This study aims to examine how service employees’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility affect their creativity at work and its mediated link through compassion at work and their intrinsic motivation. Working with a sample of 250 hotel employees in South Korea, structural equation modeling is employed to test research hypotheses. The results of this research suggest that employees’ perceptions of CSR are positively related to employee creativity. Second, compassion at work mediated the positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR and (...) creativity. Third, employees’ intrinsic motivation also mediated the positive relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR and employee creativity. Finally, the relationship between employees’ perceptions of CSR and employee creativity is sequentially and fully mediated by compassion at work and their intrinsic motivation. The theoretical and managerial implications of the results and limitations of the study are discussed, and future research directions are suggested. (shrink)

We analyze whether audit partners suffered damage to their professional reputations with the demise of Zhongtianqin, formerly the largest audit firm in China, after an audit failure enabled a major client, Yinguangxia, to fraudulently exaggerate its earnings in a high-profile scandal resembling the Andersen–Enron events in the US. This involves evaluating whether the reputational damage sustained by partners implicated in the scandal spreads to other partners in the same audit firm. We isolate whether impaired reputation impedes partners who were not (...) complicit in the ZTQ–YGX events from attracting new clients or keeping existing ones. Our evidence implies that the market shares of these partners fell after ZTQ’s collapse, supporting that guiltless partners’ reputations were tarnished. We also find that these partners are less likely to be employed by reputable audit firms. The clients of these partners tend to have lower earnings response coefficients, implying that investors downgrade the perceived quality of their audits. Moreover, compared to a matched sample, the former ZTQ partners tend to charge lower audit fees after the firm’s collapse. Finally, we exploit the unique structure of ZTQ to provide evidence consistent with the prediction that the former partners from the branch that handled the YGX audits experienced worse damage to their reputations. In a setting with minimal auditor discipline stemming from civil litigation, our results lend support to the intuition that partners’ reputation concerns motivate them to protect audit quality by closely monitoring other partners in the firm. (shrink)

This study investigates the financial effects of additions to and deletions from the most well-known social stock index: the MSCI KLD 400. Our study makes use of the unique setting that index reconstitution provides and allows us to bypass possible issues of endogeneity that commonly plague empirical studies of the link between corporate social and financial performance. By examining not only short-term returns but also trading activity, earnings per share, and long-term performance of stocks that are involved in these events, (...) we bring forward evidence of a ‘social index effect’ where unethical transgressions are penalized more heavily than responsibility is rewarded. We find that the addition of a stock to the index does not lead to material changes in its market price, whereas deletions are accompanied by negative cumulative abnormal returns. Trading volumes for deleted stocks are significantly increased on the event date, while the operational performances of the respective firms deteriorate after their deletion from the social index. (shrink)

Drawing from normal accident theory, high reliability theory, and systems theory, we analyze the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People that is promulgated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in response to the sexual abuses of minors by clergy members. Although the Charter is a step in the right direction, there remain some areas that require immediate attention. In spite of the goodwill processes, the safety of minors must remain the concerted efforts and responsibilities of (...) individuals at all the various levels if the Catholic Church is to prevent further cases of abuse from happening. (shrink)

There is a growing body of research on the theory and practice of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). However, relatively little research has been conducted on the extent to which corporations have integrated sustainability principles into the management of their supply chain and the evaluation of supplier performance. The purpose of this article is to explore the extent to which corporate sustainability principles are integrated into supply chain management (SCM) in corporations. Canada is used as a case study in this (...) article. The study included a content analysis of one hundred Canadian corporate sustainable development reports and in-depth interviews with 18 Canadian experts on SSCM. The article highlights the wide array of ways in which Canadian corporations address SSCM issues. Amongst other topics, issues associated with supply chain governance, standards for SSCM, collaboration with suppliers, performance measurement, and accountability within the supply chain are explored. The findings reveal that there are many challenges in integrating sustainability into SCM. These challenges shed light on possible future directions for research in SSCM. This article underlines the need for research that reflects the interconnected nature of the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability, particularly as it relates to measuring supplier performance on sustainability initiatives. (shrink)