Purpose: The purpose of this research is to support the green movement and improve corporate performance by focusing on green intellectual capital and its various components (e.g. green human capital, green structural capital and green relational capital). Furthermore, this study looks into the impact of business reputation in mediating the link between green intellectual capital qualities and business performance.Design/methodology/approach: To obtain data from the target population, this study employed quantitative techniques and a survey approach for data collection from respondents (managers and employees) of firms. The final sample size was 255.Findings: According to structural equation modeling green human capital, green structural capital and green relational capital all have a positive and statistically significant impact on organizational performance. Furthermore, the study shows that a company’s reputation plays an important role in mediating the relationship between the green intellectual capital component and business performance. These findings are confirmed by the natural resource-based perspective theory. This shows that developing green intellectual capital and promoting a green environment increases a company’s reputation among stakeholders, which promotes organizational performance.Research limitations/implications: The study’s findings will help policymakers and administrators better understand the role of green intellectual capital in business reputation and performance. Based on empirical data, the study would contribute to the management, environmental science and performance literature.Originality/value: To the best of the researcher's knowledge, this is the first study to apply the natural resource-based view theory and to consider corporate reputation as a mediator between green intellectual capital and business success.

Purpose: This paper empirically investigates the impact of board diversity in terms of demographic and cognitive dimensions on financial distress likelihood in an emerging Chinese market to explore whether the Chief Executive Officers' (CEOs) power moderates the relationship between board diversity and the probability of financial distress.Design/methodology/approach: To test the hypothesized relationships, demographic diversity through gender, age and nationality, and cognitive diversity through education, expertise and tenure, are taken as independent variables to investigate their impact on the probability of financial distress measured by the Altman China Z score. Data is collected for 13,740 firm-year observations from 2009 to 2018. This study employs panel data regression under fixed effect assumptions. Further, to control the possible endogeneity issue, this study uses a two-step System Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) model as a robust check.Findings: The results reveal that board diversity is positively associated with financial distress Z score, suggesting that diverse boards are helpful in reducing the likelihood of financial distress. Moreover, CEO power positively moderates this relationship. It means that board diversity, in the presence of powerful CEOs, is more effective in reducing financial distress likelihood by controlling the wrong financial decisions taken by top executives to reap personal benefits. Further, the robustness model confirms the relationship between board diversity and the probability of financial distress.Originality/value: To the best of researchers' knowledge, this is one of the earliest studies to investigate board diversity by constructing demographic and cognitive board diversity indexes as a determinant of financial distress likelihood in China. Further, researchers found no study in the literature using CEO power as a contextual variable on the relationship between board diversity and financial distress.

Despite the growing recognition of artificial intelligence in enhancing environmental performance, the pathways through which artificial intelligence influences environmental performance and the role of external factors, i.e., carbon emission strategies and sustainability regulations, in this relationship are unexplored. Data were collected from 387 employees of small and medium enterprises in Pakistan. Our empirical analysis confirms a positive relationship between artificial intelligence use and environmental performance. The results also reveal that external factors mediate and intensify the association between artificial intelligence and environmental performance. These findings are aligned with dynamic capability theory, which suggests that artificial intelligence tools with external factors can enhance small and medium enterprises’ capabilities to achieve sustainable development goals and improve environmental performance. This study has some practical and social implications for stakeholders, i.e., owners, policy-makers, and managers of small and medium enterprises in emerging economies, to promote sustainable practices and environmental performance of businesses. As per the researcher’s knowledge, this study is the inaugural investigation into the influence of artificial intelligence on environmental performance, considering the mediating role of external environmental factors and employing dynamic capability theory within the context of small and medium enterprises in Pakistan.

The study aimed to empirically investigate the impact of board diversity variables (age, gender, nationality, education, tenure, and expertise) on the investment preferences of foreign institutional investors in an emerging market, China. For this, sample data consisted of 1374 nonfinancial Chinese firms from 2009 to 2018. The study used OLS regression as a baseline regression, a fixed effect model to control omitted variable bias, and the two-step systems GMM model to control the endogeneity problem. The study revealed that board diversity variables (gender, nationality, education, and financial expertise) are positively associated with foreign institutional ownership in Chinese nonfinancial firms, implying that foreign institutional investors own a high percentage of Chinese nonfinancial firms with diversity of gender, nationality, education, and financial expertise. Age and tenure of board diversity, on the other hand, have little correlation with foreign institutional ownership. Further, the robustness regressions also confirmed the relationship between board diversity and foreign institutional ownership. This study made a unique attempt to provide empirical evidence that firms having diverse boards attract foreign institutional ownership by reducing asymmetric information.

The study aims to analyze the impact of board diversity on environmental performance with the mediating role of green invocation. The study was conducted in China's environment. The data is collected from the financial statements provided by listed companies, such as the China Stock Exchange, on its website. For data validity, descriptive statistics are used to find outliers and differences in the variables by using variance analysis and for analyzing the multicollinearity correlation matrix. The results of descriptive statistics prove the validity of the data, and the correlation matrix explains that there is no issue of multicollinearity between dependent and independent variables. The GMM model is used to analyze the data. The study's results demonstrated that board diversity positively impacts environmental performance because female directors are more environmentally sensitive than male directors. However, board diversity hurts green innovation because the board members focus on utilizing current resources in a more productive way in which the company earns immediate profit. Investing in research and development with the intention of innovation may waste the investment, and companies may suffer losses. The researcher suggested that board diversity is needed in Chinese companies for environmental performance. The results prove the resource dependency theory, which explains that innovations, research, and development depend on resource availability (Capital) in the organization. The researcher suggested that this study will be conducted in different environments, especially in the context of Pakistan, and that the researchers will accept, reject, or modify results.