Purpose: This paper aims to address the need for a more in-depth empirical investigation of exploring the link between the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and different aspects of customer behavior in a developing country. This paper develops a research framework and assesses the mediating role of trust, customer-company identification (CCI) and electronic-service quality (E-SQ) between customer perceptions of CSR and customer loyalty. Design/methodology/approach: Working with a sample of 280 banking customers in Pakistan, partial least square based structural equation modeling is used to test the conceptual model. Findings: Surprisingly, results suggest that CSR is not directly related to customer loyalty, which is contradictory to previously established findings conducted in developed countries. Thus, confirming a full mediation of CCI, E-SQ and trust in enhancing the effect of CSR on customer loyalty. The study also confirms that CSR is positively related to E-SQ, and E-SQ also directly affects CCI. Practical implications: Banks should adhere to honest CSR practices and effectively communicate and advertise these practices to increase awareness and knowledge among the customers. Similarly, banks should advance in technological expertise to generate customer identification, which then leads to their loyalty. Originality/value: Previous studies conferred short-term customer’s reactions, such as purchase intention and brand image. Still, this research discusses the long-term effect of CSR on customer behavior, such as the loyalty of the customers. Moreover, this is the pioneer study that investigates how CSR actions influence customer perceptions about E-SQ and how electronic services affect customer identification with a bank.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate two important research questions. First, this research examines the impact of real earnings management on investment inefficiency of the non-financial listed firms in Pakistan. Second, this research further explores the moderating role of short-term debt on the nexus between real earnings management and investment inefficiency. This study attempts to highlight an important research problem i.e. the jinx of real earnings management from the context of an emerging economy.Design/methodology/approach: This study employs the data from non-financial listed firms in Pakistan over the period from 2008 to 2018. The study uses panel data methodologies with firm and year fixed-effects to examine the proposed hypotheses. The results are robust to the use of sensitivity analysis, different estimation techniques and endogeneity issues (using two-stage least squares (2SLS) and generalized method of moments (GMM) techniques).Findings: The results of the research are twofold. First, consistent with the theoretical arguments, the findings reveal that real earnings management increases investment inefficiency and results in over-investments by the firms. Second, short-term debt attenuates the relationship between real earnings management and investment inefficiency. It implies that a higher level of short-term debt weakens the adverse effects of real earnings management on the investment efficiency of the firm.Originality/value: This study offers original findings on the issues pertaining to the quality of accounting and financial reporting in an emerging economy like Pakistan, where the implementation of regulations is weak in the corporate world and management frequently exploits shareholders' wealth for the short-term benefits.

Accounting conservatism (AC) is one of the components of financial reporting, and has been widely studied by academicians to identify its impact on information quality. Scholars in accounting have started to explore how AC is related to different fundamental functional areas of organizations. The interest of the scholars has resulted in an increasing number of publications in this field. In this study, we examined 408 indexed publications related to AC. This work’s objectives include analyzing the regional distribution, size, and evolution of this knowledge base by identifying key authors, documents, and journals while exploring current literature, scholarly structure, and highlighting contemporary trends. The findings of the study concluded that most of the studies are conducted in developed nations contexts. However, there are still areas that need further exploration to obtain more profound insights on the subject. This bibliometric review inspires a new generation of researchers on the topic by giving them an overview of the past studies related to AC.