Search results

There is limited knowledge of the sustainable halal food supply management in Brunei Darussalam (Brunei), although it is reputable in the halal economy and advocates the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, this paper highlights issues faced in a small, rentier halal market and proposes sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) initiatives for halal-certified food companies in Brunei.

This paper draws data from published academic research and employs a normative and narrative assessment of SSCM and halal supply chain literature.

Four normative SSCM initiatives and propositions that could be implemented by Brunei halal-certified food businesses in achieving the SDGs are highlighted: responsible sourcing, environmental purchasing, sustainable packaging and green transportation.

This viewpoint paper provides a basis for achieving the “Brunei Vision 2035” through a sustainable supply chain lens that may increase well-being and develop a productive and sustainable economy. It also lays a foundation for realising the SDGs, specifically Goal 12 of Sustainable Consumption and Production.

The dedicated attention to smaller halal markets, such as Brunei, would enrich the literature, reveal unforeseen issues or address gaps in the domains of SSCM and halal food supply chains.

The study examines the relationship between news intensity, media sentiment and market microstructure invariance-implied measures of trading activity and liquidity of Chinese property developer stocks during the 2020–2022 Chinese property sector crisis.

The authors adopt the extension of the news article invariance hypothesis, which is a generalization of the market microstructure invariance conjecture, from January 2020 to January 2022 to test specific quantitative relationships between the arrival rate of public information, trading activity and a nonlinear function of a proxy for the probability of informed trading. Empirical tests are based on a dataset of 22,412 firm-day observations and two count-data models to correct for overdispersion and the excess number of zeros. Seventy-five stocks of Chinese companies from the property development industry (including the China Evergrande Group) were included in the sample.

The authors reject the news article invariance hypothesis but document a positive and significant relationship between the flow of public information and risk liquidity. Additionally, the authors find that the proxy for informed trading activity is positively related to the arrival rates of public information from October 2021 to January 2022.

The findings support the hypothesis that negative (positive) media sentiment induces significant deterioration (insignificant improvement) in stock liquidity. The authors find that an increase in the number of news articles about a company corresponds to a higher liquidity of Chinese property developers' stocks after controlling for media sentiment.

This study aims to investigate whether the presence of women in the boardroom influences companies’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. Furthermore, it examines whether the COVID-19 pandemic and family control affect the relationship.

This study uses nonfinancial firms listed on the Indonesia and Malaysia Stock Exchange during 2018-2021. Thomson Reuters’ database is used to collect the ESG scores. Using 312 firm-year observations, the authors apply multiple regressions and sensitivity testing to ensure the robustness of the results.

This study provides empirical evidence that the presence of women in the boardroom improves companies’ ESG and family control weakens the relationship. Meanwhile, there is no support on the moderating effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors also conducted additional tests using ESG pillars (i.e. environment, social and governance pillars) as the dependent variable. The findings are robust to alternative samplings.

This research is limited to Indonesia and Malaysia, thus affecting the generalizability of the results to all developing countries. The sample size is relatively small due to data limitations related to the availability of ESG scores.

The findings of this study provide a basis for the government to establish mandatory regulations regarding sustainability performance. The positive relationship between women on boards and better ESG performance suggests that encouraging gender diversity in corporate leadership can improve sustainability practices. The government may consider implementing gender quota regulations to increase women's representation on corporate boards.

Shareholders can pursue investment portfolios in socially responsible companies, prioritizing ESG performance. In addition, investors should consider the presence of women in the company’s boardroom and whether family control exists when making investment decisions.

Overall, the originality and significance of this research lie in its comprehensive examination of the moderating factors, the inclusion of different governance systems in the sample, and the exploration of psychological aspects, contributing to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the relationship between women on boards and ESG performance in the context of developing countries.

This study examines the non-linear effect of board independence on the investment efficiency of listed firms worldwide. This study further tests whether the COVID-19 pandemic, industry competition and economic development influence the relationship between board independence and investment efficiency.

The data are retrieved from the Thomson Reuters (Refinitiv) database and include international data from 33 countries, comprising 21,363 firm-year observations. The authors' regression analyses include firm-specific variables as controls that may impact investment efficiency. The authors also perform various robustness tests including, alternative measures of investment efficiency, weighted least squares regression, quantile regression and endogeneity issues.

The results reveal a non-linear relationship between board independence and investment efficiency. Specifically, the relationship follows a U-shaped pattern, indicating that the negative impact of board independence on investment efficiency becomes positive after it reaches its optimal point, thus supporting optimal board structure theory. Interestingly, the authors find no significant evidence of board independence’s effect on investment efficiency during the pandemic. In contrast, the relationship between board independence and investment efficiency is significant only during the non-pandemic period. Furthermore, the authors discover evidence of a U-shaped relationship in both emerging and developed markets, as well as in industries with high and low competition.

The authors' study discovers new evidence on the non-linear impact of board independence on investment efficiency, which has not been explored previously in existing research.

This study has practical implications for investors by emphasising the importance of corporate governance and the appointment of independent directors. Investors should consider the findings of this study when making decisions related to corporate governance, as they can impact a firm's investment efficiency.

Despite a considerable body of literature exploring the link between corporate governance and investment effectiveness, there is a dearth of research on the non-linear effects of board independence. Furthermore, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, industry competition and economic development remain unexplored.

The integration of social media and e-commerce has resulted in a rising phenomenon among individual content providers (ICPs), who used to offer free content, to provide consumers with paid content, such as online courses, Q&As or consultations. Despite the prevalence of ICPs’ content monetization, empirical research has rarely studied its underlying mechanism. This paper examines how the characteristics of free content contributed by ICPs on social media platforms influence their paid content sales, focusing on the perspective of human brand.

The empirical setting is an online knowledge exchange platform, where users are allowed to provide free content (e.g. answers) on the social media platform and launch paid content (e.g. lectures) on the e-commerce platform. A machine learning technique is employed to construct measures for the characteristics of free content, and fixed-effects estimation is presented to confirm which factors have a significant influence on the sales of paid content.

The empirical results show that the quality, diversity and expertness of free content have a significant positive impact on the sales of the ICP-paid content, with the brand popularity of ICP playing a mediating role.

This study is the first attempt to demystify the relationship between content contribution and ICPs’ content monetization from the perspective of human brand. The findings validate the effectiveness of the “Selling by Contribution” strategy and provide valuable insights for ICPs and social media platforms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if the announcement of corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs) induce significant effects on the electricity buyers' stock returns.

This is an event study based on the Fama French Five Factor Model which uses several significance tests and robust regression approaches.

The announced closing of corporate PPAs induces significant positive abnormal stock returns. This announcement effect is even more pronounced in case of virtual PPAs.

To the best of the author‘s knowledge, this study is the first which explictly investigates the announcement effects of corporate PPAs, which are closed between the owner of the renewable energy asset and the institutional end consumer. In addition, this study extends the event study approach by robust regression methods.

The goal of this article was to look into the direct and indirect links between corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and the cost of equity, using real earnings management (REM) as a mediator.

To test the hypotheses, the authors applied linear regressions with panel data using the Thomson Reuters ASSET4 and I/B/E/S database on a sample of 540 European companies selected from the environmental, social and governance (ESG) index over the period 2011–2019.

The results show that REM partially mediates the relationship between CSR practices and the cost of equity in European firms belonging to the ESG index.

Instead of beautifying their business, companies should make efficient managerial and organizational improvements to meet their social duty. Regulators in Europe must strive for tighter enforcement while also attempting to raise public awareness of CSR. CSR can be profitable and helpful for primary stakeholders, according to the research.

Although previous literature has investigated the direct correlation between CSR practices and the cost of equity, the present work focuses on considering the direct and indirect association between CSR and cost of equity through the mediating effect of REM, which has not been widely used in CSR studies so far.

Are franking credit balances priced? This paper aims to investigate the valuation of franking credit balances via a determinant analysis and value relevance analysis.

The determinant analysis examines the factors that contribute to the increasing cumulative level of franking credit balances. Value relevance studies explore whether franking credit balances are priced in the market.

The results provide strong evidence of a size effect that the level of franking credit balances increases with firm size and weak evidence of an international focus effect that the level of franking credit balances increases with international ownership. They also find an individual dividend clientele effect that the level of franking credit balances decreases with individual ownership. They find significant evidence that franking credit balances are priced in the market. One dollar of franking credit is worth 1.4 dollars in firm value. That franking balances are capitalized at more than their face value suggests that franking credits signal firms' future dividend policy. They also find that the market valuation of franking balances increases with firm size but decreases with international focus.

This study provides direct evidence that franking credit balances are capitalized into equity prices. In the determinant analysis, this paper improves Heaney's (2009) model by using the percentage of international ownership as the proxy of international focus, thus addressing the limitation of his measure. In the value relevance tests, the study uses a modified model that includes log-transformation to reduce the skewness of variables based on Tanza's (2014) value relevance model. Moreover, the study suggests that the market valuation of franking credit balances increases with firm size, which contradicts Heaney's (2009) findings.

This study aims to examine how environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives and ISO 14001, which is an internationally agreed standard to set out the requirements for an environmental management system, affect firm performance in the context of the Industry 4.0 supply chain.

The authors develop a new chance-constrained network data envelopment analysis (DEA) in the presence of non-positive data to estimate innovation, operational and profitability performances for three main relation groups (suppliers, partners and customers) in Microsoft's supply chain.

Results of this study show the following: (1) the application of ISO 14001 will reduce profitability but increase overall performance (OP); (2) ESG implementation has a convex U-shaped influence on profitability and OP, which means that firms will benefit when ESG investment goes beyond a particular level; (3) the nonlinear U-shape is presented in the E and G components, but not in the S of the individual ESG initiatives, and (4) only specific subcomponents of S and G in the subcomponent of individual ESG initiatives are nonlinearly connected to OP. Research's results reveal that the customer group has a higher performance value than the other two groups, which suggests that this group will create competitive advantages for Microsoft.

Overall, the authors provide an insightful viewpoint into supply chain management by examining the ESG initiatives, ISO 14001 and performances of Microsoft's supply chain.

This paper aims to investigate the direct and indirect links between good corporate governance (GCG) and firm value using corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a mediating variable.

The data used in this research was collected from the Thomson Reuters Eikon ASSET4 database, involving 108 financial institutions belonging to 12 European countries listed on the stock exchange between 2007 and 2019. A multivariate linear regression analysis was conducted to test the hypotheses of this study.

Our results show that GCG has a positive effect on the firm value and CSR practices. Interestingly, the results indicate that CSR positively influences firm value. The results also reveal that CSR partially mediates the relationship between GCG and firm value.

This study contributes to the literature by providing evidence on how GCG increases firm value with the mediation mechanism of CSR in the link between GCG and firm value. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first research work documenting that GCG leads to better CSR, which ultimately results in increasing firm value of companies from the financial sector by bridging the information gap for this critical industry in the context of a developed market like Europe.