curb unethical practices by individuals.

This research contributes to the management of garments manufacturers by a practical and theoretical understanding of what influences the ethical behavioural decision-making process. Valuable guidelines are provided on the ethical decision-making process in the garments manufacturing companies for future researchers.

Many individuals start a new firm each year, mainly intending to become independent or improve their financial situation. For most of them, the first years of operations mean a substantial investment of time, effort and money with highly insecure outcomes. This study aims to explore how entrepreneurs running new firms perform financially compared with the established ones and how this situation influences their well-being.

A questionnaire survey was completed in 2021 and 2022 by a representative sample of N = 1136 solo self-employed and microentrepreneurs in the Czech Republic, with dependent self-employed excluded. This study used multiple regressions for data analysis.

Early-stage entrepreneurs are less satisfied with their financial situation, have lower disposable income and report more significant financial problems than their established counterparts. The situation is even worse for the subsample of startups. However, this study also finds they do not have lower well-being than established entrepreneurs. While a worse financial situation is generally negatively related to well-being, being a startup founder moderates this link. Startup founders can maintain a good level of well-being even in financial struggles.

The results suggest that policies should focus on reducing the costs related to start-up activities. Further, policy support should not be restricted to new technological firms. Startups from all fields should be eligible to receive support, provided that they meet the milestones of their development. For entrepreneurship education, this study‘s results support action-oriented approaches that help build entrepreneurs’ self-efficacy while making them aware of cognitive biases common in entrepreneurship. This study also underscores that effectuation or lean startup approaches help entrepreneurs develop their startups efficiently and not deprive themselves of resources because of their unjustified overconfidence.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the financial situation and well-being of founders of new firms and, specifically, startups. The personal financial situation of startup founders has been a largely underexplored issue. Compared with other entrepreneurs, this study finds that startup founders are, as individuals, in the worst financial situation. Their well-being remains, however, on a comparable level with that of other entrepreneurs.

The present study integrates inclusive leadership and protection motivation theory to propose a new model predicting employees' intention to work from home during an emergency situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

A questionnaire was developed to collect data from 939 Taiwanese and Vietnamese office employees using a non-probability convenience sampling method. A total of 887 valid questionnaires were used for further analysis. The data were analysed following a two-stage structural equation modelling using SPSS 22 and AMOS 20 software. The validity and reliability of the instrument were tested and ensured.

The results revealed that inclusive leadership and factors related to protection motivation theory– including perceived severity and perceived vulnerability – have positive direct and indirect effects on employees' work-from-home intentions through the mediating role of employees' work-from-home-related attitudes. Protection motivation theory factors were found to have a stronger effect on employees' work-from-home intention than inclusive leadership. Differences in the relationship between perceived vulnerability, perceived severity and employees' intentions towards working from home were also discovered among participants from the two studied countries.

The integration of inclusive leadership and protection motivation theory brings into light what will drive employees' intention to work from home during an emergency situation. The present study has several theoretical and practical implications for scholars, governments, managers and policymakers that can help them improve management policies for working from home in the future.

Based on integrating inclusive leadership and protection motivation theory to explore employees' intention to work from home during an emergency situation, the present study demonstrated that inclusive leadership and protection motivation theory should be considered for studies on working from home in a pandemic setting.

This study investigates the origins and elaboration of the managerial “unitary” frame of reference associated with Alan Fox, focusing on unionised firms: the industrial relations context, intellectual roots, elaboration, adaptation by other writers, and international applicability.

Tracing the above requirements through contemporaneous sources.

Fox’s designation of the unitary frame needs to be understood in its 1960s’ context, particularly the promotion of “productivity bargaining”, and its furthering through management training and education. Fox’s specific contribution is identified. Subsequent UK writers have underplayed the importance of the legal dimension of managerial authority, especially relevant in the US context, while other extra-economic factors bolster the managerial unitary frame in authoritarian societies such as China.

The use of Fox's neglected 1960s’ writings; tracking how Fox developed the unitary frame concept and how it was funnelled into the narrow parameters of non-unionism by subsequent writers; identifying its applicability beyond the UK (with the USA as a historical example and China as a contemporary one).

Corporations are confronted with growing demands to take a stand on socio-political issues, i.e. corporate social advocacy (CSA), which affects their reputation in the public. Companies use different CSA message strategies, including calling the public to support and act on the issue they advocate. Using reactance theory, the authors investigate the impact of CSA messages with a call to action on corporate reputation in the case of a company's gender equality initiative.

A one-factorial (CSA message with or without a call to action) between-subjects experiment was conducted by surveying 172 individuals living in Switzerland. The CSA messages were created in the context of gender equality.

The authors' study indicates that CSA messages with a call to action compared to those without overall harmed corporate reputation due to individuals' reactance, which is higher for CSA messages with a call to action, negatively affecting corporate reputation. The impact of the CSA message strategy with a call to action on corporate reputation remains significant after controlling for issue alignment and political leaning.

Communicating about socio-political issues, especially taking a stand, is a significant challenge for corporations in an increasingly polarized society and has often led to backlash, boycotts and damage to corporate reputation. This study shows that the possible adverse effects of advocating for socio-political issues can be related to reactance. It emphasizes that companies advocating for contested issues must be more cautious about the message strategy than the issue itself.