Purpose – Drawing on agency theory and legitimacy theory perspectives, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of board characteristics on sustainability reporting of listed companies in the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), Sri Lanka. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 148 listed companies was drawn from the CSE using stratified random sampling method and data were collected from the 2012 annual reports. The proposed hypotheses were tested using a hierarchical binary logistic regression. Findings – This study documents that board size and dual leadership are positively associated with sustainability reporting and boards with female directors are negatively associated with sustainability reporting. This study also found that sustainability reporting is likely to be influenced by firm size and firm growth. Additionally, the study also reveals that younger firms are likely to adopt sustainability reporting. Originality/value – This is the first study to examine the influence of board characteristics on sustainability reporting in Sri Lanka, considered as a developing economy with an emerging equity market.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, to examine the state of intellectual capital disclosures. Second, to investigate the relationship between board characteristics and intellectual capital disclosures.Design: This study selected thirty non-financial listed companies with the highest market capitalization from the Colombo Stock Exchange in Sri Lanka. An intellectual capital disclosure index comprising 61 items was developed to understand the level of intellectual capital disclosure in the selected companies. Panel data analysis techniques were applied to test the proposed hypotheses.Findings: Results indicated that role duality and proportion of female directors have a significant and positive impact on intellectual capital disclosures. Firm leverage was found to have a significant and negative effect on intellectual capital disclosures. Insufficient empirical evidence between other corporate board characteristics and intellectual capital disclosure in Sri Lanka may be attributed to a non-mandatory corporate disclosure environment.Originality: This is among the few studies to examine the link between corporate governance and intellectual capital disclosures employing panel data in Sri Lanka. However, a discourse on the role of corporate governance and corporate disclosures is warranted in a small island developing economy with a fragile financial system like Sri Lanka.Future Research Directions -The study calls for more studies to investigate the relationship between corporate governance and intellectual capital disclosures in the case of Sri Lanka by employing data from different industries for longer periods.

This paper aimed to examine the impact of trust repair efforts on consumers repurchase intention of milk powder products affected by negative publicity in Sri Lanka. Consumer response to business entity's effort to mitigate negative information are understudied in developing economies including Sri Lanka. A quantitative survey design was opted for this study. Data was collected from 140 consumers residing in the western province of Sri Lanka employing a questionnaire during the pandemic. The proposed hypotheses were analyzed using an OLS regression. Our findings revealed that functional repair efforts, affective repair efforts, and informational repair efforts have a significant and positive impact on repurchase intention. Among the three trust repair efforts, informational repair efforts were found to be the most important trust repair efforts that influence the repurchase intention. Based on the findings, milk powder producers in Sri Lanka should pay attention to strengthening ties with the consumers and consider trust repairing efforts to negate negative campaigns. The main limitation of the study is that data collection had to be limited among the urban consumers and collecting data randomly was challenging due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, our study contributes to the growing body of literature on trust repairing and trust theory from an under-explored economic and socio-cultural context.

Purpose of the study: Individual investor’s behavior is extensively influenced by biases that are highlighted in the growing discipline of behavioral finance. The present study sought to investigate the influence of socio-economic factors (i.e., investors’ age, gender, education, profession, and income), trading sophistication factors (i.e., trading experience and trading frequency), and self-reflection on herding bias in investment decision-making in Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE). Methodology: The study adopted descriptive and explanatory research designs. It was a census of all 243 individual investors registered with CSE as of September 2020. Sampling was done applying proportionate stratified random sampling technique and data was gathered using self-administered semi-structured questionnaires. The analysis was conducted using means, standard deviations, and regression. Main Findings: The results show that herd behavior is mostly seen among females, having less educational qualifications, who are engaged in the finance field professions, those who are with a very low monthly income, low experience, and who trade less frequently. Self-reflection can be seen in herding bias. On the other hand, age does not impact on herding bias of investors. Applications of this study: This study will be helpful to financial intermediaries to advise their clients. Moreover, the results of the present study facilitate individual investors to realize their herding bias by its’ determinants in the pursuit of making sensible and effective financial decisions. Novelty/Originality of this study: This study gives a unique insight into the investors’ profile corresponding to herding bias under consideration. It not only updates the evidence on herding bias but also highlights which factors are the most influential on herding bias in the Sri Lankan context. With the peculiar scenario in Sri Lanka, this paper contributed to the behavioral finance field as a reference for individual investors and financial advisors.

Human Resource Management as a discipline has been in existence for decades. However researchers have continued investigating various HRM practices and whether these practices are influenced by various demographic factors pertaining to industries and organizations. Researchers of this study are in pursuit of identifying HRM practices in the hotel industry in Sri Lanka in relation to demographic factors such as ownership of hotel and type of hotels. For the purpose of this study, ownership is defined as whether the hotel is owned by a foreign investor or domestic investor. Type of hotel is defined as whether the hotel belongs to a hotel chain or an independent hotel. The set of HRM practices of hotels was identified using the list of HRM practices prepared by Hoque for his research on HRM practices and performance of hotel in UK. Hoque’s list of HRM practices covers eight areas of HRM practices and each area comprises of several HRM practices belonging to that particular area of HRM. Seventy six hotels responded to the questionnaire belonging to six tourist destinations in Sri Lanka. Overall there are 25 HRM practices in the list. Based on finding, it was concluded that there is a significant relationship between the type of hotel and HRM practices.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4038/kjm.v2i2.6552 Kelaniya Journal of Management Vol.2(2) 2013:88-98