Search results

This study aims to analyse the strategic moves used by major tobacco corporations to thwart the ratification of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in Brazil.

The authors conducted a detailed historical case study spanning 1988–2005 and encompassing the period leading up to Brazil’s FCTC ratification. The authors collected qualitative data from various sources to triangulate and develop a comprehensive historical account.

The historical analysis identified three distinct phases. First, the acquisition of a Brazilian cigarette factory, Souza Cruz, by British American Tobacco dramatically altered power dynamics, strengthening the position of the tobacco industry. The second phase regards the era of dictatorship and the efforts of various actors advocating against smoking and the tobacco industry. The third phase involved Brazil’s re-democratisation and the challenges of securing FCTC ratification, during which fierce industry opposition had to be overcome. Throughout these phases, the authors identified four key strategies used by multinational corporations (MNCs) in Brazil to uphold unsustainable practices and products that contradicted public interests instead of reforming them: shaping collective memory, dissimulation, re-presentation and redirecting attention.

This study contributes to critical international business research on emerging economies by examining how Brazil’s position in the global capitalist system has influenced its dependency and how MNCs produce and maintain cycles of poverty and unsustainable practices through the exploitation of power dynamics within the country.

This article explores how companies in multiple controversial industries report their controversial issues. For the first time, the authors use a new conceptualization of controversial industries, focused on harm and solutions, to investigate the reports of 28 companies in seven controversial industries: Agricultural Chemicals, Alcohol, Armaments, Coal, Gambling, Oil and Tobacco.

The authors thematically analyzed company reports to determine if companies in controversial industries discuss their controversial issues in their reporting, if and how they communicate the harm caused by their products or services, and what solutions they provide.

From this study data the authors introduce a new legitimacy reporting method in the controversial industries literature: the solutions companies offer for the harm caused by their products and services. The authors find three solution reporting methods: no solution, misleading solution and less-harmful solution. The authors also develop a new typology of reporting strategies used by companies in controversial industries based on how they report their key controversial issue and the harm caused by their products or services, and the solutions they offer. The authors identify seven reporting strategies: Ignore, Deny, Decoy, Dazzle, Distort, Deflect and Adapt.

Further research can test the typology and identify strategies used by companies in different institutional or regulatory settings, across different controversial industries or in larger populations.

Investors, consumers, managers, activists and other stakeholders of controversial companies can use this typology to identify the strategies that companies use to report controversial issues. They can assess if reports admit to the controversial issue and the harm caused by a company's products and services and if they provide solutions to that harm.

This paper develops a new typology of reporting strategies by companies in controversial industries and adds to the theory and discourse on social and environmental reporting (SER) as well as the literature on controversial industries.

The study aims to examine the extent of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure of Canadian cannabis firms and how they view responsibility. It also explores how cannabis firms build their CSR-based organizational identity through Twitter.

Deductive and inductive content analyses were carried through on tweets for a sample of 18 firms listed on the Canadian marijuana index during the legalization period of the recreational use of cannabis.

The results of this study show that cannabis firms approach responsibility by focusing on consumer and community/local development and by raising awareness and providing product information. The findings also highlight that the firms build their organizational identity mainly around their products’ medical benefits, the scientific efforts behind product development and the continual stigmatization they experience. At the industry level, cannabis firms attempt to build a harmonized identity to neutralize stigma.

This study allowed for a comprehensive understanding on how cannabis firms position themselves within an emergent sin industry and how they create their CSR identity through Twitter. It advances our understanding on the meaning of responsibility about the specific and distinctive features of the cannabis industry. From the methodology side, this study developed two content analysis tools: a coding instrument and a dictionary. These tools could be useful for conducting future studies related to the CSR disclosure of cannabis firms worldwide.

This study aims to provide a precise understanding of how corporate sustainability information is used in socially responsible investing (SRI). The study is motivated by the lack of a recognised body of knowledge on this issue. This study, therefore, collates and reviews relevant studies (67 studies) to provide guidance to investors interested in SRI and identify a research agenda for academics desiring to contribute to this area.

This study conducts a systemic literature review employing recognised key words and searching the Web of Science. HistCite is utilised to ensure important cited studies are not missed from the collection. The review was conducted from two perspectives: (1) sources of sustainability information and (2) how the information is used in SRI.

The review identifies five major sources of sustainability information, including corporate reports, ESG ratings, industry affiliation, news and private communication with firms. These sources of information play different roles in the cross section of SRI strategies (i.e. negative and positive screening, active ownership and integration). This study provides guidance on how to use this information in SRI and provides recommendations for future research on how analysts interact with the information, how different informational characteristics impact implementation, ways to improve data quality, improvements to analysis methods and where data use needs to be extended into new strategies.

This review contributes to the SRI literature by inventorying studies of an important, yet omitted aspect, namely, sustainability information. This work also enriches the literature on corporate sustainability information by investigating how this information can be used for a specific purpose, namely, SRI. Given the increasing interest in SRI, this review will provide much-needed guidance for a range of practitioners, including investors and regulators.

This paper develops a typology of argumentation strategies used in lobbying. Unlike in other strategic communication functions such as crisis or risk communication, such typologies have not been proposed in the sub-field of public affairs.

The article synthesises the strategic communication, political communication and policy studies literature and employs exchange theory to explain the communicative-strategic exchange in public affairs. It showcases its explanatory potential with illustrative examples from Big Tech lobbying.

The paper describes that categories of argumentation strategies that a public affairs professional will choose are based on the contingency of the issue, policy objective and lobbying objective. The descriptive typology will require empirical testing to develop further.

The paper describes how public affairs professionals influence public policy through their argumentation strategies, which sheds light on the usually opaque activities of lobbying.

The proposed typology is the first of its kind for the field of public affairs. Beyond, it contributes communication-scientific insights from a rhetorical tradition to strategic communication research and other social science fields where lobbying is studied, e.g. policy studies.

This study investigates the relationship between CEO leadership, gender homophily and corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. We also investigate whether it is essential to have a critical mass of women directors on the board to create a significant power of gender diversity in leadership positions.

Our study is based on firms listed on the London Stock Exchange (FTSE-All-Share) from 2011 to 2019. CEO characteristics and other board variables were collected from BoardEx, and ESG data, and other related variables were collected from Eikon database.

We find a critical mass of female directors contributes to ESG performance suggesting that token representation of female directors on boards limits their effectiveness. We do not find support for the gender homophily perspective, our findings suggest that the effectiveness of female CEOs does not depend on the existence of a critical mass of female directors. Female directors and female CEOs are less likely to be associated with ESG activities when firms experience poor financial performance. We also find that younger female CEOs have a positive impact on ESG performance. Furthermore, we find female CEOs with shorter tenure are more likely to improve ESG performance. Overall, our findings suggest a substitutional effect between having female CEOs and gender diverse boards.

This study contributes to the debate on gender homophily in the boardroom and how that may affect ESG practices. It also complements existing academic research on female leadership and ESG performance and has important implications for senior management and policymakers.

This paper aims to providea comprehensive review of the concepts and definitions of green finance, and the importance of “green” impact investments today. The core challenge in combating climate change is reducing and controlling greenhouse gas emissions; therefore, this study explores the solutions green finance provides emphasizing their impact on the environment and firms' financial performance. With increasing attention to the concept of green finance, multiple forms of green financial tools have come to fruition; the most prominent are green bonds.

This paper compiles a comprehensive green bond dataset, presenting a statistical study of the evolution of the green bonds market from its first appearance in 2006 until 2021.

The green bond market has seen massive growth over the years reaching $1651.92bn as of 2021. Findings show that green bonds are working towards shifting from high carbon-emitting energy to renewable energy, which is vital to economic development and growth. In congruence, green bonds are aligned with the United Nation's sustainable development goals (SDGs) amounting to $550bn for 2020, with the five most covered SDGs amounting to over 60%.

With growing worldwide concern for global warming, green finance became the fuel that pushes the world to act in combating and mitigating climate change. Coupled with adopting the Paris Agreement and the SDGs, Green finance became a vital tool in creating a pathway to sustainable development, as it connects the financial world with environmental and societal benefits.

This paper aims to enhance the understanding of the distinct origins, mechanisms, growth paths and societal impacts of misinformation and disinformation through the theoretical lens of Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, particularly focusing on structural coupling and penetration.

This paper is based on a conceptual study that investigates the phenomena of mis-/disinformation based on reviews of the literature on social systems theory, particularly focusing on structural coupling and penetration.

This theoretical analysis has led to the postulations that mis-/disinformation would cause social conflicts through divergent routes and that they do not necessarily have negative consequences in society. That is, conflicts or communication of contradictions serve for the reproduction and change in social systems and, furthermore, serve society as an immune mechanism. We speculate that similarities in the manifestation of mis-/disinformation could stem from the influence of amplifiers, such as moral intervention. Nevertheless, we posit that disinformation stemming from intentional penetration is more likely to cause societal dysfunction than misinformation, leading to conflict overload, polarized information ecosystems and potential system failures.

It provides a broader theoretical perspective for a better understanding of the roots and mechanisms of mis-/disinformation and their social consequences. It also engages with unresolved debates over structural couplings and penetration, showing how distinguishing these concepts enhance analytical clarity and explanatory power.

Despite the increasing interest in the role of supply chain concentration (SCC) in improving performance, its influence on firms' sustainability performance remains unexplored, as do the underlying mechanisms of this relationship. Drawing on resource dependence theory, the authors investigate the relationship between SCC and manufacturing firms' sustainability performance and the moderating roles of operational slack and information transparency.

The authors use secondary data from 3,581 manufacturing firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share stock markets from 2006 to 2020 to conduct an empirical analysis using panel data regression models.

Manufacturing firms' SCC is negatively related to sustainability performance until it reaches a certain point, where SCC positively affects sustainability performance, presenting a U-shaped relationship. In addition, operational slack represented by a quick ratio moderates the relationship between SCC and sustainability performance by flattening the curve. Operational slack represented by receivable turnover ratio moderates the relationship between SCC and sustainability performance by steepening the curve and shifting the turning point left. Information transparency strengthens the effect of SCC on the sustainability performance by steepening the curve.

This investigation provides a comprehensive view of the SCC– sustainability performance relationship.

This study aims to estimate the pass-through rate of the increases in the excise tax and TCF tax on tobacco in Vietnam. This study seeks to shed light on how the tax burden is split between consumers and producers and inform policy discussions in the country. Using panel micro-level data collected from three waves of a nationwide retailer's survey, this study provides an evidence-based pass-through estimation for tobacco tax in Vietnam and contributes to the understanding of tax policy on smoking and smoking-related issues.

Following increases in the excise tax and TCF tax on tobacco in 2019, the differential effect of the tax hike on the “treatment group” (domestic cigarettes) versus the “control group” (illicit cigarettes) using a difference-in-difference (DID) analysis has been studied. The study utilized unique longitudinal retailers’ data on cigarettes prices in Vietnam from 2018 to 2019 to estimate the tax pass-through rate for some of the most popular factory-made cigarette brands.

This study found evidence of an over-shifting of cigarette taxes on smokers. Specifically, it discovered that the tax increase is absorbed more by low-priced brand smokers compared to premium brand users due to (1) the limited increase in prices under a pure ad valorem system and (2) the way the Vietnamese currency is denominated. Additionally, there is evidence of cushioning to mitigate price shock on consumers as the real prices increase gradually over the period of one year after the tax change.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to collect and analyze a unique panel micro-level data from three waves of a nationwide retailers’ survey, which captures the changes in marketing and pricing strategies of the tobacco industry in Vietnam before and after an increase in excise tax in 2019. The results of this study could be used as a reference for future policymakers in considering increasing taxes on tobacco.