This study examines the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational performance by evaluating the mediatory role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and organizational innovation which has received considerably less attention in the literature. This study introduces CSR and organizational innovation as potential mediators of relationships between the key constructs of transformational leadership and organizational performance. Sufficient direct and mediation effects of predictors were tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS‐SEM) with data from 396 French firms. Sufficient configurations of the predictors indicating high and low scores of performance were explored using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The PLS‐SEM results show that both direct and indirect effects of transformational leadership on performance are significant. The fsQCA results reveal that a combination of CSR and transformational leadership leads to high performance. Alternately, high performance results from high innovation. This empirical study contributes to the current knowledge by applying both symmetrical and asymmetrical approaches to indicate performance at an organizational level. This study discusses the findings and provides theoretical, managerial, and research implications.

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Climate finance and carbon pricing are regarded as sustainable policy mechanisms for mitigating negative environmental externalities via the development of green financing projects and the imposition of taxes on carbon pollution generation. Financial literacy indicates that it is beneficial to invest in cleaner technology to advance the environmental sustainability goal. The current wave of the COVID-19 epidemic has had a detrimental effect on the world economies’ health and income. The pandemic crisis dwarfs previous global financial crises in terms of scope and severity, collapsing global financial markets. The study’s primary contribution is constructing a climate funding index (CFI) based on four critical factors: inbound foreign direct investment, renewable energy usage, research and development spending, and carbon damages. In a cross-sectional panel of 43 nations, the research evaluates the effect of climate funding, financial literacy, and carbon pricing in lowering exposure to coronavirus cases. The study utilized Newton–Raphson and Marquardt steps to estimate the current parameter estimates while evaluating the COVID-19 prediction model with level regressors using the robust least squares regression model (S-estimator). Additionally, the innovation accounting matrix predicts estimations over a specific period. The findings indicate that climate finance significantly reduces coronavirus exposure by introducing green financing initiatives that benefit human health, which eventually strengthens the immune system’s ability to fight infectious illnesses. Financial literacy and carbon pricing, on the other hand, are ineffectual in controlling coronavirus infections due to rising economic activity and densely inhabited areas that enable the transmission of coronavirus cases across countries. Similar findings were obtained using the alternative regression apparatus. The COVID-19 predicted variable was used as a “response variable,” and climate financing was shown to have a favorable impact on containing coronavirus exposure. As shown by the innovation accounting matrix, carbon pricing would drastically decrease coronavirus cases’ exposure over a time horizon. The study concludes that climate finance and carbon pricing were critical in improving air quality indicators, which improved countries’ health and wealth, allowing them to reduce coronavirus infections via sustainable healthcare reforms.

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Despite the number of studies that have been carried out on the stock markets, quite a rare have in particular analyzed the tendency of herd behavior of countries in the European Union. Therefore, the emphasis is traditionally put on Asian countries and the United States. The detection of the herding phenomena is particularly made with subjective or extrapolative techniques. Consequently, our study is relevant on two levels since that, on one hand, it focuses on European countries and, on the other hand, it aims to verify the existence or non existence of the herding phenomena according to the method elaborated by Salmon, M (2000Salmon, M ( , 2004Salmon, M ( ,2008. Keywords: International capital markets, Herd behavior, Equity return dispersion, International finance Classification JEL: G15, G31 IntroductionThis study is focused on Herd behaviour and market stress using the models of, and that of. The data was collected from four European countries namely France, UK, Germany and Italy. It has been found that these countries' capital and securities market follow the herd behaviour in the events of crisis. In the literature of behavioral finance, herd behaviour is often used to describe the correlation in the trades resulting from interactions between investors. This behavior is considered to be rational for less sophisticated investors, who try to imitate financial gurus or monitor the activities of successful investors, since the use of their own information and knowledge lead to greater cost. Villatoro (2009) investigates the association between financial intermediaries' (FI) reputation and herding and argued that financial intermediaries with high reputation are prone to invest in information, whereas those with poor reputation will tend to imitate other financial intermediaries' portfolio decisions. The consequence of this behavior is herd behaviour, Nofsinger and Sias as (1999) notes,''a negotiating group of investors in the same direction over a period of time. "Empirically, this can lead to observed behaviors that are correlated between individuals and causing systematically erroneous decision making by entire populations (Bikhchandani et al., 1992). As for us, we retain the notion of herd behaviour as (Bikhchandani and Sharma 2000) for which "an individual is said to herd, if, without knowing the decisions of other investors, would have made the investment, but not undertake when it finds that other investors have decided not to undertake the investment. We therefore speak of herd behavior analysts and investors when they decide to ignore their own information and follow signs for observed decisions of other analysts and investors." Other authors such as (Grinblatt, Titman and Wermers 1995), and (Nofsinger and Sias 1999) propose a broader definition of herd behaviour, as "having a group of investors transacting in the same way, in a same direction (buy or sell) for a given period of time. However, the correlation in investor behavior does to the extent that they influence each other. This correl...

This study examines the effect of independent directors on carbon information disclosure (CID) in China from 2011 to 2017. Additionally, this study investigates the effect of independent director’s attributes (gender, academic experience, and political connection) on the CID. To test our hypothesis, we collected data of 511 Chinese listed firms. The empirical results show that independent directors have a positive influence on the CID. Moreover, the independent female directors, independent academic directors and independent politically connected directors also enhances the CID. Our findings offer shareholders, regulators, and other stakeholders an integrating perspective on motivating firms to disclose high quality carbon information.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of corporate governance quality and ownership structure on the relationship between the agency cost and firm performance. Both the fixed-effects model and a more robust dynamic panel generalized method of moment estimation are applied to Chinese A-listed firms for the years 2008 to 2016. The results show that the agency–performance relationship is positively moderated by (1) corporate governance quality, (2) ownership concentration, and (3) non-state ownership. State ownership has a negative effect on the agency–performance relationship. Various robust tests of an alternative measure of agency cost confirm our main conclusions. The analysis adds to the empirical literature on agency theory by providing useful insights into how corporate governance and ownership concentration can help mitigate agency–performance relationship. It also highlights the impact of ownership type on the relationship between agency cost and firm performance. Our study supports the literature that agency cost and firm performance are negatively related to the Chinese listed firms. The investors should keep in mind the proxies of agency cost while choosing a specific stock. Secondly; the abuse of managerial appropriation is higher in state-held firms as compared to non-state firms. Policymakers can use these results to devise the investor protection rules so that managerial appropriation can be minimized.

Previous studies have recognized that the presence of academic directors on the board leads to better corporate governance and accounting quality. However, studies have yet to establish the effectiveness of academic directors in mitigating corporate expropriation in emerging markets. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of academic directors on corporate expropriation in Chinese listed firms. It is observed that the presence of the academic director in the board mitigates earnings management and abnormal investments and enhances the dividend payments. Additionally, we find that the critical mass of academic directors curbs the expropriator managerial behavior in Chinese listed firms.