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The purpose of this paper is to analyse how an influential supplier of electronics manufacturing services (i.e. Foxconn) discloses its labour practices.

The analysis is conducted through the theoretical lens of legitimacy and impression management. This particular firm is selected as it provides a rich case on labour practice disclosures in a setting where significant labour malpractice incidents occurred from 2009 to 2011. The sample period covers 12 years of the firm's labour practice disclosures (2008–2019) to match with publicly available information that is used to construct expert comparative accounts on the disclosures. The authors corroborate the comparative accounts with sociological studies and responsibility reports from the major customer (i.e. Apple).

The authors found that the disclosures become more detailed over successive years. Occupational health and safety issues are predominantly reported, followed by issues relating to vocational guidance and training and then employment policy. Regarding impression management strategies, defensive strategies embedded in the disclosures are rarely detected and assertive strategies are persistently used from 2008 to 2019 to maintain legitimacy. The comparative accounts show the persistent use of one defensive strategy (i.e. omission) to maintain and regain legitimacy. In other words, as an economic strategy, material labour practice issues are persistently omitted in the disclosures. The incidents discernibly affect how Foxconn discloses labour practices.

The authors’ study contributes to the limited extant research on suppliers' labour practice disclosures from the perspective of legitimacy theory and impression management. The results will be of great interest to researchers, investors, assurers and other stakeholders.

This study aims to examine whether announcements of mandatory sustainability disclosure affect corporate sustainability performance (CSP).

The authors use a quasi-experiment provided by mandatory sustainability disclosure announcements that occurred in 21 countries from 2006–2016. A difference-in-differences method is adopted. The authors restrict the drawing of all candidate treatment and control firms to a pool of firms that did not disclose sustainability information one year before the announcements.

The authors find that the announcements of mandatory sustainability disclosure are positively related to CSP. The positive effect is more pronounced for firms in countries with higher anticipation effects and lower awareness effects. Specifically, the authors find that the effect of the announcements is more pronounced in a country where the rule of law is higher and stakeholders are less likely to initiate communication about sustainability with firms, and with fewer active participants in and signatories to the United Nations Global Compact initiative. The findings hold under different robustness analyses.

The study enriches the knowledge about the effect of the announcements of comprehensive mandatory sustainability disclosure by analysing the consequences of these announcements. In the contribution to this growing stream of research, the authors provide evidence on the consequences of the announcements based on a cross-country sample and importantly, focusses on the non-economic consequences.

This paper aims to uncover the global trend on the relationship between board gender diversity and firm risk. In addition, this paper investigates how country characteristics affect the relationship between board gender diversity and firm risk.

This study uses a large sample of firms in 45 countries for the period from 2002 to 2018. Ordinary least square regression is used as a baseline methodology, along with firm fixed effects. Difference-in-differences regression, two-stage least squares regression (instrumental variables approach) and change-on-change regression are adopted to better mitigate endogeneity.

This study finds that board gender diversity is associated with lower firm risk worldwide. In addition, the negative effect of board gender diversity on firm risk is more pronounced for firms that can more easily attract female directors, and for countries with lower power distance and greater preference for individualism.

The findings offer insights into the intense debate in recent years among academics and practitioners on the effect of board gender diversity on firm outcomes. Shareholders and directors may take the findings into account when they consider appointing female directors. The findings should be of interest to policymakers in countries that have not yet promoted board gender diversity.

By using an international sample with board gender quotas in different countries, this paper provides novel and persuasive evidence regarding the impact of board gender diversity on firm risk. This paper also adds to the literature by showing that the relationship between board gender diversity on firm risk is influenced by country characteristics.

This study aims to analyze whether various textual characteristics in corporate sustainability disclosure associate with corporate sustainability performance in Australia, pertaining to tones of language and readability. The voluntary disclosure theory and legitimacy theory are used to formulate the study hypothesis.

Using data from Australian listed firms (2002–2016), four textual characteristics are examined: tone of optimism, tone of certainty, tone of clarity and readability. Corporate sustainability performance is measured by Thomson Reuters Asset4 ratings. Different strategies are adopted to mitigate endogeneity concerns.

The authors found that there is a positive relationship between the textual characteristics of sustainability disclosure and sustainability performance. Specifically, firms with better performance communicate in an optimistic, certain, clear and more readable manner.

The results suggest that Australia’s voluntary reporting status does not induce a combination of poor performance and positive disclosure. This paper should be of interest to investors and other stakeholders and also informs regulatory policy on sustainability disclosure in Australia.

The authors contribute to the sustainability disclosure literature using computer-based textual analysis to explore whether firms reveal their sustainability performance by “how things are said” (i.e. textual characteristics) in sustainability disclosure. As far as the authors could ascertain, they are the first to investigate textual characteristics of sustainability disclosure in Australia.

This study aims to investigate whether top management team (TMT)’s job mobility experience is related to firm innovation.

The authors use different strategies, including a two-stage instrumental model, difference-in-differences analysis based on TMT members’ sudden deaths, propensity score matching and firm fixed-effects model, to mitigate endogeneity concerns.

The authors find that firms whose TMT experienced more job mobility have better firm innovation. In addition, the authors reveal that the job mobility experience is positively related to engagement in explorative innovation strategies that generate new knowledge. The findings are robust to a battery of tests to alleviate potential endogeneity concerns. Overall, the results highlight the role of job mobility experience in influencing firm innovation.

This study contributes to the rising literature on the determinants of firm innovation. By showing the TMT’s job mobility experience is related to innovation, the authors expand the literature about the economic consequences of the heterogeneous TMT characteristics. Given that firm innovation is essential to competitive advantage, the results should be of interest to a range of stakeholders, including investors, directors and managers and policymakers.

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.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it investigates whether and to what extent “linguistic hedging”, an impression management form of linguistic expression that conveys an ambiguous level of commitment, is used in corporate social responsibility (CSR) employment narratives; and second, it explores whether there is any difference in the use of linguistic hedging between written and spoken corporate forms of language. It mobilises these objectives by examining employee-related narratives made by electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers domiciled in Taiwan, in the context of labour malpractice incidents.

Two groups of data are examined: corporate responsibility reports (written language) and interviews and speeches of corporate founders and senior executives (spoken language). The research sample is ten Taiwanese EMS firms, all of which attracted public criticism and scrutiny due to a series of employee-related incidents. The sample period is between 2009 and 2013. Linguistic hedging is measured quantitatively by the relative word frequency of hedges, using the concordance software ANTCONC, with findings interpreted through the lens of legitimacy theory and impression management.

The study found that hedging was evident in CSR narratives. The EMS providers in Taiwan appeared to use hedging in employee-related disclosures to manage legitimacy challenges due to employee-related incidents that had happened in their assembly plants. The adjustments in employee-related disclosures made by the EMS firms as a legitimation strategy can be seen as a rhetoric device of impression management or a form of symbolic legitimation to persuade society to restore their legitimacy status. Further, overall hedging was more frequently used in spoken than written language, which suggests that rhetorical hedging in written narratives is more likely to be a deliberate choice of tactics to influence stakeholder perceptions and thereby manage corporate legitimacy.

The study introduces a new analytical technique, linguistic hedging, into the CSR literature. This enriches research methods used in this field, providing more compelling insights into the relationship between the use of language and CSR narratives in the process of corporate legitimation of employee-related practices. This study thus provides a platform for future computational-linguistics studies in the field of CSR.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between risk management committees (RMCs) and risk management disclosure (RMD) quality. Specifically, the existence of stand-alone RMCs and a number of RMC characteristics, including RMC size, RMC independence, number of RMC meetings and RMC members’ human capital is investigated.

The sample comprises top 100 Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)-listed companies during the period between 2010 and 2012, when RMD began to be guided by detailed recommendations in Australia. Following the RMD framework used by Jia et al. (2016), RMD quality is measured based on its quantity, relevance, width and depth. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions were used to test the relationship between stand-alone RMC, RMC characteristics and RMD quality.

The results show that the existence of a stand-alone RMC, the human capital of RMC and RMC size are positively associated with RMD quality. In contrast, RMC independence and the number of RMC meetings are not found to have a significant association with RMD quality.

This study contributes to the current RMD literature by investigating whether a stand-alone RMC and different RMC characteristics are associated with RMD quality. The results of this study provide useful and new empirical evidence about the relationship between RMCs and RMD quality for researchers, companies, and regulators.

This paper aims to examine changes of non-financial voluntary reporting practices over time in response to episodes of employee-related distress. It investigates employee-related disclosures by the four largest electronic manufacturing services firms in China between 2008 and 2013 during a series of employment-related incidents, to investigate how the firms re-legitimate their reputation in response to the media coverage on those incidents.

A series of employee-related incidents that occurred in 2010-2012 is selected as the focus of this study, with total coverage of employee-related disclosures between 2008 and 2013. These incidents are directly linked to three of the four sample companies: Foxconn, Pegatron and Compal Electronics. Employee-related disclosures in corporate social responsibility (CSR) stand-alone reports are coded by a set of specifically designed instructions, and newspaper articles about employee-related incidents are coded for sentiment. Results are interpreted through two theoretical lenses: the media agenda setting theory and the legitimacy theory.

Newspapers reported the employee-related incidents in a way detrimental to the legitimacy of firms that directly involved in the selected industry. In the process of legitimation, firms switch between disclosing more employee-related information and reducing disclosures. The self-expectation on organizational legitimacy also affects how CSR reporting is used in legitimation. The employee-related disclosure analysed is closer to symbolic legitimation than substantive legitimation.

This study contributes to reporting practice by showing that employee-related disclosure is largely vacuous and to a greater extent is used as symbolic legitimation. The quality of disclosure requires significant improvement. This study contributes to the literature by using the legitimacy theory to interpret employee-related disclosure in China, addressing inadequate research efforts in the context of social and human rights dimensions of CSR reporting.

This study aims to examine whether the sustainability committee, a specialized governance mechanism for environmental and social issues, is related to environmental performance. Specifically, the authors consider the presence and effectiveness of the sustainability committee.

Using a sample of Australian firms (2002–2016), the presence of a sustainability committee and sustainability committee effectiveness (consisting of 12 sustainability committee characteristics) are examined. Firms’ environmental performance is measured by Thomson Reuters Asset4 ratings.

The authors confirm prior findings of a positive relationship between the presence of a sustainability committee and the firm’s environmental performance. More importantly, sustainability committee effectiveness is found to be positively associated with environmental performance, indicating the active role that the composition and function of the sustainability committee plays in enhancing environmental performance.

The findings are of interest to directors and managers who are interested in improving firms’ environmental performance, in addition to investors and regulators who are concerned about environmental performance.

This study meaningfully expands the extant literature that studies the sustainability committee in at least three ways. First, the authors evidence the effect of an unexplored dimension of committee heterogeneity (sustainability committee effectiveness) by hand-collecting detailed information of sustainability committee members. Second, the authors distinguish from prior studies, in that the authors test the direct relationship between sustainability committee effectiveness and environmental performance. Third, by adopting different robustness tests of endogeneity along with sampling firms in various industries over 15 years, the authors offer more compelling and more comprehensive evidence in this regard. Broadly, the authors enrich the literature on corporate governance and environmental performance.