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Full-Text Articles in Business

Climate Change Concerns And Mortgage Lending, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li Jan 2024

Climate Change Concerns And Mortgage Lending, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine whether beliefs about climate change affect loan officers’ mortgage lending decisions. We show that abnormally high local temperature leads to elevated attention to and belief in climate change in a region. Loan officers approve fewer mortgage applications and originate lower amounts of loans in abnormally warm weather. This effect is stronger among counties heavily exposed to the risk of sea-level rise, during periods of heightened public attention to climate change, and for loans originated by small lenders. Additional tests suggest that the negative relation between temperature and approval rate is not fully explained by changes in local economic …


Leviathan Inc. And Corporate Environmental Engagement, Po-Hsuan Hsu, Hao Liang, Pedro Matos Dec 2023

Leviathan Inc. And Corporate Environmental Engagement, Po-Hsuan Hsu, Hao Liang, Pedro Matos

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a 2010 special report, The Economist magazine termed the resurgence of state-owned, publicly listed enterprises “Leviathan Inc.” and criticized the poor governance and low efficiency of these firms. We compile a new comprehensive data set of state ownership of publicly listed firms in 44 countries over the period of 2004–2017 and show that state-owned enterprises are more responsive to environmental issues. The effect is more pronounced in economies lacking energy security and strong environmental regulation, and among firms with more local operations and higher domestic government ownership. We find a similar effect on corporate social engagement but not on …


Rule Violation And Time-To-Enforcement In Weak Institutional Environments: A Good Faith Perspective, Jun Xia, Yusi Jiang, Heli Wang, Yuan Li Nov 2023

Rule Violation And Time-To-Enforcement In Weak Institutional Environments: A Good Faith Perspective, Jun Xia, Yusi Jiang, Heli Wang, Yuan Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Previous studies on corporate misconduct have focused mainly on preventing misconduct or remedying it after detection, but it remains unclear how misconduct can be effectively detected in the first place once it occurs. We apply the good faith perspective in the context of China, which represents a weak institutional environment, and argue that the ability of culpable leaders to conceal information may delay misconduct disclosure because such ability helps maintain the good faith of regulators. Moreover, we argue that because the regulators have faith in professionals (external auditors, institutional investors, and securities analysts) whose skills are in fact often underdeveloped …


Mitigating Industry Contagion Effects From Financial Reporting Fraud: A Competitive Dynamics Perspective Of Non-Errant Rival Firms Exploiting Product-Market Opportunities, Eugene Kang, Nongnapat Thosuwanchot, David Gomulya Nov 2023

Mitigating Industry Contagion Effects From Financial Reporting Fraud: A Competitive Dynamics Perspective Of Non-Errant Rival Firms Exploiting Product-Market Opportunities, Eugene Kang, Nongnapat Thosuwanchot, David Gomulya

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Existing studies show that financial reporting frauds by errant firms cause declines in stock market valuations for non-errant rival firms (i.e. industry contagion effects). We posit that contagion effects may be mitigated by investors’ expectations of non-errant rivals exploiting product-market opportunities at the expense of errant firms. We apply the competitive dynamics literature to argue that non-errant rivals experience lower contagion effects when they have more available slack to engage in competitive actions. This effect is expected to strengthen when rival firms have previously deployed more resources for research and development and advertising investments or have higher prior market share …


Commentary: Black Or White? Wrong Or Right? Don't Rush To Take Sides On Complex Issues Such As Israel-Hamas Conflict, Siow-Heng Ong, Benjamin Joshua Ong Oct 2023

Commentary: Black Or White? Wrong Or Right? Don't Rush To Take Sides On Complex Issues Such As Israel-Hamas Conflict, Siow-Heng Ong, Benjamin Joshua Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

While responses to the Israel-Hamas conflict have been bitterly divided, they showcase a common phenomenon of people viewing complex situations in black-and-white terms. But how did we get here?


In Customer Service, When Is A Full Refund Justified?, Hannah H. Chang Oct 2023

In Customer Service, When Is A Full Refund Justified?, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Marketing Hannah Chang discussed the challenges in achieving balance between making genuine amends for the specific incident and strategic reputation management when customers complain. She also noted the challenges in balancing between offering genuine redress and not setting precedents that encourage unreasonable demands. Assoc Prof Chang also shared how companies can take preventive measures by setting clear policies for refunds or compensation, and monitoring online sentiment to stay ahead of brewing issues, thus allowing businesses to address concerns in real time.


The Race To Regeneration: A New Era For Business And Planet, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Ryan Knowles Merrill Aug 2023

The Race To Regeneration: A New Era For Business And Planet, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Ryan Knowles Merrill

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In an era where the urgency to address environmental and social challenges is paramount, traditional sustainability efforts are no longer enough. Unlike legacy sustainability strategies that revolve around measuring and reducing carbon footprints, regenerative sustainability widens its lens to encompass all facets of our planet’s well-being and focuses on creating positive impact.


The Effect Of Nationalism On Governance Choices In Cross-Border Collaborations, Gokhan Ertug, Ilya R. P. Cuypers, Douglas Dow, Jesper Edman Aug 2023

The Effect Of Nationalism On Governance Choices In Cross-Border Collaborations, Gokhan Ertug, Ilya R. P. Cuypers, Douglas Dow, Jesper Edman

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine how nationalism influences governance choice in cross-border collaborations. While nationalism has historically been within the purview of political scientists, we demonstrate its relevance to management scholars by theorizing how nationalist attitudes and behaviors among decision-makers might shape strategic decisions about collaborations with foreign partners. Drawing on insights from the social psychology literature, we theorize how two attitudes commonly associated with nationalism, i.e., lower levels of trust and an unwillingness to work with foreigners, may increase decision-makers’ concerns about opportunistic behavior and invasiveness in cross-border collaborations. Integrating these insights into two key theories of governance choice, i.e., transaction cost …


Why Employees Accept Lower Pay At Mission-Oriented Companies, Insiya Hussain, Marko Pitesa, Stefan Thau, Michael Schaerer Jul 2023

Why Employees Accept Lower Pay At Mission-Oriented Companies, Insiya Hussain, Marko Pitesa, Stefan Thau, Michael Schaerer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Today’s companies are likely to tout how their work benefits human welfare or “makes the world a better place.” Recent research suggests that this may come with a potential financial drawback for workers, as it can inhibit them from negotiating for higher pay. Over five studies, job candidates consistently reported that they worried asking for higher pay from these companies would be seen as greedy or inappropriate. This suggests they are aware of a common bias, known as motivation purity bias, where managers believe employees interested in material rewards of work (such as pay) are less motivated than those motivated …


Board Governance Of Strategic Change: An Assessment Of The Literature And Avenues For Future Research, Patricia Klamer, Qiwen Yu, Toru Yoshikawa, Michael Hitt Jul 2023

Board Governance Of Strategic Change: An Assessment Of The Literature And Avenues For Future Research, Patricia Klamer, Qiwen Yu, Toru Yoshikawa, Michael Hitt

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Boards of directors play a central role in governing corporate strategic change. We systematically review corporate governance research on strategic change published over the past 40 years, differentiating between strategic change types and board characteristics. We identify three developments: a focus on specific strategic change types, board composition and structure, and North American listed firms as a dominant study context. Yet, our analysis of the literature shows that research on board governance of interrelated strategic changes, on different board roles and behaviour, and on the governance of strategic changes across different contexts remains underdeveloped. To address these research gaps, we …


The More The Merrier: How Psychological Standing And Work Group Size Explain Managers' Willingness To Communicate About Unethical Conduct In Their Work Group, Burak Oc, Maryam Kouchaki May 2023

The More The Merrier: How Psychological Standing And Work Group Size Explain Managers' Willingness To Communicate About Unethical Conduct In Their Work Group, Burak Oc, Maryam Kouchaki

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Business ethics research has long examined the dichotomy between remaining silent or reporting ethical misconduct to a third party. Little is known, however, about ethical conversations within a work group after observing misconduct. Specifically, we do not know how many members of their work group individuals choose to communicate with. These conversations could have important implications for creating an ethical workplace. We propose that psychological standing is an important driver of individuals' decisions not to remain silent and to instead raise moral concerns with a greater number of others in their work group. In addition, integrating existing work on structural …


Ecosystem Social Responsibility In International Digital Commerce, Jingtao Yi, Jiatao Li, Liang Chen Feb 2023

Ecosystem Social Responsibility In International Digital Commerce, Jingtao Yi, Jiatao Li, Liang Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Despite the surge of interest in digital globalization, its social dimensions have received far less attention than deserved. The lack of conversation between the two prominent areas of IB research, digitalization, and corporate social responsibility, presents a valuable opportunity for extending the agenda Ioannou and Serafeim (J Int Bus Stud 43(9):834-864, 2012) pioneered a decade earlier. We briefly depict the organizational differences between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and multinational platforms (MNPs), followed by a closer look at how social responsibility of digital platforms might depart from our conventional understanding derived from MNEs. We then propose the notion of ecosystem social responsibility …


Nature Tech: A Nascent Ecosystem, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx Dec 2022

Nature Tech: A Nascent Ecosystem, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

When people talk about climate tech, they tend to mean carbon tech. It’s all carbon tunnel vision: Carbon footprint, carbon equivalent, carbon credit, carbon compensation, carbon emission reductions, carbon offsets, decarbonization and so on. By extension, the entire debate about energy transition, energy transformation, clean power and green energy is similarly a debate that is largely held within the carbon tunnel. Make no mistake about it. These are important topics to address. The energy transition will not only prevent catastrophic climate change but have massive benefits for human health by tackling fossil-fuel induced air pollution at the source.As the above …


Social Performance Feedback And Firm Communication Strategy, Heli Wang, Ming Jia, Yi Xiang, Yang Lan Nov 2022

Social Performance Feedback And Firm Communication Strategy, Heli Wang, Ming Jia, Yi Xiang, Yang Lan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although corporate social performance has become an important measure of firm performance, there is little understanding about how firms respond to social performance feedback and how impression management may function as an important firm response to the feedback. Building upon and extending the literature on the behavioral theory of the firm and the strategic use of language, we examine how discrepancies between firms’ social performance and their aspiration levels affect how firms use visual expressions in their CSR reports. In addition, we argue that the relationship between social performance discrepancies and the use of visual expressions in CSR reports is …


Ethical Branding In A Divided World: How Political Orientation Motivates Reactions To Marketplace Transgressions, Thomas Allard, Brent Mcferran Oct 2022

Ethical Branding In A Divided World: How Political Orientation Motivates Reactions To Marketplace Transgressions, Thomas Allard, Brent Mcferran

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In today's marketplace, users (e.g., purchasers, influencers) are increasingly the “face” of brands to potential consumers, increasing the risk for brands should these users act poorly. Across seven studies, we document that political orientation moderates the desire for punishment toward users of ethical (vs. conventional) brands who commit moral transgressions. In response to identical marketplace transgressions, we observe that liberals punish ethical brand users less than conventional brand users. In contrast, conservatives punish the same users of ethical brands more than conventional brand users. We document that this bias stems from how people interpret the inconsistency between the ethical branding …


Socially Oriented Shareholder Activism Targets: Explaining Activists’ Corporate Target Selection Using Corporate Opportunity Structures, Abhijith G. Acharya, David Gras, Ryan Krause Jun 2022

Socially Oriented Shareholder Activism Targets: Explaining Activists’ Corporate Target Selection Using Corporate Opportunity Structures, Abhijith G. Acharya, David Gras, Ryan Krause

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine whether and when socially oriented shareholder activists use firms’ corporate social performance (CSP) to identify them as attractive targets for their activism. We build on the research in social movements theory and stakeholder theory to theorize how firms’ engagement with primary and secondary stakeholders reflected in their technical and institutional CSP respectively allows socially oriented shareholder activists to identify targets. We develop a theoretical model by identifying corporate targets’ degree of (1) receptivity to and (2) need to comply with activist demands as two key dimensions of their corporate opportunity structure that explains the variance in firms’ attractiveness …


Digital Transformation, Sustainability, And Purpose In The Multinational Enterprise, Gerard George, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx Apr 2022

Digital Transformation, Sustainability, And Purpose In The Multinational Enterprise, Gerard George, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We discuss how environmental and pandemic crises in combination with digitization are presenting the multinational enterprise (MNE) with increasing geopolitical, organizational, and market tensions. Institutional pluralism is creating a more complex global environment. The organization of productive work is shifting, which challenges how MNEs structure and coordinate their activities. Changing consumer and investor expectations are broadening the understanding of value creation with implications for business models. We contend that the tensions invite MNEs to reconsider how they frame, formalize, and realize corporate purpose. We close with a research agenda that recognizes the need for MNEs to become purpose-driven actors.


Impact Measurement And Standards, Angeline Chua, Hao Liang, Wanyi Yang Feb 2022

Impact Measurement And Standards, Angeline Chua, Hao Liang, Wanyi Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Despite rapid economic growth and increasing interest in impact investment worldwide, less attention has been paid to the question of whether this growth is sustainable for people and the planet. In an ideal scenario, growth would happen within planetary and social boundaries. However, current financial value is often prioritised and achieved at cost to society and the environment. For example, small farmers in Indonesia have long practised slash-and-burn agriculture, and in recent decades large companies have industrialised the practice. The peatland blazes in Indonesia release smoke and large amounts of greenhouse gases, which impact both Indonesia itself, and neighbouring countries …


Introduction To The Business Of Sustainability: An Organizing Framework For Theory, Practice And Impact, Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Havovi Heerjee Joshi, Anita M. Mcgahan, Paul Tracey Feb 2022

Introduction To The Business Of Sustainability: An Organizing Framework For Theory, Practice And Impact, Gerard George, Martine R. Haas, Havovi Heerjee Joshi, Anita M. Mcgahan, Paul Tracey

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Human activity needs to become sustainable, and businesses have a massive role to play in it. Important progress has occurred. The Coronavirus pandemic has reinforced the importance of sustainability and resilience. Businesses have become champions of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), both by integrating them into their core activities and by developing strategies and metrics to achieve them. Despite this progress, more must be done to achieve sustainability targets on a timetable that is relevant. While the narratives of businesses are often exciting, their follow-through with implementation remains limited. So too is information on successful practices, conceptual knowledge …


Corporate Sustainability Has Failed: Digitizing Regeneration May Still Save Us, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx Nov 2021

Corporate Sustainability Has Failed: Digitizing Regeneration May Still Save Us, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The author proposes a focus on regeneration as a way for small carbon footprint firms (e.g., consulting, financial services firms) to make a positive sustainability impact. He highlights that service industry firms can proactively contribute to the regeneration of common pool resources, such as forests and lakes, which often become neglected or overused. What makes regeneration different compared to more traditional donations to a conservation nonprofit is the use of digital technology that enables an organization to lay claim to the eco­system benefits it generates through its support. The digitization of benefits claims provides a transparent accounting system for environmental …


Too Many Peas In A Pod? How Overlaps In Directors’ Local And Global Status Characteristics Influence Board Turnover In Newly Public Firms, Abhijith G. Acharya, Timothy G. Pollock Oct 2021

Too Many Peas In A Pod? How Overlaps In Directors’ Local And Global Status Characteristics Influence Board Turnover In Newly Public Firms, Abhijith G. Acharya, Timothy G. Pollock

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Drawing on status characteristics theory, we explore how boards’ social structures influence board turnover. We theorize that (1) understanding directors’ relative standing and spheres of influence in the local status hierarchy creates deference structures that reduce conflict and enhance stability, thereby reducing board turnover; and (2) shared performance expectations and attraction based on homophily in the global status hierarchy can also reduce conflict and enhance stability, and thus serve as another means of reducing board turnover. Using data on the five years following the initial public offerings (IPOs) of 218 firms that went public between 2001 and 2005, we find …


Understanding Organizational And Socio-Cultural Contexts: A Communicative Constitutive Approach To Social License To Operate Among Top Hong Kong Companies, Angela K. Y. Mak, Suwichit (Sean) Chaidaroon, Alessandro Poroli, Pang, A. Sep 2021

Understanding Organizational And Socio-Cultural Contexts: A Communicative Constitutive Approach To Social License To Operate Among Top Hong Kong Companies, Angela K. Y. Mak, Suwichit (Sean) Chaidaroon, Alessandro Poroli, Pang, A.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Embracing a constitutive view of communication, this study explores how organizations in Hong Kong make sense of and negotiate their corporate societal commitment. It does that by examining how the considered organizations construct their engagement in society and talk of their aspirations on identified society-oriented doings by cultural discourse analysis. Findings show that the studied Hong Kong companies constructed their engagement by communicationally relating to other societal actors, establishing we-ness in community engagement actions, incorporating elements of the local cultures (languages and places) and in their reasoning and disclosing emotion-rich considerations. Aspirations were instead presented through a constant reference to …


Regeneration First, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Ryan Knowles Merrill Aug 2021

Regeneration First, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Ryan Knowles Merrill

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

30 years of "corporate sustainability" has left our earth in a dire state. Biodiversity loss, planetary fever, floods, wildfires, droughts, melting ice caps, dying corals… the list goes on. We need a new approach. I’m sure you heard about a carbon footprint. It is the sum of all the actions we take that have a negative impact on the planet. We consume electricity, we drive to work, we fly to our holiday destination, we waste food and plastic and so on. All these actions create a negative impact that can be expressed in CO2 equivalent. The more CO2 ends up …


Competition And Cheating: Investigating The Role Of Moral Awareness, Moral Identity, And Moral Elevation, Abhijeet K. Vadera, Chandra Shekhar Pathki Jul 2021

Competition And Cheating: Investigating The Role Of Moral Awareness, Moral Identity, And Moral Elevation, Abhijeet K. Vadera, Chandra Shekhar Pathki

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Competition can lead individuals to cheat; yet our knowledge of why competition affects cheating and how to mitigate these effects is limited. To address this limitation, we first contrast two theories: arousal theories of competition (via desire to win) and social cognitive theory (via impaired moral awareness). Our results were consistent with social cognitive theory in that competition impairs moral awareness and that this impairment explains why people cheat. We therefore build on social cognitive theory and show that two factors, moral identity and moral elevation, which are likely to make morality salient, moderated the effects of competition on cheating …


The Impacts Of Ethical Philosophy On The Corporate Hypocrisy Perception And Communication Intentions Toward Csr, Kyujin Shim, Jeong-Nam Kim Jul 2021

The Impacts Of Ethical Philosophy On The Corporate Hypocrisy Perception And Communication Intentions Toward Csr, Kyujin Shim, Jeong-Nam Kim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates how perceptions of corporate hypocrisy from the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities connect the public’s ethical philosophy to subsequent positive/negative opinion-sharing intention. With special attention to deontology and consequentialism in normative ethics of philosophy, the current study empirically tests a theoretical model of perceived corporate hypocrisy with two causal antecedents (i.e., individual moral philosophy of deontology and consequentialism), and the mediating role of corporate hypocrisy between such antecedents and the publics’ subsequent communication intention (i.e., positive and negative opinion-sharing intentions) toward a firm. Results indicate significant mediation effects of corporate hypocrisy between personal ethical orientations and the …


Good Deeds Done In Silence: Stakeholder Management And Quiet Giving By Chinese Firms, Heli Wang, Ming Jia, Zhe Zhang May 2021

Good Deeds Done In Silence: Stakeholder Management And Quiet Giving By Chinese Firms, Heli Wang, Ming Jia, Zhe Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose a new mechanism explaining why companies may remain silent about their positive corporate behaviors, such as socially responsible activities. We examine such strategic silence in the context of corporate philanthropy. Building on and extending the literature on legitimacy and stakeholder management, we argue that when a firm mistreats primary stakeholders, it is more likely to keep quiet about its philanthropic acts to avoid backlash from stakeholders. We also propose that long-term orientation among stakeholders mitigates the positive relationship between mistreating primary stakeholders and quiet giving, which allows stakeholders to appreciate the long-term value of corporate philanthropy. Data from …


A Capability-Based View Of Boards: A New Conceptual Framework For Board Governance, Patricia Klarner, Toru Yoshikawa, Michael Hiit Feb 2021

A Capability-Based View Of Boards: A New Conceptual Framework For Board Governance, Patricia Klarner, Toru Yoshikawa, Michael Hiit

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A key role of board directors is to govern corporate strategy. Whereas prior research has provided insights into board roles and activities regarding board governance, the underlying capabilities required to govern effectively remain understudied. This article explores and explicates a capability-based view of board actions in which the specific capabilities that enable boards to govern strategic activities are identified. We specifically examine the conceptual foundations and different types of board capabilities, drawing on illustrative cases as well as information from interviews with board directors in the United States, Asia, and Europe. We then discuss several future research directions that can …


Reputation Matters: Building Internal Trust And Resilience With Effective Communication, Su Lin Yeo Dec 2020

Reputation Matters: Building Internal Trust And Resilience With Effective Communication, Su Lin Yeo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Reputation is a crucial driver of business performance. In today’s crisis-ridden business environment, this corporate quality has never been more prized in organizations. Research has time and again demonstratedthat a favorable reputation offers long-term value for organizations. Reputation impacts everything from financial to relationships represented by public’s confidence in brand equity, human capital, earnings and future growth. Reputation-led companies have been shown to set the standard by leading the pack for other businesses to follow, and in times of a crisis, the reputation capital that they have amassed enable them to better recover from economic storms. However, unlike other business …


Public Relations Education In Singapore: Educating The Next Generation Of Practitioners On Ethics, Eugene Yong Sheng Woon, Augustine Pang Dec 2020

Public Relations Education In Singapore: Educating The Next Generation Of Practitioners On Ethics, Eugene Yong Sheng Woon, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines if PR education adequately prepares students for the workplace, particularly in the practice of ethics in the context of Singapore, which has been described as one of “Asia’s economic tigers” (BBC, 2018). This study, thus, aims to first, elucidate the state of PR education specifically in relation to how PR ethics is taught in Singapore. Second, it examines how ethics education prepares students for the workplace in Singapore. Data comes from examining the syllabi of 14 universities in Singapore, both local and international, and interviews with 20 academics and practitioners. Findings suggest there are varying degrees in …


Stakeholder Preservation Or Appropriation? The Influence Of Target Csr On Market Reactions To Acquisition Announcements, Li Tong, Heli Wang, Jun Xia Oct 2020

Stakeholder Preservation Or Appropriation? The Influence Of Target Csr On Market Reactions To Acquisition Announcements, Li Tong, Heli Wang, Jun Xia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines how target corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the economic gains for acquirers, as reflected in market reaction to acquisition announcement, from two distinct perspectives: stakeholder preservation versus stakeholder appropriation. The stakeholder preservation perspective suggests that positive market reaction to an acquisition stems from potential new value creation by honoring implicit contracts and maintaining good relationships with target stakeholders. By contrast, the stakeholder appropriation perspective posits that positive market reaction is primarily derived through wealth transfer to acquirers by defaulting on implicit contracts with target stakeholders. Using a dataset of acquisitions in the US, we find that target …