By incorporating novel social media data, we analyze in detail how US companies offer different employee benefits and how they are associated with several company performance measures. Benefits such ...as 401(k), employee discounts, parking, and vision/dental healthcare are the most commonly provided, while free food -related benefits and family-related benefits are the most scarcely offered. Furthermore, with the aid of efficient machine learning -based models and tools from explainable artificial intelligence, we discover that family-related benefits are often associated with the most satisfied employees and best-performing companies. Our findings indicate that high-growth companies tend to provide a broad array of benefits to their employees. In contrast, highly profitable companies often concentrate on delivering a more limited and specialized set of benefits. We argue that companies offer rare and highly sought benefits to keep and recruit high-performers.
The main research question of the study is this: Is the firm embedded into ecology, society, and governance (ESG), or vice versa? Using the resource‐based view as a theoretical lens, and stakeholder ...capitalism as a paradigm anchored in the Dashgupat Review, we demonstrate in a panel data over 26 years that at the firm level, the relationship between sustained competitive advantage and the ESG footprint is concave shaped, and the impact inequality multiple gaps of the ESG footprint are 4.75 times the providing capacity of the natural and business environment. To solve the common method variance, endogeneity, and unobserved heterogeneity, system GMM is used as a method in a dataset of US manufacturing firms from 1992 to 2019. At the end, we argue that extant attributes of a resource base for sustained competitive advantage have an inherent flaw anchored in the resource‐based view, as they ignore the “environmental, social, and governance (ESG) friendliness” attribute of a resource. Managers need to rethink the objective of their firms if they want to survive in the new ESG‐friendly economy with stakeholder supremacy.
This study examines the ability of crowdsourced employee opinions about their workplace to reveal value‐relevant information about corporate culture. We investigate the employee‐friendly (EF) ...corporate culture values that are strongly associated with firm value and operating performance using a unique social media dataset of approximately 250,000 crowdsourced employee reviews to evaluate 18 distinct characteristics of a firm's corporate culture. The explainable machine learning model is used to examine the nonlinear associations and relative importance of employee‐friendly cultural values. We find that several employee‐friendly corporate culture features are associated with firms' value (Tobin's Q) and operating performance (ROA). Our findings reveal two features whose association is clearly superior to other EF culture variables in our explainable machine learning model: pride in the company for Tobin's Q and job security for ROA. Based on the SHAP values, their effects are positive, significant, and relatively linear.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine contagion among the major world markets during the last 25 years and propose a new way to analyze contagion with wavelet methods. ...Design/methodology/approach - The analysis uses a novel way to study contagion using wavelet methods. The comparison is made between co-movements at different time scales. Co-movement methods of the discrete wavelet transform and the continuous wavelet transform are applied. Findings - Clear signs of contagion among the major markets are found. Short time scale co-movements increase during the major crisis while long time scale co-movements remain approximately at the same level. In addition, gradually increasing interdependence between markets is found. Research limitations/implications - Because of the chosen method, the approach is limited to large data sets. Practical implications - The research has practical implications to portfolio managers etc. who wish to have better view of the dynamics of the international equity markets. Originality/value - The research uses novel wavelet methods to analyze world equity markets. These methods allow the markets to be analyzed in the whole state space.
Purpose
This study aims to examine the association between board gender diversity (BGD) and workplace diversity and the relative importance of various board and firm characteristics in predicting ...diversity.
Design/methodology/approach
With a novel machine learning (ML) approach, this study models the association between three workplace diversity variables and BGD using a social media data set of approximately 250,000 employee reviews. Using the tools of explainable artificial intelligence, the authors interpret the results of the ML model.
Findings
The results show that BGD has a strong positive association with the gender equality and inclusiveness dimensions of corporate diversity culture. However, BGD is found to have a weak negative association with age diversity in a company. Furthermore, the authors find that workplace diversity is an important predictor of firm value, indicating a possible channel on how BGD affects firm performance.
Originality/value
The effects of BGD on workplace diversity below management levels are mainly omitted in the current corporate governance literature. Furthermore, existing research has not considered different dimensions of this diversity and has mainly focused on its gender aspects. In this study, the authors address this research problem and examine how BGD affects different dimensions of diversity at the overall company level. This study reveals important associations and identifies key variables that should be included as a part of theoretical causal models in future research.
PurposeThis paper provides a structured literature review of blockchain in accounting. The authors identify current trends, analyse and critique the key topics of research and discuss the future of ...this nascent field of inquiry.Design/methodology/approachThis study’s analysis combined a structured literature review with citation analysis, topic modelling using a machine learning approach and a manual review of selected articles. The corpus comprised 153 academic papers from two ranked journal lists, the Association of Business Schools (ABS) and the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), and from the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). From this, the authors analysed and critiqued the current and future research trends in the four most predominant topics of research in blockchain for accounting.FindingsBlockchain is not yet a mainstream accounting topic, and most of the current literature is normative. The four most commonly discussed areas of blockchain include the changing role of accountants; new challenges for auditors; opportunities and challenges of blockchain technology application; and the regulation of cryptoassets. While blockchain will likely be disruptive to accounting and auditing, there will still be a need for these roles. With the sheer volume of information that blockchain records, both professions may shift out of the back-office toward higher-profile advisory roles where accountants try to align competitive intelligence with business strategy, and auditors are called on ex ante to verify transactions and even whole ecosystems.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors identify several challenges that will need to be examined in future research. Challenges include skilling up for a new paradigm, the logistical issues associated with managing and monitoring multiple parties all contributing to various public and private blockchains, and the pressing need for legal frameworks to regulate cryptoassets.Practical implicationsThe possibilities that blockchain brings to information disclosure, fraud detection and overcoming the threat of shadow dealings in developing countries all contribute to the importance of further investigation into blockchain in accounting.Originality/valueThe authors’ structured literature review uniquely identifies critical research topics for developing future research directions related to blockchain in accounting.
We present 37 GHz data obtained at Metsahovi Radio Observatory from 2001 December to 2005 April for a large sample of BL Lacertae objects. We also report the mean variability indices and radio ...spectral indices in frequency intervals 5-37 and 37-90 GHz. Approximately 34% of the sample was detected at 37 GHz, 136 BL Lacertae objects in all. A large majority of the detected sources were low-energy BL Lac objects. The variability index values of the sample were diverse, the mean fractional variability of the sample being S2 = 0.31. The spectral indices also varied widely, but the average radio spectrum of the sample sources is flat. Our observations show that many of the high-energy BL Lac objects, which are usually considered radio-quiet, can at times be detected at 37 GHz.
Research on big data analytics has been burgeoning in recent decades, yet its relationship with strategy continues to be overlooked. This paper reviews how big data analytics and strategy are ...portrayed across 228 articles, identifying two dominant discourses: an input-output discourse that views big data analytics as a computational capability supplementing prospective strategy formulation and an entanglement discourse that theorizes big data analytics as a socially constructed agent that (re)shapes the emergent character of strategy formation. We deconstruct the inherent dichotomies of the input-output/entanglement divide and reveal how both discourses adopt disjointed positions vis-à-vis relational causality and agency. We elaborate a semiotic view of big data analytics and strategy that transcends this standoff and provides a novel theoretical account for conjoined relationality between big data analytics and strategy.
Digital forces and digital global connection weaken traditional ownership, location and internalization (OLI) advantages and intensify new OLI advantages (open resources, linkages and integration). ...However, by building on the resource-orchestration theory, we raise the question of how digitalization (utilization and orchestration of digital resources) and internationalization (firm-level outward internationalization and country-level inward internationalization) affect firm performance. We introduce the degree of outward internationalization and home-country inward foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows as moderators in achieving firm performance as a result of digitalization. Using a panel dataset of 571 U.S. manufacturing firms, we find a curvilinear relationship between digitalization and performance. The top quartile of digitalization efforts is rewarded by significant profitability. Moreover, high levels of outward internationalization and high net-FDI inflows increase the performance gains attributable to high levels of digitalization. Overall, the resource-orchestration theory complements new OLI advantages in explaining firm performance in the digital world.
●Builds and empirically validates linkages between the resource-orchestration theory and new OLI advantages.●Investigates the interplay of digitalization and internationalization in relation to firm performance.●Uses computer-aided text analysis method based on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing.
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