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To enrich the research on the economic consequences of enterprise digital development from the perspective of capacity utilization.

Using a sample of listed firms from 2010 to 2020, this paper exploits text analysis of annual reports to construct a proxy for enterprise digital development.

Results show that enterprise digital development not only improves their own capacity utilization but also generates a positive spillover effect on the capacity utilization of peer firms and firms in the supply chain. Next, based on the incomplete information about market demand and potential competitors when making capacity-building decisions, the mechanism tests show that improving the accuracy of market forecasts and reducing investment surges are potential channels behind the baseline results. Cross-sectional tests show the baseline result is more pronounced when industries are highly homogeneous and when firms have access to less information.

This paper contributes to the research related to the economic consequences of digital development. With the development of the digital economy, the real effects of enterprise digital development have also triggered extensive interest and exploration. Existing studies mainly examine the impact on physical operations, such as specialization division of labor, innovation activities, business performance or total factor productivity (Huang, Yu, & Zhang, 2019; Yuan, Xiao, Geng, & Sheng, 2021; Wang, Kuang, & Shao, 2017; Li, Liu, & Shao, 2021; Zhao, Wang, & Li, 2021). These studies measure the economic benefits from the perspective of the supply (output) side but neglect the importance of the supply system to adapt to the actual market demand. In contrast, this paper focuses on capacity utilization, aimed at estimating the net economic effect of digital development by considering the supply-demand fit scenario. Thus, our findings enrich the relevant studies on the potential consequences of digital development.

In recent years, US firms have increasingly integrated ESG performance goals into their executive remuneration packages. This study examines the relationship between board gender diversity and the tendency of firms to incorporate ESG metrics in performance-based compensation using data from US firms. The key questions this study addresses are: Are firms with more females on the board more likely to link executive compensation metrics? What components and types of ESG metrics are more likely to be adopted by firms with more females on the board?.

This study employs OLS regression, logistic regression, as well as instrumental variable, propensity score matching, and entropy balance methods to establish causality.

This study finds that firms with gender-diverse boards are more likely to shape their executive remuneration plans to be more ESG-oriented. The most significant positive relationship is observed with environmental and social sub-categories. The results also demonstrate that female directors are more likely to encourage firms to evaluate managers based on absolute and short-term ESG goals.

This study is one of the early studies that examine the adoption of ESG performance goals into executive compensation plans. It contributes to the existing literature by exploring the relationship between board gender diversity and the probability of firms incorporating ESG performance goals into executive compensation packages using a sample of US firms.

In this study, we examine the relation between employee treatment and annual report readability, which is measured as a reading difficulty score.

We use regression analysis to explore the impact of employee treatment on annual report reading difficulty.

We find a significant negative relation between employee treatment and reading difficulty, which suggests that annual reports of firms with better employee treatment are easier to read and understand (i.e. more readable).

Our study contributes to a more thorough knowledge of annual report readability and our findings may be of relevance to accounting standard setters and investors.

This study aims to examine how female directors on corporate boards and audit committees, and auditor affiliations (Big 4 versus Egyptian firms affiliated with foreign auditors), influence audit fees. This examination is driven by the global call for increased female representation in leadership roles and its potential implications for audit quality and financial transparency.

A sample of non-financial companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange is used for the period 2011–2020. The authors used multivariate regression models, the Heckman two-stage and tokenism to support the analysis.

The results are threefold. First, this analysis reveals that female directors, whether on corporate boards or audit committees, are more likely to choose higher-quality audits in the form of high audit fees. Second, both Big 4 firms and Egyptian audit firms affiliated with foreign auditors are positively associated with audit fees and earn significant audit fee premiums. Third, a minor difference in audit fee premiums could be attributed to the existence of female directors.

Future research may expand the analysis performed in this study by investigating the characteristics related to female directors (e.g. education, experience and age) on audit fees.

This study suggests insights for regulatory bodies, corporate decision-makers, auditors and corporate governance researchers. For instance, this study reveals that the Big 4 are not homogenous and provide different audit quality levels along with significant audit fee premiums.

This study extends and contributes to the growing literature on female representation in corporate leadership. First, this study adds to the limited research in Egypt by examining the effect of female board representation on audit quality. Second, this study adds to the extant literature on the gender of financial experts by demonstrating that female financial expert is more likely to demand high-quality audits. Finally, the results have significant implications for policymakers. For instance, this study reveals that the Big 4 are not homogenous and provide different audit quality levels along with significant audit fee premiums.

This paper aimed to examine the impacts of agricultural services on welfare of rural farmers in Ghana.

Using data from 1431 rural maize farmers, we employ multinomial endogenous switching regression and multivalued inverse probability weighted regression adjustment to assess the impacts.

Results show that 19.8%, 9.7% and 3.42% of farmers adopted solely irrigation, extension and mechanization, respectively. Furthermore, utilizing a range of agricultural services significantly improves maize yields, gross income and per capita food consumption.

This study recommends strategies that target the adoption of combinations of agricultural services to enhance rural farmers’ welfare in Ghana and other developing countries.

While agricultural services are claimed to improve agricultural production and peasants’ welfare, their impacts are not studied exhaustively. This paper contributes by providing empirical evidence of the impacts of agricultural services on farmers’ welfare.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0745.

Indirect knowledge leakage to rivals located near alliance partners represents a significant risk that has received limited scholarly attention. Hence, the question of how to manage this risk – which the authors term “partner-rival co-location risk” – in nonequity alliances remains unanswered, and this study aims to suggest establishing a steering committee to oversee the partnership.

Drawing on the agglomeration economies and alliance governance literatures, the authors develop a set of hypotheses and perform a series of empirical tests on 470 nonequity alliances in the US biopharmaceutical industry.

The authors propose that there is a positive linkage between partner-rival co-location risk and the formation of a steering committee in a nonequity alliance, which receives strong empirical support. Further, this relationship is significantly moderated by the breadth (alliance scope) but not the depth (reciprocal interdependence) of interaction between the partnering firms.

This paper is a pioneer to shed light on “partner-rival co-location risk” and how partner-rival co-location risk affects the governance decision of whether to establish a steering committee in a nonequity alliance, thus offering important theoretical and practical insights into competition and cooperation in alliance management.

This study links ethnic identity and global identity with perceptions of brand globalness (BG) and brand local iconness (BLI) regarding home country brands. Identity Theory considers consumer behavior as driven by multiple identities concurrently and interactively.

Samples from two populations, Mexicans living in Mexico and Mexican Americans in the United States, were exposed to eight randomly presented real-world Mexican brands, followed by existing measures for several constructs. Comparing such populations is uniquely appealing for studies of immigrants’ home country brands. Data is analyzed via linear regression.

Ethnic and global identities have an interactive effect on BG, BLI, and purchase intention even after controlling for ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism. With the interaction term between ethnic identity and global identity included in the model, (a) global identity exhibits more efficacy than ethnic identity in explaining purchase intention; and (b) relationships involving BLI grow stronger while those involving BG become weaker. The direction of the effect of global identity depends on whether BG or BLI serves as the mediator. Ethnic identity has a significant effect on purchase intention through BLI among Mexican Americans.

Simultaneous focus on two interacting identities is novel in the international branding space. This approach is useful for illuminating the effects of brand attributes including BG and BLI as well as studying branding effects where self-symbolizing is of interest.

Linguists classify the world’s languages into two types: futured and futureless. Futured languages (e.g. French) require speakers to grammatically mark future events, a construction that is optional in futureless languages such as German. This treatise examines whether the grammatical structure of the predominant language in a given country explains firms’ propensity to engage in controversial marketing and environmental management practices. This is expected to happen because a speaker’s future time perspective and temporal discounting vary depending on the type of language used.

The sample period for this research was from 2001 to 2020. The sample of the study consists of 5,275 firms representing 47 countries. The sample is comprised of firms from 29 countries where the predominant language is a strong future time reference (FTR) language and 18 countries with a weak-FTR language. The maximum number of firm-country-year observations of the study was 39,956. This study employed multi-level mixed effects modelling as well as other relevant estimation techniques such as random effect panel regression, ordinary least square regression and two-stage least square regression.

This research empirically demonstrates that firms based in countries where the predominant language requires speakers to grammatically differentiate between the present and the future – known as strong-FTR or futured languages – engage more often in controversial marketing- and environment-related practices than those located in countries where the predominant language does not necessarily require grammatical differentiation between the present and the future (known as weak-FTR or futureless languages).

The findings are important for managers of firms with foreign subsidiary operations: top management teams of such firms need to be aware that their foreign subsidiaries’ propensity to engage in controversial marketing and environmental management practices varies depending on the predominant language those subsidiaries use. Also, firms located in countries with weak-FTR languages need to be more rigorous in their selection process when considering forming a joint venture or acquiring a firm in countries with strong-FTR languages.

The current research enriches the burgeoning body of literature on the effect of language on corporate decision-making. It extends the body of knowledge on the impact of language structure on firms’ inclination to engage in controversial marketing and environmental management practices.

This study explores whether ethnic minorities exhibit varying levels of income inequality compared to the host population.

The research leverages a unique immigration event in Italy, specifically the settlement of multiple Albanian groups in southern Italy during the 16th century. This historical occurrence enables an investigation into the role of cultural traits in income inequality, as these groups are situated in the same geographical region and often share borders.

The results, which remain consistent after undergoing various robustness checks, indicate that Albanian villages, while still preserving their identity and tradition, tend to experience an approximately 2% lower level of income concentration compared to similar Italian municipalities.

Our findings aim to provide supporting evidence for future policy considerations regarding the long-term impact of immigration on income inequality.

Since smartphones became ubiquitous, online grocery and food purchases through take-away delivery platforms have steadily increased in China. Nevertheless, whether the development of take-away delivery can ameliorate urban–rural wage inequality still requires further analysis. The purpose of this paper is to clarify whether this positive effect exists.

This paper makes estimations based on city and individual levels combining the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) 2008, CHIP 2013, CHIP2018 survey data and the take-away delivery site data. At the city level, the Oaxaca-Blinder (O-B) decomposition method is employed to construct wage inequality index of urban and rural labors. At the individual level, this paper analyzes urban–rural wage differentials with high or low formal education level.

The rapid establishment of take-away delivery sites has resulted in an increase of 52.425 yuan on average in the annual wage of rural labors with low formal education level. When the cumulative number of sites increases by 1 unit, the annual wage inequality index decreases by 0.007 on average. Labors with the characteristics of rural household registration and low education can enjoy more dividends. Through inter-/within-industry decomposition, this paper elaborates formal education, age and cross-industry transfer as the main factors for the improvement of urban–rural wage inequality. Narrowing effect of wage differences between different groups in multiple sample slices also contributes to the mechanism analyses.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to analyze the impact of take-away delivery development on the urban–rural wage inequality from the perspective of the establishment of take-away delivery sites. This empirical study will enrich the existing theoretical perspectives on urban–rural divide under the emergence of new forms of employment. The results indicate that new forms of employment represented by take-away delivery can not only promote economic growth, but also eliminate urban–rural inequality.