CSR’s beneficial roles on firm financial performance have been well documented. However, the relationships existing in the literature are largely assumed to be linear. In this research, we propose a ...U-shaped relationship between CSR and firm cash flow volatility to demonstrate CSR’s dynamic implication on the performance instability and therefore extend the understanding of CSR into a new area involving firm performance risk factors. Further, we incorporate another key firm characteristic, marketing capability, to formulate the interactive associations between CSR and firm market-side ability toward better risk management. The results show that CSR may reduce firm cash flow volatility at low and moderate levels but will increase the volatility when the engagement is high. However, a firm with high marketing capability will eliminate the negative impact of CSR.
The deep learning model can simulate the complex nonlinear relationship between PM2.5 and aerosol optical depth (AOD), and has great application potentiality in PM2.5 inversion. However, the ...underestimation of high PM2.5 concentrations problem is still exist in heavily polluted Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (JingJinJi) region due to AOD cannot adequately represent the correlation between high PM2.5 concentrations and independent variables and neglected the effects of missing AOD. Thus, the long- and short-term PM2.5 exposure risk estimate was reduced. This work introduces gaseous pollutant data (NO2, SO2, CO, and O3) related to primary emission and secondary transformation of pollutants as predictors into a deep neural network model to improve the underestimation of high PM2.5 concentrations based on AOD and meteorological factors. We predicted the PM2.5 concentration in the missing AOD areas, generated a daily continuous PM2.5 spatial distribution, and reduced estimated bias due to AOD deficiency. Grid-based 10-fold cross-validation (CV) was used to test the model performance. Results show that daily PM2.5 concentration CV R2 is 0.87 and the root-mean-square prediction error (RMSE) is 27.11 μg/m3. The CV R2 and RMSE are higher by 0.12 and lower by 9.72 μg/m3 than the model without gaseous pollutants (GASS) as predictors. In including the missing AOD, the average concentration of PM2.5 CV R2 is 0.86 and the RMSE is 16.95 μg/m3 in heavy polluted winter; the CV R2 and RMSE are higher by 0.07 and lower by 3.95 μg/m3, respectively, than when the missing AOD was excluded. Prediction results of PM2.5 spatial distribution show that the model has high prediction accuracy and provides a complete and highly accurate spatiotemporal distribution characteristics for long- and short-term PM2.5 exposure studies, and reduces exposure misclassification of PM2.5 in heavily polluted areas.
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•Gaseous pollutants were introduced into DNN to improve PM2.5 inversion accuracy.•PM2.5 concentration in the missing AOD areas can be predicted with high precision.•We can provide accurate maps of PM2.5 distribution for PM2.5 exposure studies.
In the literature, CSR's roles on firm performance are found to be positive, negative, or neutral. This inconclusive pattern suggests there may be a more complicated mechanism at work than the ...traditional focus on simple linear associations. We propose and test an inverted-U-shaped relationship between CSR and shareholder value, the fundamental measure of firm performance. Further, we incorporate a critical firm attribute, marketing capability, to moderate the nonlinear link between CSR and shareholder value, thereby exploring a previous understudied area involving the interplay between CSR and marketside competency. The results show that an initial increase in CSR engagement positively drives firm shareholder value, but the effect turns negative when a firm pursues excessive CSR engagement. Notably, however, this negative association does not apply to firms that have a high marketing capability. Our research generates meaningful implications for a stakeholder view of CSR, strategic management, firm valuation, resource-based theories, and business practices.
Firms seek to gain global competitive advantages via strategic international expansion targeting long-term performance improvements. This long-term perspective of the role of internationalization, ...however, is largely understudied in the literature. Exploring the longitudinal effects of internationalization on the firm is essential to explaining and understanding this widely adopted strategic option. This study adopts a PVARX method and maps out the time-series impact of internationalization on both firm financial returns and risk. These relationships are further explored by examining the moderating effects of firm marketing capability, one of the most powerful drivers leading to market advantages. The results demonstrate that high marketing capability assists international expansion to produce better outcomes over an extended period of time but low marketing capability does not produce these positive outcomes.
The traditional understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has largely been focused on its downstream performance implications, particularly its associations with firms’ customer market ...metrics such as customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and customer co-creation as well as financial ones such as firm value, return on assets etc. However, given the close relationship between CSR and marketing that literature has identified, it is surprising that the relationship between a focal upstream construct, i.e. the marketing function’s power within a firm and the firm’s propensity toward CSR has not been addressed in the literature. Examining the link between marketing’s power (MP) in a firm’s top management team (TMT) and firm CSR levels, we investigate how this fundamental TMT configuration, i.e. the distribution of marketing power in the TMT, motivates the firm’s social endeavors. Further, we formulate this relationship in a contingency-based model that incorporates the moderating effects of firm size, firm age, service intensity, and resource slack across 1569 firms operating in 63 industries. In addition to their effect on CSR, this study shows how MP in TMT may influence
corporate social irresponsibility
(CSI) as well as
CSR capability
after controlling for industry type. The inclusion on these additional dimensions of CSR (CSI and CSR capability) complements our analyses of the effect that MP has on CSR. The research contributes to a deeper understanding of CSR’s fundamental corporate determinants as well as identifies the essential role of the marketing function in firms’ CSR strategy. In this process, it yields useful implications for multiple streams of theory as well as for business practices.
Internationalization's role on firm performance has captured massive research attention. However, its influence on firms' default risk, an important firm outcome that not only reflects the ...backward-looking firm managerial effectiveness but also signifies the forward-looking willingness-to-support from key stakeholders such as debt holders, is not found in the literature. This current research is developed to fill this important theoretical gap by formulating a moderating model that simultaneously incorporates internationalization, environmental dynamism, and marketing capability towards their dynamic joint effects on global firms' default vulnerability, and thus it generates more detailed and realistic images of internationalization under the influences of concurrent internal and external contingency factors. Our results show that high marketing capability assists firms that have a high degree of global expansion to reduce default risk. In addition, environmental dynamism can be either a facilitator or hindrance for internationalization's risk reduction, depending on firm capability levels.
Theoretical evidence suggests that corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) should produce long-lasting negative influences on firm performance. Yet, little empirical evidence exists in the literature ...to support this time-embedded research frame. This research was conducted by collecting a large set of firm data and by employing a series of vector autoregressive models to map out the longitudinal dynamic relationships between CSI and firm value under high versus low levels of two external factors, environmental dynamism and competition intensity, and one internal factor, firm capability. The results show that CSI’s negative influences endure in scenarios such as high dynamism, high competition intensity, and low capability, but it has only a short-term impact on low-dynamism markets and does not produce significant effects on firm value under low-competition or high-capability conditions. These findings yield useful implications for CSI, resource-based theory, and environment theories as well as for managerial effectiveness of coping with social negativities.
The traditional view of firm capability building stems from the strategic as well as the tactical levels of firm activities. However, corporate governance entities such as the board may exert ...influence on firm capabilities by creating the necessary architectural basis and resource configurations that drive the development of firm capability. The current research bridges this important gap and connects firm boardroom diversity to marketing‐side capability. This link is investigated more deeply by including two moderating factors – firm size and CEO power – to present an enriched model of the relationship. Results from our analyses show that an increase in board diversity significantly improves marketing capability. Further, this relationship is stronger (a) for firms that are smaller and (b) for firms with lower CEO power. This study provides useful contributions towards firm board diversity research, as well as for firm capability building in the marketing area.
For the better utilization of solar light and complete oxidation of environmental organic pollutants, it is desired to develop small band gap semiconductors with a deep valence band as efficient ...visible light photocatalysts. In this work, we prepared the fluorinated Bi2O3 catalysts using a precipitation method, followed by a solvothermal process in the presence of NH4F. The fluorinated Bi2O3 catalysts, especially with the atomic ratio of F to Bi (R F) at 0.2, exhibit much higher photocatalytic activities than the pure Bi2O3 for the degradation of methyl orange (MO) under the visible light irradiation. The effects of the fluorination on the phase structure, special surface areas, morphologies, optical properties, surface-adsorbed species, and electronic band structure of the Bi2O3 were investigated in detail. It was revealed that both the surface-adsorbed and lattice-substituted fluorine, induced by the fluorination to Bi2O3, play critical roles in the enhanced photocatalytic performance of the fluorinated Bi2O3. The two types of fluorine species effectively inhibit the recombination of the photoexcited electron–hole pairs by withdrawing the photoexcited electrons and increase the oxidation power of the photoexcited hole by lowering the valence band edge, respectively.
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility and customer satisfaction and evaluate the impact of this relationship on firm performance, specifically ...the moderating impact of environmental uncertainty on the corporate social responsibility to customer satisfaction relationship.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors constructed a panel data set by collecting data from Fortune Magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies and Compustat. The authors used two methods, Newey–West and White–Cluster robust regressions, to estimate the empirical models.
Findings
The results from this moderating analysis of environmental uncertainty are largely consistent with this study's hypotheses. In particular, the authors find that corporate social responsibility contributes to increased customer satisfaction for large firms, in highly competitive environments and in highly dynamic industries. This paper also finds that in high growth environments, corporate social responsibility can result in decreased customer satisfaction.
Research limitations/implications
The study is limited to environmental factors in the examination boundary conditions. Researchers should broaden the moderators to include criteria such as market orientation, marketing and/or operations capability.
Practical implications
The empirical results provide practitioners with insight to better translate corporate social responsibility into higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Social implications
The empirical results support corporate social responsibility as a viable and productive means of increasing customer satisfaction.
Originality/value
This study is the first that builds upon the work of Luo and Bhattacharya (2006) and Saeidi et al. (2015) by examining environmental factors that influence the relationship between corporate social responsibility and customer satisfaction. This research provides useful implications for marketing theories as well as business practice.