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The reform and opening-up of capital market is valued for promoting sustainable development, while its impact presented as the form of deregulation of short-selling on the green innovation of enterprises in developing countries remains unclear. The purpose of this study is to outline the significance of gradual reform of financial markets in developing countries for low-carbon transformation and provide implications for achieving carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.

Based on the green subdivided patent data and financial data of China’s A-share listed companies, this paper takes the implementation of securities margin trading program as a quasi-natural experiment and applies the difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the impact of deregulation of short-selling constraints on the enterprises’ green transformation.

The findings reveal that the initiating securities margin trading program significantly enhances the green innovation performance of enterprises. These findings are valid after performing a series of robustness tests such as the parallel trend test, the placebo test and the methods to exclude other policy interference. Mechanism analyses demonstrate a two-faceted effect of the securities margin trading program on the green innovation of enterprises, in which short-selling policy increases the pressure on capital market deregulation and meanwhile induces the environmental protection investment. The heterogeneity results demonstrate that the impulsive effect imposed by securities margin trading program is more significant in experimental group samples with characteristics of lower financing constraints, belonging to heavy polluting industries and possessing better environmental supervision capability.

First, previous studies have focused on the impact of financial policies implemented by banking institutions on the green innovation of enterprises, but few literatures have explored the validity of relaxing short-selling restrictions or opening the capital market in the field of enterprise’s green transformation in developing country. From the view of securities market reform, this paper broadens the incentive and supervision effects of the relaxation of short-selling control on enterprise’s green innovation performance after the implementation of securities financing and securities lending policy in China’s capital market. Second, previous studies have explored the impact of command-and-control environmental regulations, as well as market-incentivized environmental regulations such as green finance, low-carbon pilots and environmental tax reform, on the green transition of enterprises. Recently the role of the securities market in the green development of enterprises has received more attention in academia. The pilot of margin financing and securities lending is essentially a market-incentivized regulatory tool, but there is few in-depth research on how it affects the green innovation of enterprises. This paper enriches the research on whether the market incentive financial regulation policy can contribute to the green transformation of enterprises under the Porter hypothesis. Third, some previous studies used the ordinary panel regression model to explore the impact of financial policy on enterprise’s innovation performance. However, due to the potential endogenous problems of the estimated model, it might get biased conclusions. Therefore, based on the method of quasi-natural experiment, this paper selects the margin trading pilot policy as an exogenous shock to solve the endogenous or reverse causality problem in traditional measurement model and applies the DID model to study the relationship between core indicator variables.

To assist Malaysian public-listed companies (PLCs) in preparing corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, Bursa Malaysia Berhad (BMB) launched the second edition of the Sustainability Reporting Guide (SRG) in 2018. This new SRG edition has several additional requirements for CSR reporting (CSRR), the most important of which is a chapter on assurance which provides detailed guidance on how it may be carried out. This study aims to determine whether the new SRG edition influences the extent of CSRR, and whether such effect is moderated by the provision of assurance on CSRR. It also aims to identify whether amending CSRR regulations and providing assurance on such reporting indirectly influences firm value through the possible improvement in the extent of CSRR.

This study performed a content analysis of the CSRR of a sample of Malaysian PLCs that maintained their positions among the top 100 companies by market capitalization between 2017 and 2020 to determine the extent of CSRR for the two years before and two years after the implementation of the new edition of SRG. This study conducted different statistical analyses to indicate whether the implementation of the second edition of SRG has an effect on enhancing the extent of CSRR, and whether the provision of assurance on such reporting moderates such an effect. This study then used instrumental variable regressions to examine the influence of the predicted extent of CSRR on firms’ value measured by Tobin’s Q.

This study found that the implementation of the second edition of SRG has a positive and significant influence on the extent of CSRR. This effect is strengthened by the provision of assurance on CSRR. Instrumental variable regressions also indicate that enhancing the extent of CSRR affected by the second edition of SRG is linked to higher firm value.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to assess the determinants and implications of CSRR among Malaysian companies after adopting the second edition of SRG.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings and leverage manipulation and the moderating effects of internal and external supervision.

The authors draw on a sample of Chinese non-financial A-share-listed firms from 2013 to 2020 to explore the effect of ESG ratings on leverage manipulation. Robustness and endogeneity tests confirm the validity of the regression results.

ESG ratings inhibit leverage manipulation by improving social reputation, information transparency and financing constraints. This effect is weakened by internal supervision, captured by the ratio of institutional investor ownership, and strengthened by external supervision, captured by the level of marketization. The effect is stronger in non-state-owned firms and firms in non-polluting industries. The governance dimension of ESG exhibits the strongest effect, with comprehensive environmental governance ratings and social governance ratings also suppressing leverage manipulation.

Firms should strive to cultivate environmental awareness, fulfil their social responsibilities and enhance internal governance, which may help to strengthen the firm’s sustainability orientation, mitigate opportunistic behaviours and ultimately contribute to high-quality firm development. The top managers of firms should exercise self-restraint and take the initiative to reduce leverage manipulation by establishing an appropriate governance structure and sustainable business operation system that incorporate environmental and social governance in addition to general governance.

Policymakers and regulators should formulate unified guidelines with comprehensive criteria to improve the scope and quality of ESG information disclosure and provide specific guidance on ESG practice for firms. Investors should incorporate ESG ratings into their investment decision framework to lower their portfolio risk.

This study contributes to the literature in four ways. Firstly, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is among the first to show that high ESG ratings may mitigate firms’ opportunistic behaviours. Secondly, it identifies the governance factor of leverage manipulation from the perspective of firms’ subjective sustainability orientation. Thirdly, it demonstrates that the relationship between ESG ratings and leverage manipulation varies with the level of internal and external supervision. Finally, it highlights the importance of governance in guaranteeing the other two dimensions’ roles by decomposing overall ESG.

This study aims to explore the relationship between the degree of state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) mixed reform and the environmental response of enterprises, against the background of actively promoting the reform of mixed ownership in China.

The study is conducted on a sample of A-share listed manufacturing companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen of China, investigated for the period 2015 to 2020. The baseline regression results are robust to a series of robustness and endogeneity tests. To deal with the issue of endogeneity, the technique of instrumental variable method has been applied.

The study confirms the U-shaped effect of the depth and restriction of mixed ownership on SOEs’ environmentally responsive behaviour in the manufacturing industry, especially for lower environmental regulation and higher level of risk-taking firms. The findings indicate that the government, shareholders and other stakeholders of enterprises should not simply consider that the mixed reform is directly promoting or reducing the environmental response behaviour of enterprises.

SOEs should improve their shareholding structures to undermine performance enhancement at the expense of the environment and increase environmentally beneficial behaviours. Regulators and governments should improve the institutional mechanism of environmental regulation and make efforts to promote corporate awareness of the environment.

Although the adoption and implementation of environmentally friendly policies are costly, improved environmental response and other social responsibilities are helpful to corporate long-term growth and reputation and obtain more capital market attention. Therefore, firms would benefit from improving their environmental response to protect nature, as well as to enjoy the economic and social benefits of a better environmental response.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is a lack of studies focussing on the environmental behaviour of SOEs of mixed reform. As the mixed reform in China has come to a climax phase in recent several years, SOEs of mixed reform is an ideal environment for research. The study focusses on manufacturing firms as these firms are more susceptible to contribute to environmental pollution, exploitation of natural resources and labour concerns.

This paper aims to use the origin story of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management as a foil for unpacking the tensions between deep disciplinary specialization and liberal education in business schools in Canada and the USA. Ultimately, the paper reveals that those tensions are not irreconcilable, and that through the fortunes of historical contingencies and deliberate decision-taking, a faculty can embrace the benefits of both breadth and depth.

The paper proposes a critical organizational history of management education through a case study. By drawing on secondary literature and archival sources, the authors focus on moments in business education, such as the founding of the Wharton School of Business, the release of the Carnegie and Ford Reports and the trend towards increased specialization to situate a case study of Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Management.

The authors find that the evolution of business education in North America from its broad, liberal origins towards narrow, specialization has come at a cost to some of the benefits of business and management education. An alternative approach, one reflected in the design of Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management, its programme offerings and its interconnection with other disciplines, enables the advantages of deep disciplinarity to co-exist (and cross-inform) with the advantages of liberal approach to knowledges.

The Dalhousie model offers business schools an example of a faculty that balances the rich insights of liberal interdisciplinarity with the need for sophisticated approaches to more granular, often disciplinary, topics. In addition, the paper offers the story of a multidisciplinary management faculty, some explanation for how that faculty was maintained despite pressures towards specialization; and in doing so, contributes to the limited historical research of management education, particularly in Canada, post-2000.

The connection between digital manufacturing technologies (Industry 4.0) and the environment has sparked discussions on firms' disclosure of negative information on pollutant emissions and the pursuit of positive environmental outcomes. However, very few studies explore how it relates to a firm's robot usage and its mechanism. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of robot penetration on firms' environmental governance in China.

The ordered probit model (and probit model) are employed and empirically tested with a sample of 1,579 Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2019.

The study reveals a negative relationship between robot usage and the disclosure of negative indicators and a U-shaped relationship between robot usage and positive environmental outcomes. Among the sample, nonstate-owned enterprises (SOEs) display unsatisfactory performance, while heavily polluting industries disclose more information on pollutant emissions. The robot–environmental governance nexus is conditional on firm size, capital intensity and local economic development.

The study proposes a fresh view of corporate environmental governance to assess the environmental implications of robot adoption. It also contributes to identifying the curvilinear, moderating and heterogenous effects in the robot–environment nexus. The results provide rich policy implications for the development of industrial intelligence and corporate environmental governance in the circular economy (CE) context.

Effective safety supervision plays a crucial role in ensuring safe production within coal mines. Conventional coal mine safety supervision (CMSS) in China has suffered from the problems of power-seeking, excessive resource consumption and poor timeliness. This paper aims to explore the Internet+ CMSS mode being emerged in China.

The evolution of CMSS systems underwent comprehensive scrutiny through a blend of qualitative and quantitative approaches. First, evolutionary game theory was used to analyze the necessity of incorporating Internet+ technology. Second, a system dynamics model of Internet+ CMSS was crafted, encompassing a system flow diagram and equations for various variables. The model was subsequently simulated by taking the W coal mine in Shanxi Province as a representative case study.

It was revealed that the expected safety profit from the Internet+ mode is 296.03% more than that from the conventional mode. The precise dissemination of law enforcement information was identified as a pivotal approach through which the Internet+ platform served as a conduit to foster synergistic collaboration among diverse elements within the system.

The outcomes of this study not only raise awareness about the potential of Internet+ technology in safety supervision but also establish a vital theoretical foundation for enhancing the efficacy of the Internet+ CMSS mode. The significance of these findings extends to fostering the wholesome and sustainable progress of the coal mining industry.

This research stands out as one of the limited studies that delve into the influence of Internet+ technology on CMSS. Building upon the pivotal approach identified, to the best of authors’ knowledge, a novel “multi-blind” working mechanism for Internet+ CMSS is introduced for the first time.

This study aims to examine the impact of employee treatment on stock price crash risk in emerging markets. The study further sheds light on the economic channels and boundary conditions between employee treatment and crash risk.

This study employs a large-scale archival dataset of Chinese A-share listed firms covering 2010 to 2021. To establish causality, the study leverages multi-way fixed effects, Oster’s test, change regression and instrumental variable methods to alleviate endogeneity concerns.

The results reveal that employee-friendly treatment leads to a lower crash risk. Moreover, improving internal control quality and enhancing firm reputation appear to be the two plausible economic channels through which employee treatment mitigates crash risk. Cross-sectionally, the documented impact is more evident for human-capital-intensive firms, firms with weaker external monitoring and those operating in fiercely competitive industries.

This study is among the first to show that employee treatment has a favorable consequence for shareholder benefit through reducing crash risk. The study thus adds to the ongoing debate regarding the relationship between employee treatment and shareholder wealth. The study also extends the nascent literature on the role of rank-and-file employees in shaping corporate information landscapes.

This study aims to espouse the concept of sustainable environment, social and governance (ESG) practices as the proxies of sustainability reporting (SR). In the presence of smart technology adoption (STA), ESG drives total quality management (TQM) of sustainability matters in advanced medical device (AMD) companies post-pandemic.

This study uses two stages of rigorous data collection. Two focus groups comprising board members, investment advisers and senior managers of AMD were formed to establish the external validity of the constructs proposition. It then used a Web survey to solicit 240 respondents from AMD. Data were analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to provide robustness of predictive power in the model estimation.

Results show SR has positively impacted TQM. It reveals positive relationships between SR and ESG and ESG and TQM. Findings indicate that STA moderates the relationships between ESG and TQM with large effect sizes.

This study offers direction to expedite strategies and action plans by sustainability practitioners in an asymptotic quest for ESG and TQM best practices. Future research should focus on the protection of sustainable social using qualitative methodology.

Using the lens of corporate sustainability, this study develops a framework that integrates ESG, TQM and STA to examine the synergistic effects post pandemic. It provides evidence that ESG practices and STA adoption drive TQM in transition to attain sustainability among the AMD at the country level.

From a supply chain perspective, logistics firms collaborate with other supply chain members to extend their business scope. Investment in circular economy projects in the supply chain can not only broaden the scope of business but also increase the value of the entire supply chain. Third-party logistics companies are gradually participating in the construction and operation of many circular economy projects. How to coordinate multiple circular economy supply chain projects is at the core of its operation.

This paper first analyzes some typical supply chain projects in China and summarizes the main features of these projects. Secondly, considering the benefits of the project and the stakes of each project, a multi-stage stochastic programming model is established. Finally, Cplex, nested decomposition, LocalSolver and other methods are adopted to simulate and analyze the model.

The final experimental results find that the importance of coordinating multiple circular economy supply chain projects to increase the value of the entire supply chain. The multi-stage stochastic programming model presented in this research can provide a useful tool for logistics enterprises and third-party logistics companies to optimize their investment decisions and maximize their profits in the context of a circular economy.

There are still some limitations to this study; for example, it is limited to the analysis of circular economy supply chain projects in China. The study focused on third-party logistics companies, and other enterprises in the circular economy supply chain were not considered. The research also assumed that the benefits of each circular economy project and the stakes of each project were known, which may not always be the case in real-world scenarios.

This manuscript found that investing in other circular economy projects in the supply chain can broaden the scope of business and increase the value of the entire supply chain. Third-party logistics companies are gradually participating in the construction and operation of many circular economy projects, such as recycling and repurposing initiatives. It highlights the importance of coordinating multiple circular economy supply chain projects to increase the value of the entire supply chain. The multi-stage stochastic programming model presented in this research can provide a useful tool for logistics enterprises and third-party logistics companies to optimize their investment decisions and maximize their profits in the context of a circular economy.