Analyzing data from approximately 1.5 million employees across 1,108 established public and private US companies, we find that employee beliefs about their firm's purpose is weaker in public companies. This difference is most pronounced within the salaried middle and hourly ranks, rather than...

Concerns about high rates of government corruption in resource rich countries have led transparency advocates to urge oil and gas firms to disclose payments to host governments for natural resources. Transparency, they argue, can increase government accountability and mitigate corruption....

CEO activism refers to corporate leaders speaking out on social and environmental policy issues not directly related to their company's core business. Distinct from nonmarket strategy and traditional corporate social responsibility, the recent wave of CEO activism focuses on social issues...

We examine the effect of mandated measurement and peer disclosure of new information on the persistence of performance improvements in a setting without performance incentives. Value of information (VOI) theory posits that information can improve the accuracy of posterior beliefs and thereby...

This paper examines whether -- in the absence of mandated disclosure requirements -- shareholder activism can elicit greater disclosure of firms' exposure to climate change risks. We find that environmental shareholder activism increases the voluntary disclosure of climate change risks,...

Management and disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have received substantial interest over the last decade. In this paper, we outline a framework of how ESG issues become financially material, affecting corporate profitability and valuation. We argue that...

While there has been significant progress in the measurement of an organization's environmental and social impacts from their operations, metrics to evaluate the impact of products once they come to market lag far behind. In this paper we provide a framework for systematic measurement of product...

We construct a measure of corporate purpose within a sample of US companies based on approximately 500,000 survey responses of worker perceptions about their employers. We find that this measure of purpose is not related to financial performance. However, high purpose firms come in two forms:...

Organizations often introduce temporary incentive programs with a view of establishing long lasting behaviors. Monetary payoffs are awarded upon achievement of team goals, which measure the success of the initiative. In this study I explore whether and how organizational behavior modifications...

I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee compensation and performance. I next create...