This study investigates how anti-corruption disclosure (ACD) affects non-performing loans (NPL) using 125 banks in 32 Sub-Saharan African countries from 2012 to 2023. We developed an ACD index which measures both transparency levels and anti-corruption reporting quality through the analysis of annual reports from banks. We find the results to be consistent with our hypothesis showing anti-corruption disclosure being negatively associated with NPL. The negative association between ACD and NPL is higher in listed banks which indicates that market discipline enhances disclosure. Overall, the results emphasise the critical importance of transparency in the promotion of resilience to credit risk and systemic stability in emerging banking systems.
This paper revisits the Double Jeopardy (DJ) regularity in digital entertainment using the public MovieLens 32M archive. DJ predicts that brands with higher penetration also have slightly higher loyalty. We first run a preregistered test at the movie level, treating each movie as a brand within its genre and measuring loyalty as the mean user-level share of category requirements (SCR). Across the five largest eligible genres—Drama, Comedy, Thriller, Romance, and Action—penetration is positively associated with mean SCR, with Spearman’s ρ between 0.424 and 0.530 and every preregistered confidence interval excluding zero. But each user rates a given movie only once, so this measure captures how large a share of a viewer’s genre repertoire a movie fills, not repeat demand. We therefore read the preregistered result as a penetration–repertoire-share association and add an exploratory extension at the franchise level. Treating film franchises (identified from TMDb collections) as brands and their rated installments as repeat occasions, we again find a positive penetration–loyalty association and a modest, DJ-consistent asymmetry: larger franchises have higher mean SCR, and penetration varies more than loyalty. Overall, the results qualify rather than simply confirm DJ in digital entertainment: the clearest DJ-like evidence appears when the unit of analysis allows repeated category choice.
This paper provides an overview of risk management in the insurance sector, combining theoretical principles with practical and regulatory perspectives. Starting with a simplified model of risk pooling, we demonstrate how diversification creates benefits for risk-averse policyholders. In a next step, we present a simple model to illustrate the main goal of quantitative risk management: The optimization of performance subject to a variety of constraints rather than a pure minimization of risks. We continue by reviewing the main fields of application of risk management and elaborate on the rationality of risk management due to market frictions. Finally, our discussion of solvency regulation and alternative policyholder protection mechanisms highlights the trade-offs between financial resilience, costs, and market efficiency. Overall, the paper demonstrates that, in addition to being a regulatory requirement, risk management in insurance is a strategic instrument for balancing policyholder protection, economic efficiency, and long-term sustainability.
Addressing the scarcity of replication studies in marketing and consumer research, this study replicates a model examining drivers of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes in video streaming consumption and cross-validates it in the broader market of commercial video streaming services. The model is extended by incorporating users’ content-related information exchange on social media, conceptualized as electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Representative survey data from 1030 German video streaming service users were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results support the central role of habit and content quality in shaping actual usage and service-related word of mouth (WOM), while system quality is especially important for brand perception. In the extended model, eWOM is positively associated with both WOM and brand perception. In contrast, eWOM is not significantly associated with actual usage. Overall, the study strengthens the empirical evidence for the original model and supports its robustness across contexts. From a management perspective, streaming services benefit from prioritizing habit-forming features and content investments to drive usage. In addition, fostering content-related information exchange on social media and improving system quality are better directed toward brand building and encouraging recommendations.
This paper extends prior research on firms’ ex-ante disclosure behavior by linking disclosure of private cost information to realized ESG-specific willingness to pay in a duopoly market where random cost shocks generate spillovers into firms’ negative production externalities. Spillovers reduce incentives to disclose under quantity competition but increase them under price competition, consistent with existing results. Introducing industry-wide cost shocks that induce cross-firm spillovers generates new insights: If a firm’s disclosed cost information affects the rival’s realized ESG-specific willingness to pay, disclosure is no longer a dominant strategy. This allows for overlapping symmetric disclosure equilibria across competition types and, under price competition, the coexistence of asymmetric disclosure equilibria. From a regulatory perspective, the welfare effects of disclosure mandates depend on market structure. Welfare-enhancing mandates always reduce expected damage under quantity competition but may unintentionally increase it under price competition.
We examine how firm age affects the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) within the workforce. Drawing on a novel dataset developed by Babina et al. (2024) combining resume and job posting data for U.S. firms, we find that older firms often encounter difficulties integrating AI talent, possibly due to entrenched practices, outdated systems, and resistance to change. Specifically, a rise in firm age by one standard deviation reduces the share of AI workers by 5.2%. However, investments in R&D and infrastructure can mitigate these challenges, enabling modernization and attracting skilled AI professionals. Importantly, our analysis reveals that board composition, particularly the presence of female and minority directors, impacts AI adoption. In older firms, risk-averse decision-making and slower consensus-building among diverse boards may hinder the integration of AI talent. Firms that successfully integrate AI talent achieve significant improvements in market valuation and operational efficiency. Our study provides practical insights for managers and policymakers aiming to guide mature organizations through the challenges of technological transformation. Our findings relate to internal AI capability development and may not fully capture firms' reliance on external AI solutions.
Despite the rapid growth of Women’s Entrepreneurship Education Programs (WEEPs), their long-term impact on women’s entrepreneurial trajectories remains contested. Drawing on 44 in-depth interviews with participants and program managers across twelve WEEPs in the German-speaking region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), we employ the framework of possible selves to analyze how these programs shape identity development, confidence, and ecosystem integration. Our findings show that WEEPs are highly effective in creating safe spaces that foster trust, role modeling, and early-stage learning. Yet their transformative potential is limited when these safe spaces remain disconnected from the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem. We argue that “brave spaces” must not be equated with existing male-dominated environments, but instead actively co-created as inclusive arenas where systemic barriers can be addressed collectively. By conceptualizing WEEPs as identity spaces that balance emotional safety with strategic exposure, this study advances understanding of how entrepreneurship education can move beyond short-term empowerment toward structural change in entrepreneurial ecosystems. Women’s Entrepreneurship Education Programs (WEEPs) offer women entrepreneurs mentorship, training, and supportive peer communities. Our research shows that these programs are highly valuable for building confidence and experimenting with new entrepreneurial identities in safe, protected environments. Yet, if they remain isolated, WEEPs risk reinforcing separation from mainstream networks, finance, and opportunities. We propose that programs should not only provide safe spaces but also help build brave spaces: inclusive environments where men and women alike can engage with difficult topics, challenge systemic bias, and develop ventures together.
Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the widespread shift to remote work, interest has grown in how these changes have affected online labor markets. We study individuals who were active in both the conventional labor market and an online labor market prior to this shock, and compare workers who were shifted from on-site to remote work in their main job with those who remained on-site. To provide insights into how changes in working conditions affect productivity in online labor markets, we utilized a unique dataset obtained from a prominent online labor marketplace. Our dataset contains several measures of worker productivity, which we analyze in conjunction with survey data collected from online workers regarding their experiences with conventional market changes. By combining these two sources of data, we are able to investigate the ways in which the pandemic-induced shift toward remote work has affected the productivity and behavior of online workers. We find that, first, the shift toward remote work during the pandemic has led to changes in the patterns of productivity in online labor markets. The transition toward remote work from home (WFH) decreased online productivity by 18
This paper examines how market context and supply-side market actors are associated with popular support for market-restrictive housing regulation in Germany. Using a quota-based vignette survey, we compare rental and sales contexts and private owners and real estate companies as supply-side actors. Preferences for market-restrictive housing regulation aimed at protecting the demand side of the market are stronger in rental than in sales contexts and stronger when the actor is framed as a real estate company rather than a private owner.Perceived power asymmetry and supply skepticism show related but more differentiated patterns, whereas zero-sum thinking is widespread but comparatively insensitive to the experimental frames. By focusing on Germany as a rental-oriented, regulation-heavy housing market, the study extends the predominantly U.S.-focused literature on housing-related folk-economic reasoning and clarifies which associations are especially salient under recurring rental dependence. From a business-economics perspective, the findings show how public moral-economic reasoning may matter indirectly for firms by strengthening political demand for market restrictions in a highly salient sector.
Negative word of mouth (NWoM) can be a major factor in new product diffusion, as indicated by Goldenberg et al. (2007). We extend their work by accounting for the role of consumer uncertainty for NWoM’s impact on adoption dynamics. Using an agent-based simulation framework, we compare three different models for consumers’ possible navigation of uncertainty about the product quality—namely, the Goldenberg approach of ignoring uncertainty, Bayesian updating, and a novel approach (“Contradicting Signal Treatment Approach”, CoSiTA), in which consumers remain uncertain when facing contradictory information and delay their decision until the uncertainty is largely resolved. An empirical survey among German consumers suggests that all three types of behavior can be found in the population. Extensive computational experiments indicate that the Goldenberg model overestimates the detrimental effect of NWoM on product diffusion compared to the other two approaches. Furthermore, the diffusion under CoSiTA is considerably slower compared to Bayesian agents and generates a saddle in the adoption curve for certain social network structures. Simulations of a mixed market with all three types of consumers show that the interaction of groups who navigate uncertainty differently generates effects that qualitatively differ from a linear aggregation of the effects within each group.
Work is increasingly liberated from its traditional spatial and temporal anchors, establishing hybrid work as the most prominent work mode among knowledge workers. Hybrid workers often enjoy autonomy in deciding whether to work from the office or remotely, giving them the freedom to bypass the office as a place of work. Previous research has primarily focused on individual factors driving remote work intentions, overlooking employees’ direct office experiences. We shift attention to what we term “office-work regret”, a negative emotion hybrid workers experience within the office. This paper first conceptualizes office-work regret through regret theory and proposes its emergence through disconfirmations. Next, this study empirically investigates the impact of office-work regret on hybrid workers’ intentions to forgo the office in favor of remote work. This paper yields theoretical contributions by adding office-work regret as a negative emotion induced through disconfirmations within the office to the discussion of remote work’s emergence antecedents. By highlighting the role of space for remote workers, we posit that organizations must manage office-work regret when deeming office attendance.
This study investigates how German firms affected by the COVID-19 pandemic plan to pass on crisis-related costs to their stakeholders. Using a unique firm-level dataset, we analyze survey responses on planned pay cuts across four groups: shareholders, executives, middle managers, and other employees. The data provides detailed insights into whether and to what extent firms are impacted by the pandemic. Our findings show that affected firms plan reductions in payments for all stakeholder groups, resulting in lower dividends or smaller future compensation increases. Firms affected by the crisis are approximately 20.6–24.4 percentage points more likely to plan such reductions, with stronger effects observed in firms experiencing greater levels of impact. Additionally, we find evidence of heterogeneity: larger firms with more employees are more likely to implement planned pay cuts. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that when firms plan to reduce payments for multiple groups, they tend to pass costs onto those who are closely related within the organizational hierarchy. To address potential endogeneity in managerial skills, we apply an instrumental variable (IV) approach and conduct several robustness checks, which confirm our results.
Supply chain disruptions in the automotive industry have been increasingly prevalent, especially in recent years due to various factors such as natural disasters, geopolitical tensions, and the global pandemic. These disruptions have led to shortages of critical components, which in turn require orders containing these components to be blocked for production. Such component blockings can result in production delays and significantly increased production costs. In this paper, we propose a mixed-integer linear programming based short-term master production scheduling approach that strives to balance two contradicting goals in the presence of component blockings: the timely completion of customer orders and the need to maintain a mix of orders in the plant that allows for the construction of a feasible production sequence. Unlike existing approaches for short-term master production scheduling, we use a volume-oriented model formulation and consider the structure of a typical automotive plant, its inventories, and crucial lead times. Furthermore, we anticipate reduced component installation rates due to interdependencies of sequencing rules. In a simulation study, we demonstrate the practical viability of our approach. In particular, in a scenario with multiple component blockings, we show that it considerably reduces the number of sequencing rule violations that can lead to expensive rework or line stoppages while minimizing due date deviation costs.
Managers are usually bestowed with multiple mechanisms to elicit cooperation from subordinates. Given that these mechanisms are often employed concurrently, it is imperative to understand how their joint deployment influences worker cooperation. Using a public goods game, we experimentally manipulate two mechanisms which constitute salient features of management, namely (a) manager contribution sequencing, and (b) the pecuniary implications for the manager when applying sanctions by punishing or rewarding subordinates. Surprisingly, our findings demonstrate that neither mechanism has a direct significant effect on group cooperation levels, but that they considerably affect manager and worker behavior on both the individual and group level. In certain treatments, rewards significantly improve contributions, while punishments, when significant, always reduce contributions. Moreover, second-mover managers who bear the pecuniary consequences of their sanctioning experience negative and significant effects on group contributions when they frequently reward or punish, indicating that habitual sanctioning can become detrimental regardless of its type. The findings suggest that managers’ behavior can considerably affect the typically salient motives of reciprocity and inequality aversion among workers. We further discuss how these subtle effects reflect the dilemmas that managers face when endeavoring to boost the cooperation levels of their subordinates.
This study investigates how national culture shapes the effectiveness of corporate governance in controlling agency costs associated with cash holdings. Using data from 4675 firms in 42 countries over 2003–2023 (34,293 firm-year observations), we analyze how the cultural dimension of ‘tightness-looseness’ influences the relationship between corporate governance and cash holdings. Our findings support the flexibility hypothesis where opportunistic managers keep more than optimal cash levels. We show that strong governance reduces excess cash reserves, but its effectiveness varies by cultural context. Governance controls agency costs more effectively in tight cultures, but less effectively in loose ones. This study highlights the importance of culture-sensitive governance policies in global corporate finance.
Increasing focus is being placed on the diversity of boards, and it is rapidly becoming an important element of corporate governance. Apart from supervising the management team and aligning the interests of managers with those of shareholders, diverse board members are also expected to bring varied knowledge, expertise, valuable resources, and different perspectives to the company. This study aims to explore how board diversity affects CEO compensation incentives based on the database comprising 8568 firm-year observations, including United States non-financial and non-utility companies from 2007 to 2016. This research finds that boards with various dimensions of diversity reduce the CEO equity incentives (such as vega of stocks and options and vega of options) and enhance the CEO inside debt incentives (the CEO relative leverage ratio). When investigating the association between specific components of the board diversity index and CEO compensation incentives, we found that it is not just gender diversity but also financial expertise diversity that has a positive link with CEO inside debt incentives.
The transition to a sustainable energy system requires the development of efficient hydrogen supply chains (HSCs) to support the growing demand for clean hydrogen. National hydrogen strategies play a critical role in shaping the design and implementation of these supply chains by defining technological pathways, policy frameworks, and market structures. This study analyzes the hydrogen strategies of seven leading countries—Australia, Germany, Spain, the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France—to identify key elements influencing HSC design. A systematic literature review complements this analysis by assessing how these elements are addressed in business and management research. The findings reveal that countries adopt different strategic positions based on their natural resources, industrial capabilities, and geopolitical objectives. Additionally, the study highlights global drivers and barriers to hydrogen adoption, including policy support, cost competitiveness, and infrastructure challenges. The results contribute to the understanding of how national strategies influence HSC development and propose a conceptual framework linking strategic positioning to supply chain design. This research provides a foundation for future studies on hydrogen supply chain management and policymaking, outlining a research agenda to address existing gaps and enhance the design of hydrogen supply chains in the context of the global energy transition.
The emergence of green hydrogen as a versatile base chemical and energy carrier has led to a wide range of supply chain design and management challenges, which are addressed in this special issue of the Journal of Business Economics. The contributions offer a multifaceted view on hydrogen supply chain management, spanning national strategies, sector-specific applications, global sourcing considerations, analytical evaluation methods, spatial infrastructure planning, investment decisions, and strategic interaction among market participants. Integrating these complementary perspectives, the special issue illustrates the progress achieved to date and provides a comprehensive outlook on the remaining challenges.
In terms of cross-sectoral defossilization, Power-to-X processes seem promising by utilizing renewable electricity to produce sustainable energy carriers. However, their widespread adoption is hindered by technological, economic and environmental uncertainties. This study addresses these uncertainties by analyzing the production of regenerative fuels via Fischer-Tropsch (FT) and Methanol-to-Gasoline (M2G) syntheses. By integrating multiple scenario-based configurations of supply chains—ranging from electricity generation sources (grid, wind, photovoltaic (PV)) to hydrogen production technologies (alkaline, proton exchange membrane, and solid oxide electrolysis), heat supply options (natural gas, heat pump, process heat), and carbon capture methods (point source and direct air capture)—a comprehensive comparative economic and environmental life cycle analysis of renewable fuel production pathways is presented. The results suggests that supply chains incorporating alkaline electrolyser, point source carbon capture and heat pump in conjunction with an import strategy for intermediates produced with high renewable energy capacity factors appears to be the most promising. Trade-offs can be observed between M2G and FT as well as for PV and wind, wherein FT and PV show lower cost and M2G and wind show less emissions. In addition, the study highlights that decision-making on supply chain configuration is highly sensitive to regional aspects like infrastructure and resource availabilities (renewables, CO2), geopolitical and legal conditions. This poses a challenge not only in terms of establishing resilient supply chains, but also in terms of monitoring the various stakeholders along the entire value chain for the purposes of traceability and sustainability reporting.
This study reviews the behavioral effects of feedback in management accounting research, based on 46 papers published between 1991 and 2024, beginning after the most recent review by Peter F. Luckett and Ian R. Eggleton in 1991. Following the systematic approach of Luckett and Eggleton (Acc Organ Soc 16:371–394, 1991), the review highlights the progress in the feedback research literature and formulates avenues for future research. While existing research in this field has offered valuable insights into the elements of feedback messages and the feedback environment, further exploration is needed in three key areas: the dynamic interplay among all feedback components, a deeper examination of contextual factors, and the influence of technological advances on feedback research.
