Purpose This study examines how top management characteristics and social capital shape corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitment in SMEs, and how this, in turn influences firm performance through business model innovation (BMI). Focusing on post-transition economies, it explores BMI as a mechanism linking top management intent to competitive outcomes. Design/methodology/approach Grounded in Upper Echelons Theory (UET), the study develops and tests a conceptual model using survey data from 200 internationally active Polish manufacturing SMEs. Structural equation modeling is used to assess the relationships among managerial traits, CSR, external networks, BMI and firm performance. Findings Managerial experience positively predicts both social and environmental sustainability commitments, while higher education and general experience show negative effects on environmental commitment. External networks strengthen the link between experience and social commitment, but not environmental commitment. Social commitment improves performance indirectly through BMI, whereas environmental commitment has only a direct effect. BMI thus emerges as a key mechanism for translating leadership-driven social sustainability into firm-level value. Research limitations/implications The study is limited to Polish manufacturing SMEs and cross-sectional data; future research should broaden sectoral and regional scope. Originality/value This study contributes to SME and emerging market research by integrating leadership traits, social capital and BMI into a unified framework. It identifies BMI as a central mechanism within UET and reveals asymmetries in how social vs. environmental commitments translate into performance in post-transition settings.

Purpose Amid the growing global emphasis on sustainable development, some firms strategically engage in greenwashing to manage their stakeholder perceptions. This study examines whether and how investor sentiment, as a salient behavioral bias in capital markets, influences the adoption of symbolic environmental, social, and governance practices. Design/methodology/approach Using data from Chinese A-share listed firms from 2011 to 2022, we construct an investor sentiment index and a greenwashing score to empirically test the proposed relationship. Findings Our results show that: (1) Positive investor sentiment intensifies firms’ engagement in greenwashing. (2) This effect is mediated by heightened managerial myopia and enhanced risk tolerance. (3) This promoting effect is more pronounced in firms with poorer internal governance and weaker external governance. Originality/value Overall, this study reveals a potential adverse consequence of positive investor sentiment, offering a new perspective on firms’ hypocrisy on the issue of sustainable development.

Purpose This study aims to examine how Brazil’s regulatory framework for open finance – initially designed to promote financial inclusion through competition – can evolve to integrate broader environmental and social objectives. Design/methodology/approach It used a qualitative approach, drawing on thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in Brazil’s open-finance ecosystem. Insights inform a middle-range theory for sustainable open-finance implementation, supported by an adapted impact value chain framework. Findings The Brazilian Central Bank (BACEN) has advanced inclusive finance innovation, yet environmental objectives remain marginal in open-finance implementation. The study identifies three potential pathways for embedding sustainability into open finance: “policy for sustainability”, “reducing risks” and “national and international collaboration”. Practical implications The findings offer insights for regulators, particularly BACEN, to reorient open-finance implementation toward sustainability and support Brazil’s inclusive and climate-resilient development agenda. Originality/value This paper contributes to emerging literature on sustainable open finance by combining stakeholder insights with recent policy developments to propose a conceptual model linking open finance with environmental and social objectives.

Purpose This paper examines how UAE firms respond to major crises. We focus on whether global and UAE-specific events elicit asymmetric market reactions and which firm characteristics drive any heterogeneity. Design/methodology/approach We assemble 61 potentially impactful events (global and UAE-specific) spanning crypto, economic, energy, environmental, geopolitical and health categories. Daily firm returns are decomposed via STL (Seasonal and Trend decomposition using Loess) to isolate the irregular component. We construct cumulative irregular returns (CIRs) in multiple event windows around each shock and assess significance using Welch confidence intervals. We examine heterogeneity by splitting firms at the median of size, leverage, liquidity, valuation and growth indicators. Robustness includes conventional cumulative abnormal returns, falsification tests with pseudo events and sensitivity to window lengths. Findings We document clear asymmetries: UAE-specific crises are associated with persistent negative CIRs, whereas global crises often result in positive CIRs for UAE firms. Smaller, low-debt value firms (low price-to-book) exhibit the most pronounced positive responses, especially during global economic and energy events, consistent with investor reallocation towards adaptable firms and perceived UAE stability. Research limitations/implications We retain clustered events to reflect the real sequence of shocks; overlapping windows may contaminate attribution. STL choices and market-model alternatives are examined in robustness, but residual model risk remains. The results demonstrate the mechanisms of crisis transmission in an emerging market with evolving depth and liquidity. Practical implications For portfolio construction during crises, investors should look to smaller, low-debt value firms in the UAE to improve performance when global shocks dominate. Policymakers may target support to highly leveraged and high-valuation firms that are more vulnerable to local shocks. Originality/value We deploy STL to extract event-driven irregular returns at the firm level, reducing dependence on restrictive return-generating models. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to provide UAE-wide firm-level evidence on asymmetric crisis effects across a comprehensive event set, revealing heterogeneity by balance sheet strength and valuation.

Purpose Spillovers in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) markets are crucial for evaluating contagion risks and sustainable investments. This study aims to examine risk spillovers in China’s ESG stock market and explores their impact mechanisms. Design/methodology/approach Previous research mainly employed the Diebold and Yilmaz (DY) (2012) connectedness model to construct connectedness networks and measure spillovers. However, this approach only captures linear relationships and faces the “curse of dimensionality”. To overcome these limitations, we propose a hybrid framework that integrates the random forest with DY. Additionally, the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive model with stochastic volatility model is applied to investigate the underlying impact mechanisms. Findings First, China's ESG stock market shows notable risk spillovers across firms, industries and regions. Second, systemically important entities include financial institutions, large-scale infrastructure, and leading liquor firms; the industrial, finance, information technology and optional consumption industries and the Eastern and Southern coastal regions. They play a key role in the network and are primary spillover sources. Third, macroeconomic information, geopolitical risks and climate policy uncertainty significantly influence spillovers, with stronger short-term effects. Originality/value First, we propose a hybrid framework that excels at measuring high-dimensional and nonlinear spillovers. Second, we expand the body of ESG research in emerging markets. Third, we explore spillover mechanisms, unveiling how key factors affect risk spillovers in the ESG stock market.

Purpose In this paper, we examine the January effect (April effect in India), the turn-of-the month (TOM) effect and the day-of-the-week (DOW) effect in small-, medium- and large-stock indices in the Indian stock market using daily data from January 1, 2004, to December 29, 2023. We further attempt to compare and contrast the presence of these calendar anomalies during both the COVID-19 and the global financial crises. Design/methodology/approach To address the issue of volatility in returns clustering over time which may spike sporadically, we use the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedastic regressions to control for conditional heteroskedasticity and the possible effect of outliers. Findings The January effect is evident only in the small-cap stocks, while the TOM effect is significant among the small- and medium-cap stocks. The returns on Wednesday are positive and significantly different from zero; however, the returns on other days are not different from the returns on Wednesday. Finally, we create a trading strategy based on these anomalies which generally outperforms the traditional buy-and-hold strategy. Overall, our results indicate that the calendar anomalies are more pronounced in the small-cap stocks and behave differently during the two crises periods, akin to an anomaly within the reported calendar anomalies. Originality/value First, we provide a pioneer study on the presence of calendar anomalies in the Indian equity market using 20 years of data from January 2004 to December 2023. Second, we intend to capture the size effect in our considered calendar anomalies by analyzing three important stock indices. Third, we attempt to compare and contrast the presence of these calendar anomalies during both the COVID-19 and the global financial crises. Finally, we develop an implied trading strategy based on which the investors could time the market and earn excess returns over the passive buy-and-hold strategy for the considered time period.

Purpose This study aims to explore the differentiated influence of slack forms (high-discretion and low-discretion slack) on firms’ internationalization speed into diverse institutional environments. Specifically, this study examines firms’ internationalization speed into advanced economies (AEs) and emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). This study also adds a discussion on internationalization from a focus on firm size, especially in its moderate influence on the relationship between organizational slack and internationalization speed. Design/methodology/approach This study conducts a longitudinal analysis to examine the hypotheses using 5544 observations from 264 publicly listed Taiwanese manufacturing companies over a period from 2001 to 2022. Findings This study finds that high-discretion slack accelerates internationalization into both AEs and EMDEs. While low-discretion slack hinders it in EMDEs. However, firm size moderates these relationships differently across environments. In AEs, larger firms experience greater benefits from high-discretion slack and are more negatively influenced by low-discretion slack. Conversely, in EMDEs, larger firms experience fewer benefits from high-discretion slack and are less negatively influenced by low-discretion slack. Originality/value This study fills gaps by examining the interaction between firm size, organizational slack form and internationalization speed across different institutional environments. By combining RBV and information-processing perspectives, the study offers a deeper understanding of how firms meet information-processing demands in international expansion. It highlights the mechanism of how firms’ information-processing capacity, associated with firm size, affects the effectiveness of their employment of different forms of organizational slack in AEs and EMDEs. The findings provide practical insights for optimizing resource allocation and expansion strategies.

Purpose The study explores how emerging market firms (EMFs) survive and thrive for a sustained period in less-developed institutional environments. Design/methodology/approach Using a qualitative approach, the study analyzes 115 publicly available interviews with EMF founders and senior business leaders across emerging markets worldwide. A grounded theory approach was employed to identify patterns in leadership and resource mobilization strategies. Findings The study reveals how EMFs with limited resources strategically identify, acquire and deploy resources to overcome institutional constraints. It highlights the pivotal role of entrepreneurial leadership in recognizing opportunities, orchestrating resources and navigating complex, uncertain environments to sustain firm growth. Originality/value This research develops an integrative framework combining the resource-based view and institutional theory, offering a novel understanding of the dynamic interplay between entrepreneurial leadership and resource mobilization. In doing so, it provides context-sensitive insights into how entrepreneurial leadership shapes resource mobilization across diverse emerging market regions.

Purpose To examine the dynamic spillover effects among investor sentiment (FGI), renewable energy stocks and cryptocurrencies. Design/methodology/approach Employs the quantile connectedness approach. Findings The results indicate that, compared to the median quantile, the connectedness among variables is more robust at the extreme quantiles. The dynamic analysis also reveals that, under extreme quantile conditions, the connectedness exhibits intense time-varying properties and asymmetries, and some major extreme events have exerted enormous influences on the spillover effects. Notably, at the median quantile level, FGI is primarily a risk receiver, while renewable energy stocks and cryptocurrencies are predominantly risk transmitters. However, under extreme quantile conditions, FGI at certain times turns into a risk transmitter with significant spillover effects on renewable energy stocks and cryptocurrencies, hence reflecting its growing dominance in the system. Overall, FGI plays a pivotal role in the interplay between renewable energy stocks and cryptocurrencies. Originality/value These findings have significant implications for governments to optimise risk prevention policies and valuable recommendations for investors in asset allocation and risk management under the environment of extreme market conditions.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the impact of positive and negative sentiment on stock returns and volatilities across developed and emerging markets using the consumer confidence index as a proxy for sentiment. We conduct a comparative study of developed and emerging markets to assess whether sentiment-driven mispricing is due to overpricing or underpricing and to examine the effect of sentiment on return and risk dynamics. Design/methodology/approach We consider 31 markets consisting of 16 developed and 15 emerging markets and use the monthly amplitude-adjusted consumer confidence index (CCI) as a measure of sentiment. Then, we perform panel regression of market returns or conditional variances on investor sentiment, controlling for macroeconomic fundamentals. Findings We present three main findings. First, while sentiment levels are negatively correlated with future returns in both developed and emerging markets, these return reversals are predominantly driven by pessimistic sentiments. This suggests that fear exerts a stronger influence on markets than greed. Second, positive sentiment tends to stabilize volatility in developed markets, while negative sentiment increases risk in emerging markets. Third, mispricing effects of pessimistic sentiments appear stronger in countries with a culture of high uncertainty avoidance and low indulgence. Originality/value Understanding the effects of investor sentiment on risk and return dynamics can help investors better anticipate market corrections and volatility adjustments, especially when differentiating between developed and emerging markets. This study bridges cultural, structural and sentiment-driven perspectives to offer a comprehensive framework for understanding investor sentiment and market efficiency.