I Feel Your Pain: The Effect of Regulator as a Minority Shareholder on Merger and Acquisition Performance

We examine the effect of a regulator-led advocate for minority shareholders on merger and acquisition (M&A) performance in China. In recent years, the China Securities Regulatory Commission established the China Securities Investor Services Center (CSISC), which began its ownership of 100 shares of public firms in 2016. The CSISC advocates for the interests of minority shareholders proactively. Focusing on abnormal stock returns in M&A announcements, we find that acquirers that have the CSISC as a shareholder (CSISC acquirers) exhibit higher positive abnormal stock returns than non-CSISC acquirers. Cross-sectional analysis suggests that the core results are mainly driven by firms with severe agency problems and weak external/internal monitoring, and those not controlled by the state. In addition, we find that CSISC acquirers have better long-term performance and encounter more M&A failures than non-CSISC acquirers. Our findings indicate that although the CSISC only holds 100 shares of listed companies, it plays an effective role in monitoring and driving firms to make appropriate M&A decisions.     

Doing more and doing better are two different entities: Different patterns of family control and environmental performance

Family firms bear two types of agency costs, including type I and type II agency problems, in corporate environmental practices: (1) Outside executives at family firms hesitate to engage in environmental strategies, which can lead to drops in profits; (2) Controlling families employ opportunistically environmental management to achieve their interests. We argue that a primary cause for the agency problems lies on ineffective internal corporate governance at family firms, which can cause loss of managerial (or power) balance between outside executives and family executives. Our findings show that family firms with ownership and strategic control (FSC), which family executives and outside executives monitor and constrain each other, can achieve the highest environmental performance. Moreover, external controls, including product market competition and provincial environmental regulations, substitute effective internal control of FSC. The environmental performance premium of FSC is more prevalent when the production market competition is lower. Family firms with ownership, operational, and strategic control (FOSC) can achieve higher environmental performance within a province with more stringent environmental regulations.     

Dynamic Cost Inefficiency of the European Union Meat Processing Firms

We apply dynamic data envelopment analysis (DEA) to estimate dynamic cost inefficiency for a sample of European Union (EU) large meat processing firms over the period 2005–2012 and decompose this into the contributions of technical and allocative inefficiency. The estimation of dynamic inefficiencies controls for adjustment costs associated with firms’ investments. We further contribute by measuring dynamic cost inefficiencies and their components with regard to own region group (managerial inefficiencies) and the gap between the pooled frontier and the region-specific frontier (programme inefficiencies). Results show that technical inefficiency tends to be the largest component of cost inefficiency when both conducting the analysis for the EU as a whole and estimating a region-specific frontier. Results suggest significant differences in cost, technical, and allocative inefficiencies between meat processing firms in eastern, western and southern EU countries. We also find that the gaps between the pooled and region-specific frontiers tend to be small to negligible, which suggests that the main source of pooled inefficiencies are shortcomings in managerial practices rather than differences in region-specific conditions.     

重男轻女观念会加剧当地家族企业的机会主义动机吗——以家族企业上市公司为例

本文基于重男轻女观念的视角，探究地区文化是否会影响当地家族企业的机会主义动机。本文研究发现，重男轻女地区的家族企业更愿意安排男性家族成员担任CEO等重要职位，更多地引入家族成员参与企业经营。由于担心这种机会主义行为，外部投资者对当地家族企业的投资更为谨慎。本文从地区文化的视角阐释了家族企业的异质性，推动了已有研究从“家族企业与非家族企业有何不同”向“不同地区文化下的家族企业间有何不同”层面深入。     

Institutionalized Communication in Markets and Firms

How markets and firms function is critically related to what knowledge and information is exchanged between whom, how quickly. Exchange of (symbolic) information needs to be properly institutionalized in order to be understood by others, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, cannot avoid being ambiguous to some degree as well (Dolfsma et al. 2011 Dolfsma, Wilfred, John Finch, and Robert McMaster. 2011. “Identifying Institutional Vulnerability: The Importance of Language, and System Boundaries.” Journal of Economic Issues 45 (4): 805–818.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Ambiguity allows for the dissent that allows for innovation in the broadest sense of the term. Institutionalization of communication is community-specific. The tension between institutionalization of and ambiguity in communication explains why innovations cannot depart too much from what is known and accepted in a community to be (ultimately) accepted as a legitimate novelty. The view of markets and firms as settings for institutionalized communication and knowledge exchange offers a perspective that institutional economists are well positioned for to offer insights on.     

The sustainability behaviour of small firms in tourism: the role of self-efficacy and contextual constraints

This article presents a grounded theory to explain why some small businesses in tourism adopt sustainable business practices while others do not, even when they share environmental and wider sustainability concerns. It does so based on research undertaken among business owners in Crete. The paper starts by considering studies on sustainability awareness, knowledge and the mechanisms for accepting responsibility. Secondly, it summarises the influence of task difficulty and effort on sustainability self-efficacy. Thirdly, it focuses on social comparisons and vicarious experiences, as a way of learning what is important. Finally, it examines powerlessness due to perceived situational constraints. In so doing, the study finds that self-efficacy helps to explain sustainable attitude formation and the attitude-behaviour gap; it partly shifts the locus of responsibility for an inability to act sustainably away from the individual and towards their context. The paper contributes to the theoretical literature on small businesses and sustainability, and leads to new avenues for policy interventions.     

The Impact of Unionization Structures with Heterogeneous Firms and Rent‐Sharing Motives

How are unemployment and output affected if wages are set on the sector level rather than firm level? We take a new look at this question, allowing for heterogeneous firms and rent‐sharing motives. Without these motives, employment and output are lower under sector‐level wage‐setting due to higher wage markups. With rent‐sharing motives, however, firm selection is higher under sector‐level wage‐setting, which tends to increase employment and output, thus counteracting the markup effect. Simulations show that the firm‐selection effect decreases the difference between the two unionization structures substantially but it does not change the signs of the effects on output and employment.     

Disproportionate insider control and firm performance

The effect of disproportionate insider control on firm performance is ambiguous. Disproportionate control may enhance insiders’ ability to expropriate perquisites; on the other hand, it may provide stability of management and reduce short‐term market pressures. Using a hand‐collected sample of U.S. dual‐class firms, we find that disproportionate control is positively associated with accounting‐based performance, but negatively associated with Tobin's Q. These results are consistent with the incentives of entrenched insiders who are interested in profitability but less beholden to capital markets.     

Unfolding the impact of leadership and management on sustainability performance: Green and lean practices and guanxi as the dual mediators

This study aims to empirically evaluate the predictors that influence sustainability performance among manufacturing firms. Leadership and management, green and lean practices, and guanxi were examined to determine whether these predictors are directly and/or indirectly affecting sustainability performance; 160 valid responses were collected and partial-least-squares-structural-equation-modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data. The results showed that leadership and management positively influenced green and lean practices and green and lean practices positively influenced sustainability performance. Leadership and management also positively influenced guanxi. Interestingly, leadership and management and guanxi do not exert a significant direct influence on sustainability performance. The findings contributed to the development of the resource-based-view theory further by empirically exploring the significance of leadership and management coupled with green and lean practices as competencies and capability to drive sustainability performance. The testing of the dual mediators' effects further added value to this study.