This paper replicates a judicial experiment originally conducted on 61 U.S. federal judges, this time with GPT-5 as the decision-maker. The experiment involves a choice-of-law dispute in a hypothetical automobile accident case, where three variables are manipulated: (1) whether the applicable doctrine is a rule or a standard, (2) whether the plaintiff or defendant is portrayed more sympathetically, and (3) the location of the accident, which affects the legal outcome under different states' choice-of-law rules. Consistent with our prior work, we find that the LLM adheres to the legally correct outcome, as determined by the experimental design, significantly more often than human judges. In fact, the LLM makes no errors at all.
]]>Development of a Sustainable Biomass-Derived Nano-Adsorbent (NA1) from Watermelon and Pigeon Pea Leaves for Enhanced Pollutant Removal in Batch and Continuous Systems with Excellent Antibacterial Activity.
This study aims to develop a photo-induced nano-adsorbent material derived from watermelon leaves (WML) by incorporating green-synthesized titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs) using Pigeon Pea leaves extract. The prepared nano-adsorbent will significantly reduce reliance on traditional chemical-based methods for its synthesis. Morphological and structural studies confirm the successful formation of spherical TiO2 NPs with an average size of 48 nm, whereas FESEM-EDX studies further validate the incorporation of NPs within the bio-adsorbent, and BET analysis demonstrates a substantial improvement in specific surface area from 31.6 to 96.99 m2/g after incorporating TiO2 NPs in WML. The prepared nano-adsorbent was used for removing Cr (VI) from industrial wastewater, and the results depict the highest Cr (VI) adsorption percentage, up to 90% compared to pristine WML at optimized conditions. Kinetics and isotherm findings predict the pseudo-second-order model (chemisorption-controlled), and the Langmuir isotherm provides the best-fitting model to the experimental data. Response surface methodology (RSM) using central composite design (CCD) reflects good agreement between actual and predicted value under optimized condition signify the reliability and adequacy of the predicted model. Moreover, the antibacterial efficacy of the prepared nano-adsorbent was studied against Escherichia coli (E.coli) using extended Derjaguin–Landau–Verwey–Overbeek (XDLVO) theory in terms of adsorbent surface charge and interfacial interactions between the foulant and the adsorbent surface. The result depicts a threefold reduction in interaction energy (less negative value of ∆GTOT) after incorporating TiO2 NPs, depicting stronger antibacterial properties. Lastly, adsorption column design using Bed depth service time (BDST), the Adams–Bohart and Thomas model fitting concludes the mass-transfer-controlled adsorption process and deploy the scalability of the process in a packed bed application.
]]>Environmental sustainability in logistics has become increasingly critical as firms experience growing pressure to reduce their emissions and improve their overall supply chain's ESP. The emissions associated with the transportation, warehousing, and distribution activities of their logistics service providers (LSPs) can significantly affect their ESP. In India, freight transportation is heavily dependent on road transportation, and road freights account for a substantial share in freight-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While Green Logistics Practices (GLPs), such as route optimisation, energy-efficient warehousing, and cleaner transportation, can improve environmental outcomes, their adoption remains uneven, particularly in emerging economies. Existing research has largely examined individual drivers of GLP adoption or focused on manufacturing and broader supply chain contexts, with limited understanding of how these drivers are interrelated and their relative importance in influencing GLP adoption. The study addresses this gap by modelling the inter-relationships among GLP drivers and weighting their relative importance for LSPs in an emerging economy context. This study analyses the drivers of adoption of GLPs and their relationship with the environmental sustainability performance (ESP) of LSPs using Institutional Theory and Stakeholder Theory. A multi-method approach is used. Modified Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (m-TISM) is used to examine the hierarchical relationships among key drivers, while the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to determine their relative importance based on expert evaluations. The m-TISM findings show that legislative and regulatory compliance and customer pressure are the two primary external drivers. “Willingness to gain competitive advantage,” “collaboration with and commitment from suppliers” and “management commitment and support” emerge as organisational enablers, with management commitment and support identified as the most important internal driver. The results show a clear hierarchy from external pressures to organizational enablers and then to GLP adoption. GLP adoption is linked to environmental sustainability performance of LSPs. The AHP results further show that legislative and regulatory compliance and customer pressure are the two most important external drivers. The study contributes by providing a theoretically informed and context-specific understanding of the interrelationships and relative importance of GLP drivers for LSPs in India. The findings offer practical insights for managers and policymakers to strengthen the adoption of GLPs and environmental sustainability in the logistics sector.
]]>This study examines the association between senior executive pay and corporate sustainability performance using 14,524 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms over the period 2019–2023. This period provides consistent data availability and encompasses China's transition towards the 2020 dual-carbon policy. Drawing on agency, managerial power, stakeholder and resource dependence theories, we investigate nonlinear effects, green innovation as a mediating mechanism, and governance and ownership as boundary conditions. We find that senior executive pay is positively associated with sustainability performance, although this association weakens at higher levels of pay. Green innovation partially mediates this relationship, while gender composition, managerial age, overseas experience and board independence condition its strength. The positive association is stronger among state-owned enterprises, particularly after 2020. These findings remain robust to alternative measures of executive pay, lagged specifications, additional governance controls, propensity score matching and entropy balancing. Overall, the findings suggest that compensation design should account for sustainability objectives, compensation levels, governance characteristics and the broader institutional context.
]]>Sustainability challenges increasingly require firms to work with diverse innovation ecosystem actors, yet how these interactions relate to environmental and social (ES) solutions remains unclear. Using two-wave survey data from 270 multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiaries in China, this study examines how subsidiaries' perceived cooperation and rule-governed competition with innovation ecosystem partners are associated with ES solutions, directly and indirectly through ambidextrous open innovation, and whether digitalization capabilities moderate these associations. Competition was positively associated with ES solutions, whereas cooperation showed no direct association. Ambidextrous open innovation accounted for significant indirect associations, consistent with complementary mediation for competition and indirect-only mediation for cooperation. Digitalization capabilities strengthened the cooperation–ambidextrous open innovation association but did not significantly moderate the competition pathway. By distinguishing rule-governed competitive conduct toward partners from market competitive intensity, this study clarifies distinct subsidiary-level pathways linking coopetition to ES solutions through inbound and outbound knowledge flows. It also identifies digitalization capabilities as a boundary condition for the cooperation pathway when subsidiaries manage knowledge-protection concerns.
]]>The paper examines the influence of environmental performance on corporate controversies of public listed firms in the ASEAN-5 countries with a special focus on how family business moderates this relationship. Grounded by socioemotional wealth theory and legitimacy theory using 1616 firm-year observations between 2017 and 2024. Panel data regressions are employed to measure the relationship and further sensitivity analysis are conducted to ensure consistency of the results. The findings indicate that environmental performance and corporate controversies have a statistically significant negative relation, meaning that companies with a higher environmental performance have lower levels of corporate controversies. Interestingly, such a relationship is reinforced by the existence of family business, which implies that firms owned by families convert environmental efforts into reputational defense and the avoidance of controversies is greater. The implication of these findings is that the maintenance of socioemotional wealth and increased legitimacy issues are a source of motivation that drives family firms to focus more on environmental performance as a strategic tool to minimize corporate scandals. The research has significant implications for regulators and policymakers in the process of structuring governance systems that will promote environmental responsibility, especially in the economic systems where family-based firms operate. The study is an addition to the existing literature since it offers new empirical data on the interaction between family ownership, environmental performance, and corporate controversies within the ASEAN-5 environment.
]]>This paper examines the impact of anti-money laundering (AML) oversight on suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed by real estate agencies in Norway. Using unique data on inspections, sanctions, and confidential SARs, the study estimates the effects of inspections on reporting through a difference-in-differences approach. The results show an increase in reporting post-inspection driven by entities with a low, positive number of prior filings, while report quality remains unchanged. There is no evidence of spillover effects; inspections do not influence the reporting of uninspected entities either geographically close to or affiliated with inspected ones. The findings suggest that AML oversight may create a learning effect for inspected entities but does not lead to sector-wide improvements beyond local effects. This paper contributes to the modest empirical literature on AML oversight effects and the general literature on regulatory enforcement and provides recommendations for improvements to the AML system.
]]>This paper investigates significant Italian banks' exposure to climate-related physical risks from the perspective of operational risk. Focusing on acute physical risks, proxied by floods and storms, the analysis adopts a microeconomic and spatial perspective to assess how the territorial distribution of banks' branches at the provincial (NUTS3) level interacts with the geographical incidence of extreme climate events. Spatial autocorrelation techniques are employed to characterize the geographical clustering of both climate events and banking activity. To quantify relative exposure, bank- and province-specific indicators based on Manhattan distance measures, capturing the joint distribution of climate events and banking presence, are used. The results highlight substantial heterogeneity in banks' geographical exposure to climate-related disasters. While the proposed indicators do not aim to predict realized losses, they provide a transparent and replicable framework to identify areas of heightened climate vulnerability for banks.
]]>This research synthesises a decade of theoretical research on green HRM with corporate social responsibility (CSR). Green human resource management (GHRM) has emerged as a strategic lever to integrate environmental concerns into core HR functions, supporting organisations in aligning their internal practices with broader sustainability goals. The debate on green HRM and CSR seems to be fragmented and unclear in the existing literature. The systematic review and bibliometric analysis were conducted on 224 peer-reviewed articles from 2011 to 2023. This paper adopts the Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) protocol based on performance analysis and science mapping to explore the structure, evolution, and thematic directions of GHRM. Through co-citation and keyword co-occurrence analyses, it identifies core clusters of knowledge and classifies research themes into motor, foundational, specialised, and emerging areas. Finally, a thematic analysis reveals the future research avenues, including the integration of digital technologies, alternative leadership models, and the psychological underpinnings of green employee behaviour. This research contributes to both academic and managerial discourse by demonstrating how GHRM serves not only as an operational human resources management practice but as a key enabler of CSR and sustainability strategies. We integrate stakeholder theory and AMO theory by considering multistakeholders' needs and expectations. This review provides a fresh perspective on the adoption of green HRM and CSR for business and society. The findings offer actionable insights for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers committed to fostering environmentally responsible and socially aligned organisations.
]]>The study examines how board governance mechanisms influence the quality of sustainability reporting among listed firms in Sub-Saharan Africa, where weak institutional frameworks increase the need for strong corporate oversight. The research employed a sample of 1530 firm-year observations from 2015 to 2024, and applied panel fixed effects and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) in system models to estimate the results. The findings reveal that board attributes plays a key role in shaping the quality of sustainability disclosures across the models. The novelty of this study lies in its emphasis on board governance supporting environmental sustainability over social and economic dimensions. Firms with more independent board members, higher female representation, and directors with financial, auditing, and sustainability expertise produce more credible sustainability reports. These board attributes strengthen oversight and enhance transparency and accountability. However, board size has a negative effect, suggesting that large boards may face coordination and monitoring challenges. This study contributes new evidence by extending sustainability reporting literature in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that remains unexplored. The results offer practical insights for firms and policymakers. Companies are encouraged to maintain a sizable board of directors that would strengthen board composition through diversity and relevant expertise. Improving external assurance of sustainability reports is also important for building trust and accountability.
]]>This paper seeks to investigate the pressing need for a clearer understanding of how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) can be properly adopted and positively impact business performance. Despite the growing interest from organizations in DEI, many initiatives fail to translate into measurable outcomes, identifying the conditions under which DEI can influence performance. We adopt a mix-method approach that combines a qualitative and quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis reveals that certain DEI antecedents are needed to effectively adopt DEI initiatives. Moreover, several governance-based facilitators emerge as crucial elements in ensuring a greater DEI impact. Subsequently, we use the results from the qualitative analysis as input to run a quantitative analysis and test the impact of DEI antecedents and initiatives on business performance. A deep analysis of these relationships shows that companies can adopt certain governance-based facilitators to activate a positive influence on business performance, specifically: transparency and communication, reporting unethical behavior systems, commitment to ethical governance, promoting ethical practices and legal compliance, addressing internal conflicts, and combating and preventing corruption. Notably, these facilitators enable either an indirect impact of DEI antecedents and/or diversity in improving business performance, but none of them strengthen the effect of equity and inclusion.
]]>The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in healthcare presents a paradox at the intersection of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental sustainability. While AI-driven health innovations promise life-saving benefits and social good, their development often entails substantial carbon emissions that contradict environmental commitments. This study investigates the CSR–AI paradox by examining how consumers perceive and respond to the duality of health innovation and environmental responsibility in AI-enabled healthcare products. Drawing on cognitive dissonance theory, moral licensing, and greenwashing frameworks, we conducted a scenario-based experimental study to analyze consumer reactions to discrepancies between firms' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) claims and actual carbon footprints. We introduce and operationalize the concept of Carbon Accountability Elasticity (CAE) as a conceptual framework to quantify and guide analysis of trade-offs between health utility and environmental accountability. The results reveal that greenwashing—particularly vague or unsubstantiated ESG claims—triggers significant consumer disappointment, reduces willingness to pay, and erodes trust, especially when high carbon footprints are disclosed post-purchase. However, consumers demonstrate greater tolerance for environmental costs in the case of life-critical innovations, such as AI-powered cancer screening, highlighting a moral licensing effect. These findings underscore the importance of transparent ESG reporting and authentic sustainability practices in AI healthcare innovation. The study offers theoretical and managerial insights for advancing responsible innovation that aligns social benefit with environmental stewardship, supporting both sustainable development goals and stakeholder accountability.
]]>This study examines how firm size, broad geographic context and economic sector are associated with Refinitiv environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings. Using 2022 data for 6829 internationally listed firms, it compares the number of employees, market capitalisation and total assets and analyses the overall ESG rating and its three pillars separately. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, multiple regressions, hierarchical analyses and robustness tests are applied. Larger firms obtain higher ratings across all size measures. Total assets show the strongest individual association with the overall rating and each pillar, particularly the environmental pillar. Geographic context contributes more to the environmental and social models than to governance, whereas sector adds comparatively little explanatory power. Separate-proxy and fractional-response models confirm the stability of the findings. The results show that size measures are not interchangeable and that aggregate ESG ratings conceal important pillar-level differences, supporting a context-sensitive interpretation of sustainability ratings.
]]>This study examines the use of empirical discourse in US House of Representatives committee hearings (1997–2016, N = 12, 428), analyzing over 5.8 million sentences using machine learning classification. We find that empirical discourse has increased over time, not necessarily as a marker of evidence-based policymaking, but driven mainly by the minority. Minority legislators—both Republican and Democrat—rely on empirical arguments more than majority legislators, and more so as the majority-minority control gap increases. Senior minority members use substantially more empirical discourse, suggesting that empirical discourse is acquired as a substitute for power. We estimate the effect as ranging between 15% and 40%, depending on seniority. Using an event study design, we find that when power shifts (twice throughout the duration of our study), those who used less empirical discourse subsequently use more of it, and vice versa; this is also true at the individual level for House members who survived reelection but switched from being in the minority to being in the majority or vice versa. Overall, these findings support a “Power or Knowledge” framework, whereby the majority controls the agenda whereas the minority leverages empirical discourse to assert its voice.
]]>Considering the role of capital market governance in guiding corporate green transformation under the goal of environmental protection, this paper aims to empirically study the impact of stock liquidity on corporate ESG based on the data of listed companies in China from 2009 to 2021. The empirical results indicate that stock liquidity exerts a positive impact on the overall corporate ESG and the three specific dimensions, such as environmental performance, social responsibility, and corporate governance. Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that stock liquidity can positively affect the ESG performance by inducing green technology innovation and improving managerial shareholding. Finally, the results for heterogeneity indicate that stock liquidity's positive impact on corporate ESG varies among different firms, which is stronger in heavily polluting industries, competitive industries, and western regions. By alleviating the influence of stock liquidity on corporate ESG performance, this study provides certain policy implications for promoting green transformation.
]]>Migrant entrepreneurs operating in host-country markets face xenophobia, capital exclusion, and institutional discrimination that threaten basic business survival, yet this context remains theoretically underspecified. Existing research frames CSR as an optional legitimacy tool in stable, developed-country settings, overlooking contexts where institutional protection is absent. Drawing on Stakeholder Theory, Legitimacy Theory, and the Resource-Based View, the present study interprets the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as manifesting, in the participants' accounts, as a strategy oriented towards survival rather than as a discretionary legitimacy tool and introduces moral capital as an institutional substitute in developing-country migrant entrepreneurship. Using an exploratory qualitative design, 21 in-depth interviews were conducted with migrant-owned businesses in Türkiye; inductive content analysis revealed four CSR dimensions: employee-oriented, customer-oriented, societal, and environmental. The findings suggest that, in these participants' narratives, CSR operates less as a discretionary strategy and more as a central means through which market access, legitimacy, and resilience are pursued under structural scarcity. These findings represent an interpretive extension of the existing CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) theoretical framework, proposing that within such contexts, CSR may function more closely as a survival-oriented mechanism than as a reputational option.
]]>This study investigates how large corporations rhetorically respond to social activism and how such responses are used to construct and manage corporate legitimacy. Using the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement as an empirical context, the study examines how corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication attempts to shape organizational discourse and the development of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. Drawing on qualitative analyses of multi-source data from CSR disclosures, annual reports, executive communications, and media outputs of 50 firms from the Fortune 500, the study employs systematic content and thematic analyses to examine how organizations construct, articulate, and legitimize their responses to social activism. The findings demonstrate that corporations strategically attempt to deploy logos, ethos, and pathos to construct cognitive, pragmatic, and moral legitimacy, with rhetorical patterns varying across industries and communication platforms. Overall, the study advances CSR and business ethics scholarship by theorizing corporate rhetoric as a central mechanism through which firms navigate legitimacy under conditions of heightened social scrutiny.
]]>Big data is promoted as a route to better environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, yet evidence on its benefits is mixed, suggesting its value depends on firm-level conditions that remain unclear. Drawing on resource-based, absorptive-capacity and stakeholder theories, this study proposes corporate social responsibility (CSR) as one such condition and tests it using fixed-effects models on 1529 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms over 2009–2023. We find that big data is positively associated with ESG performance and that this association strengthens as CSR increases (β = 0.004, p < 0.05). This complementarity, however, is confined to private firms; in state-owned enterprises, CSR and big data act as substitutes. These findings imply that private firms should pair data investment with stakeholder engagement, whereas policymakers should tailor digital-sustainability programmes to firms' ownership. By reframing CSR as a condition that makes data capabilities productive, the study advances digital sustainability research.
]]>Despite leachate contamination being common around dumpsites, studies integrating spatial variation, soil-depth profiles, groundwater quality, and associated environmental risks remain limited. This study assessed leachate, soil, and groundwater quality in the vicinity of a municipal solid-waste dumpsite in Jaipur, India, using spatial sampling structured by distance, direction, and soil depth. Leachate was alkaline and reducing, with pH of 8.2–8.8, electrical conductivity (EC) of 25–29 mS cm−1, total dissolved solids (TDS) of 12,460–16,000 mg L−1, and detectable Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, Ni, and Zn. Maximum soil EC and TDS values were higher at 0.3 m, whereas selected water-extractable ions showed variable depth profiles. Groundwater pH ranged from 6.5 to 8.2, EC from 0.4 to 3.6 mS cm−1, and TDS from 200 to 1770 mg L−1. Borewells east of the study dumpsite showed the highest EC, TDS, and chloride concentrations. Spearman analysis showed depth-specific soil associations and groundwater EC-TDS-chloride-calcium co-variation. Ecological-risk assessment identified Cd as the principal soil-risk driver, with moderate to considerable integrated ecological risk across the investigated soil profile. Soil non-carcinogenic hazard indices were below 1 for adults and children, whereas groundwater-ingestion hazard indices exceeded 1 at assessed locations, particularly for children, and were dominated by Cd. The absence of a consistent concentration decline with distance or depth indicates heterogeneous spatial and vertical variation. The single-campaign spatial design did not confirm source attribution or transport pathways. Leachate treatment, runoff control, protection of groundwater-use areas, and seasonal monitoring are recommended.
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