Recently, there has been growing recognition of the significance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors in assessing a company’s performance and worth. Previous research has failed to take into account the significant impact of technological innovation in their empirical investigations. This study fills the gap by investigating the moderating impact of technological innovation on ESG performance and company value in developing and least-developed countries. The study utilized secondary data from 78 pharmaceutical companies from 2009 to 2022. For the investigation, we used the pooled mean group (PMG) and generalized methods of moments (GMM) estimators. The findings reveal that environmental and social performance influence firms’ value; however, governance performance does not influence firms’ value. Additionally, technological innovation acts as a catalyst, strengthening the favorable influence of ESG performance on firm value. The findings affirm the need to incorporate technological innovation, as it enables pharmaceutical firms to implement more efficient and sustainable practices.

An effective internal auditor can support an organization in achieving its goals and protect its assets and funds. However, to be effective, the internal auditors need to be empowered with relevant resources. This study aims at probing the influence of the empowerments (management support, external auditors' collaboration, independence, size of internal audit units, and extrinsic rewards) on the internal auditors' effectiveness, and to examin whether extrinsic rewards moderate the association between respective empowerments and the effectiveness of Jordanian public sector internal auditors'. The current work relied on 117 surveys collected from Jordan's internal audit and financial managers in the public sectors. According to the Resource-Based View (RBV), the findings show that management support, external auditors cooperation, independence, and extrinsic rewards all have a significant influence on the effectiveness of internal auditor. The of the Internal Audit Department (IAD) size was discovered to be insignificant. Also, the results have revealed partial support for the influence of the extrinsic reward as a moderator. Because of the prominence of the public sector in the Jordanian market, this current research expands on the idea of enabling internal auditor (IA) to accomplish their assigned objectives. The findings might help authorities develop new norms and legislation for the internal audit profession. These empowering characteristics may also improve internal auditors' capacity to execute their duty in saving public monies and limiting corrupt practices inside public sector organizations.

We examined the impact of financing decisions on a firm’s sustainability in China as it aspires to achieve carbon neutrality. To proxy firms’ sustainability performance, we proposed an index for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. The financing decision was proxied by debt funding and equity funding. Using secondary data from China Stock Market Accounting Data from 2016 to 2022, we utilize the fixed effect and fully modified ordinary least squares estimators for the empirical analysis. The analysis indicated a favorable link between debt funding and ESG performance. We uncovered an inconsistent association between equity funding and ESG performance. Moreover, ownership concentration revealed a significant role in moderating the impact of debt financing and ESG performance in China. The findings affirm that firms should rely on debt funding rather than equity funding to enhance their ESG performance. Hence, policymakers should enact laws allowing easy access to debt funding for companies to ensure higher ESG performance. This, in the long term, will contribute to the Chinese dream of carbon neutrality.

There is evidence for mixed effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on corporate financial performance. In particular, evidence is reported to be positive, negative, and insignificant. These controversies are generally explained by two opposing schools of thought, which are the social impact hypothesis and the shift of focus hypothesis. This paper attempts to contribute to the ongoing debate by investigating whether the relationship between CSR and firm financial results is nonlinear. Therefore, this research relies on a panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) model in order to calculate the value transition threshold of CSR in 70 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) firms from 2015 to 2020, using the CSR composite index and various CSR dimensions, which include environmental, social, and governance transition dimensions. Empirical findings indicate that investment in CSR does not help to boost corporate value until it exceeds the value transition threshold. However, when the marginal benefit exceeds the cost, CSR investment becomes a positive contributor to corporate performance. Furthermore, results indicate that the nonlinear relationship persists when using the individual CSR dimensions, i.e., governmental, social, and environmental CSR measurements. Finally, an interesting finding shows that the social CSR dimension is associated with the highest threshold level. Hence, firms should invest more in the social aspects of CSR in order to see their profitability increase.