Search Results (668)

Environmental considerations shape corporate strategy, risk management, and firm valuation. Yet, empirical evidence on the links between environmental performance, environmental disclosures and corporate financial performance is mixed and often omits risk implications. We develop a holistic framework to examine the endogenous inter-relations among corporate environmental performance (CEP), environmental disclosure (CED), financial performance, and risk. Employing 3SLS, we analyse the simultaneous links between CEP, CED, and market-based measures of performance and risk for a large panel (7877 firm-year observations) of US-listed firms over 2005–2020. The findings reveal that environmental performance and environmental disclosure have distinct economic implications. Environmental performance is associated with lower market valuation and lower market risk. These findings suggest that while substantive environmental initiatives may enhance organisational resilience, investors are not appropriately factoring the associated benefits in firm valuation. In contrast, environmental disclosure is associated with higher market valuation and higher market risk. Thus, environmental communication may enhance corporate legitimacy and strengthen stakeholder relations while simultaneously increasing investor awareness of environmental exposures and sustainability-related uncertainties. We also find a strong positive association between environmental performance and environmental disclosure, suggesting that environmental reporting increasingly reflects underlying environmental actions rather than symbolic signalling alone. Overall, the results highlight the importance of distinguishing between environmental actions and environmental communication when evaluating corporate environmental strategy, firm value, and risk. Overall, the results carry implications for managers, investors, regulators, and researchers seeking to evaluate the role of corporate environmental strategy in corporate resilience, transparency, and value creation. Full article

The cooperatives combine a pyramidal structure, in which few members concentrate decision-making power, with ownership dispersed among a broad membership base. This configuration favors adverse selection and moral hazard arising from information asymmetry between managers and stakeholders, which legitimacy theory suggests may be reduced through sustainability disclosure. The study advances the literature by combining three elements not yet integrated in research on cooperatives: the cultural pillar as an autonomous dimension of sustainability, disaggregated analysis by pillar, and risk-adjusted financial performance. The level of sustainability disclosure was analyzed from a stakeholder perspective, along with its association with financial performance. Forty-four expert-validated indicators were applied to 39 cooperatives listed in the 2022 World Cooperative Monitor that published complete reports over the 2020–2022 triennium, resulting in 117 observations, estimated by fixed effects with cluster-robust standard errors. Mean disclosure was 0.52, led by the environmental pillar (0.70), followed by the economic (0.62), social (0.47), and cultural (0.33) pillars. The aggregate index showed no statistically significant association with risk-adjusted financial performance, either for ROA or for ROE, whereas the social dimension remained positive and significant regardless of the metric used. This pattern is consistent with the propositions of legitimacy theory regarding the social pillar, although the underlying mechanisms of information asymmetry reduction and legitimacy strengthening were not directly measured in this study. Full article

Climate risk has become a defining challenge for businesses, influencing strategic decision-making, organisational resilience, and long-term performance. Despite the rapid growth of research in this area, the intellectual development and thematic evolution of climate-related corporate studies remain fragmented. This study provides a comprehensive synthesis of the literature through a bibliometric analysis and systematic review of 643 Scopus-indexed, peer-reviewed articles published between 1993 and 2025, with a systematic thematic synthesis of 23 empirical studies. Using Biblioshiny and VOSviewer, science-mapping techniques, including co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling, were employed to examine publication trends, intellectual foundations, and major research themes. The findings indicate a shift from environmental measurement and compliance toward climate-risk management, carbon disclosure, and sustainable finance. Financial outcomes are heterogeneous, and context-dependent carbon exposure is generally associated with valuation penalties and downside risk, while the relevance of disclosure and climate strategies depends on credibility, substantive implementation, and organisational and institutional conditions. The integrated review shows that the financial implications of climate-related corporate actions are contingent upon climate-risk exposure, disclosure credibility, organisational capabilities, and institutional context. It further explains the coexistence of mixed empirical findings and identifies priorities for future research and policy. The findings offer valuable implications for researchers, corporate managers, investors, and policymakers seeking to strengthen sustainable business practices under an evolving climate risk landscape. Full article

Despite growing regulatory and investor attention to human capital as a core pillar of corporate sustainability and ESG reporting, it remains unclear how human capital-related information is priced in financial markets. This study examines the associations between human capital disclosure, management practices, and firms’ financing costs. Using a global panel of 1180 non-financial firms across 53 countries from 2017 to 2023, we employ Bloomberg ESG data to construct measures of human capital disclosure, management practices, and materiality. Panel regression analyses indicate that while human capital management practices exhibit no significant standalone associations, human capital disclosure is positively associated with the cost of equity, cost of debt, and the weighted average cost of capital. However, we document a significant complementary effect: when coupled with strong management practices, disclosure is associated with a lower cost of equity, particularly in contexts where human capital is financially material. Furthermore, the positive association between disclosure and capital costs becomes weaker as human capital materiality increases. Overall, our findings suggest that capital markets do not uniformly price human capital information; rather, its valuation is highly conditional, depending on the substantive credibility of management practices and contextual materiality. Full article

Background/Objectives: In Germany, women have direct access to gynaecologists without GP referral, making the GP’s role in female-specific conditions largely secondary. It has not previously been examined whether the sex of the GP is nonetheless associated with the documented prevalence of these conditions in primary care records. Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study used data from the IQVIA™ Disease Analyzer. All women aged ≥18 years with at least one visit to one of 1183 GPs in Germany in 2025 were included. Women attending female and male GPs were matched 1:1 by propensity score on age, statutory health insurance, practice size, consultation frequency in 2025, and the van Walraven comorbidity score (excluding malignancy), yielding 661,485 women per group. Associations between GP sex and the documented prevalence of eight female-specific conditions were examined using conditional logistic regression within the age strata clinically relevant to each condition (from 18–30 to >75 years), with the age × GP-sex interaction tested in a single model per condition and E-values calculated to assess robustness to unmeasured confounding. Results: The association between GP sex and documented prevalence was strongly age-dependent, with a significant age × GP-sex interaction for seven of eight conditions (all p < 0.001). Female GP sex was associated with higher documented prevalence in mid-life, including menopausal and perimenopausal disorders (46–60 years: OR 1.37, 95% CI 1.28–1.46), endometriosis (31–45 years: OR 1.15, 1.03–1.28) and benign neoplasm of the female breast and genital organs (46–60 years: OR 1.16, 1.04–1.29); in the oldest women, the pattern attenuated or reversed (menopausal disorders > 75 years: OR 0.81, 0.72–0.90). No association was observed for breast cancer or female genital organ cancer at any age. Conclusions: In German primary care, the association between GP sex and the documented prevalence of female-specific disorders is age-dependent—most pronounced for conditions that require active clinical recognition and patient disclosure in mid-life, and absent for specialist-managed malignancies. Full article

Carbon emissions have gained media attention and public discussion. Motivated by recent trends and scholarly debate on climate change, this study explores whether firms in carbon-intensive industries exhibit inferior financial reporting quality relative to other sectors and examines how the relationship evolves. Our analysis which used data from US firms for the period between 2006 and 2024 indicates that companies in high-emissions industries engage in more earnings management activities compared to those in other sectors. Interestingly, the discretionary accruals disparity between carbon-intensive and other sectors has diminished over time, while the real earnings management gap persists but narrows. This research adds to the growing body of research examining the impact of climate-related uncertainties on corporate information disclosure. Full article

Under the guidance of China’s “dual carbon” goals, the importance of carbon information disclosure in textile and apparel enterprises has become increasingly prominent, and its mechanism for enhancing corporate innovation behavior requires further clarification. Based on regression analysis, this study examines listed textile and apparel companies in China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets from 2012 to 2024 using a fixed-effects model to empirically test the impact of carbon information disclosure intensity on corporate innovation behavior and its underlying mechanisms. The results demonstrate that increased carbon information disclosure intensity significantly promotes growth in corporate innovation behavior, a core conclusion that remains valid even after conducting a series of robustness tests addressing endogeneity issues. Mechanistic analysis reveals that the positive driving effect of carbon information disclosure intensity on innovation behavior is weakened by investor attention, with investor focus playing a negative moderating role in this relationship: high-quality carbon information disclosure should enhance innovation by reducing information asymmetry; however, under heightened investor scrutiny, short-term investment orientation and management pressure for immediate performance may distort this transmission pathway, thereby inhibiting innovation promotion. Heterogeneity analysis further shows significant differences in the impact of carbon information disclosure intensity on innovation behavior across textile and apparel firms with varying ownership structures and industry categories. This study provides theoretical foundations and practical guidance for advancing carbon information disclosure practices in the textile and apparel sector, guiding investor focus appropriately, and fostering corporate innovation development. Full article

Corporate sustainability programs at large companies are driven by multiple simultaneous motivations, yet most theoretical accounts treat motivation as reducible to a single framework. We conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with senior sustainability managers at Fortune 200 companies. The most commonly named motivations among these 30 interviews were risk management and business logic (27), stakeholder and investor pressure (22), intrinsic ethical conviction (13), and regulatory compliance (12). A three-category motivational model emerged—externally-driven (17), values-integrated (10), and values-driven (3)—organized around whether sustainability commitment originates in external pressure, internal conviction, or both. The values-integrated category—in which both external pressure and genuine internal conviction are simultaneously present—is theoretically significant, as it describes a motivational profile that neither a pure greenwashing account nor a pure idealism account would predict. Nearly all participants (29) framed sustainability as a company-wide mode of operating rather than a discrete program, and 26 viewed the senior sustainability role as effectively permanent. The findings suggest that single-theory analyses of sustainability motivation mischaracterize a multi-driver reality, and that direct interview methods are better positioned than disclosure-based research to surface the stated values component of corporate motivation, though stated values may not determine resource allocation. Full article

Monetary ecosystem service (ES) valuations often differ across studies even when similar methods are applied because available data implicitly determine which biophysical, management, and demand-side drivers are represented. These implicit “valuation boundaries” are rarely reported, limiting comparability, evidence synthesis, and benefit transfer. We propose a logic-chain-based reporting framework that makes valuation boundaries explicit through determinant coverage disclosure. The framework combines an ecosystem-specific reference template, which organizes value determinants into service-specific logic chains spanning supply (nature and management) and demand (beneficiaries and socio-economic modifiers), with a reporting overlay that identifies represented determinants and key omissions for each monetary estimate. Rather than replacing existing valuation guidance, it complements current practice by improving transparency under realistic data constraints. We demonstrate the framework using vineyard agroecosystems in Castilla y León (Spain). Based on available regional data, we estimate standardized monetary values (€/ha/year, 2023) for selected provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services and report valuation-boundary profiles alongside each estimate. Additional vineyard-level observations illustrate how incorporating local information narrows valuation boundaries and changes the interpretation of results. The framework provides a reusable reporting structure that can improve transparency, support valuation databases, facilitate evidence synthesis, and enhance the reliability of benefit transfer applications. Full article

Corporate greenwashing has become a growing concern because it may weaken policy incentives for real emissions reductions and environmental investment. However, it remains unclear whether firms’ financial strategies influence their environmental communication strategies. This paper shows that corporate tax avoidance significantly increases corporate greenwashing, with the effect primarily reflecting symbolic environmental communication rather than improvements in substantive environmental practices. Mechanism tests indicate that tax avoidance facilitates greenwashing by increasing information asymmetry and appointing managers with environmental backgrounds. Further analyses reveal that this effect is more pronounced among firms with higher pre-event levels of greenwashing. Moreover, tax avoidance does not improve substantive environmental performance, providing no evidence for the alternative explanation that tax avoidance reduces greenwashing by increasing internal resources available for environmental investment. These findings provide implications for environmental governance, ESG disclosure regulation, and corporate sustainability management. Full article

This study examines whether context-validated acute distress disclosures in annual Form 10-K filings improve bankruptcy-risk ranking beyond accounting variables. The analysis links U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing data, Item 7 Management’s Discussion and Analysis text, and bankruptcy events from the Florida–UCLA–LoPucki Bankruptcy Research Database for fiscal years 2010–2021. The primary sample contains 21,239 nonfinancial firm-year observations and 159 one-year bankruptcy events. The paper develops a Validated Distress Disclosure (VDD) Dictionary that flags going-concern uncertainty, covenant noncompliance, and lender forbearance or waiver after sentence-level context filtering. In the 2019–2021 holdout test, adding VDD indicators to a six-variable Ohlson-related accounting baseline increases the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) from 0.8682 to 0.8827 ($\Delta =0.0146$; 95% confidence interval (CI) [0.0040, 0.0275]) and precision–recall AUC (PR-AUC) from 0.0924 to 0.2060 ($\Delta =0.1136$; 95% CI [0.0458, 0.2132]). Benchmark and decomposition tests indicate that the main signal is concentrated in going-concern disclosures and that VDD is best interpreted as an auditable ranking supplement to accounting variables and broader text models, not as a calibrated probability-of-default model. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risks increasingly propagate across interconnected supply chains, yet conventional ESG assessment methods remain largely reliant on firm-level disclosures and static ESG ratings that often overlook indirect risk transmission among trading partners. This study develops a network-aware artificial intelligence (AI) framework for forecasting ESG risk by integrating Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), transformer-based natural language processing (NLP), explainable AI, and conventional machine-learning techniques. The proposed framework combines supply-chain network structures, shipment-level trade information, ESG controversy records, governance indicators, and transformer-derived ESG sentiment extracted using FinBERT and RoBERTa. Using a dataset of 11,386 firms across 27 industries from 2015 to 2025, the proposed GNN achieved the highest predictive performance, outperforming conventional machine-learning models with an ROC-AUC of 0.913. The results further demonstrate that supply-chain network centrality and transformer-derived ESG sentiment substantially improve the early identification of firms exposed to future ESG controversies. By integrating network relationships with textual ESG intelligence, the proposed framework advances FinTech-enabled ESG analytics and provides a scalable approach for proactive risk monitoring, sustainable investment decision-making, and supply-chain risk management. Full article

Against the backdrop of increasing global uncertainty and the growing acceptance of sustainable development principles, enhancing supply chain resilience has become a core issue for enterprises in managing risks and ensuring operational security. Based on a review of the literature and theoretical analysis, this study constructs an evaluation system comprising 12 third-level indicators across three dimensions: proactive defense capability, green operational capability, and collaborative recovery capability. When determining whether there are interdependent relationships among the indicators, this study introduces an extended Bayesian fusion method based on trapezoidal fuzzy numbers to evaluate and confirm these relationships, thereby reducing biases arising from subjective judgments. By quantifying experts’ assessments of the relationship strength and confidence levels between indicators using trapezoidal fuzzy numbers, this method effectively integrates the opinions of multiple experts, reducing the randomness and subjectivity associated with individual judgments. During the ANP weight calculation stage, to overcome the ambiguity and uncertainty inherent in traditional pairwise expert comparisons, trapezoidal fuzzy numbers were similarly used to quantify the comparison results. These were then defuzzified using the mean area metric to construct a precise judgment matrix. Finally, using the publicly available annual reports and ESG disclosure data from three multinational corporations—one in the semiconductor manufacturing sector (Company T), one in industrial digital manufacturing (Company S), and one in the food and beverage industry (Company N)—as empirical samples, the cross-industry applicability and validity of the constructed evaluation system were verified. The results demonstrate that this method can systematically reflect the key factors influencing sustainable supply chain resilience and their weighting structure. Full article

Corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) disclosure has become an increasingly important mechanism for improving transparency, accountability, and climate governance. Although ISO 14001, ISO 14064, and the GHG Protocol provide complementary approaches to environmental management, greenhouse gas quantification, and reporting, studies integrating these frameworks remain limited, particularly in emerging economies. This study proposes and theoretically substantiates an integrated Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV)-based governance framework and empirically examines organizational characteristics associated with Brazilian companies that voluntarily publish Gold-level GHG inventories under the Brazilian GHG Protocol Program. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, combining bibliometric analysis, thematic content analysis supported by NVivo, and statistical analyses based on a sample of 92 organizations. The empirical analysis evaluates the association between ISO 14001 certification and selected organizational characteristics, including public listing status, within this homogeneous group of companies recognized for preparing complete and independently verified GHG inventories. The findings indicate a statistically significant association between ISO 14001 certification and public listing status and suggest that robust climate disclosure is supported by complementary governance, measurement, verification, and reporting practices rather than by the isolated adoption of individual standards. The study contributes to the literature by proposing an integrated MRV-based governance framework, providing empirical evidence from the Brazilian context, and offering practical insights for organizations seeking to strengthen the credibility and transparency of corporate climate reporting. Full article

A persistent difficulty in monitoring private-credit risk is that narrative and quantitative information in periodic filings are produced jointly but evaluated separately. This leaves open the question of whether disclosure language is a useful signal of risk management behaviour or merely an echo of conditions already visible in published data. For business development companies (BDCs), this separation carries a particular cost: the sector sits at the intersection of private credit, fair-value accounting, and floating-rate funding, where filing language about portfolio conditions and the macro environment may reflect the cycle itself rather than add to what published rate and spread data already reveal. This paper asks two questions. First, do aggregate BDC text measures of macro and portfolio-credit language co-move with key macro series over time? Second, does cross-sectional text intensity relate in a stable, linear way to the same BDC’s reported ratios and their volatility? Using dictionary-based filing scores linked to over 590 BDC observations and macro series from 2010 to 2025, we find macro text in filings correlates strongly with variables such as the Federal funds rate and the two-year Treasury yield. Portfolio-credit text lines up with corporate spreads and the unemployment rate. At the firm-year level, associations between text and balance-sheet outcomes are weak. This indicates that BDC narratives are linked with the macro cycle, but there is not a tight mapping to risk metrics in reported financials from year to year, consistent with a degree of insulation in private credit from prevailing macro conditions. For creditors, investors, and supervisors of private-credit vehicles, this asymmetry of macro co-movement without firm-level signal has direct implications for how narrative disclosure should be weighted in risk monitoring and governance frameworks. The aggregate regression results are based on sixteen annual observations and should be interpreted accordingly. Full article