The purpose of this study is to find out how the positive influence of corporate sustainable development on corporate financial performance alters during the two recent crises i.e. the global recession (2008–10) and COVID-19 (2019–20). The fixed effect modeling of panel data is applied in the main analysis of Chinese manufacturing companies ranging from 2008 to 2020. The results of the study disclose that there is an overall positive influence of corporate sustainable development on corporate financial performance. However, this influence becomes stronger during both crises i.e. the global recession (2008–10) and COVID-19 (2019–20). Moreover, this positive influence is even stronger during covid −19 recession as compared to this influence during the global recession (2008–10).

This study explores the relationship between company earnings management and the relative value relevance of book value and earnings. The differential effect on the value relevance of earnings management (EM) from 2014 to 2018 for all firms listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) is investigated by short-term versus long-term discretionary accruals. For firms whose EM is considered as an indication of its discretionary accruals, it is anticipated that earnings’ value relevance would be lower than firms that do not consider EM. The results show that EM discretionary accruals influence the value relevance of book value and earnings for the long-term compared to the short-term. The study’s finding is expected to shed light on applying the quality of firms’ financial reporting in protecting stakeholders’ interests by providing them with credible information free from earnings manipulations.

This study aims to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) of Value Management (VM) in construction projects in the context of developing countries. The article serves as a preliminary study on the status of VM in developing countries. A questionnaire survey and interviews with construction professionals have been conducted to highlight possible success factors to achieve this aim. The 181 returned surveys were analysed using factor analysis to explore the inherent relationships between the highly ranked CSFs. The study reveals that Client Support, Awareness of the VM team, the VM facilitator’s proficiency, and the VM team environment are the main clusters that describe the connections between CSFs. Besides the scarcity of VM studies in developing countries, our study provides insights into how VM techniques can be smoothed in construction projects. Additionally, the article introduces two novels CSFs to the field of VM that has not been investigated before.