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Although there is a growing body of work on immigrants' information behavior, little is known about the pre-arrival information experiences of immigrants who consult formal information sources such as immigration agents. Drawn from a larger study on the information behavior of immigrants, this paper mainly reports the semi-structured interview findings on the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants who used formal information sources with discussion on how that affected their post-arrival settlement into Canada.

The study used a mixed method approach with semi-structured interviews (n = 60) and surveys (n = 205) with participants who arrived in Canada between the years of 1971 and 2017. Data were collected from May 2017 to February 2018.

Although the overall scope of the original study is much larger, this paper features findings on the pre-arrival information experiences derived mainly from an analysis of interview data. This study provides insights into the pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants consulting formal information sources such as immigration firms, individual immigration consultants and more formal government agencies. The author introduces a new concept of “information crafting” by exploring the negative consequences of selective information sharing by immigration consultants/agents in newcomers' settlements in Canada, primarily positive information about life in Canada, sometimes with exaggeration and falsification. The interview participants shared story after the story of the settlement challenges they faced after arriving in Canada and how the expectations they built through the information received from immigration consultants and government agencies did not match after arrival. This study emphasizes the importance of providing comprehensive information about life in Canada to potential newcomers so that they can make informed decisions even before they apply.

The findings of this study have theoretical and practical implications for policy and research. This study provides insights into the complicated culturally situated pre-arrival information experiences of Bangladeshi immigrants. Moreover, the study findings encourage researchers in various disciplines, including psychology, migration studies and geography, to delve more deeply into newcomers' information experiences using an informational lens to examine the information newcomers receive from diverse sources and their effects on their post-arrival settlement in a new country. The study challenges the general assumptions that formal information sources are always reputable, useful, and comprehensive, and it provides some future directions for research that seeks to understand the culturally situated information behavior of diverse immigrant groups.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between company reputation and dividend policy.

In this study, sample of 98,809 firm-year observations from 22 countries covering 2005–2016 were used.

Firm reputation concerns are associated with higher propensities to pay dividends and payout ratios. Further, this positive effect is more pronounced for firms with high free cash flows, high information asymmetry and low institutional monitoring. The results are robust to an instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching and the Heckman two-stage correction approach while addressing endogeneity concerns.

These findings have significant implications for various stakeholders, such as existing and potential investors, managers, policymakers and regulators, by providing insights into the relationship between corporate reputation and firm dividend payout decisions. Corporate reputation is highlighted as crucial for accessing finance, emphasizing the role of national regulators and policymakers in facilitating firms' efforts to improve their reputation. The study highlights the dynamics of corporate reputation and dividend payout, calling for proactive engagement from regulators and policymakers. Crafting policies conducive to reputation-building can enhance firms' financial prospects, indicating the need for strategic interventions at managerial, regulatory and policy levels. Understanding the influence of economic context is crucial for firms to tailor reputation management strategies and optimize funding opportunities in different economic environments.

Overall, results suggest that reputation serves as a disciplining mechanism, where firms will pay dividends to maintain their reputations.

Despite the growing use of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies in construction, the reasons behind adopting social media in this context and its real benefits for sustainable construction and productivity remain unclear. This study aims to examine how construction professionals perceive the impact of social media on sustainable construction and productivity in the industry.

This research used a mixed-methods research approach (qualitative and quantitative), resulting in the formulation of a well-structured questionnaire which was distributed to construction professionals. Ordinal regression and multinomial logistic regression were carried out to assess the impact of social media use on sustainable construction and productivity enhancement, as well as the extent of social media utilization in construction projects.

Through exploratory factor analysis, five distinct clusters of social media consequences were identified, namely: information and knowledge sharing, community engagement and morale, environmental and resource management, disruptive and stressful effects and communication and collaboration. Furthermore, the extent of social media usage is closely related to three key factors: community engagement and morale, environmental and resource management and communication and collaboration.

This study represents one of the pioneering research efforts in Nigeria to investigate the implications of social media usage in the construction industry. Thus, future studies can build upon this research to further contribute to the multifaceted dimensions of social media’s impact on the construction industry.

The global energy sector draws significant stakeholder attention due to never-ending controversies surrounding its environmental impacts. Investors’ response to such controversies causes direct financial implications for these firms. Furthermore, environmental, social and governance (ESG) sensitivity, which is likely to safeguard the energy sector firms from such controversies, is itself conditional to the development stage of a country and its regulatory environment. Therefore, this study aims to investigate if the influence of ESG on the share price volatility (SPV) of energy sector firms is subject to the development stage of the countries.

The study investigates nine years of panel data of 93 global energy sector firms from developing and developed nations. Using dynamic two-way fixed effects estimation and computing robust standard errors to obtain the econometric results.

The main finding reveals that the impact of ESG on SPV is, indeed, subject to the development stage of the nations. Similar results are observed for the effects of the social dimension of ESG on SPV. While ESG impacts the SPV negatively for firms in developing economies, the impact is the opposite for firms in developed nations. In other words, strong ESG propositions induce share price stability for developing countries while destabilizing the firms in developed nations.

The policymakers should further streamline the regulations and policies related to ESG adoption and adherence. In practice, the energy sectors should streamline their operations. Firm managers, especially in the energy sector, should devise strategies with ESG as an essential component to safeguard their firms against environmental and market volatility and adversatives. The firms in developing nations should further strengthen their social dimension of ESG to foster social equity and harmony.

The study contributes through its niche investigations on the energy sector, which is very important for the world economy. The study is relevant in the current scenario when the world faces a severe energy crisis due to global supply chain issues.