The relationship between Sustainability Reporting and corporate financial performance is overlapping and multifaceted and it has been an interesting issue for both academics and professionals since the beginning of the millennium. Studies have found divergent results on this relation and the industrial differences are omitted in many papers. Moreover, studies considering developing countries are scarce. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the relationship between sustainability reporting and firm performance in a developing country context. The impact of sustainability reporting is investigated using pooled ordinary least square (OLS) method for panel data regression through two models based on Tobin’s Q and ROA. A total of 920 observations for 46 companies with 3 different impact levels based on their environmental effect and 5-year quarterly panel data between 2016–2020. The research used data from Borsa Istanbul (Istanbul Stock Exchange) and also independent variables such as leverage, risk, size, current ratio, growth, sustainability reporting, and the environmental impact level of companies. The results showed that sustainability reporting has a significant positive impact on financial performance according to the ROA model, and a significant negative correlation between risk and financial performance according to both ROA and Tobin’s Q models. Considering the environmental impact of companies, the results also reveal a positive relationship between high impact companies’ sustainability reporting and short-term financial performance as ROA is an accounting-oriented measure that reveals the company’s short-term financial performance. Further research should investigate the impact of sustainability reporting in different markets based on the impact level of companies and the development degree of countries.

Purpose: This study aims to examine the factors that move the decision‐makers in small businesses to expend company resources for corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative phenomenological study used a Van Kaam method as modified by Moustakas with in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews to explore the factors and priorities considered by SME executives in CSR decisions.Findings: The study revealed that small business executives are generally influenced by personal feelings, financial conditions, friends and family, and religion in making decisions on CSR activities. In addition, these decision‐makers prefer local CSR activities, are concerned with the environment, and go beyond the basic legal requirements. The sole focus on profits was not evident in these small business executives.Research limitations/implications: The results imply that small business management does not rely simply on the analytical but on the relational and emotional. Management theories for small businesses may need to include the factors such as local community, personal feelings and religion as determining the direction of overall decision‐making in the small business community. This study is also significant to leadership in that it identifies factors that influence the decision process in small businesses.Originality/value: The results of this study may open new discussions and lead to the development of new theories on leadership and management in small businesses.

Over the last decade, the development of smartphones, social networking sites, and applications led to a rise in social commerce, a new way for companies and individuals to carry on a trade. The s-commerce trend is based mostly on information exchange and social connections, and their effect on users’ purchase intention. This study seeks to observe trends in the literature on social commerce while investigating its interplay with purchase intention using bibliometric analysis. This analysis is one of the best tools to summarize the research in the field and to designate the trends and future directions. However, to eliminate data duplication and the cleaning process, only the ScienceDirect database is used with “social commerce” and “purchase intention” as keywords, providing us with 71 studies for the period 2013–2022. This study sorts these articles according to the following bibliographic indicators: year of publication, journal with most published research, authors, language, keywords, and citation frequency. The general themes and methods of the papers in the database are also investigated to better cover the topic. This analysis provides insight for this line of research into purchase intention in social commerce.

The impact of sustainability on corporate financial performance has been an important subject of both academic and professional debate since the 1990s. However, there is a lack of consensus in the literature, and studies from developing countries remain scarce. Accordingly, this study uses discriminant analysis to shed light on the variables that discriminate between sustainable and non-sustainable companies using the companies included in Borsa Istanbul (BIST100) (Istanbul Stock Exchange) and the Borsa Istanbul Sustainability Index for a three-year period. Financial and market variables are used in the analysis. Financial variables include the return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA), leverage ratios, and company size. The analysis also incorporates market variables such as alpha, beta, volatility, earnings per share, and the price to book ratio. The results show that the relationship between sustainability and performance is significantly influenced by the company size, leverage, volatility, and price to book ratio. The large companies are considered to be more sustainable as their commitment is well recognized. In this way, they attract more investors. Therefore, their stock prices are less volatile and achieve a better price to book ratio. They obtain easy access to external financing compared to companies considered to be non-sustainable. Moreover, they are less volatile in the market and better valued by investors.

Purpose – This study, according to the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication and the technological revolution of the last decade, aims to investigate the online CSR communication of the SMEs. Design/methodology/approach – According to the study's purpose and character, the data are collected from the websites of SMEs. The firms are chosen randomly from a database of a web portal for SMEs. The websites in the sample are examined in order to explore the nature and the extent of information on CSR activities and style of presentation. Findings – The findings showed that the number of SMEs with CSR information on their websites is very low. The SMEs do not use the potential of their websites to their advantage in terms of the quantity and style. However, the study offers an overview of different CSR activities and communication styles of these activities. Research limitations/implications – The research used a sample from an SME web portal database with the result that it makes it difficult to generalize the results but they are in coherence with the results of similar studies. Practical implications – The study enriches the extant literature and provides future research areas as well as insights and basic principles for managerial use for better usage of the web. Online CSR activities that organizations may find interesting and hints to improve websites for a better style and image of good corporate citizenship are also discussed. Originality/value – The study explores in the Turkish context the current situation of online CSR communication and shows that even the SMEs are increasingly concerned with communicating ethically and responsibly to the diversity of stakeholders through the web.

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to investigate the brand social responsibility (BSR) construct, and to develop a scale to measure this construct.Design/methodology/approach: Using corporate social responsibility scales and the existing literature, a pre‐test to establish an initial list of items is followed by exploratory factor analysis in order to obtain a list of descriptors and statements to measure brand social responsibility. Then, the retained items of the BSR scale and existing CSR scales are tested on a panel of 248 participants.Findings: The brand social responsibility scale tested in this research was more focused on a brand's trustworthiness, awareness, and the brand's philanthropic activities from a consumer's perspective. The descriptors used in the scale more accurately measure consumers' perceptions of a brand's social responsibility than CSR scales, and also take into consideration the possible differences between a parent brand's SR and its subsidiary's SR.Research limitations/implications: This study, while investigating the brand social responsibility construct and developing a scale to measure it, compares existing CSR scales and emphasizes the possible differences between a parent brand's SR and its subsidiary's SR.Originality/value: The brand social responsibility scale in this study is important as it is one of the few scales in the field that takes into consideration the consumer's perspective as well as the possible effects of a parent brand and its subsidiaries.