Does corporate environmental responsibility engagement affect firm value? The mediating role of corporate innovation

This paper aims to construct a comprehensive corporate environmental responsibility (CER) engagement measurement to examine the relationship between CER engagement and firm value as well as explore the mediating effect of corporate innovation on this relationship based on a sample of 496 China's A‐share listed companies from 2008 to 2016. The results show that when firms start to adopt environmental regulations, CER would have a negative effect on firm value; however, at a specific level, CER would start to enhance firm value positively. In addition to this, corporate innovation plays a mediating role in the relationship between CER and firm value. Corporate innovation promotes firm value of firms with CER more than firms without CER. Overall, the findings of this paper are extremely relevant for the government, investors, and firm's managers and can be utilized for policy and investment decision making. Also, the findings encourage firms to enhance their sense of environmental responsibility in order to enhance their competitive advantages, enhance corporate innovation capabilities, and thus enhance firm value.     

Institutional investors' corporate site visits and aggressive financial reporting

This paper investigates the impact of institutional investors' corporate site visits on financial reporting aggressiveness. While prior research has shed light on the monitoring impact of institutional shareholding on firms' financial reporting practices, institutional investors' preference regarding financial reporting remains unclear. Using a sample of Chinese firms listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2019, we find that institutional investors' on-site visits significantly increase financial reporting aggressiveness of hosting firms. The on-site visit effect is more salient in firms that are more sensitive to the influence of institutional investors, for example, firms with a less powerful chief executive officer, financially constrained firms, and firms operating in competitive industries. Our study highlights that under a setting of weak minority shareholder protection such as in China, managers are likely to recognize revenue aggressively to please powerful shareholders who paid intensive attention to them.     

投资者认知、审计质量与公司价值

投资者认知是决定市场资源配置的重要因素,认知水平越高,公司价值越大。审计作为一种降低信息不对称的制度安排,能够影响公司信息传递,进而正向调节认知效应;审计还具有缓解代理冲突的功能,而代理成本与审计质量存在对应关系,因此审计质量也体现为对认知效应的负向调节。我国股市目前主要体现为后一种情况,表明审计提升公司价值的主要路径是缓解公司的代理冲突,公司对高质量审计的需求动机远比满足投资者信息需求的动机更为强烈。聘用大型事务所能够向市场投资者传递积极信号,对认知提升公司价值的效应有正向调节作用。审计模式选择需要考虑公司的信息传递特征,并与投资者对公司的认知水平相契合。     

投资者监督、政府干预与企业价值——基于机构投资者的经验证据

文章通过模型证明大投资者(Blockholders)与个人投资者相比对上市公司实施更多的监督,并且大投资者的监督行为能够增加企业价值;但模型也表明机构投资者是否实施监督及其为企业带来的价值增量取决于监督的成本和收益。文章利用中国资本市场的机构投资者数据,检验了理论模型的四个基本结论。结果表明:机构投资者比个人投资者更积极地监督上市公司,并有助于提高企业价值;政府干预(用上市公司最终控制人为政府代表)减少了机构投资者监督的收益,降低了机构投资者对企业价值所起到的正面作用,削弱了机构投资者监督的积极性。研究结论表明,发展机构投资者有助于改善上市公司的治理水平,提升企业价值;但是政府干预限制了机构投资者的积极公司治理作用。     

Corporate Governance,Investment, and Firm Valuation in Asian Emerging Markets

We investigate the effects of corporate governance and family ownership on firm valuation through investment efficiency in Asian emerging markets. Using 3 years of time series data from the Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia corporate governance score for 10 Asian emerging markets, we find that good corporate governance leads to better or more efficient investment decisions and eventually to higher firm value. We also find that investors reward firms for improvement in corporate governance. The findings do not hold for Asian firms with a family or concentrated ownership structure. The results are not driven by changes in accounting standards in these markets.     

Corporate sustainability and financial performance: Collective reputation as moderator of the relationship between environmental performance and firm market value

Markets value superior corporate sustainability performance in part because investors use a firm's environmental performance as a signal of desirable but difficult-to-observe attributes, such as the firm's integrity capacity. Yet a signaling conflict can arise when a firm belongs to an organizational form that has a collective reputation for being unethical. In such circumstances, the firm's environmental performance may no longer credibly signal its underlying integrity capacity, leading markets to adjust downward the value they would otherwise place on the firm's environmental performance. Using longitudinal data on South Korean firms, we find that improvements in firm environmental performance lead to smaller increases in market values for firms belonging to a poorly reputed organizational form. However, firms can partially recover lost value by adopting firm features that reduce the signaling conflict, thereby restoring the notion of corporate sustainability performance driving firm market values.     

Risk reporting and stock return in the UK: Does market competition Matter?

This study examines the extent to which market competition influences risk reporting practice. It also explores how market competition affects the usefulness of risk reporting. The automated textual analysis measures the level of risk reporting [how much to report] and its tone [how it is reported] of UK FTSE 350 firms. The abnormal stock return is used as a proxy for the usefulness of risk reporting. In contrast to the proprietary cost hypothesis, our results indicate that the level of risk reporting is a positive function of market competition. Besides, UK firms are likely to disseminate more (less) negative (positive) news about their risks when market competition increases. However, after examining the informativeness of this reporting, we provide evidence that the level of reported risk information does not significantly enhance the abnormal stock returns of UK firms. Nevertheless, the tone of the reported risks carries incremental information indicative of a firm’s abnormal stock return, especially when market competition decreases. The findings suggest that firms are likely to alleviate their proprietary costs by framing their reporting of risk information in a way that deters potential competitors from entering their market and that market competition diminishes the perceived informativeness of such reporting. The results provide implications for investors as they should not acknowledge the disclosure of higher risk information when asking for more corporate transparency, as it lacks informativeness. Besides, policymakers may impose extra compulsory requirements on the UK firms to avoid reporting overly optimistic risk news to protect investors and avoid the adverse effects of this reporting.     

企业控制权视角下的公司治理与内部审计

公司治理是企业内部投资者和管理者之间一系列调解利害关系的契约,内部审计即产生于此。内部审计满足了投资者对公司治理和管理者对经营控制的需求。本文从企业产权理论的角度对公司治理和内部审计的关系及内部审计在公司治理中的作用进行了研究。     

To Thine Shareholders Be True? Linking Large Corporate Ownership to Firms’ Use of Commitment Human Resource Practices

Human resource practitioners and academics have increasingly realized the importance of corporate governance for firm human resource activities. This study investigates how one important form of corporate governance, namely, ownership within large, publicly traded firms, is associated with a firm's use of commitment human resource practices (CHRPs), specifically, the use of incentive compensation, profit sharing, and participative decision making. Our findings indicate that the types of large investor, namely, family and institutional, are differentially associated with the likelihood of the firm using these CHRPs. Specifically, family owners with their long‐term investment horizon, as well as their stakeholder orientation, increase the likelihood of the firm using these practices. In contrast, large institutional owners with their shorter‐term investment horizon, as well as their investor orientation, decrease the likelihood of the firm using these practices. Furthermore, among institutional investors, transient institutional investors are negatively associated with these practices, while dedicated institutional investors are not associated with these practices. Taken together, our results regarding the positive association of family ownership and this subset of CHRPs and the negative association of transient institutional investors and this set of practices, have important implications for human resource professionals who not only need to understand how ownership affects HR practices but also how to articulate the value of these investments in order to attract investors. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Do LGBT‐supportive corporate policies enhance firm performance?

Prior research provides evidence that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)‐supportive corporate policies are related to important human resource functions, such as enhanced recruitment and retention. In addition, prior research indicates that investors view the adoption of such policies positively. We examine the firm‐performance mechanisms underlying favorable stock‐market reactions based on an integration of perspectives from corporate social responsibility and the business case for diversity. Specifically, we estimate a hierarchical linear model (HLM) to account for the nested nature of our data (firms nested within states) and find that (1) the presence of LGBT‐supportive policies is associated with higher firm value, productivity, and profitability; (2) the firm‐value and profitability benefits associated with LGBT‐supportive policies are larger for companies engaged in research and development (R&D) activities; and (3) the firm‐value and profitability benefits of LGBT‐supportive policies persist in the presence of state antidiscrimination laws. In supplemental analyses, we find that firms implementing (discontinuing) LGBT‐supportive policies experience increases (decreases) in firm value, productivity, and profitability. We are among the first to link LGBT‐supportive policies specifically to financial performance outcomes as well as to develop and test a multilevel model of these relationships. Our results have important implications for theory and research on LGBT issues in organizations, human resource managers, and policymakers.     

Foreign Equity Ownership and Information Asymmetry: Evidence from Japan

Using a large sample of Japanese firms, we investigate whether the level of foreign ownership in a firm is inversely related to information asymmetry between firm (managers) and market (outside investors). Since information asymmetry is not directly observable and, thus, is difficult to measure empirically, our analysis focuses on the link between foreign shareholding and a measurable consequence of information asymmetry; that is, the timing and magnitude of intertemporal return‐earnings associations. The empirical results support our hypothesis, and subsequent tests based on residual foreign ownership show that the relation between foreign ownership and information asymmetry is robust to the addition of various control variables such as market capitalization and cross‐corporate holdings. We also show that foreign investors tend to avoid stocks with high cross‐corporate holdings. Overall, our results suggest that foreign (institutional) investors are likely to be efficient processors of public information and are attracted to Japanese firms with low information asymmetry.     

Shaping the organisational context for corporate entrepreneurship and performance in Iran: the interplay between social context and performance management

Abstract

Prior research highlighted the importance of an organisational context stimulating autonomous behaviour when trying to increase levels of corporate entrepreneurship. From a social exchange perspective, we argue that firms in developing countries need to complement such supportive practices with performance-oriented practices. Our findings indicate that Iranian firms with an organisational context characterised by an interaction of social context and performance management have more engagement in corporate entrepreneurship, and that corporate entrepreneurship mediated the relationship between the organisational context and firm performance. This provides a better understanding of the way firms in developing economies can shape their organisational context to promote corporate entrepreneurship in order to achieve better firm performance.     

Independent director tenure and corporate transparency

We examine the impact of independent director tenure on corporate transparency. Using a sample of 12,423 firm-year observations from 1997 to 2017, we find that corporate transparency increases in independent director tenure. The results are robust to various variable definitions and model specifications, providing strong evidence supporting the Expertise hypothesis that long-tenured independent directors are better monitors and advisors. We conclude that long-tenured directors benefit firms and their investors by enhancing firm transparency and reducing information risk. Capping independent director tenure is not always beneficial.     

State Ownership,Socio-political Factors,and Labor Cost Stickiness

This article examines the effect of state ownership on the labor cost stickiness of firms in 22 European countries. States are more likely to interfere in the decision-making processes of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and demand firm activities that are desirable from a socio-political perspective. For example, to win political support, politicians may instruct SOEs to avoid layoffs to minimize unemployment rates. The varied objectives of SOEs also make it more difficult to control managers' behavior, leaving more room for managerial discretion and the pursuit of self-interests through empire-building behavior. Both state intervention and managerial self-interest restrain managers from laying off employees or reducing employee wages when sales decrease, which may lead to greater labor cost stickiness. Data from 1993 to 2012 reveal that SOEs exhibit greater labor cost stickiness than private firms, and their labor cost stickiness also varies predictably with socio-political variables such as election years and left-wing governments.     

Peer effect on dividends and return comovement

This study investigates the stock return comovement of dividend-paying and nonpaying firms induced by peer effects of dividend payout policies. We consider peer effect as a channel that links a firm’s dividend initiation to firms that did not change dividend status. Dividend initiation attracts investors to the industry and puts pressure on peer firms to change their dividend policy, which leads to return comovement between nonpaying peers and paying firms. Using matched peer firms that resemble dividend initiators, we find that return comovement can be induced through an indirect channel without changes in style or category. Excess return comovement for firms without dividends is observed with dividend payers of the market and their industries through peer influence.     

Parasites and Paragons: Ownership Reform and Concentrated Interest among Minority Shareholders

Do investors with concentrated shareholding infringe on the value of more-fragmented shareholders (‘parasites’) or facilitate the growth of firm value for all shareholders (‘paragons’)? In a major ownership reform of Chinese listed firms, we obtain evidence which suggests that larger minority shareholders undertook certain actions both for a rent-seeking purpose – that these actions allowed them to reap private benefits at the expense of smaller minority shareholders, and for a value-creating purpose – to potentially increase firm value after the reform. It is plausible that both drivers co-existed, but they generated different implications of wealth redistribution. When institutional constraints on rent-seeking were ineffective, higher concentration of minority shares decreased the immediate gains captured by the small investors who held minority shares at the time of the reform, but increased the future value of the firm to be divided among for all investors, large and small, who held firm shares after the reform.     

Corporate Entrepreneurship and Family Business: Learning Across Domains

Research at the interface of corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and family firms’ domains has grown steadily based on the premise that family firms’ specific elements uniquely affect CE antecedents, strategies, and outcomes. However, much remains to be uncovered. In this article, we offer a theoretical advancement of a corporate entrepreneurship process model for the case of family firms organized around the categories of ontology (i.e., domain redefinition), epiphany (i.e., new components and mechanisms), and heterogeneity (i.e., family firm variety and contingencies). This development paves the way for an agenda for future research and for possible generalizations to non‐family firms.     

Asymmetric effects of corporate sustainability strategy on value creation among global automotive firms: A dynamic panel quantile regression approach

This study explores the asymmetric effects of corporate sustainability strategy on firm value at different conditioning quantiles by performing a dynamic panel quantile regression analysis on global automotive firms from 2011 to 2017. Further, this study measures the distinct effects of positive and negative corporate sustainability strategies on firm value, which has remained unconsidered as yet. The findings suggest that low-value and midvalue firms respond more strongly to positive and negative corporate sustainability strategies than high-value firms. This implies that for low-value and midvalue corporations that are in a growth phase, an investment in positive corporate sustainability strategies is essential to increase firm value by enhancing public perception of their efforts. Therefore, positive corporate sustainability strategy contributes substantially to future growth. Conversely, positive corporate sustainability strategy may not be a priority in increasing firm value for high-value corporations, because these strategies do not enhance the public's discernment of their efforts in ethics management and hence do not contribute to a future increase in value. Meanwhile, engagement in negative corporate sustainability strategy worsens firm value in all quantiles, although the effect is somewhat weaker for high-value firms. Nevertheless, however high valued and well established a firm is, it is not immune to crisis.     

System‐Spanning Values Work and Entrepreneurial Growth in Family Firms

Culture and values are key drivers of corporate entrepreneurship in early stages of family firm development, but value conflicts often arise over time that progressively inhibit their entrepreneurial efforts. How can family firms reconcile conflicting values to sustain corporate entrepreneurship over time? Our 45‐year longitudinal case study of a large global family firm shows that family business leaders’ practices of invoking and flexibly using family and business values were crucial to achieve sustained entrepreneurial behaviour and growth over an extended period of time. We theorize these efforts as system‐spanning values work enfolding through specific family, business, and temporal mechanisms. By identifying and elucidating three types of values work (i.e., rooting, revitalizing, and spreading), our study advances current understanding of the micro‐foundations underpinning the relationship between values and entrepreneurship in family firms.     

How Corporate Social Responsibility Engagement Strategy Moderates the CSR–Financial Performance Relationship

We propose that firm profits are shaped by how firms engage in corporate social responsibility. Recent research on the corporate social responsibility (CSR)–corporate financial performance (CFP) relationship proposes a variety of contextual and organizational factors to create a more robust link. However, few of these studies explore the role of the CSR engagement strategy. Drawing on absorptive capacity theory and related perspectives such as time compression diseconomies, asset mass efficiencies, and path dependence theory, we argue that when a firm engages in CSR slowly and consistently, focuses on related CSR dimensions, and starts with internal dimensions of CSR, CFP will be enhanced. With longitudinal data collected from 130 firms from 1995 to 2007, we find that firms benefit more when they adopt a CSR engagement strategy that is consistent, involves related dimensions of CSR, and begins with aspects of CSR that are more internal to the firm. The pace of the CSR engagement strategy, however, does not moderate the CSR–CFP relationship. This study helps fill the gap in CSR research by showing that, regardless of contextual factors, a firm can choose the proper strategy to enhance the financial benefits of the CSR engagement.