Corporate sustainability and environmental reporting: triggers and consequences.

This paper explores the triggers and consequences of sustainability reporting in the developing economy of Pakistan. Moreover, the study examines whether the corporate factors have any indirect and conditional indirect effects on financial performance through sustainability reporting where sector-affiliation acts as a moderator. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach has been applied for the data collection and analysis. The study uses secondary data collected from annual reports of 178 companies listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange for 2010-2018. The quantitative results reveal that size, age, leverage, earnings, sustainability awards, CEO duality, and board independence significantly influence sustainability reporting. In contrast, foreign ownership, ownership concentration, women on board, and media visibility do not determine sustainability reporting. Mediation results indicate significant indirect effects of each corporate factor on financial performance through sustainability reporting. Similarly, except for a few, conditional indirect effects in all the models were also seen to exist. Subsequently, interviews with prominent players in the field helped validate and understand the quantitative results. This study has implications for regulators, corporate managers, investors, NGOs, and academic researchers.

The moderating role of industry clockspeed on the relation between supply chain integration practices and new product flexibility.

This study assessed the firm's new product flexibility in the recovery phase of COVID-19. Using the theoretical lens of organizational information processing theory, it established the relationship between supply chain integration practices (supply chain planning, internal integration, and supplier involvement) and new product flexibility. It also explained the moderating effect of industry clockspeed on supply chain integration practices and new product flexibility with the help of contingency theory. This study used an online survey method to collect data from plant managers, and we received 256 useable responses. We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to test the validity and reliability of the scales, and we tested hypotheses using moderated multiple regression technique. The results showed significant positive relationships between supply chain integration practices and new product flexibility. The moderating effects hypotheses showed that industry clockspeed significantly and positively moderated on supply chain planning-new product flexibility and internal integration-new product flexibility links. But it negatively moderated on supplier involvement and new product flexibility. Our study departs from earlier studies in the field that were conducted under normal circumstances. We conducted our study in the recovery phase of COVID-19 in Pakistan, when firms, after fourteen days of complete lockdown, resumed their operations and experienced a new business landscape.

The climate change and stock market: catastrophes of the Canadian weather.

In the last few decades, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events have increased in many parts of the world, including Canada, as a result of global warming. Climate warming in Canada is about double the magnitude of global warming; therefore, the effects of weather catastrophes are expected to be higher in Canada compared to other economies. This study explores the impact of weather catastrophes on the Canadian stock market over the period 1988-2016. A mix of accounting ratios and statistical tests is used to estimate the effects of the extreme weather events on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) composite and its subsector indices. A significant negative effect of the weather catastrophes on stock market returns and volatility is noticed a day after the extreme weather events. This effect is widespread in all sub-sectors of the market; IT and financial services sectors are the most impacted, while the consumer staples sector is the least. It is concluded that the impact of climate warming in Canada is higher and more widespread compared to other economies.

Moderating Role of Information Asymmetry Between Cognitive Biases and Investment Decisions: A Mediating Effect of Risk Perception.

Behavioral Finance is an evolving field that studies how psychological factors affect decision making under uncertainty. This study seeks to find the influence of certain identified behavioral financial biases on the decision-making process of investors in developing countries. This research examines the moderating effect of Information asymmetry on the two most important and commonly used cognitive biases, namely Anchoring bias and Optimism bias and decision making and investigates whether Risk perception mediates the relationship between them or not. Quantitative research has been conducted using a structured questionnaire for data collection. After completing the pilot study, a questionnaire was designed and sent to investors via online channels. Data has been collected from 317 real estate investors. Mediation analysis has been performed using model 4 and moderation analysis by applying model 15 of Process Macros (Hayes, 2017) for the interaction effect. The study investigated that both cognitive biases have a significant positive effect on investors' decisions and Risk perception also significantly mediates the relationship between them. Consistency with other studies suggests that Information asymmetry has a significant moderating effect. The proposed conceptual model provides insight into how investors' decisions are influenced by behavioral biases in the real estate sector and enhances the understanding of cognitive biases in the real estate sector. This study is recommended for real estate investors and policymakers of emerging and developed countries. The current study is the first of its kind, focusing on cognitive biases on investment decisions with mediating role of Risk perception and the moderating effect of Information asymmetry.

Does Whipping Tournament Incentives Spur CSR Performance? An Empirical Evidence From Chinese Sub-national Institutional Contingencies.

The current study investigates whether tournament incentives motivate chief executive officer(s) (CEOs) to be socially responsible. Furthermore, it explores the role of sub-national institutional contingencies [i.e., state-owned enterprises (SOE) vs. non-SOEs, foreign-owned entities (FOE) vs. non-FOEs, cross-listed vs. non-cross-listed, developed region] in CEO tournament incentives and the corporate social responsibility performance (CSRP) relationship. Data were collected from all A-shared companies listed in the stock exchanges of China from 2014 to 2019. The study uses the baseline methodology of ordinary least squares (OLS) and cluster OLS regression. Moreover, firm-fixed effects regression, two-stage least squares regression, and propensity score matching deal with the endogeneity problem and check the robustness of the results. The results provide reliable evidence that tournament incentives motivate CEOs to be more socially responsible. On the other hand, sub-national institutional contingencies positively affect the association between CEO tournament incentives and CSRP. The findings have important implications for companies and regulators who wish to enhance CSP by providing incentives to top managers.

Cognitive Bias and the Extraversion Personality Shaping the Behavior of Investors.

The paper examines the direct and indirect effects (via investors' risk perception) of heuristic biases on investors' irrational behavior in decision-making. The study also investigates the moderating effect of investors' extraversion on both the direct and the indirect associations between heuristic biases and irrational decision-making. Based on survey data collected from 247 investors registered in various brokerage houses in Pakistan and the analyses (mediation and moderation) performed using the Process Macro technique (proposed by Hayes, 2017) in SPSS, the results of this study reveal that heuristic biases positively affect investors' irrational decision-making both directly and indirectly via risk perception. The results reveal that extraversion moderates both direct and indirect associations between heuristic biases and investors' irrational behavior in decision-making. Our findings carry useful practical implications for organizations' policymakers.

"Do Good, Have Good": A Serial Mediation Analysis of CSR with Customers' Outcomes.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is envisaged to offer several outcomes and while customer-specific consequences are unclear or have not obtained due attention, there is a dearth of literature that focuses on perceptual, attitudinal and behavioral outcomes in tandem. Against this backdrop, this study entails the investigation of perceptual (service quality), attitudinal (affective commitment) and behavioral (customer citizenship behavior) outcomes of CSR through a serial mediation mechanism. A total of 994 responses obtained from fast-food restaurants, highlight the fact that CSR influences service quality, affective commitment, and customer citizenship behavior. Moreover, it is witnessed that CSR influences customer citizenship behavior indirectly as well, as the serial mediation mechanism is also proved. The practical and theoretical usefulness of the study is also provided at the end.

How Investors Attitudes Shape Stock Market Participation in the Presence of Financial Self-Efficacy.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how investor's money attitudes shape their stock market participation (SMP) decisions. This study followed the theory of planned behavior (TPB), and a survey was conducted to collect the responses from active investors. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for the analysis of proposed relationships among the constructs, and a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to check the interrelation of the variables and validity of the constructs. This research has concluded that investor's money attitudes are significant to affect their stock market participation decisions. Further, it was found that risk attitudes partially mediate the relationship between money attitudes and stock market participation. Moreover, financial knowledge and financial self-efficacy positively moderated the relationship between money attitudes and stock market participation. This research is one of the early attempts at studying the money attitudes of investors and introduces financial self-efficacy as a moderating construct between money attitudes and stock market participation. The sample size for this study was 250 respondents which can be increased in future research, and the same relationships can be tested by using a larger sample. Moreover, this study has used money attitudes as predictors of stock market participation. Still, many other variables, like personal value, can also be taken to investigate their influence on stock market participation.

Occupational health and safety issues in the informal economic segment of Pakistan: a survey of construction sites.

This research covers the current status of occupational health and safety (OHS)-related practices in the informal construction segment of Pakistan. Data were collected, through interviews, from 316 construction sites employing 3577 workers. The results of the study reveal that both employers and workers lack knowledge of OHS laws/standards and no practices of this nature are enacted at these construction sites. Alarmingly, work-related accidents, whenever they happen, are not given due attention and there is no formal injury-report system. The informal construction industry employs a huge portion of the informal workforce, and lack of OHS happens at tremendous human cost. These research findings may thus play their role in strengthening the case for reforms in the sector. This study, if properly utilized, may also enable employers of the sector by increasing their knowledge about OHS practices and, as a result, trying to offer safer environments for their workers.