Akshita Arora

Purpose: The social responsibility in business research is becoming increasingly apparent as the world continues to face pressing issues such as wars, inequality, misgovernance and poverty, amongst others. This study aims to spark a meaningful scholarly dialogue on “the social responsibility of business research”. Design/methodology/approach: The arguments in this study are curated by conducting a concise yet focused review of the extant literature on the selected topic. Findings: This study finds that despite breakthroughs in business research, the debate on the social responsibility of business research remains ambiguously defined and lacks rigour. Research governance fosters transparency and ethical practices, social innovation addresses unfulfilled societal needs and impact evaluation assesses the effectiveness of these initiatives in fostering social change. A balanced integration of these dimensions is essential for business research to fulfil its social responsibility. The authors argue that adherence to the principles of social responsibility in business research, as articulated in this study, has the potential to contribute meaningfully to the development of a society; one that is resilient to conflict, poverty, inequality and global health challenges. Research limitations/implications: The proposed framework in this study is intended to guide policy-making in the context of business research. Practical implications: The study provides vibrant implications for business researchers by encouraging and providing guidance on how to focus on interdisciplinary approaches to promote the social responsibility of business research. Originality/value: This study initiates a discussion on “the social responsibility of business research” by proposing a framework that integrates governance, innovation and evaluation.

Purpose: This study examines whether promoters’ ownership structure affects integrated reporting (IR) adoption in India and whether companies’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores moderate the association between promoters’ ownership type and IR adoption. Design/methodology/approach: It uses a sample of the top 500 National Stock Exchange (NSE) listed Indian companies. The data on IR adoption has been manually extracted from the annual reports of the companies. The logistic regression approach has been employed for estimations. Findings: The study found that foreign-controlled companies negatively affect IR adoption, whereas companies controlled by Indian groups are more pro-active in IR adoption. Similarly, Indian promoters as corporate bodies have a positive impact on IR adoption, whereas foreign promoters as corporate bodies negatively impact IR adoption. We also found that ESG scores play a moderating role in the relationship between ownership concentration and IR adoption. Originality/value: The study helps to understand how firm-specific factors, such as ownership concentration and ESG, affect voluntary IR adoption in emerging economies.

We investigate the impact of national governance (NG) on firm‐level financial distress (FD), by using agency theory. By analyzing the World Governance indicators’ NG components, namely, “voice and accountability, regulatory quality, political stability and absence of violence/terrorism, rule of law, government effectiveness, and control of corruption”; we find that NG fosters corporate FD. Using balanced panel data of Indian listed companies for a period of 8 years (2016 to 2023), we find that a positive relationship between most NG components and firms' Altman Z scores (reduced distress) is evident. However, for one component of NG, i.e., voice and accountability, the counterintuitive negative effect on Altman Z scores indicates increased regulatory and political volatility. We emphasize the vitality of NG for practitioners and policy‐makers. The study is novel in its comprehensive and unique way of examining all the underlying factors of NG to curtail agency problems at firm‐level FD. Thus, spillover effects of governance from macro to micro levels are evident.

Purpose: The objectives of the study are threefold. The primary objective is to examine the impact of environmental disclosures (ED) on financial distress (FD) situation of the companies. The second objective is to investigate the impact of internal (corporate governance score) and external governance (national governance index) structure on FD. And third is to examine the ED–FD nexus with the interaction of both governance structures.Design/methodology/approach: Using eight years of panel data for the 254 non-financial companies, and applying two-way fixed effects models, we arrive at our statistical estimates.Findings: The results indicate that an increase in ED scores reduces FD. While corporate governance is insignificant to FD, national governance is effective in reducing FD. Interestingly, corporate governance negatively moderates the linkages between ED and FD, while national governance does not exhibit any such interaction effects.Originality/value: We contribute to the existing literature by being the pioneer study to test the relationship between ED and FD for a sample of Indian companies and that too, with the moderation of internal and external governance structures.

The corporate social disclosures made by companies are gaining popularity on a global scale. Companies are either doing it out of disclosure obligations or to reduce information asymmetries and gain investors' confidence. The objective of our study is to examine whether women directors affect the disclosures of social information for a representative sample of Indian listed companies. Our sample includes top listed NSE‐100 non‐banking Indian companies. We measure women participation at the leadership level using the ratio of women at the board level and the Blau index. The social scores include indicators on human rights, community, workforce, and product responsibility and we test the impact of gender diversity on these indicators. Further, three categories of women directors have been created: (a) one woman director, (b) two women directors, and (c) three or more women directors to test their impact on social disclosures. We use the social disclosure scores for measuring the corporate social disclosures of the company. The research is quantitative and has been carried out by using dynamic panel models. The empirical results reveal that gender diversity has a positive impact on social disclosure of firms. Also, the contribution of women directors to social disclosure scores becomes effective only after reaching a critical mass. This study has significant implications for management and practitioners as it helps to determine the significance of women participation at leadership positions in order to improve policies for disseminating information of social nature.

The aim of our study is to investigate the impact of intellectual capital (IC) and its components such as human capital, structural capital, and capital employed on the environmental disclosures (ED) of a company. The IC has been measured using value‐added intellectual coefficient (VAIC) and alternate value‐added intellectual coefficient (A_VAIC). The study employs method of moments quantile regression (MM‐QR) approach to examine the heterogeneous effects of ED within firms by extracting relevant data from ProwessIQ and Bloomberg databases. The findings of the study indicate that the relationship between ED and IC is concave implying that IC initially has a significant positive impact on ED but beyond a point, it produces negative impact. Further, it is noticed that IC's impact increases as we move from lower (25th) to higher quantile (75th), indicating that low values of IC have low impact on ED, whereas high values of IC have greater impact on ED. This is the first study to examine the impact of IC on ED. It also adds to the scarce literature on the new statistical technique of method of moments quantile regression.

Purpose: The effectiveness of independent directors in making autonomous decisions for better corporate governance in organizations has often been questioned. This paper aims to investigate their role in company’s decision making in India and the reasons behind their ineffectiveness.Design/methodology/approach: This paper examines the regulatory environment and ongoing reforms in which independent directors operate. It identifies crucial factors such as ownership patterns, the appointment and selection process that affect their autonomy. The analysis draws from newspaper articles, blogs, India’s regulatory requirements, The Companies Act and relevant related literature.Findings: The findings reveal that the independence of directors remains largely in form but not in function. This paper recommends a fair and more robust selection through an independent authority, and disclosure of the resignations of independent directors. Independent directors should be given more powers and their risk-reward scheme should be analyzed.Originality/value: The paper emphasizes the need for independent directors to be truly independent from the senior management, promoters, and other existing directors. It calls for tighter and more transparent appointment procedures to ensure that independent directors are not influenced by senior management and can bring objectivity to the company board.

Purpose: The objective of this study is to assess if corporate social disclosures in a company are influenced by gender diversity at board level. We also investigate the number of women directors, who can collectively make an impact on social disclosures, by considering different numbers of women directors on the board.Design/methodology/approach: We have measured board gender diversity using the ratio of women at board and have also used two indices: the Blau-index and the Shannon-index. The social disclosure index is fetched from Bloomberg terminal. The research is quantitative and has been carried out using panel data models for estimating the linkage between board gender diversity and corporate social disclosures.Findings: Our results support the idea that women are more conscious of social concerns and that having a gender diverse board has a favourable impact on social disclosures. It also shows that when there is only one woman director on the board, she might not be able to affect social disclosures in a company; however, two or more women on board may significantly influence social disclosures.Practical implications: The study supports critical mass theory and has significant implications for academics, corporations and regulatory bodies. With the mandatory regulations on women directors, the study determines the significance of board gender diversity to improve policies for disseminating information of social nature.Originality/value: The past studies have so far inspected the impact of gender diversity on financial performance, corporate social responsibility disclosures, dividend policies and corporate sustainability disclosures but have not specifically assessed the influence of gender diversity on social disclosures.

Purpose: In today’s knowledge-based economy, companies are hugely driven by intangible resources such as intellectual capital. However, whether corporate governance of a company drives intellectual capital is less explored in emerging economies. We examine the impact of intellectual capital efficiency on firm performance for Indian firms, considering the moderating role of board gender diversity.Design/methodology/approach: We have created a framework for panel data analysis and conducted estimation using the dynamic panel data model to control for endogeneity and heteroskedasticity issues. We use alternate performance and gender diversity measures for our sample of top 500 listed companies for a period of six years, that is 2015–2020.Findings: The results demonstrate a significant positive association between intellectual capital and performance. However, moderating impact of gender diversity on the relationship between intellectual capital and performance is not significant.Practical implications: The findings indicate that IC plays a crucial role in a company’s performance, which may boost economic growth. Further, the findings reveal that despite the mandatory quota for women on boards in Indian companies, their impact on IC is subliminal. It may be because the critical mass is yet to be achieved, which should be considered by policy-makers while framing policies in this area.Originality/value: Our study is one of the foremost studies to consider the impact of mandatory gender quotas while examining the association between tangible and intangible firm performance. It makes an incremental contribution to literature to enrich our understanding on the influence of gender diversity on intellectual capital-performance linkages.

The agency issues between shareholders and management push corporate governance issues into limelight. Our study's objective is to examine the consequences of board characteristics on a firm’s financial performance. Board size, independe...