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A significant number of criminal and deviant acts are investigated by nonpolice actors. These include private investigators who charge fees for their services, professional services firms such as firms of accountants who also charge fees, in-house investigators employed by private organisations and in-house investigators of public sector organisations who are not sworn police officers. Some of these investigators, such as private investigators, have been exposed in unethical activities such as illegal surveillance and blagging to name some. In this respect, this study aims to uncover the ethical orientations of investigators using cluster analysis.

This study is based upon an online survey of private investigators predominantly in the UK, i.e. investigators beyond the public police. An innovate statistical inferential analysis was used to investigate the sample which resulted in the development of three ethical orientations of such investigators.

Based upon a survey response from 331 of these types of investigators this study illustrates the extent they engage in unethical activities, showing a very small minority of largely private investigators who engage in such activities.

A unique feature of this study is the use of an innovative statistical approach using an unsupervised machine learning model, namely, TwoStep cluster analysis, to successfully group and classify respondents based on their ethical orientation. The model derived three types of ethical orientation: ethical, inbetweeners and risk takers.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the childhood trauma experiences of CEOs influence firms’ internationalization.

The research used a difference-in-difference method with constructing a treatment group whose chief executive officer (CEO) experienced the great famine in China between the ages of 7 and 11, and a control group whose CEO was born within three years after 1961.

The study reveals a significant inverse correlation between CEOs’ childhood trauma experiences and firm internationalization. However, this correlation is weaker in the case of state-owned enterprises and firms led by CEOs with overseas work experience.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to extend the theoretical framework to elucidate firms’ internationalization by introducing childhood trauma theory into the field of international business literature. Second, the authors link the literature on the effect of CEO explicit traits and psychological traits on firm internationalization by exploring how CEOs’ childhood trauma experience shapes their risk aversion, which, in turn, influences firm internationalization. Third, the authors address the call for examining the interplay of CEO life experiences by scrutinizing the moderating effect of CEO overseas work experience on the association between CEOs’ childhood trauma exposure and firm internationalization.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainable development goals (SDGs) disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

The study focuses on a sample of 95 Italian-listed companies preparing the mandatory non-financial declaration (NFD) according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards over a five-year period (2017–2021), corresponding to an unbalanced sample of 438 observations. Analyst forecast quality was proxied by earnings forecast accuracy (FA) and earnings forecast dispersion (FD), built on data retrieved from the Refinitiv database. A manual content analysis was performed on NFDs to derive an SDG disclosure score (SDGD) for each sampled company.

This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that voluntary SDG disclosure matters to the capital market in that it helps enhance the information environment of companies, evidenced by improved analyst forecast quality. In particular, this study highlighted that SDG disclosure positively influences analyst FA while negatively affecting analyst FD.

This study focuses on the Italian context, which has idiosyncratic characteristics regarding the structure of the financial market, the composition of corporate ownership and experience in non-financial reporting practices.

This study indicates to corporate managers that following GRI standards may represent the right way to better integrate SDG disclosure in corporate non-financial reports and increase the relevance of such information for investors and other capital market participants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the association between SDG disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

This study examines whether a firm’s management earnings forecasts affect its technical innovation activities. Our study also examines whether the cost of debt plays a mediating role between the management earnings forecasts and the innovation nexus.

We obtained data from 1,032 Chinese non-financial firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2005 to 2022 (i.e. 18,576 firm-year observations). We used various econometrics techniques, such as Heckman’s (1979) two-stage selection method and two-stage least square, to examine the relationship between management earnings forecasts and the firm’s technical innovation activities.

We find a positive relationship between management earnings forecasts and the firms' technical innovation. We also find that the cost of debt mediates the relationship between management earnings forecast and technical innovation. Further analysis indicates that frequent earnings forecasts provide incremental information regarding a firm’s future value and cash flows, thus reducing the volatility and uncertainty in cash flow calculations. Our findings are robust to several tests.

Our study has implications for policymakers, practitioners and high-level management of Chinese firms, enabling them to understand the relationship between management earnings forecasts and firms' innovation activities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) with a massive and unexpected challenge that has caused many to adjust their operational standards. Perhaps the biggest change has been the shift to remote work and away from traditional office spaces. Thus, this study aims to explore the implications of this shift within the context of customer participation in the new product development (NPD) process.

Our study surveys 218 small-to-medium size business-to-business firms in the USA on a variety of questions revolving around their NPD processes, customer collaboration and the shift to remote work. The authors use structural equation modeling in the AMOS program to analyze the data.

The findings indicate that both customer participation breadth and customer participation depth positively impact new product performance. Furthermore, these relationships are found to be contingent upon whether firms rely on remote work during the collaboration process. The results show that accessing a broader variety of explicit customer insights (i.e., breadth) has become easier in the increasingly remote collaboration environment. However, as face-to-face customer participation in NPD has decreased, the prospect of gaining deep, tacit customer knowledge relevant to product development (i.e., depth) has become more challenging.

This study contributes to the knowledge-based view of the firm and the customer participation literature, and it also has implications for managers adjusting to the shift to remote work following the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings provide additional evidence that customer participation is an effective strategy for SMEs (Morgan et al., 2018), but remote work has both positive and negative implications regarding the type of external knowledge that is acquired during customer participation in NPD.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the ethical and environmental implications of allowing space resource extraction to disrupt existing fuel economies, including how companies can be held accountable for ensuring the responsible use of their space assets. It will also briefly consider how such assets should be taxed, and the cost/benefit analyses required to justify the considerable expense of supporting this emerging space industry.

This paper adopts theoretical bioethics methodologies to explore issues of normative ethics and the formulation of moral rules to govern individual, collective and institutional behaviour. Specifically, it considers social justice and social contract theory, consequentialist and deontological accounts of ethical evaluation. It also draws on sociological and organisational literature to discuss Dowling and Pfeffer’s (1975) and Suchman’s (1995) theories of pragmatic, cognitive and moral legitimacy as they may be applied to off-world mining regulations and the handling of space assets.

The findings of this conceptual paper indicate there is both a growing appetite for tighter resource extraction regulations to address climate change and wealth concentration globally, and an opportunity to establish and legitimise new ethical norms for commercial activity in space that can avoid some of the challenges currently facing fossil fuel divestment movements on Earth.

By adopting methodologies from theoretical bioethics, sociology and business studies, including applying a legitimacy lens to the issue of off-world mining, this paper synthesises existing knowledges from these fields and brings them to the new context of the future space resource economy.

This study aims to investigate the influence of two perceived organizational ethics systems (perceived ethics training quality and integrity-based climate) on the ethical decision-making (EDM) of tax accountants in Ghana. The study also examines the moderating role of the decision-makers’ financial situation on the quality ethics training–EDM relationship.

Survey data from 356 tax accountants were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling technique.

The results show that the two ethics systems influence EDM, but their extent of influence varies across the stages of EDM. Specifically, quality ethics training is a better predictor of EDM at the ethical issue recognition stage, whereas integrity-based climate is a better predictor of EDM at the ethical intention stage. The study also found that decision-makers’ financial situation predicts the ethical recognition stage of EDM but does not moderate the quality ethics training–EDM relationship.

This study recommends the concurrent deployment of quality ethics training and an integrity-based work climate to improve ethical behavior. Policymakers should also emphasize a work climate that promotes honesty, conscientiousness and ethical principles (integrity-based climate) to improve ethical intentions.

This study applied the interactionist theory by capturing the relative effects of two organizational ethics systems and an individual-level situational factor in a single model. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that tests the moderation effect of decision-makers’ financial situation on the ethics training–EDM relationship in a developing country context.

This study aims to fill a gap in the literature by providing evidence for a “greenium” in the primary Sukuk market. The term “greenium” is defined in the study as the lower cost of capital or reduced yields that green Sukuk may offer compared to non-green Sukuk, reflecting investor willingness to accept lower returns for green investments. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to investigate the potential role of “greenium” as an incentive for issuers to fund eco-friendly projects, contributing to a sustainable environment.

This study uses propensity score matching techniques to provide an accurate comparison of pricing differences between green and non-green Sukuk issued in global primary markets during the period 2017–2022.

The results reveal that green Sukuk signify a “greenium” effect. This suggests that investors find green Sukuk attractive, willing to accept lower returns. Given the positive investor response to green initiatives in the market, issuers can capitalize on the growing demand for green Sukuk, leading to low-cost funding.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature at the interface of Islamic finance and environmental sustainability. In particular, it stands out by focusing on the pricing dynamics in the green Sukuk market and highlights the potential benefits of issuing green Sukuk to help achieve sustainability goals while providing access to lower cost of capital for the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Based on the componential theory of organizational creativity and innovation, this study examined the relationship between managerial coaching (MC) and innovative work behavior (IWB). It focused on the mediating role of psychological empowerment and the moderating role of task interdependence.

The self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data from 420 employees of the United Arab Emirates’s public sector organizations. A hierarchical linear model (HLM) with different regression techniques was used.

The results showed that MC directly influences IWB. The path analysis also revealed that MC has an indirect effect on IWB via psychological empowerment. The moderating role of task independence in MC and IWB was also revealed.

The findings shall provide insights that will help practitioners and academics understand frontline employees' innovative behavior in public sector settings and formulate strategies that will increase the involvement of employees in displaying innovation-based activities at the workplace.

This study adds value to the literature by integrating the componential theory of organizational creativity and innovation in public sector settings.

A debate on whether new ventures should be supported with public funding is taking place. Adopting a position on this discussion requires rigorous assessments of implemented programs. However, the few existing efforts have mostly focused on regional cases in developed countries. To fill this gap, this paper aims to measure the effects of a regional acceleration program in a developing country (Medellin, Colombia).

The economic notion of capabilities is used to frame the analysis of firm characteristics and productivity, which are hypothesized to be heterogeneous within the program. To test these relationships, propensity score matching is used in a sample of 60 treatment and 16,994 control firms.

This paper finds that treated firms had higher revenue than propensity score-matched controls on average, confirming a positive impact on growth measures. However, such financial growth is mostly observed in service firms rather than other economic sectors.

Further evaluations, with a longer period and using more outcome variables, are suggested in the context of similar publicly funded programs in developing countries.

These findings tip the balance in favor of the literature suggesting supportive programs for high-growth firms as opposed to everyday entrepreneurship. This is an insight, especially under the context of an emerging economy, which has scarce funding to support entrepreneurship.