Executives' carbon cognition and corporate carbon performance: The mediating role of corporate low-carbon actions and the moderating role of firm size.

Executives' carbon cognition (ECC) is an important driving factor for enterprises to achieve carbon performance (CP) through low-carbon actions, but the existing research has not explored the mechanism between them. Based on the data of 440 Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2021, we used text mining method to construct the index of ECC, and obtained noteworthy results through regression analysis. The results indicated that ECC has a significant positive impact on corporate low-carbon actions (CLA); CLA has a significant positive impact on CP; CLA plays a mediating role in the relationship between ECC and CP; in addition, firm size negatively moderates the positive impact of ECC on CLA; firm size negatively moderates the mediating effect of CLA on the relationship between ECC and CP. The research conclusions deepen the understanding of the relationship between ECC and CP in the context of carbon neutrality era, and provide theoretical guidance for guiding companies to actively implement low-carbon actions. At the same time, this study introduces the text mining method into the research of ECC, which provides a reference for future research in this field.

The Impact of Accountability-Oriented Control Aspects of Variance Investigation on Budgetary Slack and Moderating Effect of Moral Development.

Variance investigation (VI) has been identified as an effective mechanism to reduce budgetary slack at the ex ante budgeting stage. This paper focuses on two further research questions: (1) the extent to which two different accountability-oriented control aspects (i.e., external investigation and self-reporting) of VI affect budgetary slack and (2) the extent of the moderating effect of moral development on the relationship between these two accountability-oriented control aspects and budgetary slack. Our experimental results show that both external investigation and self-reporting can reduce the propensity of creating slack at the ex ante budgeting stage. More specifically, the effect of external investigation on reducing the propensity of creating budgetary slack is greater than that of self-reporting. This study further reveals that moral development moderates the effect of external investigation on budgetary slack. When comparing subordinates with low moral development with those with high moral development, our results show that the effect of external investigation on budgetary slack is stronger among the former group than the latter group. This study does not find any moderating effect of moral development on the relationship between self-reporting and budgetary slack. Our study sheds some new light on varying effects of two accountability-oriented control aspects of VI on budgetary slack, which are also moderated by different levels of subordinates' moral development. These results may be considered in the design and implementation of management control systems.