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Our research investigates how the inclusion of a company on an independent ethics index affects its attractiveness to institutional investors. Using a sample of 864 U.S. firms over the 2010–2018 period, we find that institutional investors significantly increase their holdings in companies in the quarter that they are included on the ethics index and maintain larger holdings in the four quarters following the inclusion on the Ethisphere list relative to pre‐inclusion period, with dedicated institutional investors being more swayed to invest than transient investors. This paper adds to the emerging literature on intermediate signaling by showing that a firm's inclusion on an ethics index reduces information asymmetry with institutional investors. Our evidence suggests that public companies should effectively, rather than ceremonially, adopt sound governance structures and invest in socially responsible activities, as these actions can increase their likelihood of being included on ethics indices. By doing so, these firms send credible signals about their ethical compass, granting them access to valuable institutional investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on 26 semi-structured in-depth interviews with disabled employees, this paper explores the work environment of disabled individuals in Egyptian public organizations and how it affects their feelings of emancipation. The findings show that institutional limitations translated into poor public policy implementation by the state and discriminatory organizational practices constitute major hurdles to the inclusiveness and empowerment of disabled employees. Particularly, we find that the weak law enforcement capacity of the state has led to poor policy implementation, and to a lack of institutional infrastructure that can support law implementation. Furthermore, poor organizational practices, such as the unavailability of health and education resources, fair selection and/or merit-based recruiting, and speech-related harassment have further amplified the negative experiences that people with disability encounter in the workplace. All of these factors limited the emancipatory feelings of disabled employees. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed at the end of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE IMPORTANCE OF INTERACTIVE NETWORK BRANDING IN FAST-CHANGING BUSINESS ENVIRONMENTS Traditionally, academic literature has examined branding from a single-firm perspective, as an internal management activity (e.g., Barros-Arrieta & García-Cali, [1]; Gapp & Merrilees, [8]). INB is described as a socially constructed process, through which the identity and reputation of a company - as two key pillars of a brand - are being cocreated with a company's stakeholders (Koporcic & Halinen, [19]; Koporcic & Törnroos, [21]). Interactive network branding: Demonstrating the importance of firm representatives for small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets. The INB process, thus, takes a multi-stakeholder perspective, while focusing on interpersonal interactions between firm representatives that act as brand ambassadors and boundary spanners in business network settings (Koporcic, [18]). [Extracted from the article]