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Unlike other types of corporate disclosure, corporate political disclosure (CPD), which is the disclosure of corporate political contributions and the related governing policies and oversight mechanisms, does not provide completely new information to stakeholders. Some of the information disclosed in CPD is available from other public records (e.g. the Federal Election Committee website or OpenSecrets website). Given this unique feature of CPD, it is interesting to investigate the cost and benefit tradeoff for firms of altering their CPD practice in response to policy and political uncertainty.

This study employs recently developed indexes of aggregate economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and a novel dataset of CPD transparency to examine the impact of EPU on CPD transparency and how the proprietary cost of corporate political activities moderates this association. The sample consists of S&P 500 companies from the 2012 to 2019 period.

The authors document that firms mitigate the heightened information asymmetry associated with higher aggregate EPU by increasing CPD transparency. The positive association between EPU and CPD is less pronounced for firms that are more sensitive to EPU, for firms that more actively manage EPU through corporate political contributions or lobbying activities and for firms that are followed by more analysts. The authors also find that more transparent CPD helps to mitigate the information asymmetry caused by heightened EPU. This study’s results hold when the authors control for other types of voluntary corporate disclosure.

This study contributes to the emerging literature on the determinants of CPD transparency by identifying EPU's positive impact on CPD transparency. This study also provides empirical evidence that the proprietary costs arising from the controversial nature of corporate political activities dampen firms' incentives to provide transparent CPD in response to heightened EPU, and that information on corporate political activities gathered and processed by financial analysts seems to lower the marginal benefit to companies of publicizing CPD on their own website.

This paper investigates how two characteristics of language, abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity, influence user engagement in communication exercises on innovation targeted to the general audience. The proposed conceptual model suggests that innovation fits well with more abstract language because of the association of innovation with imagination and distal construal. Moreover, communication of innovation may benefit from greater adherence to the narrativity arc, that is, early staging, increasing plot progression and climax optimal point. These effects are moderated by content variety and emotional tone, respectively.

Based on a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application on a sample of 3225 TED Talks transcripts, the authors identify 287 TED Talks on innovation, and then applied econometric analyses to test the hypotheses on the effects of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity on engagement, and on the moderation effects of content variety and emotional tone.

The authors found that abstractness (vs concreteness) and narrativity have positive effects on engagement. These two effects are stronger with higher content variety and more positive emotional tone, respectively.

This paper extends the literature on communication of innovation, linguistics and text analysis by evaluating the roles of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity in shaping appreciation of innovation.

This paper reports conceptual and empirical analyses on innovation dissemination through a popular medium – TED Talks – and applies modern text analysis algorithms to test hypotheses on the effects of two pivotal dimensions of language on user engagement.

Free banking theory, as developed in Adam Smith’s 1776 treatise, “The Wealth of Nations” is a useful tool in determining the extent to which the “invisible hand of the market” should prevail in regulatory policy. The purpose of this study is to provide a timely review of the literature, evaluating the theory’s relevance to regulation of financial technology generally and cryptocurrencies (cryptos) specifically.

The methodology is qualitative, applying free banking theory as developed in the literature to technology-defined environments. Recent legislative developments in the regulation of cryptocurrencies in the UK, European Union and the USA, are drawn upon.

Participants in volatile cryptocurrency markets should bear the consequences of inadvisable investments in accordance with free banking theory. The decentralised nature of cryptocurrencies and the exchanges on which these are traded militate against coordinated oversight by central banks, supporting a qualified free banking approach. Differences regarding statutory definitions of cryptos as units of exchange, tokens or investment securities and the propensity of these to transition between categories across the business cycle render attempts at concerted classification at the international level problematic. Prevention of criminality through extension of Suspicious Activity Reporting to exchanges and intermediaries should be the principal objective of policymakers, rather than definitions of evolving products that risk stifling technological innovation.

The study proposes that instead of a traditional regulatory approach to cryptos, which emphasises holders’ safety and compensation, a free banking approach combined with a focus on criminality would be a more effective and pragmatic way forward.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence of earnings management in the Australian not-for-profit (NFP) disability service providers sector, as well as to understand the motivations for and implications of such practices. This research is important for stakeholders, such as members and funders, as well as the broader Australian community, considering the significant financial resources allocated to these organizations from the public purse.

The authors employ a longitudinal dataset containing financial data from 154 Australian NFP disability service providers, collected over a two-year period (2015–2016). Through the analysis of detailed balance sheets and income statements, the authors seek to uncover evidence of earnings management practices in this sector. The study’s results provide valuable insights into the behaviour of the charitable human services sector.

The findings reveal that Australian NFP disability service providers engage in earnings management practices, primarily aimed at reducing reported profits to meet the normative financial expectations of stakeholders, such as public sector funders and philanthropists. The executives of these organizations strive to report profits close to zero, being cautious not to report a loss, which might raise concerns about their sustainability.

The authors contribute to the existing literature on earnings management in the NFP sector by focussing on Australian disability service providers, an area that has been under-researched due to a lack of suitable data. The results offer insights into the incentives and implications of earnings management practices in this sector and highlight the need for a revaluation of accounting standards, reporting requirements and audit arrangements applicable to the NFP sector.

This study aims to, firstly, develop a red flag checklist for cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes and, secondly, to test this red flag checklist against publicly available marketing material for Mirror Trading International (MTI). The red flag checklist test seeks to establish if MTI’s marketing material posted on YouTube^® (in the form of a live video presentation) exhibits any of the red flags from the checklist.

The study uses a structured literature review and qualitative analysis of red flags for Ponzi and cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.

A research lacuna was discovered with regard to cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme red flags. By means of a structured literature review, journal papers were identified that listed and discussed Ponzi scheme red flags. The red flags from the identified journal papers were subsequently used in a qualitative analysis. The analyses and syntheses resulted in the development of a red flag checklist for cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes, with five red flag categories, containing 18 associated red flags. The red flag checklist was then tested against MTI’s marketing material (a transcription of a live YouTube presentation). The test resulted in MTI’s marketing material exhibiting 88% of the red flags contained within the checklist.

The inherent limitations in the design of using a structured literature review and the lack of research regarding the cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme red flags.

The study provides a red flag checklist for cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes. The red flag checklist can be applied to a cryptocurrency investment scheme’s marketing material to establish if it exhibits any of these red flags.

The red flag checklist can be applied to a cryptocurrency investment scheme’s marketing material to establish if it exhibits any of these red flags.

The study provides a red flag checklist for cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes.

Despite the widespread prevalence of share pledging by Indian promoters, this area remains out of the researchers’ purview. This study aims to bridge this research gap by delineating the impact of promoter share pledging on future stock price crash risk and financial performance in India.

A sample of 257 companies listed on the Standard and Poor’s Bombay Stock Exchange 500 (S&P BSE 500) Index has been analysed using panel (fixed-effects) data regression methodology over 2011–2020. Further, alternative proxies for crash risk and financial performance are adopted to ensure that the study’s initial findings are robust. Finally, the instrumental variable with the two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) method has also been employed to alleviate endogeneity concerns.

The results suggest a significantly positive relationship between promoter share pledging and future stock price crash risk in India. Conversely, this association is significantly negative for future financial performance. Moreover, the results hold, even after including alternative proxies of stock price crash risk and financial performance and addressing endogeneity concerns.

Owing to the sizeable equity shareholdings of the promoters, share pledging has remained a lucrative source of finance in India. Despite the popularity, the findings of this study question the relevance of share pledging by Indian promoters considering its impact on aggravating future stock price crash risk and deteriorating future financial performance.

Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular channel for project fundraising for entrepreneurial ventures. Such efforts require fundraisers to develop and manage a crowdfunding campaign over a period of time and several stages. Thus, the authors aim to identify the stages fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign process and how their engagement evolves throughout this process.

Following a multiple case study research design analysing six successful campaigns, the current study suggests a taxonomy of stages the fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign management process while identifying the types of engagement displayed and their relative intensity at each of these stages.

The study proposes a five-stage process framework (pre-launch, launch, mid-campaign, conclusion and post-campaign), accompanied by a series of propositions outlining the relative intensity of different types of engagement throughout this process. The authors show that engagement levels appear with high intensity at pre-launch, and to a lesser degree also at the post-launch stage while showing low intensity at the stages in between them. More specifically, cognitive and behavioural engagement are most prominent at the pre- and post-launch stages. Emotional engagement is highest during the launch, mid-launch and conclusion stages. And social engagement maintains moderate levels of intensity throughout the process.

This study focuses on the campaign process using engagement theory, thus identifying the differing engagement patterns throughout the dynamic crowdfunding campaign management process, not just in one part.

In this study, the authors sought to investigate how the implicit social ties of both project owners and potential backers are associated with crowdfunding project success.

Drawing on social ties theory and factors that affect crowdfunding success, in this research, the authors developed a model to study how project owners' and potential backers' implicit social ties are associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The proposed model was empirically tested with crowdfunding data collected from Kickstarter and social media data collected from Twitter. The authors performed the test using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model with fixed effects.

The authors found that project owners' implicit social ties (specifically, their social media activities, degree centrality and betweenness centrality) are significantly and positively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. Meanwhile, potential project backers' implicit social ties (their social media activities and degree centrality) are negatively associated with crowdfunding projects' degrees of success. The authors also found that project size moderates the effects of project owners' social media activities on projects' degrees of success.

This work contributes to the literature on crowdfunding by investigating how the implicit social ties of both potential backers and project owners on social media are associated with crowdfunding project success. This study extends the previous research on social ties' roles in explaining crowdfunding project success by including implicit social ties, while the literature explored only explicit social ties.

The management of employee happiness and well-being has been gaining interest in academic research in recent years; however, few studies have focussed on the entrepreneur's perspective. The aim of this paper is to analyse the state of research on women-led businesses, well-being and happiness management.

A bibliometric study has been carried out since 1996, the first year in which publications in this field were detected. In total, 128 papers are identified in the most reliable database, Web of Science Core Collection. A network mapping of authorship, citation and co-occurrence of keywords in scientific publications is shown.

The results of this study confirm that societal changes resulting from crises increase research interest in improving organisational environments and happiness. After the economic crises of 2013, there was a boost, and after the pandemic, there is again a boost in research. More than half of the publications and citations on female entrepreneurship and happiness management are post-pandemic. The study offers some research directions and emphasises the role of gender.

This article brings a new approach to the study of well-being in organisations, highlighting the relevance of the role female leadership plays in promoting happiness at work.

The phenomenal proliferation of crowdfunding platforms raises concerns on the heightened occurrence of financial crimes since billions of funds are exchanged through these online systems frequently. Accordingly, some countries have implemented legislative responses to address these risks, although each countries’ laws have varying degrees of severity. Hence, the purpose of this study is to assess the efficiency and robustness of Mauritian laws to combat financial crimes that may arise from a crowdfunding transaction with a particular emphasis on money laundering and tax evasion.

To achieve this research objective, the black letter approach was used to analyse Mauritian rules and regulations on the researched topic and a comparative analysis was carried out against the corresponding laws on crowdfunding in some other jurisdictions, notably the UK and the USA with the view of suggesting the policy recommendations to Mauritian authorities.

It was found that there is still scope for improving the existing legal and regulatory framework on crowdfunding in Mauritius to prevent instances of money laundering and tax evasion. The paper suggests that a crowdfunding operator must be categorised as a reporting person and must carry out regular due diligence checks. There must also be more collaboration in terms of information exchanges and training sessions among the tax authority of Mauritius, crowdfunding operators, fund seekers and investors to shed light on the tax treatment of income and deductions to avoid issues of tax evasion.

At present, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is amongst the first academic writings on the efficiency of Mauritian laws in dealing with the risk of financial crimes through crowdfunding, and also, because existing literature is quite scarce on assessing the adequacy of crowdfunding rules in developing countries, this research aims at filling in the gap in literature. The study is carried out with the aim of combining a large amount of empirical, theoretical and factual information that can be of use to various stakeholders and not only to academics.