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CEOs are increasingly called upon to take public stands on political issues, a phenomenon dubbed "political activism." These stands tend to have either moral foundations or moral implications, yet it is unclear whether stakeholders truly want CEOs to make stands, and, if so, how philosophically grounded they are in their stated positions. This paper explores the philosophical worldview questions relevant to current issues facing organizations, particularly those that have been characterized as "wokeism." It then examines how these worldview positions translate or apply to these issues in ways that seemingly contradict CEOs' stands. Finally, it explores how the concept of the social imaginary, CEOs' political beliefs, mass media's reciprocal effects, and CEO narcissism may influence CEOs to take "woke" political activist positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To succeed in growing and scaling their organization, start-ups must establish roles, routines, rules, and plans that coordinate organizational activities. However, early-stage start-ups often lack such coordination mechanisms. Through a longitudinal qualitative multiple-case study of five start-ups, we develop a theoretical framework for how start-ups develop and improve coordination over time. We find that start-ups establish coordination through a learning sequence consisting of four distinct learning styles. To develop coordination successfully, start-ups anticipate coordination problems before they escalate, steal ideas and frameworks from others, experimentally implement coordination, and combine and simplify coordination mechanisms. By providing a processual understanding of how start-ups develop coordination, we contribute to the literature on coordination in start-ups, which has tended toward static explanations. We also add to the literatures on emergent coordination and organizational learning, as we highlight the role of deliberate learning in developing coordination, and how different learning styles link together to create learning sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Summary: This article examines the association between ideology and firm participation in sociopolitical activism. In particular, it focuses on the ideological alignment between a firm's upper echelons and its general employees. We theorize that participation in progressive corporate activism reflects the ideological views of both the top management team and general employees. By examining firm participation in letter campaigns supporting progressive causes, our findings indicate that ideological alignment between a top management teams and general employees' liberal political leanings is associated with a firm's participation in progressive corporate activism. The CEO's own ideological preferences do not have an independent association with this kind of activism. This article concludes with a discussion of implications for our understanding of corporate political action and nonmarket strategy. Managerial Summary: This article looks at the relationship between political ideology and firm participation in sociopolitical activism. Although some have argued that firms' activism reflects a CEO's ideological preferences or employee activism, we find that neither explanation fully accounts for the kinds of companies that engage in this kind of activism. We find that progressive corporate activism reflects the ideological views of both top management and general employees. Our findings suggest that companies that have ideological alignment on progressive issues are more likely to take public stands on those issues because the stands reinforce core values held by employees and the top management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of board characteristics on the relationship between political connections and cash holdings in Asian countries. The findings suggest that Asian firms with political connections, large boards, and gender diversity have lower cash holdings, while firms with CEO duality have higher cash holdings. Further, the study provides unique evidence that Asian firms with large boards and gender diversity have a moderating effect and strengthen the negative influence of political connections on cash holdings. We also find that CEO duality moderates the influence of political connections on cash holdings in Asian countries. The authors conclude that strong board monitoring and governance mechanisms are crucial for the effective use of cash, particularly in firms with political connections. This research contributes to the literature by presenting novel evidence that board characteristics critically influence the relationship between political connections and cash holdings in the Asian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporations are increasingly wading into social and political matters that are unrelated to their business operations. This Paper empirically investigates corporate participation in social debates through the corporate response to Dobbs, the Supreme Court's decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion. First, the Paper identifies and examines the public companies that reacted to the reversal of Roe v. Wade ("Reacting Companies"). Only a few corporations reacted. On the one side, they tend to be large, with sizeable workforces, concentrated in consumer-facing and tech industries, and headquartered in states with no restrictions on abortion rights. On the other side, they tend to have more female representation on the boards and more liberal-leaning CEOs. The findings suggest that companies decided to speak mainly driven by strategic positioning reasons, but leadership's gender and ideology might have facilitated their choice to take a stand on reproductive rights. This view is further supported by the examination of the corporate contributions to the Republican Attorney General Association ("RAGA"), which has been vocal about its fight against abortion rights. More than 20% of the Reacting Companies made anti-abortion donations, even after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, disclosing the potential inconsistency of corporations' political speech. Second, the Paper focuses on how corporations speak. An empirical survey of the corporate statements in reaction to Dobbs reveals heterogeneous responses. The majority of the statements only announced the coverage of employees' abortion travel expenses ("Employee Statements"). A third of the statements expressed instead a clear political stance in support of abortion rights and against the Supreme Court's ruling ("Political Statements"). Companies that issued Employee Statements were more likely to have Republican-leaning CEOs and to make anti-abortion donations, indicating they may have spoken due to their constituencies' pressure. Political Statements, conversely, tended to be issued by smaller companies and were significantly more likely to be authored by the CEO itself, making it unclear if the CEO was speaking on behalf of the company or expressing a personal belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Hospitals' corporate governance (CG) mechanisms oversee critical operational issues and evaluate the outcomes. This paper investigates the impact of CG (i.e. board size, board independence, board expertise, board meetings, board gender diversity, CEO gender, and academic directors) on the financial performance of English National Health Service (NHS) hospitals and separately by hospital type (i.e. trusts and foundation trusts). Design/methodology/approach: The sample includes 128 NHS hospitals. The data were collected through document analysis and archival work from annual hospital reports from 2014 to 2018. Findings: The findings indicate that board expertise, board meetings, board diversity, CEO gender, and academic directors significantly and negatively affect NHS hospitals' financial performance. For NHS trusts, the results reveal that board expertise, board diversity, and CEO gender have a significant negative effect, while for NHS foundation trusts, only CEO gender has a significant negative impact. Originality/value: Overall, this study contributes to the literature on the healthcare system. It holds significant practical implications for hospital governance and has important implications for theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether retaining the former CEO as a board member has an impact on big bath accounting around CEO turnovers. Early evidence shows that when a CEO turnover occurs, the new CEO uses big bath to shift the responsibility for low earnings toward the previous management. However, the former CEO is often retained. This event may restrict the new CEO's ability to take a big bath. Using a hand-collected sample of CEO turnover events in US firms, we find that CEO turnover increases the probability of a big bath. However, retaining the CEO acts as a monitoring mechanism by reducing the probability of big baths, especially opportunistic ones. Our findings indicate that CEO retention could be a useful corporate governance mechanism that restricts new CEO's opportunistic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether board independence improves the readability of annual reports. Using a sample of 11,938 firm-year observations over the period 1997–2016, we empirically show that board independence decreases the readability of annual reports. This result is consistent with the notion of managerial avoidance of costly board monitoring. We also run an array of cross-sectional tests to understand the settings in which the association is either more or less pronounced. Even though managerial ability and SEC's Plain English Rule of 1998 improve readability, we find that the negative relationship between board independence and readability continues to persist. Our results also reveal that directors' tenure and CEO duality attenuate the board independence–readability relationship, while CEO tenure enhances this association. Overall, our findings provide additional insights into the link between board independence and annual report readability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Man and the Biosphere Program (MAB) responds to challenges of the Anthropocene through an explicit social-ecological approach. Implemented as a world network of biosphere reserves, MAB aims to increase [eco]system sustainability and resilience globally, via individual model sites for learning and sustainable development. This research provides an in-depth case study of MAB implementation in South Africa using the Cape Winelands Biosphere Reserve (CWBR), established in 2007 when a key MAB guiding policy, the Madrid Action Plan came into effect. The study utilized semi-structured in-depth interviews with strategic and operational management, and document analysis. The CWBR prioritizes their role as a landscape coordinator, a driver of socio-economic development and site in which humans derive benefits from healthy natural environments. The CWBR have adopted a non-profit organization cooperative governance model in support of this vision, fulfilling the socio-economic development function primarily through successful international partnerships. Challenges faced include a perceived lack of sufficient government support, limited stakeholder awareness and insufficient resources for project implementation. Over reliance on the pillar of their model, the chief executive officer in the current governance form, is an instrument in their effectiveness, yet carries significant risk. These are learnings useful for other biosphere reserves translating an international designation for a local context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the impact of ownership structure on firm adjustment speed toward the target leverage. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs a partial adjustment model on a sample of 694 publicly listed firms from 2007 to 2021 in Vietnam. Findings: The study finds that state and foreign ownerships inhibit the speed at which firms approach their optimal level of debt. Interestingly, this negative association is less pronounced in firms managed by powerful CEOs (duality CEOs; highly experienced CEOs; CEOs who they own or their families possess a large number of shares). Further, state and foreign ownership are found to be positively associated with firm performance. This beneficial impact weakens, however, when firms use more debts. Originality/value: The outcome reveals that having a powerful CEO on board can help businesses in this emerging market counteract the detrimental effects that foreign and state ownership leave on the process of adjusting leverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their efforts to combat climate change, some firms choose to develop environmental innovations. Given that environmental innovation strategies fall into the politically sensitive area of climate change protection, we theorize that CEO political ideological divergence can substantially impact the chosen strategy. Drawing on threat response theory, we find that CEO ideological divergence from a Republican president negatively affects environmental innovation intensity, while ideological divergence from a Democratic president positively affects it. Moreover, increased communication of sustainability orientation weakens this studied impact. We utilized a longitudinal data set of S&P 500 CEOs (2010–2018) with 916 firm-year observations and 188 unique firms, to present theoretical and managerial implications for environmental innovation, CEO political ideology, and threat response theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to examine the association between chief executive officers' (CEOs) characteristics and sell-side analysts' recommendations. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a sample of firms listed on the London Stock Exchange and uses two databases, Capital IQ and BoardEx to study the above relationship. A variety of regression analyses are used in the empirical models, including ordinary least squares, fixed effect, random effect, Tobit, Logit and generalized method of moments. Findings: The authors find that firms with CEOs who had a wider network size and firms with foreign CEOs receive favorable investment recommendations. Further, firms with CEOs who have more time to retire are more likely to receive favorable investment recommendations. However, the authors find that firms with CEOs with more qualifications receive unfavorable recommendations and female CEOs are not affecting investment recommendations. Originality/value: Ultimately, this study demonstrates the importance of CEO characteristics for sell-side analysts who play an important role in the stock markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how CEO-related events covered in news media affect consumer evaluations. The conceptual model proposes six CEO-related news categories and details their impact on consumer evaluations as well as the degree to which these responses determine firms' stock prices. The authors analyze a rich sample of 725 CEO-related events of 125 firms covered in leading US news outlets from 2009 to 2019. Using an econometric approach and an event study, they find that stories about CEO scandals detrimentally affect consumer evaluations, which translates to an immediate loss of more than US$500 million on stock markets, whereas stories about CEO altruism and CEO political ideologies have a positive impact on consumer evaluations. The authors provide insights into short and long-term effects and formulate actionable implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's corporate landscape, the separation of the board chair and CEO roles is increasingly prevalent among public firms. Understanding this leadership dynamic, particularly the board chair-CEO working relationship, is critical. This study delves into the influence of divergent behaviors among institutional investors on the board chair-CEO interaction and explores how environmental munificence moderates these effects. We ascertain that high levels of dedicated institutional investor ownership tend to prompt board chairs to exhibit both control and collaboration orientations with CEOs. Conversely, in instances of elevated transient institutional investor ownership, board chairs are less inclined toward collaboration with CEOs. Of notable interest is our investigation into how environmental munificence shapes these relationships. We discover that the abundance or scarcity of resources in the environment can significantly recalibrate the impact of institutional investor ownership structures on board chair orientations toward CEOs. This study not only contributes to the broader realm of corporate governance research but also offers practical insights for practitioners navigating the intricate dynamics between institutional investors, board chairs, and CEOs. Our findings underline the nuanced interplay between investor behaviors, leadership orientations, and environmental contexts, enriching the understanding of effective corporate governance strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that the similarity of a firm's technological expertise with that of other firms affects managerial labor market outcomes. Using each firm's patent portfolio to estimate its technological expertise, we find that its similarity in technological expertise with other firms is strongly related to the benchmark group used for CEO compensation and job transitions. Furthermore, we show that a firm's CEO pay is positively associated with the CEO compensation levels of technologically similar firms. Our results thus demonstrate the crucial role of technological similarity in determining the value of outside options and the boundaries of the managerial labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the effect of trust on debt contracting. We find that, after the revelation of option backdating, borrowers that likely backdated their previous option grants pay higher interest rates on loans. This adverse effect is mitigated by CEO replacements. Results are similar for public debt, but only if a third party identified the backdaters. After the backdating revelation, firms that engaged in backdating increase their reliance on public debt, and those without access to the public debt market experience capital constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the factors in the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework that affect the decision of whether to adopt electronic commerce (EC) or not within small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). To this end, a questionnaire‐based survey was conducted to collect data from 60 managers or owners of manufacturing SMEs in Tunisia. Unlike the traditional regression approaches, we referred to novel machine learning (ML) techniques and reveal that ML techniques reach a higher level of performance in forecasting driving factors to EC adoption compared to the traditional logistic regression approach. The achieved results also indicate that EC adoption within SMEs is significantly affected by eight factors, namely, IT vendors' support, the adopted technology complexity degree, chief executive officer (CEO) innovativeness, technology readiness, customers' pressure, firm size, infrastructure compatibility, and the innovative technology‐perceived relative advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The current study aims to investigate the mediating role of executive stock options in the nonlinear relationship between financial constraints and research and development (R&D) investment through two measures of financial constraints. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on a sample of 90 French firms for the period extending from 2008 to 2020. The authors employ a panel threshold method to analyze whether the impact of financial constraints on R&D investment depends on the level of financial constraints or not. Findings: Using SA index (Hadlock and Pierce, 2010) and FCP index (Schauer et al., 2019) as measures of financial constraints, the authors demonstrate that the relationship between financial constraints and R&D investment is nonlinear. Moreover, the authors find that executive stock options mediate partially the relationship between financial constraints and R&D investment. More specifically, the authors show that stock options could play two roles depending on the level of the financial constraints; inconsistent mediation for firms with low/medium level of financial constraints and partial mediation for highly constrained firms. Originality/value: This paper is the first to the best of the authors' knowledge to investigate the nonlinear relationship between financial constraints and R&D investment as well as the mediating role of executive stock option using dynamic panel threshold models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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