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This paper aims to examine how bank stress tests affect bank tax planning.

The study uses US bank stress test bank size thresholds and a regression discontinuity design to investigate the effect of the Dodd-Frank Act and the instituted bank stress tests on bank tax planning. We use different measures of tax planning, including bank-specific measures and measures of tax avoidance, tax aggressiveness, and effective tax planning from recent literature. Our regression discontinuity and difference-in-differences regression analyses include bank and year fixed-effects and lagged bank characteristics to control for potential endogeneity.

This study finds that stress tests have the unintended consequences of intensifying tax planning and increasing tax avoidance. Stress-test banks increase tax avoidance by accelerating charge-offs, net interest, and non-interest expenses. However, this increase in tax planning is not optimally maximized, leading to lower effective tax planning compared to non-stress-test banks. Banks with a substantial increase in tax avoidance under the Dodd–Frank Act tend to increase their risk, investing in high-risk-weight assets and lending in riskier loan categories. These findings are consistent with tax minimization conditions under added regulatory attention and policy uncertainty.

Literature on bank tax planning is limited. Most tax avoidance literature excludes financial institutions such as bank holding companies mainly due to differences in business practices and regulatory frameworks. This study is the first to investigate tax planning behavior among US banks. The current study thus extends the research field by examining the effect of bank transparency regulations, such as bank stress tests, on bank tax planning activities. Our findings have a direct bank policy implication. They show that stress testing has the unintended consequences of increasing tax planning activities and consequently increasing risk-taking on banks with high tax avoidance, which goes against the goals of stress testing regulations.

This study investigates the mechanism of defensive word-of-mouth (WOM), which refers to consumers responding to unfair negative online reviews of a brand with which they identify.

Study 1 employs an experimental design that manipulates brand identification and the perceived fairness of negative WOM, using a gift card choice scenario to measure decision-making behavior. Study 2 involves a real event with Google reviews and follows a quasi-experimental design, manipulating identification with the university and using Google Maps star ratings to measure brand attitude.

Consumers with high brand identification are more likely to defend the brand when confronted with unfair negative WOM. However, they do not always exhibit defensive WOM in fair cases. Furthermore, the results show that the defensive WOM can strengthen consumers’ brand attitude and supportive behavior.

Encouraging defensive WOM by mobilizing brand advocates and highlighting the unfairness of negative WOM could be a practical strategy to defend the brand and minimize the risk of online firestorms. Notably, defensive WOM itself strengthens the relationship between consumers and the brand.

This study proposes a mechanism for the defensive WOM phenomenon and demonstrates that the rebound effect in brand attitude caused by negative WOM comes from consumers’ willingness to express defensive WOM. We draw on self-affirmation theory to address the gap in theoretical explanations for defensive WOM. This contributes to the literature on self-identity and WOM research by showing that consumers defend their identities through WOM communication.

This paper aims to reconcile conflicting findings about the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in counteracting the negative impacts of brands’ ethical transgressions by testing the moderating role of self-brand connection (SBC).

Drawing on motivated reasoning theory, this paper posits that high- and low-SBC consumers’ information processing and moral judgment are driven by distinct goals: to reach desired versus accurate conclusions, respectively. Five experiments were conducted to test whether CSR efforts can mitigate the impact of blatant ethical transgressions.

CSR allows high-SBC consumers to evaluate brand transgressions more favorably, as CSR serves as counterfactual evidence that reinforces their beliefs in the brand’s morality. In contrast, low-SBC consumers view CSR as hypocritical, leading to more negative responses. Increased perceptions of brand morality (hypocrisy) mediate CSR’s buffering (backfiring) effects among high- (low-) SBC consumers.

This paper does not control for the effect of the time gap between CSR and ethical transgressions even if buffering effects of CSR could be faded out as memories recede.

Brand transgressions may be inevitable events, but firms or managers can alleviate the negative impact of transgressions by engaging in CSR activities. In doing so, they need to make clear to whom they will appeal using CSR information considering its backfiring effects among low-SBC consumers.

Few studies have examined when and how CSR attenuates or exacerbates the negativity of brand transgressions with a strong theoretical framework. This paper, grounded in motivated reasoning theory, explains how the same CSR initiative can yield opposing outcomes based on the consumer’s self-brand connection. Rather than solely exploring how strong consumer-brand relationships buffer brand transgressions, this research shows how high-SBC consumers biasedly seize CSR information to justify brand transgressions, even when they are blatant.

We are facing a number of concurrent human-induced crises which, it might be claimed, are the result of entangled processes which flow between and through the issues of climate change, environmental degradation, political instability, global health problems and economic inequalities. These crises are now posing existential threats to ecosystems, habitats, lifeforms and humans. One reaction to these crises has been the instigation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Their influence can be argued to have met varied levels of impact and success, but in a complex, interconnected world, perhaps, it is too much to expect that they would, by themselves, act as a management tool which would solve all our ills as they focus on the large scale, not the individual. This leaves a gap for a framework which supports individual growth towards supporting sustainability. The inner development goals (IDGs, 2021) framework is a recent innovation, initially suggested by three Swedish organisations with the express intent of fostering capacities and perspectives at the individual level which will encourage populations to engage with the crises we face in more informed, motivated and practical ways. Through an engagement with the literature, this chapter considers the need for the IDGs in education as a process through which the SDGs can be engaged with at an individual level. This debate is both current and important as it suggests a way in which individual agency can be brought to bear on the global crises we all face.

This paper aims to study the impact of consumers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) associations on corporate financial performance and the moderating role of market competition.

The panel data set is analyzed using a random effects regression model. The analyzed data is based on the unique RepZ Responsibility scores published by the global research agency Kantar Millward Brown and contains information about consumer CSR associations.

This study reveals CSR associations' positive, lagged, direct impact on firms’ market value. Market competition moderates this relationship in the way that a company’s market value benefits more from consumers' CSR associations when facing high rather than low market competition.

Consumers' CSR perceptions increase the market value of a company. This effect is intensified when brands are exposed to intense competition, which allows conclusions about CSR as a differentiation strategy to be drawn: To stand out in a competitive market, brands should prioritize improving their CSR associations among consumers to differentiate themselves and increase their market value.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to test the effect of consumers’ CSR associations on forward-looking financial performance measures. Moreover, by analyzing the moderating effect of market competition on the relationship between CSR associations and firms' market value, this study provides information about the differentiating power of CSR from a brand perspective using a panel-data analysis.

Organizations can greatly benefit from the transfer of knowledge from older employees to younger generations. However, older workers often hesitate to share their expertise with their younger colleagues. Grounded in conservation of resources theory and the stereotype threat framework, this study aims at examining the negative impact of age-based stereotype threat on organizational knowledge management.

The authors developed a moderated mediation model and collected data from 219 older workers with a time-lagged design to explore the effect of age-based stereotype threat on older workers’ knowledge hiding.

The results showed that age-based stereotype threat could lead to knowledge hiding behaviors among older workers due to increased job insecurity, and leader-member exchange can potentially mitigate these effects.

The findings underscore the detrimental effect of age-based stereotype threat on organizational knowledge management and suggest that organizations should foster an age-inclusive environment to facilitate effective intergenerational knowledge transfer.

Integrating the psychological threat perspective of voice with cognitive dissonance theory, the current research seeks to uncover how managers’ experience of shame shapes the extent to which they are threatened by and subsequently react defensively to voice(r).

A two (employee voice: voice condition vs no-voice condition) by two (manager shame: shame vs control) between-subjects experiment with 263 participants (i.e. front-line managers from mainland China) was conducted to test the hypotheses.

Employee voice (vs no voice) induced a higher ego threat among managers experiencing a higher than lower level of shame. The heightened ego threat, in turn, negatively affected the perceived warmth of the employee via perceived behavioral appropriateness. In a similar vein, it affected the perceived competence of the employee via perceived behavioral constructiveness.

Organizations and managers should be aware of the potential unfavorable effects of managers’ emotional state of shame on voice(r) evaluations and take action to improve managers’ emotional regulation skills. Employees should work on their emotional intelligence, which helps them better “read the wind” before speaking up.

The present work advances the understanding of managerial defensive reactions to employee voice by demonstrating that shamed managers are more likely to cognitively denigrate the voice and the voicer as an approach to defend their threatened ego.

Purpose: This study examines the integration of smart agriculture and supply chain management systems within Turkey’s agricultural sector under Industry 5.0.

Need for the study: With global challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, ensuring safe food production and accessibility is critical. However, there is a gap in understanding the readiness and awareness of Industry 5.0 technologies in agriculture and logistics. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating the adoption and implications of smart agriculture and logistics in Turkey.

Methodology: Drawing on secondary data from regulators, farmers, and supply chain experts, this study employs coding methods, particularly theoretical coding, to develop a framework for assessing the sector’s readiness for smart technologies and Industry 5.0 awareness.

Findings: This study reveals insights into the adoption and impacts of smart agriculture and supply chain systems in Turkey. It identifies factors shaping institutional logics within the sector and explores how Industry 5.0 technologies influence these logics. Additionally, it offers theoretical insights into Turkey’s agricultural future in the Industry 5.0 era.

Practical implications: Practically, this study informs policymakers, regulators, farmers, and supply chain stakeholders about Industry 5.0 technology readiness and awareness in Turkey’s agricultural sector. It guides strategies for smart technology adoption, improving productivity, food safety, accessibility, and sustainability. Furthermore, it contributes to institutional logics literature, shedding light on the independent logics driving organizational settings in smart agriculture and supply chain management.

This paper aims to present a systematic literature review of 176 studies relating to change management in the context of process optimization and to investigate how companies effectively use change management to optimize processes across different industrial sectors.

Descriptive statistics are used to represent patterns, trends and correlations between change management strategies, research methods applied for processes optimization and industry field. A comprehensive analysis of the papers’ keywords, crossed with research methods and industrial sectors, allowed us to substantiate the results in analytic terms. For some selected studies, chosen on the basis of their significance to the research field, the contents were mapped and discussed in detail.

This study provides numerous insights into the various applications of change management across different industry fields. In general, change management appears to be no longer a theoretical discipline, showing instead practical relevance, which is reflected in testing theories through case studies and real implementations. The review emphasizes the need for careful and systemic planning by companies, effective communication, employee involvement and supportive organizational culture. These factors are crucial for enhancing process efficiency and employee acceptance of change. Digital technologies also prove to be valuable support for change management during process optimization.

The innovative contribution of this paper consists of the joint perspective taken when looking at process optimization and the application of change management strategies. Such a perspective favors an in-depth examination of the interactions between the two aspects and provides more comprehensive results compared to the existing literature.

The importance of including victims of abuse within prevention responses has recently received some attention within the sport sector. This chapter reports on a UK initiative, funded by a national sport agency, which aimed to provide a platform for individuals with a ‘lived experience’ of child abuse in a sport context to deliver awareness-raising events for stakeholders within the sport sector. Interviews were conducted with the participants to explore their experiences. This chapter reports on their primary motivations for participation, the concerns and anxieties they experienced, as well as wider issues relating to engagement with the sport sector. The discussion reflects on the challenges and potential of such activity and will be of interest to those with a personal experience of abuse, practitioners and researchers working with survivor-activists and those working in safeguarding and child/athlete welfare more broadly.