Corporate Responses Research Articles

The impact of female board directors on effective investment management: evidence from Korean firms

PurposeBoard gender diversity is an important component of sound corporate governance. This paper aims to examine the influence that female board directors in listed firms in Korea have on effective investment decisions.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used 4,117 data items related to finance and governance from FnGuide for listed Korean firms between 2014 and 2019. The authors analyzed the data using Heckman’s two-stage regression, controlling the ordinary least square regression and endogeneity, to resolve the problem of selection bias. Gender diversity was measured using the existence/absence of female directors on boards (dummy variable) and the ratio of female directors on boards (BLAUt-1 index and SHANNONt-1 index).FindingsFemale board directors influenced the suppression of under-investment for the enhancement of corporate value, but not the suppression of over-investment. Additionally, female directors played a complementary role in under-investment to mitigate corporate risk, but not in intra-industry competition. Kanter’s classification of board types indicated that the skewed board and tilted board have a significant effect on under-investment and play a complementary role in corporate risk.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, this study is about only Korean firms. Second, this study relies on corporate actual data but does not account for the factors that affect human behavior or how such behaviors can evolve. Third, the authors included as many appropriate variables as possible when setting the research model, but there may be missing correlation variables.Social implicationsThe authors’ results have policy implications, as they can be used as a basis to establish policies related to gender diversity in Korea, where there are currently insufficient empirical studies on women’s participation on the boards of directors. Moreover, with the amended FISCMA, which mandates that firms must hire at least one female director, Korean firms need to implement practical employment policies that can benefit firms, by selecting capable female directors rather than engaging in tokenism.Originality/valueThis study empirically examines gender diversity in the boards of Korean firms that have implemented the female quota system for the first time and considers female board directors’ roles in undertaking effective corporate investment decisions. This insight can guide change management and help firms avoid tokenism – a possible corporate response to pressures arising from the debates about feminism in Korea and gender diversity legislation.

Fossil fuel companies' climate communication strategies: Industry messaging on renewables and natural gas

Research shows that multinational oil and gas companies have recently made a strategic shift away from outright climate denial to more nuanced discourses of climate delay. Communication on social media is an under-analyzed part of the fossil fuel industry's strategy to delay the energy transition away from fossil fuels to a renewable future. This study examines how four companies (Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, and TotalEnergies) are communicating about the renewable transition by analyzing tweets published by their global Twitter accounts. Each of these companies tweets about different renewable technologies in the context of showcasing their own renewable projects. TotalEnergies and BP focus mostly on solar, ExxonMobil on biofuels, and Shell on hydrogen; geothermal and hydropower are hardly mentioned by any of the companies. The number of tweets mentioning renewables increased rapidly after 2015. Topic modeling on tweets about renewables shows that renewables are often mentioned together with natural gas, emphasizing how both are essential for emissions reductions. Similarly, computational text analysis on tweets about natural gas reveals how companies highlight the social good of natural gas including promoting its role in emissions reductions, presenting natural gas as a fuel for a cleaner future, and emphasizing that natural gas is critical to meeting growing societal demand for energy. This pattern of communication - linking renewables to natural gas and promoting natural gas as part of their corporate response to climate change - suggests an evolution of fossil fuel companies' strategic efforts to delay the energy transition and obstruct climate action.

Choosing Beyond Compliance Over Dormancy: Corporate Response to India's Mandatory CSR Expenditure Law

ABSTRACTThis article examines whether firms engaged in high levels of voluntary CSR (corporate social responsibility) alter their strategic choices in response to detrimental public policy – specifically India's Companies Act (2013) that mandates qualifying firms to spend 2% of their three-year average net profits on CSR. Drawing on the concept of organizational dormancy, we argue that firm capabilities, political awareness, exposure to political pluralism, and ownership identity may explain choice heterogeneity among these firms. Our key and non-intuitive finding is that even in the absence of discretionary choice in determining optimal CSR expenditure, firms are less likely to choose dormancy and instead embrace and even surpass the stipulations of the law in their CSR contributions. Also, politically aware firms are more likely to opt for dormancy over compliance. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.

The Chair’s Summing Up Independent Evaluation Office—The IMF’s Emergency Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

(IEO), which provides an early evaluation of the Fund’s emergency response to the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to draw lessons from the experience for responding to possible future global crises. They highlighted the report’s key finding that the Fund’s response was effective and agile to a crisis like no other, despite the extraordinary challenges and risks, as the Fund rapidly adapted its lending framework and internal processes to serve the membership, help to close large financing gaps, and give confidence to the membership and markets by making its resources available expeditiously under adequate safeguards. Besides lending, Directors noted that the Fund also undertook useful analytical work and gave extensive and timely policy advice and capacity development. They welcomed the report’s finding that the Fund’s corporate response was adapted quickly, including by reprioritizing work, introducing HR and budget initiatives, and swiftly embracing the virtual environment. Directors especially commended staff for their strong dedication during these challenging circumstances.

Board Gender Diversity and Carbon Proactivity: The Influence of Cultural Factors

Due to inadequate studies, our knowledge of the effect of female directors and national culture on the corporate response to climate change is still limited. To address this gap, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamic relationship between gender diversity on the board of directors and corporate carbon proactivity and how two dimensions of national culture (individualism and indulgence) moderate this relationship. This study focuses on large companies that disclosed carbon-related information via the CDP survey in 2011–2017. Our findings show that gender diversity promotes corporate carbon proactivity. Furthermore, the positive effect of gender diversity on carbon proactivity is weaker when firms are in countries marked by a higher level of individualism and indulgence. As far as we know, this study is the first to explore and document the empirical evidence on the dynamic impact of gender diversity in the corporate governance body and national culture on managers’ climate change behaviors in terms of green proactivity.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? How Danish MNEs in Russia Respond to a Geopolitical Shift

Geopolitical shifts are having an increased impact on multinational enterprises. We propose a framework that illustrates how corporate responses to geopolitical shifts vary with operational and reputational considerations. We build our framework from evidence of how five Danish multinationals with operations in Russia responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The selected cases highlight several drivers of operational and reputational considerations that offer reasons for MNEs’ heterogeneity in strategic responses. Based on our framework, we derive recommendations for managers in terms of increased preparedness and awareness. We also recommend that policymakers reconsider their strategies for using corporations as geopolitical instruments.

Corporate Responses to Community Grievance: Voluntarism and Pathologies of Practice

Grievance landscapes form in rapidly industrialising contexts where social and environmental impacts are inevitable. This paper focuses on the complex operational and organisational settings in which grievances arise and the industrial pathologies that form around resource development projects. The arguments draw on classic and contemporary literature on “grievance”, “right” and “entitlement”, and the authors’ own sustained engagement with global mining companies and local communities. Our contention is that the grievance landscape is far more critical to understanding environmental, human rights, and mining interactions than the managerial systems that companies construct to signal compliance with voluntary international norms. These managerial systems, or operational-level grievance mechanisms, map the procedural contours of how a local grievance would travel once it is made visible to the company. In practice, however, it is fiction, illegibility and invisibility that dominate. Across the pathologies, the common denominator is the corporate propensity to avoid recognising the legitimacy of a local grievance and the source of its cause.

The Answer Social Challenges: Social Accounting and Social Accounting Measurement

The main purpose of this accounting is to increase the awareness and attention of companies to the impact of their activities on the environment. Social accounting can also be a bridge between companies and non-profit organizations related to the environment. The methodology used is qualitatively using review literature on the definition of social accounting and how to measure social accounting in the process of its implementation to answer the social challenge that this social accounting audit is the answer to the license to operate for a company or non-profit organization which we often know as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The result is (1) CSR management requires companies to implement environmental protection and economic development responsibilities, so they will take the initiative to create environmental-related knowledge to adapt to changing external ecological requirements and use green technology to build market forces. (2) Some of these sustainability reporting standards must be made by the company so that in the reporting process not only financial statements but also sustainability reports are presented in the portfolio is shared publicly as an indicator of the company's commitment to the implementation of sustainability programs, where this sustainability report must be approved by a licensed certified person. (3) With the spirit of social-techno-entrepreneurship as a form of integration of all components, a company cannot separate between economic and social values, so that the interests of various parties can be accommodated simultaneously. Researchers suggest that companies must be able to present economic legitimacy (creation of job opportunities), social legitimacy (improvement of welfare), trust in interaction (corporate response defines problems in society and mutual interaction in common life into a form of License to Operate for companies or non-profit organizations.

Beyond conventional corporate responses to climate change towards deep decarbonization: a systematic literature review

Over the past 20 years, the literature on corporate responses to climate change has offered a vast array of theoretical and practical insights into organizational efforts to reduce business-related carbon emissions. However, it remains unclear whether these efforts will result in significant reductions of carbon emissions. Presently, it becomes crucial to understand, if, why, and how companies can effectively respond to the current challenges of deep decarbonization, defined as the process of emission reduction down to, or close to, zero to limit global warming. By means of a systematic literature review with 370 identified papers, we are able to categorize the main findings of the literature according to the four most common areas of investigation, including drivers, actions, barriers, and facilitators. Additionally, we conduct a comparative analysis of the literature along these four areas of investigation according to two categories: conventional responses and deep decarbonization responses. The results show that the literature on conventional responses to climate change (n = 321) extensively covers all four areas of investigation; however, it only touches on the descriptive (i.e., ‘what’) aspects of decarbonization. The recent and emerging literature on deep decarbonization responses (n = 49) provides novel insights on the prescriptive (i.e., ‘why’ and ‘how’) aspects of deep decarbonization. However, this literature is restricted to mostly regional and industrial foci, and it does not connect drivers, barriers, and facilitators in a systematic way. Thus, we highlight key implications for future research and practice in order to effectively address corporate deep decarbonization.

Stakeholder salience: corporate responses during a public health crisis

Abstract Prior crisis management research mainly studied the context of accidental and preventable crises which are generally within the organization's control, while the COVID-19 pandemic presents a public health crisis in which corporations do not have control over the extent of the impacts. Built upon the stakeholder salience framework, we propose and test the hypotheses that are derived from societal stakeholders' power, legitimacy, and urgent claims during the pandemic and reveal several corporate responses that address multiple stakeholders' interests, including customers, shareholders, community, suppliers, and employees. Specifically, corporations with a larger number of employees and social media followers tend to adopt more corporate responses that address various stakeholders' concerns. Further, in highly impacted industries, there is an increased influence of social media followers on customer-related corporate responses as well as a decreased influence of employees on employee-related corporate responses.

Understanding corporate social responsibility, employee psychological capital and work performance: The perspective of tourism in the emerging economy

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) improves business performance in a significant way (Manzoni & Islam, 2015). This study examines how travel and tourism firms handled their CSR during the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affected employee satisfaction (EST) with corporate responses on employee psychological capital (PsyCap) that was measured through self-efficacy (SEC), hope (HOP), resilience (RES) and optimism (OPT). This study also examines PsyCap’s impact on employee work performance (WPM). An online questionnaire was used to obtain data from Indian travel industry personnel to support the study’s conceptual model. A total of 301 valid and usable responses were obtained for the final analysis, which was analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 20 and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) 22 software. The model underwent validation through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equations modeling (SEM). CSR strongly affects EST, which positively impacts all four variables of employee PsyCap. A positive association of SEC, HOP, and OPT with WPM has also been found, while the association between RES and WPM is insignificant. These variables explained about 53% (R2 = 53.2) of the variance in work performance. This study offers academia and industry practitioners valuable insights into CSR during natural disasters and health hazards.

Corporate Green Bonds: Market Response and Corporate Response

Corporate Green Bonds: Market Response and Corporate Response

Assessing the plausibility of climate futures

Abstract We suggest a new Social Plausibility Assessment Framework to assess which climate futures are plausible (Aykut, Wiener et al., 2021). The approach is rooted in theories about social change, social inertia and path dependency, disruptive change, and transformation. This theoretical basis allows us to identify a set of key drivers that can be assumed to have a high impact on a given future scenario. A climate future is socially plausible if the empirical evidence about the key drivers point in the direction toward the chosen scenario, or at least strongly indicates that enabling conditions are building up that support this direction. To test the framework, we chose the scenario of deep decarbonization by 2050 which is our understanding of the necessary social change that would be needed for limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C, with reasonable likelihood of only a limited overshoot. We selected ten key social drivers that influence whether we achieve deep decarbonization by 2050: UN climate governance, transnational initiatives, climate-related regulation, climate protests and social movements, climate litigation, corporate responses, fossil fuel divestment, consumption patterns, journalism, and knowledge production. We defined enabling and constraining conditions for each of these drivers to be able to assess whether these drivers are moving towards or away from deep decarbonization, and how fast. We used extensive literature reviews, existing data bases, and our own research to establish the empirical evidence for the assessment. Unless the enabling conditions of social drivers change dramatically over the next few years, reaching worldwide deep decarbonization by 2050 is not plausible. We discuss implications of this assessment.

Facebook, X e Instagram: más allá de lo gratis. El verdadero costo de las redes sociales

In this analysis, we draw upon the thoughts of Debord, Baudrillard, and McLuhan to unravel how the screen's evolution from a mere medium to a complex digital ecosystem has succeeded in capturing, and potentially subjugating, user attention. This dynamic enables the titans of the information society to profile users with precision, using this information for the calculated distribution of advertising, thereby manufacturing previously non-existent needs. At first glance, this might be interpreted as the natural evolution of advertising into the digital realm. However, it becomes problematic when digital platforms, from a position of authority, knowingly promote advertising that could be deemed unethical, including the use of public figures in deceptive campaigns. When these tactics are exposed, the corporate response is often one of indifference. This scenario invites reflection on the underlying interests of these practices and the ethics of market strategies in the digital sphere, raising critical questions about responsibility and morality in the information age. In our case study, we will focus on social network X, although this practice can also be found on Facebook and Instagram.

Strategic organizational resilience during and after the COVID-19: Case study of Western Balkans

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected businesses globally. It swept the world like a wave, changing and adapting economies around the world. However, many businesses have shown remarkable resilience in the face of this crisis, adapting to changing circumstances and finding new ways to serve their customers. To build resilience, people need to understand organizational change. In this study, the authors only explained the organizational aspects of resilience in the Western Balkans. They emphasized that there is a lack of research investigating resilience in the context of venture failure due to the inability to respond to the demands of crisis conditions. Therefore, they study the association between corporate responses that we consider particularly important during this crisis, in relation to labor practices, to determine whether companies experienced less-negative responses to the crisis during the market collapse. The aim of these studies is to highlight the importance of the need to improve resilience after the COVID-19 crisis and to determine strategies for achieving it. For this purpose, extensive literature was used, which represents the theoretical framework of the research. Based on their research, the winners in the changing business environment will be unbridled firms that respond to challenges and create new opportunities.

Miniature Crane Prototype: A Novel Approach for Recognizing Yoga Postures to Treat Autistic Children

The paper presents a miniature crane prototype including a deep learning model especially designed for autistic children to assist them by teaching yoga. The objective of the paper is to propose a solution to help autistic kids overcome their difficulties faced in their local environment and adapt themselves to society for their well-being. Autistic kids find it hard to involve in social communications and feel insecure to talk with unknown people. Also, some of the kids have repetitive behaviors. To propose a solution, we introduce a miniature crane prototype to assist children in teaching yoga by which autistic kids can overcome their social difficulties. Play can create a positive impact on children during the learning phase and get rid of their difficulties. The play will take the input of the user and react accordingly. The miniature is mobile to get closer and playable with children by Responsive incorporation. The miniature can capture pictures depicting the behavior of the kid and respond to the kid through the LCD screen. The play enhances the activity of the kid and motivates them to learn yoga. The play is included with a yoga detection model which helps the play assist kids in learning yoga. The deep learning algorithm AlexNet is used which can detect and instruct while learning yoga. The model achieves higher accuracy of 98.61% which helps in assisting yoga postures the children with the proper instructions.

БАГАТОНАЦІОНАЛЬНІ ПІДПРИЄМСТВА У МІЖНАРОДНОМУ НАУКОВО-ТЕХНОЛОГІЧНОМУ ОБМІНІ: ФАКТОРИ КОНКУРЕНТНОГО ЛІДЕРСТВА ЗА УМОВ ТЕХНОГЛОБАЛІЗМУ

The main driver of intra-company scientific and technological exchange of multinational corporations is the dynamic increase in the scale of their international production and the transition of foreign subsidiaries from the implementation of technologically simple production operations to the production of science-intensive products. At the same time, intra-company technology transfer is a kind of response of multinational corporations to profound transformational changes in their business activities under the conditions of technoglobalism, which is accompanied by the ever-increasing elimination of cross-border barriers in the global sharing of knowledge. The first to be drawn into the "whirlpool" of internationalization were corporate research and development of an applied nature, and later – research and development aimed at adapting the technologies obtained by foreign branches to consumer needs and standards of local markets of the host countries. Among the latter, research and development of multinational corporations were included in the general internationalization process. The economic effectiveness of multinational corporations's participation in intra-company technology transfer consists not only and not so much in receiving royalties from the sale of licenses, but in obtaining indirect market competitive advantages based on the delegation of part of the innovative functions to foreign units, saving transaction costs for conducting research and development, increasing own business image, as well as the development and implementation of industry standards for the functioning of one or another sector of global production. In this way, multinational corporations achieve a number of strategic goals, namely: minimizing terms and transaction costs for the development of new technological inventions, leveling the negative impact of customs barriers and currency restrictions existing in various countries of the world, penetrating new segments of the global market, maintaining control over results of corporate research and development and prevention of their outflow to competing companies, development of corporate innovation networks, etc.

ESG Considerations in Acquisitions and Divestitures: Corporate Responses to Mandatory ESG Disclosure

ESG Considerations in Acquisitions and Divestitures: Corporate Responses to Mandatory ESG Disclosure

Microscopy in the Study of Asbestos-Containing Joint Compound and Patching Products, Including Spackling

Drywall (wallboard, plasterboard, gypsum board) became the common construction material for interior walls in buildings in the later 1940s. Joint compound (mud, spackling, taping compound, joint treatment material) and patching products such as spackle or spackling were used to seal the seams between the boards and cover cracks and nail indentations. Most joint compounds from the 1940s into the later 1970s contained chrysotile asbestos in various formulations. Analyses by microscopy determined the chrysotile asbestos content of samples of Bondex, Georgia-Pacific, and Reardon products to be 1–5%, 3–8%, and 1–2% asbestos, respectively. Information compiled from several sources, including corporate responses to the U.S. EPA Asbestos Information Act of 1988 and other documents, suggest that asbestos-containing joint compounds and patching products from the 1930s into the late 1970s contained chrysotile in the range of 0.5% to 23%, with one company having a few formulations with asbestos levels as high as 45.2%. Although there were no documents showing that amphibole asbestos was intentionally added to joint compounds, there is some evidence of amphibole asbestos fibers in certain joint compound products, probably as accessory minerals with added chrysotile, talc, or limestone. No amphibole asbestos fibers were found in a Georgia-Pacific joint compound product tested using the acid/base digestion preparation procedure. During simulation testing, the asbestos level in the breathing zone of a worker during the mixing of Bondex Joint Compound ranged from 6.9 to 12 asbestos fibers per cubic centimeter of air (F/cc) (phase contrast microscopy modified by transmission light microscopy). The level was below detection during application. During sanding, the asbestos level in the breathing zone of the worker ranged from 1.9 to 5.5 asbestos F/cc. The simulations showed results that were within the ranges reported in the scientific literature for airborne asbestos levels caused by dry mixing and sanding of asbestos-containing joint compound. The sale of joint compound and spackling sold for consumer use with intentionally added asbestos was banned by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 1977.

Corporate responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by Fortune 500 companies

COVID-19 created a challenging environment both for businesses and individuals. Effects of the pandemic on companies had the potential to create negative public relations as entities attempted to deal with the worldwide crisis and to communicate their situation. Many companies were quick to provide information to customers and employees early in the pandemic about how they were responding to the crisis, while other companies provided limited immediate response to COVID-19. An examination of the top 300 companies listed in the 2020 Fortune 500 found that 186 of those companies communicated their status and plans in press releases posted from January 2020 through May 2020 regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. This study, based on Situational Crisis Communication Theory, qualitatively analyzed the releases via constant comparative method. The analysis resulted in four primary categories that dominated company releases: (1) In This Together, (2) Perseverance Through Strength, (3) We are Here for You, and (4) Fighting for the Team.