Business Strategy and Development最新文献

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming entire industries at an unprecedented pace. Yet, established technology adoption theories offer limited tools for characterizing business AI integration and analyzing its effects. These primarily focus on the factors facilitating or hindering adoption, rather than on adoption patterns and impacts. This paper introduces a novel conceptual framework to address this key gap and applies it to the case of the ESG rating industry. ESG raters play a pivotal role in sustainable finance, providing metrics that guide investment decisions globally. However, little is known about the extent and nature of their AI usage and its implications. Through a mixed-methods approach combining the analysis of job postings, patent filings, research publications, and corporate websites, we examine AI adoption among major ESG raters. Our investigation explores the specific AI technologies employed, their functional applications, the innovations developed, the intensity of AI integration, and the potential impacts of raters' AI adoption. Our results reveal widespread and growing AI adoption across the industry. Our findings show that raters extensively leverage Natural Language Processing to streamline data collection, processing, and analysis. Furthermore, they have pioneered Machine Learning innovations that significantly expand their sustainability assessment capabilities in various domains. These findings mark a considerable departure from prior academic and gray literature that characterized major ESG raters as having minimal AI use, prompting critical questions regarding the implications of this technological transformation for ESG ratings' reliability, transparency, and potential biases.

Employee churn or attrition presents significant challenges, especially in emerging markets, where it can disrupt business operations and inflate recruitment costs. This research leverages machine learning techniques to predict employee churn, focusing on developing sustainable and inclusive retention strategies that enhance business competitiveness. By analyzing a range of predictive algorithms and key variables associated with churn, the study identifies the most effective models for predicting attrition. A comprehensive exploratory data analysis was conducted using an indigenous machine learning model, offering practical insights for human resource management in emerging markets. The findings align with the sustainable development goals (SDGs), promoting decent work, and economic growth. This study contributes to business strategy by proposing data-driven solutions for workforce stability and sustainable development.

This study examines the effects of corporate sustainability factors (CSFs)—specifically gender diversity, energy practices, and environmental practices—on innovation and their subsequent impact on firm performance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. By integrating Absorptive Capacity Theory, we explore how these CSFs drive innovation, contributing to broader sustainable development goals. We analyze the impact of innovation on firm performance using the resource-based view (RBV). Utilizing secondary data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES), we employ a two-stage instrumental variable regression (IV-2SLS) to address endogeneity and establish causal relationships. Our findings reveal that stakeholder engagement through gender diversity, energy practices, and environmental practices significantly enhances innovation, which, in turn, drives firm performance. Diverse leadership fosters creativity and innovation, while energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable practices reduce costs, improve brand reputation, and align with sustainable development goals. These insights underscore essential policy implications for promoting environmental policy, clean production, and sustainable innovation ecosystems. Encouraging MENA firms to engage stakeholders and adopt sustainable practices can drive economic prosperity and contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Coffee consumption is becoming increasingly prevalent among a growing number of consumers worldwide. Despite ranking seventh in coffee consumption, Italy is the global coffee export leader, with almost 1000 coffee roasting companies across the country. As a product subject to increasing interest in sustainability, numerous studies address the economic, social and environmental challenges affecting coffee production. However, only a few evaluate the sustainability performance of roasting companies in consuming countries. This study examines the integration of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in business strategy to provide an overview of sustainability performance among Italian roasting companies. The analysis encompasses 78 sustainability practices across 49 businesses and assesses their communication to stakeholders. Furthermore, factors such as company size and specialty coffee sale were investigated for their influence on sustainability performance. The findings reveal a low commitment to sustainability within the Italian coffee sector, with 83.7% of companies in the first two stages of the five-stage CSR assessment model. Although there is an interest in addressing product safety, quality, and consumer relations, responsible sourcing is often relegated to suppliers or voluntary sustainability standards. Communication is not effective, as more than half of the companies did not provide sustainability information on their websites. In this sample, the commitment to sustainability was directly related to the size of the business, and the same relationship was observed for roasters selling specialty coffees.

This study explores the impact of a CEO's educational background from a top university on reducing corporate ESG risk and the potential moderating role of CEO gender. Using the QS World University Rankings (QS WUR) to define reputable universities, the research focuses on companies in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, known for elevated ESG risks. Through Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis, the results show that CEOs educated at top universities reduce ESG risk, while CEO gender does not moderate this relationship. The findings represent the importance of reputable universities as habitus to support the globalization of business and responsible management education, regardless the gender. The results also highlight the influence of educational background on corporate ESG performance, with significant implications for corporate strategy and CEO appointments.

This study examines the key factors influencing sustainable performance in commercial banks, focusing on the impact of non-financial metrics—customer focus, internal processes, and learning and growth—within the Balanced Scorecard framework on the performance of commercial banks in Ethiopia. Additionally, it examines the moderating role of management commitment in this relationship, grounded in organizational learning theory, upper echelons theory, and the balanced scorecard model. The study adopts an explanatory research design, utilizing covariance-based structural equation modeling and interaction-term analysis. A multi-stage sampling technique, followed by systematic random sampling, was employed, with Soper's formula used to determine a sample size of 480 from a total population of 4990. Mahalanobis distance was applied to identify and remove biased responses. The findings reveal that non-financial metrics—customer focus, internal processes, and learning and growth—positively affect commercial banks' sustainable performance, and management commitment strengthens this effect. Furthermore, the results empirically validate the proposed hypotheses, emphasizing the value of incorporating non-financial metrics into performance measurement and highlighting the essential role of management commitment in ensuring their success. This research fills a gap in the literature on sustainable performance measurement within the Ethiopian banking sector and provides actionable insights for managers and policymakers.

Global agrifood supply chains are under increasing pressure to address sustainability issues due to growing concerns. However, numerous organizations within the agrifood industry are struggling to incorporate sustainable supply chain management practices and address the concerns. Therefore, this research is designed to identify the key critical factors, such as drivers, enablers, and barriers to adopting sustainable practices. This study considers the Ethiopian coffee industry, which is an important sector not only for the Ethiopian economy but also for the global agrifood supply chain. To accomplish the objectives of this study, we applied a systematic literature review and empirical survey. A systematic literature review was conducted to identify critical factors for adopting sustainability in agrifood supply chains. An empirical survey was then undertaken in the Ethiopian coffee industry to rank the key critical factors. Hence, the study has revealed that economic and productivity improvement, cost effectiveness and improvement in the overall performance, and difficulty in mindset and cultural changes as the key critical factors that determine the adoption of sustainability initiatives from the perspectives of the Ethiopian coffee supply chain. The findings can be used as input by government regulatory bodies and policymakers to craft strategies and policies to adopt sustainability initiatives and ensure sustainable development. Furthermore, the research is expected to contribute to the existing literature by bringing in the perspective of suppliers in developing countries.

This study assesses the effect of the board of directors' attributes, environmental committee (EC), and institutional ownership (IO) on carbon disclosure quality (CDQ) from the perspectives of legitimacy and agency theories in Malaysia. This study collects and analyzes data based on 1000 observations of firms from carbon-intensive industries from 2015 to 2019. The effect of the board of directors' attributes, EC, and IO on the CDQ was observed using a panel data regression model. The study revealed a significant positive relationship between board independence, board size, female representation, EC, IO, and CDQ. These findings suggest that carbon disclosure awareness is rising in Malaysia as firms have gradually integrated corporate governance (CG) best practices into their business strategies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the factors that influence CDQ in Malaysian businesses. This study identified firms with a higher CDQ using a new global reporting initiative-based carbon reporting index. This expands the literature on carbon disclosures. This study focuses on carbon-intensive industries, which might not reflect Malaysia's current CDQ situation. Thus, future research should focus on other sectors to fully grasp the current state of the CDQ in Malaysia and offer new perspectives on emerging markets. The findings may benefit a vast group of regulatory bodies in assessing Malaysian firms' responses to local and international carbon guidelines.

The green transition is increasingly viewed as a path to prosperity, or even survival, for organizations. In several countries, greening is vigorously pursued across various organizational activities, including organizational culture, which has garnered significant scholarly attention. However, there appears to be no comprehensive literature review on green organizational culture (GOC) indexed by reputable databases like Scopus. This paper aims to provide a bibliometric overview of GOC. A total of 558 documents from Scopus, spanning 1996–2023, were analyzed using bibliometric methods. The study examines the research performance on GOC, including volume growth trajectory, document types, contributing countries, international collaboration, research groups, influential authors, and prominent sources in GOC research. Notably, it identifies five main schools of thought and two topical trends in GOC literature. This may be the first effort to review GOC literature using Scopus data, highlighting performance and mapping the scientific landscape of this field.

This study investigates whether environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures enhance industry-adjusted firm performance and whether the presence of foreigners on board and export orientation affect this relationship. The Taiwan dataset from 2013 to 2020 indicates that ESG practices positively affect accounting- and market-based performance (i.e., adjusted Tobin's Q and adjusted MTB ratio). However, ESG has no significant relationship with purely market-based performance (i.e., adjusted Jensen Alpha and adjusted FF3). The results illustrate a significant joint effect of ESG with foreigners on board and export experience on accounting and market-based performance. The findings provide deeper insight into the complex relationship between sustainability practices, ownership structures, and international businesses. Our findings remain consistent when using alternative estimation methods to account for endogeneity and selection bias.