Publicaties

Increased transparency about harmful corporate human rights practices is often assumed to contribute to the prevention of such violations, as negative publicity may generate reputational damage for corporations. However, whether and when such reputational damage actually occurs, and in what shape, is unknown. We use an event study design to investigate stock market reactions to announcements of accusations of corporate human rights violations. ...

Determining whether family management influences firm growth remains a controversial issue in current literature. This study addresses this research gap by analysing the effect of family TMT involvement on firm growth, as a reflection of the mixed gamble trade-off between restricted versus extended socioemotional wealth priorities, taking into account both the duality between growth and degrowth as well as the multidimensional nature of firm ...

It is known that small firms rely mainly on the CEO’s individual knowledge for developing innovations. Recent work suggests that this approach is inefficient since it underutilizes other employees’ knowledge. We study to which extent using CEOs, managers and non-managerial employees’ ideas enhances small firms’ innovation performance. A Heckman selection model on 305 small firms shows that not only CEO’s and managers’, but also non-managerial ...

Family firms employ about 60 percent of the global workforce. While it is widely assumed that they are good employers, data about their conduct is mixed. In this study, we extend stewardship and agency theories to test competing propositions about the impact of family on employment practices using data from 14,961 private Belgian firms over a 19-year period. Higher investments, lower dividend payout, and higher risk tolerance indicate that ...

PurposeThe authors investigate the influence of CEOs' Islamic religiosity on the level of tax aggressiveness within private family firms. In addition, this study aims to explore the moderating role of the CEO's ownership stake in the firm and the payment of Zakat.Design/methodology/approachThe authors gathered data through surveys completed by 199 CEOs of Jordanian Islamic family firms. These survey results, along with financial statements, were ...

In this study, we analyze the contribution of academics to corporate technology development. Firm patents that involve (Flemish) academic inventors are contrasted with patents developed in-house. Two distinctive patterns emerge. First, firms involve academics relatively more often when exploring new technological fields (novel to the firm). At the same time, the majority of inventions in which academics become involved still reside in domains ...