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Currently, many studies have shown an increasing interest in owner-dynamic capabilities (ODCs). Existing studies mainly focus on the dynamic capability basis and capability development within the owner organization, whereas they rarely analyze the capability mobilization within the network of participants in megaprojects. Therefore, this study aims to explain the interaction and evolution of the mobilization strategies of ODCs and the cooperative strategies of other participants.

This study develops a tripartite evolutionary game model to analyze the evolutionarily stable strategy of the owner, the reciprocal participants and the general participants. Results are numerically simulated with a validation case. The asymptotic stability of multiple group strategies is discussed under the replicator dynamic system.

This study suggests that resource complementarity significantly reduces the difficulty of mobilization. Moreover, these strategies are only effective with sufficient ODCs. The results indicate that reciprocal participants are more sensitive to the change in resource complementarity.

This study provides strategic guidance for mobilizing ODCs in megaprojects to better embrace uncertainty and stress, contributing to the dynamic capability literature with an evolutionary game approach. And new insight for the study of reciprocity preference in megaprojects is also provided.

Financial communication refers to the strategies and practices employed by companies to share financial information and engage with investors, stakeholders and the broader financial community. At its core lies investor relations management (IRM), focused on achieving effective two-way communication between the company and these groups for fair valuation of securities. Key financial communication activities include investor meetings, earnings calls, roadshows, annual reports, market analysis and crisis communication. Moreover. stakeholder theory emphasizes identifying and managing relationships with all individuals and entities that can affect or be affected by the company's operations. Stakeholders include shareholders, employees, creditors, suppliers, communities, regulators etc., classified as primary (essential) or secondary (indirectly involved). Proactive stakeholder engagement is crucial for achieving corporate objectives. Additionally, investor relations (IR) specifically deal with managing interactions with shareholders, creditors and potential investors through information dissemination, utilizing finance, marketing and communication techniques. Implementation channels include regulated disclosures, shareholder meetings, media engagement and forums. Other covered aspects include crisis communication strategies, corporate reputation management, internal communication practices, transparency and disclosure guidelines and legal/ethical considerations surrounding corporate communication. Overall, robust financial communication capabilities are vital for corporate success, reputation building and sustainable growth in today's competitive landscape.

Prior research finds that firms disclosing a focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) experience less negative reactions following a corporate misstep. We predict that this “insurance effect” is limited to cases of ordinary failures (i.e., failures not directly related to the social or environmental impacts of the firm) and may provide no protection when a failure is directly related to CSR. Further, we hypothesize a potential “backfire effect,” where investors react more negatively to a CSR-focused firm in the case of a CSR-related failure than to a traditional firm experiencing the same failure. In-keeping with attribution theory and expectancy violations theory, our results support the predicted limitation of the insurance effect. In addition, we find that the limited insurance effect is mediated by reputational assessments. Although directionally consistent, the proposed backfire effect is not statistically significant. Overall, our results suggest that CSR is not a panacea for dampening the penalties associated with business missteps, and managers seeking to benefit from CSR engagement should be diligent in monitoring their firms' future CSR performance.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and tone management in the annual report. This is based on the notion that managers, driven by personal interests, may use their ESG accomplishments by using an abnormal positive tone to enhance their reputation or career prospects.

Using panel data from Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2022, this study first investigates the relationship between ESG performance and abnormal tone management. The study then uncovers this relationship is mediated through the mechanisms of equity-based incentive and analyst coverage. The conclusions of this paper hold even after a series of robustness tests, such as propensity score matching, Heckman two-stage method and two-stage least squares with instrumental variables.

This study finds a positive correlation between ESG performance and the presence of abnormal positive tone in annual reports. Furthermore, the mechanistic analysis reveals that managers in companies with strong ESG performance are motivated to use an overly positive tone, largely due to their vested interests in equity-based compensation. Moreover, in an effort to alleviate the pressure stemming from heightened financial analyst coverage and enhance the impression conveyed through analysts' reports, managers with superior ESG performance also tend to inflate the tone within their annual reports.

This study provides significant insights into the ongoing dialogue surrounding ESG-related equity incentives, which incentivize managerial manipulation of stock prices through the use of abnormal positive tone. The findings call upon investors to exercise greater vigilance in examining narrative information in annual reports, as abnormally positive tones may not always faithfully represent performance but rather reflect managerial self-interest.

There is an emphasis on the importance of robust oversight mechanisms within corporate governance bodies to curb the manipulation of tone for managers’ personal gain.

This study enhances the theoretical foundation of ESG studies, offering a holistic perspective on the intricate interplay among ESG performance, managerial behavior and financial markets, with potential implications for researchers, investors and regulators.

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between the rework cycle with system dynamics (SD) models and the Project Management Institute (PMI) process group.

To achieve the aim of this paper, 84 articles that blended SD models and project management (PM) were analysed to identify key variables used in PM modelling. The key variables were utilised to build an extended SD model with multiple rework cycles to explain the link between the rework cycle SD model and PMI process group.

The results show that SD might be a favourable approach to capture the reality of the project life cycle when it is extended to represent front-ending, delivery and back-ending. In fact, SD models could potentially be extended to the agile and hybrid methodologies for improving the PM.

Although this paper provides a better understanding about the extended project life cycle by SD modelling, the results reported herein should be considered in future research that comprises the design of a SD model considering the agile and hybrid methodologies for PM.

This paper shows how the rework cycle can be applied to the extended project life cycle and the PMI process groups. Additionally, it highlights why SD modelling is a crucial tool for assisting managers with long-term decision-making in PM.

This study is among the first to explore the integration of rework cycle SD models within the PMI process groups. Specifically, it may prove valuable in supporting decision-making for project managers at each stage of a project’s extended life cycle. As a result, the research also contributes to the ongoing discussion on integrating PM with sustainability and innovation considerations.

Este artículo tiene como objetivo contribuir a una mejor comprensión de la relación entre el ciclo de retrabajo con modelos de dinámica de sistemas (DS) y el grupo de procesos del Instituto de Gestión de Proyectos (PMI, por su sigla en inglés).

Para lograr el objetivo de este artículo, se analizaron 84 artículos que combinaban modelos de DS y gestión de proyectos (PM, por su sigla en inglés) para identificar las variables clave utilizadas en el modelado de PM. Las variables clave se utilizaron para construir un modelo de DS extendido con múltiples ciclos de retrabajo para explicar el vínculo entre el modelo de DS del ciclo de retrabajo y el grupo de procesos de PMI.

Los resultados muestran que la DS puede ser un enfoque favorable para capturar la realidad del ciclo de vida del proyecto cuando se extiende para representar el inicio, la entrega y el final. De hecho, los modelos DS podrían extenderse potencialmente a las metodologías ágiles e híbridas para mejorar la gestión de proyectos.

Aunque este documento proporciona una mejor comprensión sobre el ciclo de vida extendido del proyecto mediante el modelado de DS, los resultados informados aquí deben considerarse en futuras investigaciones que comprendan el diseño de un modelo DS considerando las metodologías ágiles e híbridas para la gestión de proyectos.

Este documento muestra cómo se puede aplicar el ciclo de revisión al ciclo de vida extendido del proyecto y a los grupos de procesos de PMI. Además, el documento establece por qué el modelado DS es un enfoque importante para ayudar a los gerentes con la toma de decisiones gerenciales a largo plazo.

Este estudio es uno de los primeros en explorar la integración de los modelos de DS de ciclo de trabajo dentro de los grupos de procesos PMI. Específicamente, puede ser valioso para apoyar la toma de decisiones para los gerentes de proyectos en cada etapa del ciclo de vida extendido de un proyecto. Como resultado, la investigación también contribuye a la discusión continua sobre la integración de la gestión de proyectos con consideraciones de sostenibilidad e innovación.

This article shows how different data sources can be combined to learn about the evolution of gender norms over time. First, data on job advertisements from 1950 up to 2020 reveal that there was a significant change among Swiss employers' stated preferences regarding their prospective employees' gender. More specifically, the proportion of gender-neutral job posts increased from five to almost 95% within the observation period. To further corroborate and contextualize this finding, I complement it with time series on the relative frequency of several specific queries, such as equality between men and women, from Google's German language book corpus. These additional series are broadly consistent with the evolution of the share of gender-neutral job posts. However, it also appears that there are two distinct narratives, one concerned with the personal sphere, identity, and intimate relationships, the other with the political and public realm. Interestingly, the narrative on personal relations set off considerably earlier than the change in the proportion of gender-neutral job ads. Overall, the evidence from the different data series shows that gender norms have changed substantively, yet in a complex manner, over the past decades.

Rhetoric has long had a bad reputation, as synonymous with “false and empty speech”. In the last century, rhetoric has undergone an important reappraisal, which has seen it applied also to corporate communication, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and, most recently, sustainability communication. However, the bad reputation that rhetoric has accumulated over the years continues to weigh on the legacy of the discipline, creating theoretical and methodological bias. This research represents a work that aims to map and systematize the academic literature related to rhetorical analysis in the context of CSR and sustainability communication. After a systematic literature review, a state-of-art literature mapping was carried out in order to create typological clusters of current approaches within traditional rhetoric theory, holding firm the assumption that the rhetorical discipline should be considered as a set of reasoned and structured techniques useful for corporate discourse and its persuasive effectiveness. The analysis has enlightened wide academic research regarding the study of rhetoric in corporate communications studies clustered in six typologies of topic endorsed by a specific goal that rhetoric would have in the studies.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between corporate COVID-19 disclosure (COVID_DISC) and stock price volatility (SPV) in Egypt.

The authors used the manual content analysis method to measure corporate COVID-19 disclosure in the narrative sections of annual reports. The authors use ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to examine the impact of corporate COVID-19 disclosure on stock price volatility using unique data from Egyptian-listed firms during COVID-19 pandemic over the period of 2020 to 2022. Propensity score matching method was adopted to mitigate the potential endogeneity issue.

This study reveals that corporate COVID-19 disclosure has a significant negative impact on stock price volatility, suggesting COVID-19 disclosure reduces stock price volatility. In addition, the results confirm that COVID-19 disclosure offers value relevant information to investors, which is consistent with the Egyptian Financial Supervisory Authority’s (EFSA) motivation in calling for more information on COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings of this study can help corporate managers and EFSA in enhancing corporate disclosure and transparency during future financial crises. Moreover, the findings offer valuable insights to investors, helping them gain a better understanding of the business environment during COVID-19 crisis.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first Egyptian empirical evidence that examines the relationship between corporate COVID-19 disclosure and stock price volatility.

The present study aims to identify how firms positioned their corporate reputation (i.e. impressiveness vs respectability) in their initial public offering (IPO) communication based on the impression formation model. Further, the study examined whether this presentation of corporate reputation was related to IPO success (i.e. stock price and volume of trading).

The present study analyzed 248 IPO prospectuses that were submitted to the major US stock markets. Specifically, various substantive and symbolic information and cues in IPO prospectuses were content analyzed.

The results suggest that bigger (in terms of revenue) IPO companies featured more “impressiveness” in their IPO prospectus, leading to greater IPO success. Bigger (in terms of both revenue and number of employees) IPO companies featured more “respectability” impressions in the IPO prospectus, although they did not achieve direct IPO success on the first day of IPO. Different types of industry used different information cues to feature “impressiveness” and/or “respectability,” suggesting that different types of firms view different cues to be important to IPO communication.

The results also suggest some practical guidelines for the strategic use of contents, tables and illustrations. Using more charts, tables and illustrations in IPO prospectus summaries was associated with a higher volume of trading on the first day. The more illustrations included in the IPO prospectus summaries, the less investors were willing to pay for initial stock prices.

IPO communication is a generally understudied area in corporate communication and strategic communication scholarship. The results should help to explain which communicative aspects and PR strategies effectively manage the firm’s impression to maximize the chances of an IPO success as well as initially build the financial reputation of a company. By doing so, the findings contribute to the broader advancement of financial communication within the strategic communications domain.