Humanitarian relief efforts increasingly depend on corporate philanthropy and corporate donations. In times of war, however, corporate philanthropy is complicated because stakeholders may interpret corporate donations as politically partial. Corporate donations may therefore impact corporations’ relations with warring countries, endanger corporate assets and operations, and affect corporate reputations both positively and negatively. Using a unique dataset of humanitarian pledges by Europe’s 300 largest corporations following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, we examine when corporations give in times of war and why many made humanitarian pledges while others did not. Our fsQCA analysis reveals different pathways to corporate giving in the context of interstate armed conflict and suggests that corporations pledging donations consider social, strategic, and mimetic bandwagon-related factors in conjunction. The findings extend the understanding of corporate philanthropy by revealing how the politicized context of armed conflict complicates motivations for corporate donations and demonstrates how corporations’ economic interests can both enable and hinder corporate philanthropy in times of war.

Our study explores the intricate relationship between political connections, undisclosed executive compensation, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling within emerging economies. Analyzing 3,912 firm-year observations from 2010 to 2021, we reveal that political connections combined with undisclosed executive compensation significantly increase CSR decoupling due to unethical practices like bribery. We propose that state ownership, foreign ownership, and transparency can mitigate this effect. State ownership enhances government monitoring, aligning firms' interests with societal goals, while foreign ownership introduces global ethical standards, reducing the gap between stated and actual CSR practices. Enhanced transparency in corporate governance discourages unethical behavior and promotes accountability. Our findings challenge the assumption that political connections inherently lead to substantive CSR due to government scrutiny, highlighting instead the potential for ethical lapses when executives receive undisclosed compensation. This research enriches Cognitive Dissonance Theory by demonstrating organizational dissonance and extends stakeholder theory by examining diverse monitoring roles. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of transparency and ethical accountability in executive compensation. Practically, our study offers insights for investors, regulatory bodies, and companies in emerging markets, advocating for genuine CSR efforts and ethical business practices to improve corporate governance.

This paper explores the construct of organizational identity, used by top managers as a cognitive filter to interpret environments and align corporate behavior with stakeholder expectations. Focusing on foreign market exit decisions, it analyzes the influence of societal and organizational values on strategic responses to external shocks, according to a theoretical and configurational multiplicity approach, to conduct fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on European and Nordic companies. The results contribute to foreign ethical divestment literature, by revealing that various configurations shape decisions to exit from the Russian market in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Both moral and economic factors play a crucial role in these decisions. Nordic companies, reflecting higher ethical standards, align with the expectations of their home societies and the Nordic socioeconomic model. The study also highlights the impact of organizational values on corporate reactions to geopolitical events, in addition to the traditional exit antecedents that influence the choice of exit routes.