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This study tries to examine how supply chain (SC) absorptive capacity (AC), SC ambidexterity, SC risk mitigation and supply chain agility (SCA) affect SC efficacy (SCE) in manufacturing firms (MFs) in the Middle East region.

Using a quantitative approach through a survey-based study, 1,004 questionnaires were distributed to the MFs that are listed in the chambers of the industries of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain in the Middle East region, with 239 useable and valid responses retrieved for analysis, representing a 23.8% response rate. The main respondents were chief executive managers, operations managers, managers and logistics managers from both mid and top levels. The conceptual model was tested by using a hypothesis-testing deductive approach. The findings are based on covariance-based analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) using partial least squares-SEM (PLS-SEM) software.

This study illustrates a significant relationship between SC AC, SC ambidexterity, SC risk mitigation and SCA on SCE. Further, the findings indicate that there is a significant effect of SC risk mitigation as a mediating factor in the relationship between SC AC, and SC ambidexterity on SCE directly and indirectly, as well through a moderating effect of SCA in these relations. Finally, there is a significant direct and indirect effect of SCA in the relationship between SC AC and SC ambidexterity on SCE as a moderating factor.

This study presents theoretical and empirical insights that both SC risk mitigation and SCA are proper logistics features for mediating and moderating extends the literature by adding a positive role of SC AC and SC ambidextrousness in mitigating SC risks. However, this study adds up the SC literature by evidencing moderating role of SCA between the absorptive capacities, ambidexterity on SCE. Such findings of this study can provide insightful implications for managers and practitioners at different levels in and efficacy among MFs (MFs, stakeholders and policymakers regarding the importance of using the three mentioned enablers on SCE) in MFs, particularly in the Middle Eastern firms and in developing countries in general East region.

The author examines the presence of foreign currency effects and the risk-mitigation channel through which a foreign-currency denomination reduces the loan spread.

The author runs regression analyses using loan data of firms incorporated in member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) from 2000 to 2020. The author also runs several robustness tests to address forward exchange rate bias, endogeneity concern and sample-selection bias.

Consistent with the currency matching motive of foreign debt use, the results show that a foreign currency denomination is associated with a lower spread and the relationship is amplified when there is a positive correlation between the changes in the return on assets and in the exchange rate.

This paper enriches existing studies on the use of foreign debt as an exchange rate risk management tool.

The results suggest that as firms utilize foreign debt and policymakers need to design banking regulations that not only oversee but also encourage the use of foreign debt as a hedging instrument to lower firms' borrowing costs.

This paper contributes to extant studies by examining the presence of foreign currency effects in emerging countries' loan markets and by exploiting the micro-level demand-side factors as the channel through which the currency denomination affects the loan spread.

In India, artificial intelligence (AI) application in supply chain management (SCM) is still in a stage of infancy. Therefore, this article aims to study the factors affecting artificial intelligence adoption and validate AI’s influence on supply chain risk mitigation (SCRM).

This study explores the effect of factors based on the technology, organization and environment (TOE) framework and three other factors, including supply chain integration (SCI), information sharing (IS) and process factors (PF) on AI adoption. Data for the survey were collected from 297 respondents from Indian agro-industries, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for testing the proposed hypotheses.

This study’s findings show that process factors, information sharing, and supply chain integration (SCI) play an essential role in influencing AI adoption, and AI positively influences SCRM. The technological, organizational and environmental factors have a nonsignificant negative relation with artificial intelligence.

This study provides an insight to researchers, academicians, policymakers, innovative project handlers, technology service providers, and managers to better understand the role of AI adoption and the importance of AI in mitigating supply chain risks caused by disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper aims to explore the effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on shareholder value using the stock market reactions to a terrorist attack. This paper exploits the September 11 terrorist attack as an unanticipated exogenous shock that reduced shareholder wealth suddenly and unexpectedly. Based on the risk-mitigation hypothesis, the argument is that more socially responsible firms should suffer less negative market reactions.

This paper uses the standard event study methodology to estimate the stock market reactions to the 9/11 terrorist attack. Then, the study executes a cross-section analysis to determine whether CSR offers any protection in the presence of a sudden negative shock. Additional analysis includes propensity score matching, instrumental-variable analysis and using Oster’s (2019) method for testing coefficient stability.

The results show that the negative stock market reactions to the shock are significantly alleviated for firms with strong social responsibility. A rise in CSR by one standard deviation improves the market reactions by 22.56% of the average decline. This is consistent with the prediction of the risk mitigation hypothesis, where CSR spawns moral capital or goodwill that functions as an insurance-like defense in case of an adverse event.

The study focuses on short-term market reactions because this method is more likely to show a causal effect. Future research may investigate long-term effects.

While prior research has investigated the effect of CSR on firm value, it has been challenging to establish causality. The approach is more likely to show causality as it is based on a sudden and unanticipated negative shock. This paper also uses several methods to reduce endogeneity, making it more likely that the results show causality, rather than merely an association.

This study develops and tests a model exploring the relationship between supply chain (SC) counterfeit risk management and performance in the healthcare supply chain (HCSC).

In the proposed theoretical model, HCSC counterfeit risk management is characterized by HCSC counterfeit risk orientation (HCRO), HCSC counterfeit risk mitigation (HCRM) and HCSC risk management integration (HRMI), while performance is represented by healthcare logistics performance (HLP) and healthcare organization overall performance (HOP). Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and survey data from 55 HCSC managers are used to test the research hypotheses.

HCRO has a significant positive effect on HCRM, while HCRM has a positive impact on HRMI. With respect to HLP, HCRM has a nonsignificant effect, while HRMI has a significant impact, thus confirming the important mediating role of HRMI. Finally, HLP has a significant positive effect on the overall performance of healthcare organizations.

All study participants were from the United States, limiting the generalizability of the study findings to different countries or regions. The sample size employed in the study did not allow the authors to distinguish among the different types of healthcare organizations.

This study delineates between a healthcare organization's philosophy toward counterfeiting risks vs actions taken to eliminate or reduce the impact of counterfeiting on the HCSC. By offering firm-level guidance for managers, this study informs healthcare organizations about addressing the challenge of counterfeiting in the HCSC.

The purpose of this research is so that project managers can use a systemic approach to prioritizing the risks of outsourcing including an understanding of the external factors that could affect the prioritization.

A survey was designed by the authors and distributed to 2,500 outsourcing professionals from different organizations and the hypotheses were tested using the data from these surveys. The logic for forming the hypothesis is discussed for each hypothesis and so are the demographics of the respondents

External factors such as the type of technology involved, type of market targeted, location of outsourcing and the amount of experience the outsourcing professional had, did affect the prioritization of the outsourcing risks. Furthermore, trends were identified among the ranking of the outsourcing risks.

One of the constraining factors of this research, as in the majority of empirical research initiatives, was the limited sample size, which could potentially affect the rating. An increased sample size could have also provided the researchers with a more detailed insight into the interrelationships between the various outsourcing risks.

For the first time, the outsourcing risks have been prioritized using a systemic approach. The systemic approach has been used in the financial industry while analyzing risk but the authors have applied it to prioritization of outsourcing risks. This includes understanding the interrelationships between the risks and also the effect that external factors can have on the prioritization of those risks.

The paper aims to investigate the effect of uncertain times on LGBT-supportive corporate policies, exploiting a novel text-based measure of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) that was recently constructed by Baker et al. (2016). LGBT-supportive policies have attracted a great deal of attention in the media lately. There is also a rapidly growing area of the literature that addresses LGBT-supportive policies specifically.

The authors execute a regression analysis and several other robustness checks including propensity score matching (PSM) and an instrumental-variable analysis to mitigate endogeneity.

The authors' results show that companies significantly raise their investments in LGBT-supportive policies in times of greater uncertainty, reinforcing the risk mitigation view where LGBT-supportive policies create moral capital with an insurance-like effect that mitigates adverse consequences during uncertain times. The effect of EPU on LGBT-supportive policies is above and beyond its effect on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in general.

The authors' study is the first to explore the effect of uncertain times on LGBT-supportive corporate policies. The authors contribute to a crucial area of the literature that examines how firms respond to EPU. In addition, the authors enrich the literature on LGBT-friendly policies by showing that EPU is one of the significant determinants of LGBT-friendly policies.

Recent international business research finds that state-owned multinational enterprises (SOMNEs) invest relatively more in politically risky host countries than do privately-owned multinational enterprises (MNEs). This study aims to investigate theoretically and empirically whether state ownership mitigates the impact of host-country political risk on subsidiary economic risk.

The authors link theoretical arguments on state ownership to arguments from non-market strategy literature to outline mechanisms whereby state ownership can buffer subsidiaries from political risk, weakening the link between host-country political risk and earnings volatility in subsidiaries. Using a data set on Norwegian MNEs’ foreign subsidiaries across almost two decades, the authors test this prediction using both matching methods and panel regressions.

While standard panel regressions provide empirical support only for the infrastructure sector and for the highest political risk contexts, nearest-neighbour matching models – comparing only otherwise similar private- and SOMNE subsidiaries using the full sample – reveal more general support for the political risk mitigation hypothesis.

The study presents the first comprehensive analysis of whether state ownership can mitigate the effect of political risk on subsidiary economic risk.

The authors investigate the implications of environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices of firms for the pricing of their credit default swaps (CDS). In doing so, the authors compare European and US firms and consider nonlinear and indirect effects. This complements the previous literature focusing on linear and direct effects using bond yields and credit ratings of US firms.

For this purpose, the authors apply fixed effects regressions on a comprehensive panel data set of US and European firms. Further, nonlinear and indirect effects are investigated utilizing quantile regressions and a path analysis.

The evidence indicates that higher ESG ratings mitigate credit risks of US and European firms from 2007 to 2019. The risk mitigation effect is U-shaped across ESG quantiles, which is consistent with opposing effects of growing stakeholder influence capacity and diminishing marginal returns on ESG investments. The authors further reveal a mediating indirect volatility channel that substantially amplifies the direct effect of ESG on credit risk. A one-standard-deviation improvement in ESG ratings is estimated to reduce CDS spreads of low, medium and high ESG firms by approximately 4%, 8% and 3%, respectively.

This is the first study to examine whether credit markets reflect regional differences between Europe and the US with regard to the ESG-CDS-relationship. In addition, this paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating differences in the response of CDS spreads across ESG quantiles and to study potential indirect channels connecting ESG and CDS spreads using structural credit risk variables.

The study investigates the effect of political risk on shareholder value, using an event study and a novel measure of firm-level political risk recently developed by Hassan et al. (2017). In addition, the authors explore how corporate social responsibility (CSR) influences the effect of political risk on shareholder wealth.

The authors exploit the guilty plea of Jack Abramoff, a well-known lobbyist, on January 3, 2006, as an exogenous shock that made lobbying less effective and less useful in the future, depriving firms of an important tool to reduce political exposure.

The results show that the market reactions are significantly more negative for firms with more political exposure. Additional analysis corroborates the results, including propensity score matching, instrumental-variable analysis and Oster's (2019) method for testing coefficient stability. Finally, the authors note that the adverse effect of political risk on shareholder value is substantially mitigated for firms with strong social responsibility, consistent with the risk mitigation hypothesis.

This study is the first to explore the effect of political risk on shareholder value using a novel measure. Furthermore, it is also the first to show that CSR alleviates the cost of political risk to shareholders.