Researchers have widely studied the nexus between corporate environmental ('green') policy and its green performance and firm financial performance, but with mixed findings. A potential explanation for these mixed findings is the focus of extant studies on the direct and immediate impact of environmental performance on financial performance to the exclusion of firm-specific boundary conditions. Furthermore, all prior research study the effect of environmental performance on either stock market-based performance measures (i.e. stock return) or accounting-based performance measures (i.e. ROA). A missing third dimension of firm performance, product-market-based performance (i.e. market share) has so far remained unexplored despite representing a crucial objective when innovating. Using Newsweek's annual green ranking as a novel measure of environmental performance for a panel of U.S. firms from 2010 to 2015, this paper attempts to fill these voids in the literature. The results show a positive relationship between firms' environmental performance and market share as a measure of product-market-based performance. The findings further demonstrate that this relationship is positively moderated by the level of customer awareness and innovativeness of the firm: the higher the level of awareness of a firm's environmental credentials and innovativeness, the stronger the effects of environmental performance on market share. Our results are robust against endogeneity concerns and alternative measures of firm financial and environmental performance.

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Other studies, however, have found negative or contradictory results. Findings have varied widely, from positive to negative, to a U-shaped effect, or even to an inverse U-shaped effect of CSR on financial performance (Cheng et al., 2014). Several explanations have been put forward for these conflicting findings, including measurement errors, theoretical or methodological limitations, and neglect of contingency factors (Aguinis and Glavas, 2012; Cheng et al., 2014; Ullmann, 1985). The current study attempts to overcome the measurement limitations of earlier studies and to investigate the impact of CSR initiatives on marketing performance-one dimension of company performance that has not been addressed yet. This article puts forward and tests the proposition that

The world has witnessed a major wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) through the 1990s and up to 2007.A majority of these M&A deals are horizontal, involving the purchase of another company in the same industry. Such acquisitions imply a motivation to increase revenues by expanding market scope and/or market share, and/or by adding new products to the portfolio. They also suggest a pursuit of cost efficiencies in various aspects of operations. Whether these benefits are actually realised is an empirical question that has attractedresearch in several disciplines, including economics, finance and accounting. By now, there is a large body of research evidence to indicate that M&As have a poor record of success, with the main beneficiaries being the sellers who reap a one-off gain from the premium paid to acquire their firm.The objective of this dissertation was to examine post-merger performance from a marketing perspective, a topic that has not been explored thus far. This study followed a multi-stage approach; in the first stage an exploratory case study was conducted to identify the parameters of the research problem and to develop a set of hypotheses. Following this, a quantitative study of a sample of M&A transactions was carried out to test these hypotheses.The exploratory case study was based on Tata Motors, an Indian company which acquired Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford Motors. This case investigation based on both primary data collected through in-depth interview and a wide spectrum of secondary sources, showed that the acquisition had a significantly positive impact on Tata Motors' marketing performance, with sales volume and revenue growing significantly in the post-acquisition years. However, these sales increases came at a high cost; the company invested a huge amount in new product development and marketing communications, with the result that profit performance was negatively affected in the three years post-merger. Profit margins increased, however, in the seventh year 2014, suggesting that the reduction post-merger may have been a temporary effect.The quantitative study was based on a sample of forty-five M&A deals involving ninety US companies.This longitudinal study examined performance over six years, three before the merger, and three yearsafter the merger. Four analytical toolswere used:a paired sample t-test, an analysis of effect size, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and regression analysis, to examine post-merger performance. The results of both raw data and log-transformeddata analyses showed that sales revenue increased significantlyin the post-merger years compared to the pre-merger years. Moreover, the combined companies reduced their marketing and selling costs in proportion to sales revenue. However, there was asignificant reduction in profit as measured by return on sales (ROS).Combining the findings from both the qualitative and quantitative studies, we concluded that post-merger marketing performance improved, i.e. sales revenue and cost of marketing and selling, but...

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