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How can large international financial firms go green in authentic ways? What enhances ‘Net Zero action’? Changes in global banks, fund managers, and insurance firms are at the heart of green finance. External change pressures – combined with problematic firm predispositions – exacerbate barriers to change and promote scepticism about authentic Net Zero change. Field research reveals main elements, connections, and interactions of this question by considering financial firms as complex socio-technical systems (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003). An interdisciplinary/holistic narrative approach (De Bakker et al., 2019) is adopted to design a conceptual framework that can support a green ‘behavioural theory of the financial firm’ (green BTFF). The BTFF presents an international version (Peng, 2001) of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm (Barney, 1991; Hart, 1995; Teece et al., 1997).

The approach of this chapter is aimed at closing knowledge gaps and realign values in financial markets and society. By raising awareness about organised hypocrisy and facades (Brunsson, 1993; Cho et al., 2015; Schoeneborn et al., 2020) in financial firms the chapter aims at overcoming the gap between ‘talking’ and ‘walking’ in the financial sector. The chapter defines testable firm-level hypotheses for ‘Green Finance’ (Poterba, 2021) as well as – by implication – tests for ‘greenwashing’.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has been widely accepted as a vital tool for communicating with stakeholders on a range of social, environmental, and governance issues, but how companies define, interpret, apply, integrate, and communicate their CSR efforts and impacts in corporate reporting is anything but a straightforward task. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the concept of materiality in CSR reporting and demonstrate practical examples of good CSR and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reporting practices. We chose the aviation industry because of its economic relevance, constant growth, and future expected changes in the aftermath of COVID-19. In addition, airlines affect many of the SDGs directly and indirectly with contending results. This chapter is timely because of the growing willingness by companies to integrate CSR and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) thinking into the corporate strategy and business operations using materiality assessment and enhancing their competitive advantage and ability to maintain long-term value and because ESG and ethical investing have become part of the mainstream investing. Thus, this chapter contributes to an understanding of the wide range of existing and new reporting frameworks and regulations and reinforces the importance of discussing how this diversity of approaches can affect the work toward worldwide comparability of CSR and sustainability reporting.

High-quality nursing home (NH) care has long been a challenge within the United States. For decades, policymakers at the state and federal levels have adopted and implemented regulations to target critical components of NH care outcomes. Simultaneously, our delivery system continues to change the role of NHs in patient care. For example, more acute patients are cared for in NHs, and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has implemented value payment programs targeting NH settings. As a part of these growing pressures from the broader healthcare delivery system, the culture-change movement has emerged among NHs over the past two decades, prompting NHs to embody more person-centered care as well as promote settings which resemble someone's home, as opposed to institutionalized healthcare settings.

Researchers have linked culture change to high-quality outcomes and the ability to adapt and respond to the ever-changing pressures brought on by changes in our regulatory and delivery system. Making enduring culture change within organizations has long been a challenge and focus in NHs. Despite research suggesting that culture-change initiatives that promote greater resident-centered care are associated with several desirable patient outcomes, their adoption and implementation by NHs are resource intensive, and research has shown that NHs with high percentages of low-income residents are especially challenged to adopt these initiatives.

This chapter takes a novel approach to examine factors that impact the adoption of culture-change initiatives by assessing knowledge management and the role of knowledge management activities in promoting the adoption of innovative care delivery models among under-resourced NHs throughout the United States. Using primary data from a survey of NH administrators, we conducted logistic regression models to assess the relationship between knowledge management and the adoption of a culture-change initiative as well as whether these relationships were moderated by leadership and staffing stability. Our study found that NHs were more likely to adopt a culture-change initiative when they had more robust knowledge management activities. Moreover, knowledge management activities were particularly effective at promoting adoption in NHs that struggle with leadership and nursing staff instability. Our findings support the notion that knowledge management activities can help NHs acquire and mobilize informational resources to support the adoption of care delivery innovations, thus highlighting opportunities to more effectively target efforts to stimulate the adoption and spread of these initiatives.

This chapter explores the influence of the banking and insurance sectors on the economic growth of Czechia, a nation with unique financial dynamics ideal for this study. Our aim is to ascertain the contribution of these financial institutions to economic growth, addressing the divergence in empirical findings that have marked this research area for decades. We scrutinise the impact of various factors, including sectoral development and the efficiency and stability of these institutions, all within the Czech context. Utilising the Granger causality test, we assess the role of several indicators related to the development of the banking and insurance sectors. Our findings reveal that in Czechia, the evolution and operational efficiency of these financial institutions significantly drive economic growth. This study provides an in-depth understanding of the role these sectors play in the Czech economic landscape, affirming their crucial contribution to the nation's economic prosperity.

This chapter introduces dividend smoothing, presents theories to explain dividend smoothing behavior, and analyzes how different levels of business environment affect dividend smoothing. First, dividend smoothing describes a mechanism in which a firm is reluctant to reduce dividends and only increases dividends when its earnings increase permanently. In practice, dividend smoothing behavior is found in both developed and developing countries. Firms in developed countries are more likely to smooth dividends than those in developing countries. Second, although Miller and Modigliani (1961) posit that investors are indifferent between stable and unstable dividend payments in a perfect environment, market frictions in the real world make stable and unstable dividends have different effects on firm value. Three common frictions are information asymmetry, agency problem, and investors' demand for income smoothing. Due to information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders, firms tend to smooth their dividends to signal outside investors about their quality. In addition, dividend smoothing may be the substitute for weak corporate governance and/or the outcome of free cash absorption behavior. Besides, dividends are more convenient for investors' consumption; therefore, firms are more likely to smooth dividends in order to satisfy investors' demand for smooth income. Finally, as a special dividend decision, dividend smoothing is also affected by an internal micro (industry) and macro-environment. Dividend smoothing theories are the behind mechanisms to explain these effects.

Financial instability and economic crises are closely intertwined. There is no universally accepted definition. The term ‘stability’ or ‘instability’ refers to the behaviour of the system rather than to individual institutions. However, one cannot rule out that failure of a single financial institution can trigger significant financial turmoil as was happened in 2007–08 global financial crises. Like unstable equilibrium, instability implies inability to correct itself on its own. Instability, if it persists, turns into a crisis. In the above backdrop, the objective of this chapter is to investigate the financial crises and instability viewed both from economic and international political economy perspectives with a tale of four generation crisis models as it has been evolved over time to explain the phenomenon of different types of crises.

Factors of production (labour, land, capital), technology and technical progress are usually cited as the main sources of economic growth and development. However, there are a number of other factors that have a significant impact on the possibilities and extent of their use or their further improvement and development. These factors undoubtedly include the institutional environment, within which corruption is also a consideration. In this chapter, attention will be focused on the various institutional variables that are used to assess the quality of a country's institutional environment, including corruption. A number of studies have shown that a quality institutional environment and low levels of corruption are prerequisites for long-term economic growth. Using an analysis of individual indicators of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGIs), published annually by the World Bank, supplemented by the Corruption Perception Index (published by Transparency International), we look at where Czechia has moved over the last decade or two in terms of institutional quality and corruption.