The responsibility principle and the democratic firm

The recent Enron-type scandals have reinvigorated the corporate governance debate. The purpose of this paper is to situate that debate in a much older and more fundamental debate about the organization of production. This paper presents a modern reconstruction of a property rights argument for the democratic firm (a firm whose legal members are the people working in it). The old “fruits of their labor” argument is reformulated using the ordinary responsibility principle that legal responsibility is to be imputed to whoever is in fact responsible. Far from conflicting with private property, the responsibility principle provides grounds for the just appropriation of private property. However, there is a conflict with the legal contract for the renting of human beings, the employment contract, in view of thede facto nontransferability of responsibility. This recognition of the invalidity of the employment contract can be independently arrived at using a modern reconstruction of an inalienable rights argument from the Reformation and Enlightenment. Finally these arguments are applied to the corporate governance debate to suggest a rechartering of corporations so that shareholders become debt-holders and the people working in a corporation become its legal members.     

中国企业产权改革浅析

在西方现代产权制度理论的基础上,剖析中国现代企业在产权制度改革上的不足,进一步探讨在新经济中,如何深化对国有产权制度的改革,塑造符合社会主义市场经济的又有活力的国有资产产权结构,以及充分认识私营企业在产权发展中的弊端,如何帮助私营企业引进先进的现代产权管理方式,打破现有的产权束缚,完善企业治理机制,发挥私营企业的巨大潜力。     

Competition and Public Policy in the Nursing Home Industry

A theory of property needs to give an account of the whole lifecycle of a property right: How it is initiated, transferred, and terminated. Economics has focused on the transfers in the market and almost completely neglected the question of initiation and termination of property in normal production and consumption (not in some original state or in the transition from common to private property). The institutional mechanism for the normal initiation and termination of property is an invisible hand function of the market — the market mechanism of appropriation. Does this mechanism satisfy an appropriate normative principle? The standard normative juridical principle is to assign or impute legal responsibility according to de facto responsibility. It is given a historical tag of being "Lockean," but the basis is contemporary jurisprudence, not historical exegesis. Then, the fundamental theorem of the property mechanism is proven, which shows that if "Hume's conditions" (no transfers without consent and all contracts fulfilled) are satisfied, then the market automatically satisfies the Lockean responsibility principle — i.e., "Hume implies Locke." As a major application, the results in their contrapositive form, "Not Locke implies Not Hume," are applied to a market economy based on the employment contract. I show that the production based on the employment contract violates the Lockean principle (all who work in an employment enterprise are de facto responsible for the positive and negative results), and thus Hume's conditions must also be violated in the marketplace (de facto responsible human action cannot be transferred from one person to another — as is readily recognized when an employer and employee together commit a crime).¹     

所有制、制度环境与公司治理效率

资本所有制作为资本所有权的制度安排是企业有效治理的前提条件。企业治理制度的形成具有路径依赖的特性 ,是与各个国家和企业所处的环境因素分不开的。在既定的经济技术和制度环境下 ,只要企业所有权安排得当 ,任何与其经济技术和制度环境相适应的资本所有制形式都是可以有效的。衡量治理效率的标准是治理成本的最小化或治理主体收益的最大化。为了提高治理效率 ,我国应根据不同企业的情况适时进行治理制度的改革和创新 ,并努力创造适于企业生存的制度环境。     

利益相关者间的谈判与企业治理结构

企业的契约性与利益相关者理论具有一致性 ,它们都隐含了企业是一种再谈判机制。利益相关者对企业的所有权分配进行谈判 ,谈判结果决定出企业的治理结构。在这个过程中 ,各方的谈判破裂结果效用、谈判力和对谈判破裂的担心程度是关键变量。我们使用Nash谈判模型及其推广模型分析了这个过程。我们的结论是 ,企业治理结构是内生的 ,每个企业的治理结构都是特殊的个案 ,一种治理结构并不具有普适性。这个结论具有重要的立法含义。     

国有企业新型公司治理结构问题及改革探析

国有企业公司治理结构的完善一直是改革的重点之一。随着国企现代企业制度的确立,这一问题从形式上可以说已经得到解决。然而,2004年一系列问题的出现充分说明,公司治理结构在国企中还未真正确立,或者说是出现了一些新的问题。国有公司治理低效的根源是产权问题,因此,只有在产权改革的基础上才能建立真正有效的公司治理结构。     

Knowledge at work: Some neoliberal anachronisms

With a predilection for market solutions, neoliberalism upholds that the individual is generally the best judge of his or her interests. Yet markets are never universally applied as a mechanism of allocation and there are reasons, in principle, why capitalism will always have “missing markets.” Concentrating on the application and appropriateness of neoliberal theory to the workplace, this article argues that firms are not markets, despite some tendencies in modern theory to conflate the two. The employment contract is a key characteristic of modern firms, but neoliberal theory is often silent on the distinction between an employment contract and a contract for services, and largely ignores the asymmetrical rights of authority within contracts of employment. Furthermore, the social nature of knowledge represents a challenge to neoliberal theory and policy, because it sometimes makes it more difficult to define individual property rights. Accordingly, with the growth of the knowledge economy, neoliberalism to some extent is an anachronism.     

公司治理理论前沿综述

1 997年亚洲金融危机的影响还未完全消除 ,美国股市又相继爆出了安然、世通等一系列丑闻 ,公司治理问题一直在其中扮演着重要的角色。我国政府将建立有效的公司治理结构视为“现代企业制度”建设的核心内容 ,而加入WTO的承诺使得全面系统地处理这一问题显得更加紧迫。本文试图在契约 (激励 )理论发展的大背景下对公司治理的最新进展作一回顾和评述 ,以期为所有关注公司治理理论和实践的人士提供一些新的视角和研究参考。     

企业社会责任透明度、法律环境与企业价值——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

依据信息经济学,探究企业社会责任透明度对企业价值的影响机制,法律环境在企业社会责任透明度与企业价值间的调节机制。以2012—2016年的A股上市公司为样本,研究结果表明,企业社会责任透明度对企业价值有显著正向影响。其次,弱法律环境正向调节企业社会责任透明度对企业价值的影响,强法律环境负向调节企业社会责任透明度对企业价值的影响。最后,研究还发现企业异质性影响企业社会责任透明度对公司价值的影响。     

从控制到协调：企业治理目标的演进

企业的治理目标可以理解为企业的价值取向,即企业应该为谁服务,为谁而存在？企业治理目标也体现在维护企业内创造价值的关键性资源的完整性,并通过价值分配来激励这些关键性资源。传统的物质资本密集型企业其关键性资源具有产权特性,控制企业产权便可以维持企业的价值创造能力,同时也可以获得相应的价值分配权,因此物质资本密集型企业的治理目标便是控制企业的关键性物资资本,并为其服务。而在人力资本密集型企业中,创造价值的关键性资源无法通过产权加以控制,需要凭借关系型契约来协调。此时,只有妥善协调企业内的关键性资源,才能维持企业的价值创造能力,所以人力资本密集型企业的治理目标由控制转变为协调企业内的关键性资源。企业家通过关系型契约协调关键性人力资本的关键是让人力资本感知与企业合作的收益要大于不合作的收益,切实保证人力资本有权参与分享与企业合作所产生的收益,从而提高关系型契约自我实施的能力。     

数字时代的企业创新生态系统治理研究综述

摘要：数字经济时代,创新生态系统成为企业竞合的主要形态,但现有研究主要关注企业创新生态系统的建设和赋能作用,企业创新生态系统的治理研究亟待加强。本研究运用科学知识图谱可视化分析方法,针对WOS和CNKI数据库中2000-2022.06年的1593篇相关文献进行关键词共享、高频词时区划分、热点词聚类和突现词辨析等计量分析和比较,分析中外企业创新生态系统治理研究的进展、演进路径,讨论其内涵外延和基本理论,展望企业创新生态系统治理的发展趋势和热点问题。研究发现：首先,中外对于企业创新生态系统治理研究在时间上并不同步,国外在20世纪90年代提出企业创新生态系统治理,随后由起步期进入平稳增长期,再到高速增长期,而中国企业创新生态系统治理研究先后经历了萌芽期、渐进期和高速增长期;其次,中外研究均体现了从企业创新生态系统设计治理、过程治理到产出治理的基础理论逻辑;最后,数字创新生态系统治理、科技创新责任治理、区块链治理、知识产权安全治理等问题是共同关注的前沿动向,数字创新生态系统治理、丰富治理机制和治理研究方法、聚焦治理主体以及动态化治理问题或将成为未来研究重点方向。     

产权性质、债券融资与过度投资——基于中国A股上市公司的经验证据

以我国沪深两市2008-2011年发行公司债券的A股上市公司为样本,考察不同产权性质下公司债的发行对公司过度投资的影响,实证检验结果表明:公司债可以有效地制约过度投资;相对于国有控股的上市公司,公司债券对民营上市公司的过度投资可以发挥更为有效的制约作用,银行贷款负债的治理作用弱化不及公司债券对投资的约束作用。     

Empowering Firm Owners by Separating Voting from Buying and Selling Shares

This paper discusses a new system of firm governance. In the system, the responsibility for voting the shares of a firm (“voice”) is given to the people who ultimately provided the money, who, however, have to delegate it to proxy voting institutions. The system helps overcome collective action problems and conflicts of interest within firms, and it reduces the private benefits of control. The disadvantages for firm governance may be relatively modest. However, since the new system of voice is a conceptual innovation, the analysis of its effects is rather tentative. Further research and experimentations are required for firmer conclusions.     

The effect of firm maturity on corporate social responsibility (CSR): do older firms invest more in CSR?

Motivated by the literature on corporate life cycles, we explore the effect of firm maturity on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our results based on over 26 000 observations across 21 years reveal that more mature firms invest significantly more in CSR. Furthermore, we find that the effect of firm maturity is not uniform across different categories of CSR. As firms get older, they become much more responsible in terms of diversity and environmental awareness, whereas the effect of firm ageing is much weaker in terms of human rights and product safety. Our study is the first to link corporate life cycles to CSR.     

产权、法律与公司治理

近年来针对公司治理的实证研究发现,产权、法律、市场以及企业组织形式等对公司治理机制具有重要影响.一个国家的产权和法律制度决定着其公司治理结构的演进路径和特征.在我国新兴加转轨的资本市场上,由于缺乏对投资者的有效司法保护,其他外部市场机制如何替代司法保护不足以促进公司治理改革和完善,将成为未来研究的重要课题之一.     

Organizational forms in the knowledge economy: a comparative institutional analysis

This paper provides a framework with which to analyze organizational forms in the knowledge economy. We focus on an important trade-off facing modern firms: firms can acquire the property of all the innovations developed by their employees and can greatly increase their profits, yet this type of private intellectual property rights regime can discourage the innovative effort of the very same workers. Allowing workers to carry their knowledge outside the firm eliminates this disincentive. Hence, strategic complementarities may exist between innovative partners and a disclosure driven intellectual property rights regime, and passive employees and a private intellectual property rights regime. An evolutionary game theoretic model demonstrates these strategic complementarities and shows when economies tend towards disclosure driven or private intellectual property rights regimes.     

控制权与激励的冲突——兼对股权激励有效性的实证分析

控制权配置与激励安排是组织治理中的两个重要工具,本文首先从组织中委托人私人收益角度分析委托人控制权与代理人激励之间可能的冲突,进而通过上市公司数据对这一冲突关系进行经验检验。我们的研究发现,中国上市公司大股东控制权与管理层股权激励之间存在显著的冲突,而且这种冲突与股权性质、公司成长速度相关。民营控股公司中的冲突程度显著弱于其他类型公司,国资委控股公司中的冲突显著强于其他类型公司;而公司成长速度越快,大股东控制权与管理层激励之间的冲突越强。本文的研究结果能够很好地解释中国上市国有企业中股权激励效果不显著、甚至出现负效应的经验现象,并由此提出相应的政策建议。     

现代公司治理理论基础的分析

现代企业制度的发展提出了公司制企业"两权分离"的著名命题.而新制度经济学家通过对公司产权的分解与剖析,指出应当通过剩余控制权分配从而实现对公司治理结构进行事前的制度安排.基于信息经济学的委托-代理理论与利益相关者理论的发展,使得理论界对公司治理问题的本质有了进一步的了解.从现代企业理论、产权理论、委托-代理理论以及利益相关者理论的角度出发,对现代公司治理的发展渊源及理论基础进行简要回顾和分析,进而说明治理结构与机制的设计则重在对各利益相关者做出相关制度安排,以在不同利益集团之间寻求利益均衡.     

公司治理文化与会计信息披露互动：理论与案例

公司治理制度遵从民主决策和监督原则,公司治理文化的精髓是责任和诚信;会计信息披露是代理人与外部利益相关者沟通的制度安排,客观公正是会计信息披露的价值取向,公司治理文化与会计信息披露之间存在互动关系。公司治理文化模式取决于企业权力配置格局和治理主体的诚信。案例研究表明,公司治理文化对会计信息披露发挥了主导作用;会计信息披露不仅反映公司治理的结果,体现公司治理文化特征,而且还反作用于公司治理。