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The purpose of this research is to ascertain the impact of audit committee (AC) activism and independence on the quality and quantity of environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures for energy sector firms in Australia. This paper aims to understand how AC attributes such as meeting frequency, and the number of independent directors influence the compliance with the global reporting initiative (GRI) guidelines and quantity of ESG disclosures.

Bloomberg ESG disclosure scores and company reported AC attributes are collected and analysed using the pooled ordinary least square (OLS) regression framework with Petersen’s (2009) technique by using a two-dimensional cluster at the firm and year level. Further, this paper uses a lagged independent variable and two-stage least square approach to address endogeneity concerns.

The results show a significant positive effect of AC activism and independence on the level of compliance with the GRI guidelines, indicating the favourable effect of AC attributes on ESG reporting quality. Likewise, AC attributes positively affect the quantity of ESG disclosures. Notably, the impact of AC attributes is more pronounced on environmental disclosures.

This paper validates the significance of the management control mechanism in improving the quality and quantity of ESG disclosures for an environmentally sensitive sector, hence offering a potential answer to reduce agency and legitimacy issues for the sensitive industry firms.

This study investigates the moderating role of complaint handling between ideological incompatibility, symbolic incongruity, negative past experience and corporate social irresponsibility on brand hate.

The study employs the Duplex Hate theory which assumes that hate is the manifestation of multiple factors. A survey-based self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 400 smartphone users at Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan.

The findings suggest that ideological incompatibility, symbolic incongruity, negative past experience and corporate social irresponsibility contributes to brand hate. The complaint handling (moderator) weakens the effects of ideological incompatibility and symbolic incongruity on brand hate.

The research provides insights into the cancel culture and clarifies how brand hate can be controlled.

Empirical study on the antecedents of brand hate remains insufficient. The current study contributes to the brand hate literature by providing an understanding of the phenomenon of brand hate and by empirically examining the different antecedents responsible for causing the behavior. The study has also provided an additional determinant of brand hate, which is corporate social irresponsibility. The role of moderators for controlling brand hate is greatly ignored in the existing literature. The current work also extends previous studies by investigating a moderating factor for reducing brand hate, which is complaint handling.