Inspired by the promotion of gender balance on boards of directors of listed companies in Europe, this study seeks to understand whether the presence of women with different responsibilities is associated with gender policies disclosed in corporate social responsibility or sustainability reports. Using the data of listed companies in Italy, we find a positive association between the presence of women in the role of chairperson and the implementation with disclosure of gender policies. Consistent with gender self-schema, women believe in their values, and pay attention to conflict management when they are in the position of chairperson. We find different results when the women are in the position of chief executive officer (CEO). The position of CEO is usually a male job and our results show a non-significant perception of female problems when a woman occupies the CEO position. This study contributes to corporate social responsibility analysis of the reporting of gender policies.

Purpose Following the contingency perspective, this paper aims to examine if a good corporate governance structure is able to reduce earnings management made through related party transactions. The authors expect that a high-quality corporate governance influences private benefit acquisition and reduces the positive association between related party transactions and earnings management. Design/methodology/approach A two-stage least squares instrumental variable approach is used to further address endogeneity concerns in this study. The model is organized into three parts: the construction of the corporate governance indicator, the first stage regression to compute the predicted corporate governance indicator and the second stage regression (ordinary least squares multivariate regressions) to analyze the relationship between related party transactions and earnings management. The analysis focuses on a sample of Italian listed companies over the period 2007-2012. Findings The study finds that the interaction between sales-related party transactions and corporate governance is negatively associated with abnormal accruals, signaling that corporate governance quality reduces the positive association between sales-related party transactions and earnings management, consistently with the contingency perspective. Originality/value The research contributes to literature by empirically testing the assumption of contingency perspective. In particular, the results provide new insights to the academic community, underlying that good corporate governance mechanism helps to reduce earnings management behavior through related party transactions.

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Corruption is a proxy of low detection of opportunistic behavior and may influence managers' decisions. Considering an international scenario, the study investigates whether income shifting between subsidiaries and parents is emphasized for subsidiaries in less corrupted countries. Data refer to groups with the parent company in France, German, Italy, Spain, or UK. Using financial data, tax rate, and country corruption level, linear regression is carried out to determine the impact of corruption on income shifting process. Using anomie theory, this study offers additional evidence that corruption is a symptom of instability and influences managers' decision‐making processes. Managers tend to shift income towards less corrupted countries and so, high bribery reduces the incentive to attract foreign income. These results are novel given we focus on European international groups and not merely on single firms. They confirm the positive effects of responsible business and the attractiveness of countries that control for corruption.

This study investigates the relationship between the implementation of mandatory gender quotas on boards and companies' environmental indicators for Italian listed firms from 2010 to 2018. First, based on the upper echelon and resource dependence theories, we expect that the resources provided by female directors appointed under a coercive legal approach will lead to a reduction in firms' greenhouse gas emissions and an increase in recycled waste. These resources are mainly based on female personality, backgrounds and environmental commitment, which improve firms' environmental decision-making. Second, based on the gender socialisation and overconfidence theories, we expect that women's attention to stakeholders and experts will be negatively related to firms' environmental violations, which result in litigation and penalties. To test our hypotheses we used a content analysis and a staggered difference-in-difference multivariate regression model. Our results confirm our expectations for environmental performance and litigation, but not for penalties.