Corporate Philanthropy - Potential Threat or Opportunity?

Is corporate giving a matter of sporadic and altruistic generosity? Or should it be seen more as “a product to be marketed to the public”? The author is Lecturer in International Business in the Department of Commerce of the University of Birmingham, Ashley Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT.     

Illusion of safety: How consumers underestimate manipulation and deception in online (vs. offline) shopping contexts

Online commerce changes how consumers shop for products and services—while also giving firms more control over consumers' shopping experience, more access to their information, and leading more firms to use these platforms to their financial advantage. In this research, I examine consumer perceptions of firms when they shop for products and services online (vs. offline), to determine whether consumers feel firms might use certain kinds of manipulative and deceptive tactics against consumers. Results show consumers believe firms are less likely to use manipulative and deceptive practices to increase consumer spending, when they shop online (vs. offline) for products and services. These findings remain consistent despite key individual differences (in ethnicity, gender, age, and time spent online). This research also demonstrates how certain cues can make consumers more (vs. less) suspicious of firms when they shop online and discusses the implications these findings have for consumer financial welfare.     

Environmental performance,sustainability, governance and financial performance: Evidence from heavily polluting industries in China

This study seeks to contribute to the existing business strategy and the environment literature by examining the effect of governance structures on Chinese firms' environmental performance, and consequently ascertain the extent to which the financial performance–environmental performance nexus is moderated by governance mechanisms. Using a sample of Chinese companies from heavily polluting industries over a 5-year period, our baseline findings suggest that, on average, board size and governing board meetings are positively associated with Chinese firms' environmental performance, whilst board independence and gender diversity have positive, but insignificant association with firms' environmental performance. Our evidence suggests further that the examined internal governance mechanisms have a mixed moderating effect on the link between financial performance and environmental performance. Our findings have important implications for company executives, environmental activists, policy-makers, and regulators. Our results support insights drawn from agency, resource dependence, stakeholder, and legitimacy theories.     

Board gender diversity and dividend policy in Australian listed firms: the effect of ownership concentration

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - We examine the association between board gender diversity and corporate dividend payout. Our results suggest that although board gender diversity impacts...     

Acting Intuition into Sense: How Film Crews Make Sense with Embodied Ways of Knowing

This study contributes to a holistic understanding of sensemaking by going beyond the mind–body dualism. To do so, we focus analytically on a phenomenon that operates at the nexus of mind and body: intuition. By observing four film crews, we unpack how people act their intuition into sense – that is, how they transform, through action, an initial sense (intuition) that is tacit, intimate, and complex into one that is publicly displayed, simpler, and ordered (i.e., a developed sense). Our model identifies two sensemaking trajectories, each of which involves several bodily actions (e.g., displaying feelings, working hands-on, speaking assertively). These actions enable intuition to express a facet of itself and acquire new properties. This study makes three important contributions. First, it develops the holistic-relational character of sensemaking by locating it in the relations among multiple loci (cognition, language, body, and materiality) rather than in each one disjunctively. Second, it theorizes embodied sensemaking as a transformative process entailing a rich repertoire of bodily actions. Third, it extends sensemaking research by attending to the physicality and materiality of language in embodied sensemaking.     

Market Interaction and Pro-Social Behavior: An Experimental Study

When actions generate negative externalities for third parties, incentives exist to pass these “morally costly” decisions to others. In laboratory experiments, we investigate how market interaction affects allocations when the right to divide a sum of money between oneself and a passive recipient is commoditized. Allocation to recipients is reduced by more than half when determined by subjects who purchase or keep the right to make the division as compared to a control where subjects are directly assigned the right. Sellers report accurate beliefs about recipient allocations and do not report feeling less responsible the more often they sell the allocation right. The market allocates the right to make divisions more frequently to buyers who allocate more to recipients, but sellers who allocate less to recipients tend to sell less often. Selection cannot solely explain the results, suggesting market interaction itself may directly impact behavior.