Francesco De Luca

This study examines how board characteristics are associated with environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure in Europe. Drawing on agency, stakeholder and resource dependence theories, it analyses 6260 firm‐year observations for 986 firms across 25 EU countries from 2011 to 2021. The study employs ordinary least squares, firm fixed‐effects, quadratic specifications, separate instrumental‐variable models, two‐step system‐GMM, interaction tests and board‐system analyses, complemented by a supplementary analysis of potential NFRD exposure. Board size and gender diversity are positively associated with ESG disclosure in the full‐sample baseline models. Independence is positive in ordinary least squares but insignificant in firm fixed‐effects estimation. Quadratic models indicate diminishing marginal associations for gender diversity in contemporaneous and lagged specifications. Independence curvature appears only contemporaneously, while board size shows no significant curvature. Positive size and gender‐diversity coefficients persist in instrumental‐variable and system‐GMM models, while independence is positive only in the former. CEO duality remains insignificant. The five interaction terms provide no significant evidence of complementarity or substitution. Board size is insignificant in the one‐tier subsample, while gender diversity is significant in its fixed‐effects models. Both attributes remain positive and significant after excluding two‐tier observations. The NFRD analysis provides suggestive evidence of a differential change in the gender‐diversity association across potential exposure groups, weakened by country‐by‐year effects. The findings distinguish positive baseline associations from nonlinear patterns and extend contextual governance–disclosure evidence through governance combinations, national board‐system frameworks and potential reporting exposure.

This study examines how corporate governance relates to environmental and social sustainability disclosure in environmentally and socially sensitive industries and whether these relationships differ from low‐impact industries. Drawing on stakeholder–agency and resource dependence theories, we analyze 3276 firm‐year observations from 503 European Union‐listed firms during 2011–2021 using OLS, instrumental‐variable, and two‐step system‐GMM estimations. Board size and gender diversity are positively associated with both disclosure dimensions. Board independence is positively associated with social disclosure, whereas CEO duality is negatively associated with social disclosure. Supplementary analysis of 6097 observations from 965 firms shows that most relationships between governance and disclosure do not differ significantly by industry sensitivity. However, CEO duality has a significantly more negative association with social disclosure in sensitive industries than in low‐impact industries. These findings identify industry sensitivity as a selective boundary condition and underscore the need to distinguish environmental from social disclosure when evaluating board effectiveness.

Purpose: The environmental, social and governance (ESG) topic has recently received increasing attention from scholars due to increasing regulations for firms’ non-financial disclosure with respect to environmental and social issues. For instance, the European Union (EU) recently issued the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in December 2022 and implemented it starting in 2024 in member states. Non-financial disclosure is relevant for various stakeholders and could affect firm value. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effect of ESG disclosure on firm value in the EU context. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses panel data on listed EU firms extracted from the Bloomberg database from 2014 to 2024. The final sample comprises 11,003 firm-year observations. The ordinary least squares method is used as a baseline regression. This study addresses the endogeneity issues by applying instrumental variable and two-step system dynamic panel generalised method of moments approaches. Findings: The results of the univariate tests, including the mean-difference comparison test based on pre-CSRD and CSRD issuance periods, reveal a significant decrease in the average ESG disclosure score in the CSRD issuance period. These results are similar for individual ESG pillars. Further, the results show a significant reduction in average firm value in the CSRD issuance period. The regression results report a significant and positive effect of ESG disclosure on firm value. Practical implications: This study provides practical implications for policymakers, firms and stakeholders. Based on the findings and the contexts of signalling and institutional theories, regulatory requirements for non-financial reporting on environmental and social issues affect a firm’s sustainable behaviour. This directly impacts various stakeholders, including market participants, and eventually affects market value. Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature on the relationship between ESG disclosure and firm value in the context of the transition from the non-financial reporting directive to CSRD.

This paper intends to explore the debate on hybrid organizations in business studies as business scholars have been increasingly focusing on hybrid organizations in recent times. This study extracted a sample of 370 papers from the Scopus database and performed bibliometric analysis, including descriptive and thematic analyses. The R and Bibliometrix packages are used to perform bibliometric analysis. The descriptive analysis results present the growing interest of business scholars in hybrid organizations research, especially more recently. The thematic analysis results identify eight major topics in the corpus, including hybrid organizations, hybrids, governance, sustainability, social mission, tensions, assembly chain, and hybridity. The future research agenda could be useful for academics to address the gaps highlighted to provide solutions for the efficiency of hybrid organizations.

Purpose: This study aims to develop a model based on the financial variables for better accuracy of financial distress prediction on the sample of private French, Spanish and Italian firms. Thus, firms in financial difficulties could timely request for troubled debt restructuring (TDR) to continue business. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a sample of 312 distressed and 312 non-distressed firms. It includes 60 French, 21 Spanish and 231 Italian firms in both distressed and non-distressed groups. The data are extracted from the ORBIS database. First, the authors develop a new model by replacing a ratio in the original Z”-Score model specifically for financial distress prediction and estimate its coefficients based on linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Second, using the modified Z”-Score model, the authors develop a firm TDR probability index for distressed and non-distressed firms based on the logistic regression model. Findings: The new model (modified Z”-Score), specifically for financial distress prediction, represents higher prediction accuracy. Moreover, the firm TDR probability index accurately depicts the probabilities trend for both groups of distressed and non-distressed firms. Research limitations/implications: The findings of this study are conclusive. However, the sample size is small. Therefore, further studies could extend the application of the prediction model developed in this study to all the EU countries. Practical implications: This study has important practical implications. This study responds to the EU directive call by developing the financial distress prediction model to allow debtors to do timely debt restructuring and thus continue their businesses. Therefore, this study could be useful for practitioners and firm stakeholders, such as banks and other creditors, and investors. Originality/value: This study significantly contributes to the literature in several ways. First, this study develops a model for predicting financial distress based on the argument that corporate bankruptcy and financial distress are distinct events. However, the original Z”-Score model is intended for failure prediction. Moreover, the recent literature suggests modifying and extending the prediction models. Second, the new model is tested using a sample of firms from three countries that share similarities in their TDR laws.

Innovation and sustainability have become critical factors for firms’ growth in the contemporary world. It emphasises the importance of firms investing in research and development (R&D) to achieve high technological potential, contribute to sustaining resources, and enhance firm value. These contributions by firms are also relevant for stakeholders. Thus, this study aims to examine the impact of non-financial disclosure on innovation and firm value considering the sample of listed Italian firms. The data for study variables are collected from the Bloomberg database. The final sample is based on 139 firms. The two-step generalised method of moments (GMM) technique is employed to test study hypotheses. The results show that non-financial disclosure has a positive and significant impact on innovation and firm value. Based on the findings, this study suggests practitioners consider issues related to sustainability, for instance, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, as such consideration can protect stakeholders’ interests and attract investors with investment opportunities. Thus, it can help firms to invest more in R&D as well as enhance firm value.