ISO 14001 (Environmental Management Standard) helps corporations to build legitimacy and goodwill, and can be also viewed as an organizational response to institutional pressure to act proactively towards the environment. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how investors in the emerging country value voluntary environmental management standard ISO 14001 certification. The impact of voluntary environmental management standard ISO 14001 on market performance is still not clear. By using event study methodology, this study matched ISO-certified firms with non-certified ones based on three different matching principles that include return on assets, size, and industry. The findings indicated that investors negatively valued ISO 14001 in both the short and long run. The study recommended policy implications for managers, policy makers, and non-government organizations.

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Prior research suggests that undertaking corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities affect firm value. We extend this line of research by considering CSR activities over a longer period (a consistent CSR behavior) and examine the impact of CSR permanency on firm value. Using a cross‐country sample of 600 top‐listed firms from four leading emerging economies, Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) over the period 2010–2018, we find that CSR permanency positively impacts firm value after controlling for various firm and country characteristics. This effect is observed more pronounced for family‐owned firms. Additional analysis reveals that permanent CSR activities in both social and environmental dimensions positively influence firm value, however, CSR permanent activities in the social dimension exert a larger impact on firm value. Our results make important contributions to theory and practice.

Based on a cross-industry panel of 510 non-financial Indian and Chinese firms during the period 2005-2015, we argue and show that Chinese firms with resource and asset seeking motives and Indian firms with market-seeking motives suffered differently from the financial crisis of 2008. Specifically, Indian firms that faced financial market imperfections domestically and market contraction externally had to cut back on outward investments as markets shrank and sales growth dampened. In contrast, the fortunes of Chinese firms that relied on debt finance to seek out international assets rose. Not only had investment targets become cheaper after the financial crisis, but the reliance on leverage as the instrument of finance also inured Chinese firms to the fluctuations of stock markets and the other financial implications of the crisis. Consequently, Chinese and Indian outward investment paths that looked so similar before 2008 began to diverge rapidly.