Given the increasing role of socially responsible investing (SRI), but still limited participatio... more Given the increasing role of socially responsible investing (SRI), but still limited participation of individual (i.e. small, retail) investors, the objective of this study is twofold: (i) We aim to identify investment barriers regarding SRI for individual investors and analyze to what extent these barriers vary across different investor groups. (ii) We analyze to what extent sustainability or transparency labels can help to overcome these barriers. To this end, we empirically analyze data from a survey and a stated choice experiment for a broad sample of financial decision makers in German households. The results suggest that a considerable amount of respondents can imagine to invest in a socially responsible manner, which is promising for policymakers and practitioners who aim to foster sustainable development and SRI. However, too high information costs are a severe barrier for potential future investors and a considerable share of respondents distrusts providers of socially responsible investment products. Banks, who could help to solve this problem, appear not to fulfill their role as intermediaries. But we find that labels might serve as a complement to banks. Especially sustainability certificates that confirm the consideration of sustainability criteria could decrease information costs and overcome at least some barriers for some investor groups, particularly for new investors. However , the results also suggest that a certain degree of basic knowledge and trust in providers of socially responsible investment products is required before labels work efficiently.
Work-life issues have important implications at both organizational and individual levels.This pa... more Work-life issues have important implications at both organizational and individual levels.This paper provides a critical review of the work-life literature from 1990 onwards through the lens of diversity, with a particular focus on disparities of power induced by methodological and conceptual framings of work and life.The review seeks to answer the following questions: What are the gaps and omissions in the work-life research? How may they be overcome? To answer these questions, the review scrutinizes blind spots in the treatment of life, diversity and power in work-life research in both positivist and critical scholarship. In order to transcend the blind spots in positivist and critical work-life research, the review argues the case for an intersectional approach which captures the changing realities of family and workforce through the lens of diversity and intersectionality.The theoretical contribution is threefold: first, the review demonstrates that contemporary framing of life in the work-life literature should be expanded to cover aspects of life beyond domestic life. Second, the review explains why and how other strands of diversity than gender also manifest as salient causes of difference in experiences of the work-life interface. Third, the review reveals that social and historical context has more explanatory power in work-life dynamics than the micro-individual level of explanations. Work-life literature should capture the dynamism in these contexts. The paper also provides a set of useful recommendations to capture and opera-tionalize methodological and theoretical changes required in the work-life literature.
This study attempts to investigate the influence of managerial mindfulness on firm innovation. Ma... more This study attempts to investigate the influence of managerial mindfulness on firm innovation. Managerial mindfulness is defined as a collective psychological state shared by top management team (TMT) members and represents their collective attention to present-moment events and experiences. Drawing from two psychological mechanisms of mindfulness, we argue that managerial mindfulness can positively affect R&D intensity-a proxy for firm innovation. The first psychological mechanism is that mindfulness facilitates self-regulation. By facilitating self-regulation, managerial mindfulness enables TMT members to behave less opportunistically and act in a less self-serving manner. Therefore, TMT members are concerned about the shareholders' interests in long-term value creation and hence are willing to take more risk such as investing more in R&D. The second psychological mechanism is that mindfulness facilitates goal-pursuit, especially for intrinsic goals. Mindful TMT members are autonomously motivated to pursue goals that are more satisfying, persist for longer durations, and show greater success than goals that are extrinsically motivated; mindful TMT members are likely to view R&D as an intrinsic goal to pursue. In addition to the main effect, this study also examines several moderators and suggests that the positive relationship between managerial mindfulness and R&D intensity is moderated by firm age, slack resources, and past financial performance. Specifically, this relationship becomes weaker when a firm grows older and the firm has better past financial performance, while it is stronger when a firm has greater slack resources. To empirically test our hypotheses, we rely on a sample of Chinese listed companies and collect data from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research (CSMAR). Feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) regression is adopted due to the presence of significant autocorrelations and heteroskedasticity. The empirical analyses provide full support for our hypotheses. Therefore, this study contributes to literature of mindfulness, as well as studies on TMT's influence on firm strategy and decision-making.
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Papers by Jane Ngo