corporate social responsibility (CSR), Dow Jones Sustainability Index, institutional theory, investor protection, legal enforcement,

The study aims to answer why the previous studies find the positive or insignificant effect of the CEO's abilities on firm performance. Using 34,285 CEO-firm-year panel data from the U.S. publicly traded firms drawn from the BoardEx and EXECUXOMP database during from 1992 to 2014, the results show that the fit of the CEO"s generality or specialist ability with firm strategy matters on firm performance and risk. This study computes a discrete STRATEGY composite measure to construct firm strategy types, such as Prospect or Defend and use CEOs" résumés to construct an index of general skills that are transferable across firms and industries. The results find that generalist CEOs are more suitable for prospectors than specialist CEOs. Firm performance is much better when specialist CEOs work for Defenders. Although the firm performance is better too for the generalist CEOs who fit for the Prospect strategy, the firm"s risk is up too. The result suggests that firms need to consider their chosen business strategy to recruit and select CEOs Our findings provide direct evidence that the match between CEO"s ability and the firm"s strategy is crucial to firm performance and risk.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the media coverage of corporate social performance (CSP), as well as the ultimate impact that such coverage has on the financial performance of corporate entities. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a sample of financial holding companies (FHC) listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the authors select the two most popular newspapers in Taiwan, to construct the unique media coverage of CSP activity database. Findings – First, the quantity of news articles about social activities of FHCs is positively correlated with financial performance. Second, the authors find that news articles about FHCs’ positive social activities for shareholders will trigger a positive evaluation by shareholders; however, news articles about FHCs’ positive (negative) social activities for employees will trigger a negative (positive) evaluation by shareholders. But if the news articles about FHCs’ positive social activities for employees are initiated by the media, rather than by the company itself, they will trigger a positive evaluation by shareholders. Originality/value – The average shareholders may praise management for one particular CSP activity of a positive nature, whereas they may criticize another CSP activity, despite it being generally regarded outside of the firm as also being positive in nature. It therefore becomes clear that when setting out to investigate whether “doing good” actually does translate into “doing well,” the authors should not attempt to total different kinds of information on CSP; In this paper, the authors emphasize that they need to be analyzed separately.

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This study analyzes the influence of behavioral foundation factors and corporate strategic behavior on the formulation of corporate dividend policy. We use the Logit model and the OLS model for estimating the empirical model. The year- and industry-fixed effects are controlled in the model. We consider the behavioral foundations in three dimensions-ambiguity aversions, risk aversion, and loss aversion. The results show firms with high ambiguity or high risk infrequently pay dividends but firms with loss-averse behavior tend to pay dividends. This paper also provides evidence that a firms’ business strategy influences its corporate dividend policy. Aggressive firms inhibit the payout of dividends. In additional tests, we find the results remain unchanged in those firms with high corporate governance or high growth opportunities.