Water scarcity is rising as a global issue, because the planet earth is facing a global water crisis, which is considered something that can destroy environmental sustainability of our planet. The fact is that humanity’s demand is depleting natural resources faster than nature can replenish itself; if human habits and unsustainable use of water resources do not change, water scarcity will inevitably intensify and become a major cause of conflict among different nations of the world. The water scarcity issue is a crucial issue but unfortunately it has not received due attention in past. Pakistan, which once was a water abundant country, now facing a situation of water scarcity. Pakistan has a poor irrigation system which results 60% loss of its water; Pakistan uses more water for crop production than other countries. Likewise, the country harvests water from rainfall, rivers, snow, and glaciers. The country is facing a serious water crisis that is caused by different factors, such as changing climatic conditions, rising population, poor irrigation system, poor political will, and rapid urbanization. The water crisis of Pakistan is expected to worsen in coming years. This is a drastic situation which calls for emergency measures. With this background, the present study provides a detailed view of the water situation in the country with challenges to water management. The study also suggests some recommendations for policymakers to improve the water crisis situation in the future.

Innovation is a complex process and has been shown to be influential towards different types of stakeholders. From the viewpoint of stakeholder theory, shareholders and creditors are more likely to be concerned about corporate financial performance. However, in the new era an enterprise’s responsibilities have to extend to other stakeholders, including its employees, suppliers and communities. This study aims to extend the literature by examining the individual effects of product and process innovations, and then their interactions with external collaboration, on firm performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in terms of local contributions for a sample of Vietnamese manufacturing firms during 2011–2013. Research findings suggest that process and product innovations are beneficial to firm performance in terms of market share, but not return on total assets. This implies that investment in innovative activities requires time to make positive changes in profitability, but it may help with winning customer loyalty. We also find evidence suggesting that innovation could make firms more obscure, especially when there are external parties involved. This motivates firms to send signals about their sustainability and goodwill through corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. With regard to CSR activities, we are the first to provide a breakdown of categories of corporate social contribution towards the local well-being, and elaborate evidence on the effect of innovation on each category, rather than just a composite index of CSR as in some extant studies.

Although the relationship between board gender diversity and a firm’s financial performance has been investigated before, the current study provides a valuable contribution by exploring the complex phenomenon of the mediating impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance on a firm’s financial performance. The current study aims to explore whether corporate social responsibility (represented by the proxy variable of CSR reporting) mediates the relationship between boardroom gender diversity and firm performance. We use the pooled ordinary least square (OLS) regression to examine the above relationship by using data from 2008 to 2015. To control the likelihood of endogeneity we also use one-year lagged and two-stage least square (2SLS) regression models. Our results show that boardroom gender diversity is significant, positively correlated with firm performance, and CSR fully mediates the relationship between boardroom gender diversity and firm performance. In addition, four control variables (independent director, Chief executive officer (CEO power), board member meeting frequency, Big4, and leverage) have some influence on firm performance. These findings hold for a set of robustness tests. Our findings have the implication for the investors and regulators. For investors, our results show that the existence of female directors on the board can improve the firm performance. For regulators, our results advise the worldwide policy maker to give the importance to boardroom gender diversity. The paper contributes to the existing studies, by pioneering the investigations of the mediating role of CSR in the relation between boardroom gender diversity and firm performance in Chinese context.

The primary objective of this paper is to empirically examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) influences corporate tax avoidance (CTA) of Chinese listed companies. The study is based on a sample of 3481 firm-year observations from 2009 to 2015 using CSR ratings from the Rankins (RKS) corporate social responsibility ratings agency in China, and all financial data extracted from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research (CSMAR). The authors foundthat CSR is negatively related to the current and cash effective tax rate (proxies of corporate tax avoidance), suggesting that responsible firms are more involved in tax avoidance as compared to less responsible firms. Their findings are robust against different control variables. Additionally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper is one of the first to document an empirical association between CSR and corporate tax avoidance of Chinese listed companies.

The present research is conducted on the Chinese corporate sector and raises the basic questions associated with the adoption and implementation of corporate disclosure practices such as SDGs. The sample for this research consisted of 100 Chinese companies, which are listed in the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2016 to 2018. For this purpose, content analysis is developed. More specifically, a quantitative approach is applied to quantify and identify certain contents or words in the given text. Our results show that Chinese companies seem to be more focused on certain aspects of the UN SDGs at the cost of others, but the overall situation is, at best, not encouraging. The focus of attention of Chinese companies seems to be infrastructure development, industrial innovation, and economic growth, along with the provision of a dignified and respectable working environment, affordable and clean energy, and peace, justice, and strong institutions. The results can be used as guidelines by Chinese companies to determine the actual presence or absence of SDGs implementation inside the process of value creation as an integral part of their practices about corporate disclosure. The main contribution of this research relates to the analysis of the adoption and implementation efforts to report SDGs and the contribution of such reporting towards the fulfillment of the UN Agenda 2030. This can be of interest to researchers working on the given topic. It is of utmost importance for government policymakers and corporate decision-makers, who want to support companies that are contributing towards the achievement and adaptation of SDGs as part of their overall objectives.

Corporate tax avoidance is an act aiming at reducing tax amount liable to the government, which is expected to raise firm value. However, agency theory postulates that opportunistic managers can lower tax liabilities through the arrangement of complex transactions, enabling them to shirk or pursue own interests. Therefore, the need to examine the link between corporate tax avoidance and firm performance is evident, yet there has not been any research on this in the context of Vietnam, a country plagued with tax-avoiding cases. We are the first to examine the empirical link using a sample of Vietnamese listed firms over the period from 2010 to 2016, using a wide-ranging set of performance and tax-sheltering indicators. Overall, the results indicate a mixed relationship between corporate tax avoidance and firm performance in Vietnam.