Search results

Drawing on signalling and impression management theories, this study aims to examine a bidirectional association between managerial tone in earnings conference calls and financial performance.

The sample includes non-financial firms listed in the FTSE 350 index during the period 2010–2015. Managerial tone was measured using positive and negative keywords based on the Loughran-McDonald Sentiment Word Lists, while return on assets was used as a proxy for firms’ financial performance.

The findings indicate that current financial performance positively affects the managerial tone in earnings conference calls. Likewise, the results also show that there is a positive relationship between managerial tone in earnings conference calls and firms’ future financial performance.

The results have important implications for top management to use more virtual communication media (i.e. earnings conference calls) to continue managing their relationships with financial stakeholders and helping them better understand financial performance, especially in countries where holding such calls is not yet part of firms’ policy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies that explore the relationship between managerial tone in earnings conference calls and financial performance. Overall, this study contributes to managerial tone literature and holds significant theoretical and practical implications.

As it is known, the accounting information system (AIS) plays a significant role in the business ecosystem by recording and processing financial and accounting data and reporting the produced information to all relevant parties for decision-making. However, its used methods and systems, including double-entry bookkeeping and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, have limitations, especially in terms of trust and reliability concerns for stakeholders and the possible scope for records manipulation and fraud. The application of blockchain technology is believed to enhance the reliability of the AIS and addresses many of its current limitations. Blockchain can offer numerous benefits if used to manage AIS functions through enhanced trust, reliability, and transparency, increased efficiency, reduced costs and fraud, improved accounting information quality and real-time accounting. Nevertheless, the adoption and implementation of blockchain in the AIS are associated with several technical and nontechnical challenges which are not easy to address and could limit the wide technology adoption in the immediate future. Considering that a full understanding of the benefits and challenges of adopting blockchain in the AIS still needs more clarification, this chapter examines blockchain technology and its implications for the AIS. It reviews blockchain characteristics and its benefits to the AIS, discusses its possible integration into the AIS, outlines adoption and implementation challenges, and suggests critical avenues for future research.

This study explores social entrepreneurship as a viable career path for employees facing hostile workplace conditions in Peru. It examines the gender-specific effects of workplace challenges such as hostility, discrimination and sexual harassment on individuals’ aspirations for career transitions and entrepreneurship.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 450 Peruvian workers experiencing adverse workplace conditions. Quantitative data analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between perceived workplace challenges, intentions to leave current jobs and the propensity to pursue social entrepreneurship. Gender differences were analyzed to uncover unique patterns in these relationships.

Results reveal significant gender differences: females report higher levels of discrimination, while males report higher perceptions of workplace harassment. Females intending to leave their jobs demonstrated a stronger inclination toward social entrepreneurship compared to their male counterparts. These findings underline the detrimental impact of hostile work environments on employee aspirations and highlight social entrepreneurship as a meaningful career option for individuals seeking to address societal issues.

This research offers valuable insights for organizations and policymakers, emphasizing the importance of creating equitable work environments. It also underscores the potential of social entrepreneurship to empower individuals disillusioned by conventional workplace structures to drive positive social change.

By elucidating the role of social entrepreneurship as an alternative career path, our study contributes to the growing body of literature on entrepreneurship and social impact, offering valuable insights for both researchers and practitioners aiming to foster more equitable and empowering work environments.

Little is established about the mechanism through which employee voice is connected to employee mental health. Drawing from social exchange theory, this study examines how employee engagement practices are associated with employee voice, which further influences employee mental health. In addition, the study includes parallel mediation and examines whether perceived interpersonal justice (PIJ) and empathetic leadership (EL) mediate the relationship between employee engagement practices and employee voice.

Three time-lagged surveys of 457 employees in the Indian information technology (IT) sector were accomplished.

As hypothesised, employee engagement practices have a positive influence on employee voice. Secondly, employee voice has a positive influence on the employee’s mental health. PIJ and EL were also found to be significant parallel mediators for the relationship among employee engagement practices and employee voice.

This study displays the positive influence of employee engagement practices on employee voice. Further, the employee’s voice influences the employee’s mental health. Therefore, it suggests means for improving its pervasiveness in an organisation.

This research paper is an important contribution as it is one of the few studies examining the role of PIJ and EL as parallel mediators of employee engagement practices and employee voice. It also answers repeated calls for more research on employee mental health in the IT sector.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical understanding germane to ethical climate’s contingent, nonlinear relationship with salesperson performance. While research shows a positive relationship between a firm’s ethical climate and salesperson performance, current examinations of this effect have been limited to linear hypothesizing and testing. The job demands-resource model, however, suggests that the relationship between ethical climate and salesperson performance is nonlinear.

To test the theorized nonlinear and moderated nonlinear relationships, the authors use a sample of 485 business-to-business salespeople and structural equations path modeling.

Results reveal an increasing incremental threshold effect between ethical climate and salesperson performance. Findings further support postulations that conditions which increase (e.g. competitive intensity) or decrease (e.g. role autonomy) the extent to which the sales environment is challenging correspondingly increase or decrease the magnitude of the nonlinearity.

Because the study required variance in environmental-level (e.g. competitive intensity) and organizational-level (e.g. role autonomy) moderators, data used to test the hypotheses came from a cross-sectional, self-reported survey.

The results produce the managerial insight that there are increasing returns to salesperson performance as the ethical climate increases. Insights from the analysis of moderating conditions further inform managers that in highly competitive industries they should be especially attuned to their ethical climate.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the findings are the first to advance insight into ethical climate’s curvilinear and contingent salesperson performance implications. Furthermore, this study advances moderated nonlinear relationships suggested by theory.

The purpose of this paper is to review how knowledge transfer, including knowledge integration, absorptive capacity and reverse knowledge transfer (RKT) in cross-border acquisitions, is examined in existing research work. The authors also propose directions to advance research in cross-border acquisitions.

A systematic literature review is conducted, and related propositions are advanced based on scientometric and bibliometric analysis of 146 papers published over 10 years about tacit knowledge transfer, innovation activities, industrial policy effect on merger decisions, top management experience and value creation in cross-border acquisition. First, the authors searched major themes with the help of Scopus, and later, the authors analysed all received literature with the help of VOS Viewer.

This review facilitates us to identify six clusters and main author keywords. These six clusters are the underlying six research streams, including RKT, cultural distances, value creation, absorptive capacity, innovation and reference to India and China.

Despite knowledge transfer constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the success of cross-border acquisitions, knowledge management in the acquired company through proper knowledge transfer and knowledge integration is not given enough attention. Current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically manage knowledge post-acquisition. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyse the dynamics of knowledge transfer in cross-border acquisitions. The study is a novel attempt to relate current research themes to emerging areas of cross-border acquisitions.

This study aims to investigate whether country governance, regulated industry and firm-level characteristics, namely, ownership structure and firm size, are associated with the likelihood of firms having a politically connected board (PCB). This study also examines whether country governance and concentrated ownership moderates the association between institutional ownership and PCB.

This study uses cross-country analysis using 20 countries and hand-collected PCB data from 574 firms and 1,701 firm-year. This study performs logit regression analyses to examine hypotheses.

The results document that countries’ accountability, industry type and institutional ownership are associated with the likelihood of firms having a PCB. This study also finds that country governance, especially accountability, moderates the relationship between institutional ownership and PCBs. The results thus indicate the importance of country governance, especially accountability, in determining institutional investors’ political strategies.

This study provides several implications. First, firms tend to elect PCBs as a non-financial strategy because it arguably delivers additional resources and improves their performance, especially in countries with lower accountability and regulated industries. Meanwhile, investors and management must also hire PCBs cautiously because PCBs are closely related to agency issues. Agency issues reflect on the finding that institutional investors tend to avoid PCBs. However, the relationship between institutional investors and PCBs is closely related to the country-level context, especially accountability. This study also advises policymakers that country governance, especially accountability, is crucial in regulating the relationship between business and politics.

This study uses a relatively large number of new PCB and institutional ownership data collected manually from 20 countries. This study also examines several variables of country governance, such as accountability to PCB decisions that have not been tested before. This study examines the relationship between institutional ownership and PCB ownership decisions that were not examined before and uses a cross-country sample. In addition, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first one that examines the role of state governance, especially accountability for the relationship between institutional ownership and PCBs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine push and pull factors influencing assigned expatriates’ (AEs) decision to remain in their host countries indefinitely as long-term migrants.

In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 individuals from different developed countries on renewable visas in their host country of Malaysia, having arrived initially as AEs. Interview data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach.

The findings highlight push and pull factors and suggest that AEs’ decisions to become long-term migrants can be attributed to three contextual factors: personal, organizational and country.

This study provides insights for human resource managers to understand potential motivating factors that might influence an AE to consider remaining indefinitely in their host country as a long-term migrant, thus terminating their contract with their MNC employer.

This is among the first empirical studies in the field of international business on AEs who subsequently became long-term migrants in a host country. Moreover, it highlights the possible change in expatriates’ temporary status. It contributes to global mobility literature by examining how in highly skilled professionals, the pursuit of a long-term professional career and lifestyle improvement correlates with a “privileged” position in a host country.

Conscious consumers have been influenced to either cut back on their fashion consumption or switch to ethical clothing (EC) as a result of the detrimental social effects of fast fashion that have been seen over the past 10 years. It also reflects how the ethical belief of the young generation influences them to be conscious of the ill effects of their fashion choices or behave like an ignorant irresponsible buyer. This study aims to examine this issue in detail to find out the prevalence and impact of such beliefs on consumption choices over a period of time.

This study uses the cross-sectional data of 525 respondents from India to explore and unearth the EC phenomenon in emerging markets. It follows a two-step approach consisting of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to examine the proposed hypotheses using AMOS 22 software.

It was found that consumers in developing economies are concerned about the ethical standards followed by the fashion industry (FI), which is reflected in the form of inhuman working conditions for FI workers.

This study emphasizes understanding attitude, subjective norms, behavioral control and EC related to ethical buying behavior and their interaction mechanisms that transform it into the actual buying intention of EC.

It was an eye-opener that collective societal culture and standards do not influence ethical purchase decisions but it is rather the individual’s own ethical rules which is a result of established core family values that significantly shape fashion consumption. This study advances existing literature by empirically verifying the relationship between consumer attitude, consumers’ subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, environmental concern with ethical buying behavior and ethical purchase intention. It could provide insightful information and support academic research as well as real-world marketing and environmental initiatives.