Word from the editor

This new issue of Management international (Mi) is primarily composed of articles analysing corporate social responsibility (CSR) at an international level and acknowledging in this way the growing importance that the topic has assumed within contemporary management studies. The ten contributions featured below - selected after undergoing Mi’s rigorous evaluation procedure - offer highly inspiring insights into the different facets of CSR when undertaken in an international management context. We hope that you enjoy reading them and would also like to take this opportunity to wish you all the best for your own 2023 research and publication efforts. Yohan Bernard, Laurence Godard, Fabrice Herve and Mohamed Zouaoui’s article “Sustainability report editorials: A predictive signal for a company’s inclusion in a sustainability index?” analyses sustainability report CSR references by asking whether they tend to predict a company ultimately becoming part of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSWI). Drawing from signalling theory and from a textual analysis of several French corporate sustainability report editorials, the authors demonstrate that editorials can in fact serve as a leading indicator of CSR performance, and that their predictive power is enhanced when they have been signed by a Managing Director; published in a sustainability report; and written clearly and accessibly. Karen Geitzholz, François Durrieu, and Stéphane Trébucq’s contribution - “Human capital and sustainable procurement as determinants of financial performance? Testing a serial mediation effect’s application to European listed companies” – looks to analyse the impact that the serial mediation of human capital has on both sustainable procurement and financial performance. Mobilising a 2016-2020 empirical study of 240 companies listed in Europe, the study has also been assessed along societal lines by Vigeo-Eiris, an extra-financial rating agency. It finds validation for social mediation when market-to-book (MTB) – and not return on assets (ROA) - is the financial performance variable being used, findings that attest to the importance of investors’ perceptions of sustainable procurement policies’ expected long-term effects. Mehdi Dahmen, Pascal Paillé, Norchène Ben Dahmane Mouelhi and Lotfi Hamzi’s article “Using social exchange to encourage eco-responsible behaviour in an organisational environment: the work climate’s contingent effect on perceived justice” addresses the latter variable’s lesser-known effect on pro-environmental behaviour by means of an empirical study conducted in Tunisia and involving a sample of 223 public administration office workers. Mobilising a number of social exchange principles, the findings reveal a reinforcement of perceived justice effects when employees deem the work climate to be conducive to a pro-environmental commitment. Conversely, there is no indication that perceived justice interactions occur under these circumstances at an organisation’s higher levels. Sabri Boubaker, Mohamed Firas Thraya and Mohamed Zouaoui’s article “Excess control and corporate social responsibility” starts with the observation that companies’ social responsibility strategies depend on their ownership structure, before going on to examine the CSR effects that ensue when cash-flow rights differ from (excess) control rights. Based on a sample of listed French companies, analysis here demonstrates that companies characterised by an excess of control achieve significantly lower CSR performance. The presence of family shareholders accentuates the negative effect that excess control has on CSR performance, whereas the impact is neutralised when other major shareholders are present. Findings are robust to the use of several measurements of excess control; to CSR performance; and to potential endogeneity-related control issues. Jean Biwole Fouda and Charles Robert Kamga’s contribution - “Towards a CSR model derived from the discourse of entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa: Findings from a study undertaken within a Cameroonian context” - mobilises concepts such as justification and legitimation (associated with a conciliator mechanism approach) to analyse the contents of interviews carried …