We use a sharp regression discontinuity design (RDD) to show that victories by women candidates in close House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections lead to an increase in female directors in firms located in the candidates’ districts. The causal effect is higher when the media coverage of the woman candidate is higher, when voter turnout is high, and when firms have more local directors and local institutional investors. The heterogeneous regression discontinuity (RD) effects suggest that electoral wins may influence local gender norms and firms’ board diversity through multiple channels, including conveying majority views on gender-related social norms, increasing exposure to exemplar women, and facilitating learning about women’s different but effective leadership styles. The evidence suggests a potential spillover effect from women’s political leadership to the corporate world.

This study investigates the influence of workplace conditions on job satisfaction, focusing on environmental, occupational safety, and social factors, paying particular attention to gender interactions. Drawing on the European Survey on Workplace Health, Wellbeing, and Quality of Work Life, data from 514 employees in local companies and public organizations across six Southern European countries were analysed using discrete choice regression models. The empirical findings identify ventilation, ergonomics, social spaces, and safety training as the strongest positive drivers of job satisfaction, while repetitive work negatively affects it. The results show that women, highly educated employees, and those with permanent contracts report higher job satisfaction, with female workers benefiting most from ergonomic improvements and safety equipment. Managers should therefore prioritize improvements in workplace conditions – particularly ventilation, ergonomics, safety training, and job stability – while integrating gender-sensitive approaches to strengthen both employees’ well-being and organisational performance.

Drawing on attribution theory and impression management research, we investigate when and how abused employees engage in different coping strategies and what the interpersonal consequences of the coping strategies are for employees. Specifically, from an employee actor–based perspective, we develop and test a dual-path-mediated moderation model that represents the double-edged sword effect of abusive supervision. Using data from 444 front-line employees, we find that injury initiation motives attribution enhances the positive relationship between abusive supervision and revenge motivation, which in turn is positively related to intimidation, exemplification, and supplication. Conversely, performance promotion motives attribution strengthens the positive relationship between abusive supervision and motivation to reconcile, which in turn is positively associated with ingratiation, self-promotion, and exemplification. Intimidation and supplication are then related to increased interpersonal conflict with leaders, while ingratiation is related to reduced interpersonal conflict with leaders. Theoretical contributions, practical implications, and limitations are discussed.

Women entrepreneurs face distinct gender-specific challenges, including restricted access to venture capital, work–life conflicts driven by stereotypes, and competing demands from their roles as business owners, caregivers, and community leaders. These pressures often foster polychronicity – a temporal orientation favoring simultaneous task management. Grounded in role accumulation theory, we conduct a two-stage survey of 129 Chinese women entrepreneurs to investigate the relationship between polychronicity and resilience. We further examine three moderators – frequent interruptions, entrepreneurial experience, and emotional intelligence – that amplify polychronicity’ s resilience-building effects. This study highlights the positive association between polychronicity and women entrepreneurs’ resilience, offering new insights into temporal dynamics in entrepreneurship. It also provides women entrepreneurs with practical strategies to help them navigate multiple role challenges and thrive amid adversity by leveraging their preference for multitasking.

Societal concerns on the environmental impact of manufacturing activities in developing economies have intensified over the past decade. Open innovation (OI) has emerged as a promising approach to mitigate these adverse effects without compromising sustainable performance (SP). This primary aim of this study is to examine and evaluate the current state of research on OI and SP practices for further empirical studies in developing economies. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses framework, we systematically reviewed and analysed 108 articles from Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and ScienceDirect databases related to OI and SP practices. Our study highlights significant knowledge gaps in the relationship between OI and SP in manufacturing, noting a predominant focus on developed countries. This research contributes to the existing literature by identifying critical contextual and theoretical gaps, providing valuable insights and theoretical implications for future OI and SP research agendas in developing countries.

Superstitions are unproven beliefs that shape decision-making. While many studies have examined their influence on corporate financial decisions, few have addressed their impact on corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this study, we focus on the superstition associated with the Chinese zodiac year – a belief linked to bad luck – and investigate its effect on firms’ charitable donations. Drawing on literature concerning stress appraisal, resource building, and corporate philanthropy, and using data from Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2020, we find a positive association between a CEO’s zodiac year and corporate donations. Furthermore, this effect is weakened by CEO’s overconfidence and amplified by increased negative media coverage of CEOs during zodiac years. This study contributes to the literature on the outcomes of superstitions in management, the antecedents of corporate philanthropy, the boundary conditions of stress appraisal, and the agency motivations of corporate philanthropy. Managerial implications are also discussed.

We introduce a method to determine the investor’s optimal portfolio size that maximizes the expected out-of-sample utility under parameter uncertainty. This portfolio size trades off between accessing investment opportunities and limiting the number of estimated parameters. Unlike sparse methods such as lasso, which exclude assets during the optimization step, our approach fixes the optimal number of assets before optimizing the portfolio weights, which improves robustness and provides greater flexibility in practical implementations. Empirically, our size-optimized portfolios outperform their counterparts applied to all available assets. Our methodology renders portfolio theory valuable even when the data-set dimension and sample size are comparable.