This study uses insights from the political perspective on corporate governance to investigate the influence of geographic concentration of institutional blockholders on workplace safety violations. When institutional investors who have a blockholding stake (i.e., institutional blockholders) are geographically concentrated, corporate managers are more likely to pursue efficiency at the expense of employee interests because these blockholders may find it easier to coordinate their actions, strengthening their power over corporate managers and ultimately giving rise to more workplace safety violations. We also (...) contend that the influence of institutional blockholders’ geographic concentration on workplace safety violations hinges upon the ownership of employees, socially responsible investment funds, and the CEO. Findings from a longitudinal sample of 1316 U.S. firms support our arguments. This study contributes to a nascent stream of research examining the influence of capital market participants on workplace safety by highlighting the role of institutional blockholders’ geographic concentration as a new channel through which investors can shape employee outcomes. (shrink)

The value of a company’s ethical reputation has become a focal point for management researchers. We seek to join this conversation and extend the research centered on a firm’s ethical reputation. We accomplish this by shifting our focus away from its impact on external stakeholders to its impact on internal stakeholders. To this end, we rely on signaling theory to explain why a firm’s ethical reputation matters to its employees in an effort to bridge the macro–micro research gap. Across two (...) studies, we propose and demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation impacts employee subjective career success in form of career opportunities and work–life balance. Given our signaling theory framework, we also identify and explain when two industry-level characteristics operate as boundary conditions that distort a firm’s ethical reputation signaling properties. Specifically, the results demonstrate that a firm’s ethical reputation is positively related to employees’ perceptions of career opportunities and work–life balance. The results of our studies also demonstrate that the relatively high levels of industry competition and industry regulation weaken the positive impact of a firm’s ethical reputation on career opportunities and work–life balance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

Using a unique dataset of deceased certified public accountants (CPAs) in China, we document that auditors who have experienced the death of a peer CPA from the same office are less likely to issue modified audit opinions, indicating impaired audit quality. Accordingly, we argue that heightened death awareness and corporate social responsibility (CSR) awareness, triggered by the death of a work peer, lead to death anxiety, intrinsic-value pursuit, and reduced commitment to the employer, thereby hindering both work ability and work (...) commitment during the audit process. Moreover, the power of peer death is amplified by both self-relevance and self-exposure to deaths perceived by living auditors. Since most of the deceased CPAs in our sample are not signing CPAs who lead audit projects, our results illustrate the significant negative impact of peer death on work performance at the rank-and-file employee level. As employee deaths are frequently linked to the prevalent burnout culture and show a growing trend in recent years, our findings timely reveal the economic costs of the toxic workplace environment. This practically implies the critical importance of promoting a safe and healthy working environment ex ante and providing appropriate bereavement support for employees affected by a colleague’s death ex post. (shrink)