Search results

The purpose of this study is to determine if blockchain-supported carbon offset information provision and shipping options with different cost and environmental footprint implications impact consumer perceptions toward retailers and logistics service providers. Blockchain and carbon neutrality, each can be expensive to adopt and complex to manage, thus getting the “truth” on decarbonization may require additional costs for consumers.

Experimental modeling is used to address these critical and emergent issues that influence practices across a set of supply chain actors. Three hypotheses relating to the relationship between blockchain-supported carbon offset information and consumer perceptions and intentions associated with the product and supply chain actors are investigated.

The results show that consumer confidence increases when supply chain carbon offset information has greater reliability, transparency and traceability as supported by blockchain technology. The authors also find that consumers who are provided visibility into various shipping options and the product's journey carbon emissions and offset – from a blockchain-supported system – they are more willing to pay a premium for both the product and shipping options. Blockchain-supported decarbonization information disclosure in the supply chain can lead to organizational legitimacy and financial gains in return.

Understanding consumer action and sustainable consumption is critical for organizations seeking carbon neutrality. Currently, the literature on this understanding from a consumer information provision is not well understood, especially with respect to blockchain-supported information transparency, visibility and reliability. Much of the blockchain literature focuses on the upstream. This study focuses more on consumer-level and downstream supply chain blockchain implications for organizations. The study provides a practical roadmap for considering levels of blockchain information activity and consumer interaction.

Drawing insights from institutional theory, this paper aims to examine whether and to what extent banks have reconfigured their management control systems (MCSs) in response to growing institutional pressures towards sustainability, understood as environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

The authors conducted an exploratory study at the three largest Italian banking groups to shed light on changes made in MCSs to account for ESG issues. The analysis is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with managers from the sustainability and controls areas, as well as from other relevant operational areas particularly concerned with the integration process of ESG issues. Additionally, secondary data sources were used. The Malmi and Brown (2008) MCS framework, consisting of a package of five types of formal and informal control mechanisms, was used to structure and analyse the empirical data.

The examined banks widely implemented numerous changes to their MCSs as a response to the heightened sustainability pressures from regulatory bodies and stakeholders. In particular, with the exception of action planning, the results show an extensive integration of ESG issues into the five control mechanisms of Malmi and Brown’s framework, namely, long-term planning, cybernetic, reward/compensation, administrative and cultural controls.

By identifying the approaches banks followed in reconfiguring traditional MCSs, this research sheds light on how adequate MCSs can promote banks’ “sustainable behaviours”. The results can, thus, contribute to defining best practices on how MCSs can be redesigned to support the integration of ESG issues into the banks’ way of doing business.

Overall, the findings support the theoretical assertion that institutional pressures influence the design of banks’ MCSs, and that both formal and informal controls are necessary to ensure a real engagement towards sustainability. More specifically, this study reveals that MCSs, by encompassing both formal and informal controls, are central to enabling banks to appropriately understand, plan and control the transition towards business models fully oriented to the integration of ESG issues. Thereby, this allows banks to effectively respond to the increased stakeholder demands around ESG concerns.

This study aims to investigate the effects of board cultural diversity (BCD) and board gender diversity (BGD) of the board of directors on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the European banking sector using resource-based view (RBV) theory. In addition, this study analyses the linkages between BCD and BGD and knowledge sharing on the board of directors to improve ESG performance.

This study selected a sample of European-listed banks covering the period 2021. ESG and diversity variables were collected from Refinitiv Eikon and analysed using the ordinary least squares model. This study was conducted in the European context regulated by Directive 95/2014/EU, which requires sustainability disclosure. The original population was represented by 250 banks; after missing data were excluded, the final sample comprised 96 European-listed banks.

The findings highlight the positive linkages between BGD, BCD and ESG scores in the European banking sector. In addition, the findings highlight that diversity contributes to knowledge sharing by improving ESG performance in a regulated sector. Nonetheless, the combined effect of BGD and BCD negatively impacts ESG performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to measure and analyse a regulated sector, such as banking, and the relationship between cultural and gender diversity for sharing knowledge under the RBV theory lens in the ESG framework.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of family involvement in ownership and governance on the quality of internal auditing.

Leveraging a hand-collected data set of listed family firms from 2014 to 2020, this study uses regression analyses to investigate the impact of family ownership, family involvement on the board, family CEO and the generational stage of the family business on the quality of internal auditing.

The results provide evidence that family ownership is positively associated with the quality of internal auditing, while later generational stages of family businesses have the opposite effect. Additional analyses reveal that the presence of a sustainability board sub-committee moderates the relationship between generational stages of family businesses and the quality of internal auditing function.

This paper does not consider country-institutional factors and other potentially family-related antecedents or governance factors that may affect the quality of internal auditing.

The results are informative for investors and non-family stakeholders interested in understanding under which conditions family-related factors influence the quality of internal auditing functions.

This study offers fresh evidence regarding the relationship between family-related factors and the quality of internal auditing and board sub-committees that moderate such a relationship in family businesses.

Climate change poses risks to society and the demand for carbon literacy within small and medium-sized enterprises is increasing. Skills and knowledge are required for organizational greenhouse gas accounting and science-based decisions to help businesses reduce transitional risks. At the University of Copenhagen and the University of Northern British Columbia, two carbon management courses have been developed to respond to this growing need. Using an action-based co-learning model, students and business are paired to quantify and report emissions and develop climate plans and communication strategies.

This paper draws on surveys of businesses that have partnered with the co-learning model, designed to provide insight on carbon reductions and the impacts of co-learning. Data collected from 12 respondents in Denmark and 19 respondents in Canada allow for cross-institutional and international comparison in a Global North context.

Results show that while co-learning for carbon literacy is welcomed, companies identify limitations: time and resources; solution feasibility; governance and reporting structures; and communication methods. Findings reveal a need for extension, both forwards and backwards in time, indicating that the collaborations need to be lengthened and/or intensified. Balancing academic requirements detracts from usability for businesses, and while municipal and national policy and emission targets help generate a general societal understanding of the issue, there is no concrete guidance on how businesses can implement operational changes based on inventory results.

The research brings new knowledge to the field of transitional climate risks and does so with a focus on both small businesses and universities as important co-learning actors in low-carbon transitions. The comparison across geographies and institutions contributes an international solution perspective to climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

This study investigates the relationship between board gender diversity (BGD) and the time to Initial Public Offering (IPO), which stands as an entrepreneurially risky choice, particularly challenging in family firms. We also investigate the moderating role of family ownership dispersion (FOD).

We draw on an integrated theoretical framework bringing together the upper echelons theory and the socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective and on hand-collected data on a sample of Italian family IPOs that occurred in the period 2000–2020. We employ ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and alternative model estimations to test our hypotheses.

BGD positively affects the time to IPO, thus, it increases the time required to go public. FOD negatively moderates this relationship. Our findings remain robust with different measures for BGD, FOD, and family business definition as well as with different econometric models.

The article develops literature on family firms and IPO and it enriches the academic debate about gender and IPOs in family firms. It adds to studies addressing the determinants of the time to IPO by incorporating gender diversity and the FOD into the discussion. Finally, it contributes to research on women and outcomes in family firms.

This study reviews scholarly work in sustainable green logistics and remanufacturing (SGLR) and their subdisciplines, in combination with bibliometric, thematic and content analyses that provide a viewpoint on categorization and a future research agenda. This paper provides insight into current research trends in the subjects of interest by examining the most essential and most referenced articles promoting sustainability and climate-neutral logistics.

For the literature review, the authors extracted and sifted 2180 research and review papers for the period 2008–2023 from the Scopus database. The authors performed bibliometric and content analyses using multiple software programs such as Gephi, VOSviewer and R programming.

The SGLR papers can be grouped into seven clusters: (1) The circular economy facets; (2) Decarbonization of operations to nurture a climate-neutral business; (3) Green sustainable supply chain management; (4) Drivers and barriers of reverse logistics and the circular economy; (5) Business models for sustainable logistics and the circular economy; (6) Transportation problems in sustainable green logistics and (7) Digitalization of logistics and supply chain management.

In this review, fundamental ideas are established, research gaps are identified and multiple future research subjects are proposed. These propositions are categorized into three main research streams, i.e. (1) Digitalization of SGLR, (2) Enhancing scopes, sectors and industries in the context of SGLR and (3) Developing more efficient and effective climate-neutral and climate change-related solutions and promoting more environmental-related and sustainability research concerning SGLR. In addition, two conceptual models concerning SGLR and climate-neutral strategies are developed and presented for managers and practitioners to consider when adopting green and sustainability principles in supply chains. This review also highlights the need for academics to go beyond frameworks and build new techniques and instruments for monitoring SGLR performance in the real world.

This study provides an overview of the evolution of SGLR; it also clarifies concepts, environmental concerns and climate change practices, particularly those directed to supply chain management.

This paper aims to analyze the thematic content of research addressing the relation between board of directors (BoD) and business transformation (BT) to obtain better understanding of status and to derive future areas of study.

This paper reviews literature through a bibliometric analysis based on co-occurrence of articles published in Web of Science Core Collection ™ (WoS) between 1990 and 2022, identifying key concepts, setting network of relations and identifying the strategic importance of clusters of concepts. Findings and implications are discussed, future lines of research are presented and limitations are noted.

Thematic research on boards addressing transformation shifted from the analysis of individuals' traits to an organizational approach with majority of research centered on the role of boards under different theories and the consequences of strategic changes on firm's performance. Further research is around gender diversity, sustainability and the moderating role of ownership structure and business culture.

Some limitations are also noted. This analysis considered articles indexed by WoS for Q1+Q2 publications as source of literature, while including others such as Scopus would increase knowledge base. Also, to identify main streams of research, the authors considered keywords with cumulative occurrence spanning from 30% to 40% while increasing this percentage would add terms that might improve precision to the connections among keywords. Other techniques could have been used such as co-citation or bibliographic coupling, although the authors find these as better suited to investigate the basic structure behind the foundational knowledge of the topic while the authors’ intention was to understand the positioning of study fields regarding the degree of research progress.

This paper presents some practical implications for future researchers. Those who wish to leverage previous evidence to address new research questions might look into principal themes covering BoD dynamics and composition to exert CG, and the relation between strategic decisions and performance measured by different variables. Those who wish to position their research as new findings to shed light on dilemmas, might find opportunities in the fields of climate change-sustainability, R&D for growth and innovation under the perspective of intangible assets.

This paper, is the first to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to identify research clusters for the intersection of boards and transformation and to determine their stage of development.

本文旨在分析探討董事會與業務轉型之間的關係的學術研究的專題內容，以能對有關課題的研究狀況有更深入的了解，並擬從分析中取得未來可供研究的範疇。

本文透過科學計量分析法來進行文獻探討。方法乃基於在1990年至2022年期間在Web of Science Core Collection 刊載的學術論文的共現分析而進行; 透過這個研究方法，研究人員建立了聯繫的網絡，並確認了各個概念群組的策略重要性。在本文中，研究結果和研究結果帶來的啟示會被討論，未來的研究領域和方針也會得到說明，研究的局限也會被認定和記錄下來。

探討董事會而又涉及業務轉型的專題研究，由當初集中探討董事個人的特質、轉移到現在研究整體的組織理念和處事取向，而就後者來說，大部份的研究都集中於在不同的理論框架裡董事會所扮演的角色，以及因策略上的改變而為公司的業績帶來的影響。進一步的學術研究都是圍繞著性別多元化、可持續性、所有權結構所扮演的緩和角色和商業文化的研究。

盡我們所知，本文乃為首篇學術論文，去鑑定關於董事會與業務轉型之間的關聯的研究集群，也是首篇學術論文，去確定這些研究集群的發展階段。

This paper aims to identify the effect of environmental management systems (EMSs), commitment to stakeholders and gender diversity on corporate environmental performance (CEP) and the extent to which an economic crisis moderates these relationships.

A regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 14,217 observations from 1,933 firms from 26 countries from 2002 to 2010. The estimator used is ordinary least squares with heteroscedastic panel-corrected standard errors (PCSEs), which allows us to obtain consistent results in the presence of heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation.

The results show that EMSs and stakeholder engagement are mechanisms that drive CEP but lose their effectiveness in times of crisis. However, the presence of women on boards has a positive effect on CEP that is not affected by an economic crisis.

The study has some limitations that could be addressed in the future. We present board gender diversity as a governance mechanism because its role is strongly related to non-financial performance. Future studies could focus on other corporate governance mechanisms, such as the presence of institutional or long-term investors. In addition, other mechanisms could be found that can counteract poor environmental performance in times of crisis. Finally, it might be useful to contrast these results with the crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The results obtained have important practical implications at the corporate and institutional levels. At the corporate level, they highlight, as essential contributions, that environmental management systems and stakeholder orientation are not effective in times of economic crisis, except for with the presence of women on the board.

Following the crisis, the European Commission has promoted gender diversity on boards as a mechanism to improve the governance of entities – improving, among other aspects, sustainability. In this sense, another one of the practical implications of the study is support for the policies that the European Union has implemented over the last two decades.

The paper analyses how a crisis affects the moral and cultural institutional mechanisms that promote CEP. Gender diversity on the board of directors not only promotes environmental performance but also appears to be a governance mechanism that ensures this performance in times of crisis when the other mechanisms lose their effectiveness. The study proposes specific policies that help maintain environmental performance in an economic crisis.