股权制衡、非国有股东委派董事与公司绩效

从公司治理层面完善国有控股企业的股权制衡是国企混合所有制改革的重点和难点,以往学者仅仅研究了股权制衡与公司绩效之间的关系,很少研究两者关系的作用路径和影响机理.因此,引入非国有股东委派董事这一概念,研究非国有股东委派董事在股权制衡与公司绩效之间发挥的中介效应.结果表明:股权制衡有利于公司绩效的提升,非国有股东委派董事在股权制衡与公司绩效两者之间发挥了中介效应.     

Can Foreigners Improve the Profitability of Emerging Market Banks? Evidence from the Vietnamese Strategic Partner Program

Foreign ownership and foreign management are often assumed to improve the efficiency of emerging market banks. Our article examines this relationship for the Vietnamese strategic partner program, where foreign banks have been allowed to take minority stakes in local banks. We add to the existing literature by distinguishing between ownership by foreign strategic and non-strategic investors, and between foreign management sent by the strategic partner and independent foreign executives. We show that only the presence of independent foreign executives has a positive impact on banks. We interpret these results as the consequence of conflicts of interest and power struggles between local shareholders and the strategic partner, which prevent efficiency in enhancing technology transfer.     

信贷供给、资产配置及企业绩效——来自中国制造业上市公司的证据

近些年,中国“金融与实体经济”的研究愈发成为热点。宏观层面,资金“脱实入虚”“金融空转”的讨论亦此起彼伏。然而,针对微观层面的企业资金“脱实入虚”的研究则寥寥无几。本文选取2003—2016年中国A股制造业上市公司的年度报告数据,利用2009年宏观调控措施营造的“准自然实验”环境,采用双重差分方法探究在资金资源充足的前提下,企业配置金融资产的倾向性,并进一步研究企业绩效的后续变化情况。实证结果表明,当制造业企业获得更多的信贷资金支持,同时缺乏有效的外部监管时,企业更倾向于配置金融资产,金融活动也会在企业的日常生产经营中扮演愈发重要的角色。在此基础上,企业的主营业务却未得到发展,反而盈利能力、成长能力均受到损害,且后者受到的影响更大,即进行过多金融投资对中国A股制造业上市公司的远期影响更为深重。基于上述结论,本文从实体经济从业者、资金提供方以及监管层三个角度提出了相关政策建议。     

Whither seniority? Career progression and performance orientation in South Korea

Framed by institutional theory, this study reassesses the influence of seniority on (HRM) in South Korea today. We analyze first the overall influence of seniority in business, second its significance for career progression (i.e. promotion), and third its relation to individual performance orientation. By conducting in-depth interviews among local and expatriate managers, we find that the role of seniority is still pronounced. Seniority-based promotion remains significant, and individual performance evaluation systems, as are typically found in Western countries, hardly fit the cultural environment and tend to be ineffective. By contributing to the extant theories on institutional dynamics and the convergence–divergence–hybridization debate alike, our results strengthen the culturalist approaches, holding that informal institutions persist and do not disappear quickly. Further, rather than moving towards global convergence, we see the Korean HRM system as being in a state of hybridization caused by coercive isomorphism resulting from experimentation with foreign best-practice systems. As a result, some HRM practices are dysfunctional. We recommend that firms should reinterpret their valuation of individual performance towards team achievements and pay more attention to the optimal team composition.     

Relationship Between Sustainable Development and Financial Performance: International Empirical Research

The aim of this paper is to clarify the relationship between companies' sustainable behavior and their financial performance (FP), which has been studied for several years without reaching a consensus on the effect and the direction of it. Hypotheses are tested for an unbalanced sample of 1960 multinational non‐financial listed companies from 25 countries and one administrative region for the period between 2002 and 2010. Due to the use of an international database and the differences among countries, it is possible to observe divergence between institutional settings. For this reason, a corporate governance system (Anglo‐Saxon, Germanic, Latin and Asian) is used as characteristic of the macro‐environment. Results obtained via the generalized method of moments estimator allow us to support the existence of a positive bidirectional relationship between corporate social responsibility and FP, evidencing the existence of a synergistic circle. The use of market value indicated that investors are able to identify economic, social and environmental practices generating a positive effect on FP. These relationships differ between corporate governance systems, due to the specific characteristics of each system. Findings are robust for each sustainable sub‐index (society, human rights, environmental and board). Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Government Engagement,Environmental Policy,and Environmental Performance: Evidence from the Most Polluting Chinese Listed Firms

This study empirically examines the implementation of environmental policies and how government engagement impacts on a firm's environmental performance based on a sample of Chinese listed firms in the eight most polluting industries over a 10‐year period. The findings of the study demonstrate that government engagement, measured as ownership structure, is positively correlated with environmental performance, measured by environmental capital expenditure, for state‐owned firms, but no significant relation is found for non‐state‐owned firms. In addition, non‐state‐owned firms are more likely to perform better in terms of environmental investment after the 2006 enactment of a new policy explicitly linking environmental issues with political incentives to regional governments. This study also reports that corporate environmental performance impairs firm value for state‐owned firms but has no impact on firm value for non‐state‐owned firms, suggesting that investors negatively respond to environmental investments made by state‐owned firms as a result of government engagement/political pressure. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Effectiveness of independent boards of UCITS funds

In order to protect fund investors against conflicts of interest with fund management companies, US funds have mandatory independent directors, but this obligation is not required under the European Union Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS) Directive. Nevertheless, a considerable number of UCITS funds do have independent directors. Whether independent directors should also be mandatory in Europe has been a topic of ongoing debate. Using a sample of Luxembourg UCITS, we test the hypothesis that more independent boards add value for investors through lower costs and/or better investment performance, but we fail to find supporting evidence, even for funds with a higher risk of conflicts of interest. Oversight by independent depositaries and institutional shareholders does not seem to be effective either. It appears that board attitude and the sponsor distribution model are more important since we find evidence that boards that prioritise cost monitoring have lower costs and that independent sponsor funds have better performance. These results question the effectiveness of self-regulation or formal regulation requiring independent board members.     

The moments of the Gompertz distribution and maximum likelihood estimation of its parameters

The Gompertz distribution is widely used to describe the distribution of adult deaths. Previous works concentrated on formulating approximate relationships to characterise it. However, using the generalised integro-exponential function, exact formulas can be derived for its moment-generating function and central moments. Based on the exact central moments, higher accuracy approximations can be defined for them. In demographic or actuarial applications, maximum likelihood estimation is often used to determine the parameters of the Gompertz distribution. By solving the maximum likelihood estimates analytically, the dimension of the optimisation problem can be reduced to one both in the case of discrete and continuous data. Monte Carlo experiments show that by ML estimation, higher accuracy estimates can be acquired than by the method of moments.     

The evolution of inter-organisational social capital with foreign customers: Its direct and interactive effects on SMEs’ foreign performance

Taking a longitudinal approach, we analyze how the evolution of different dimensions of social capital between an SME (Small and Medium enterprise) and its key foreign customers directly influences the firm’s foreign performance growth. Moreover, we utilize a contingency approach by introducing two dyad-specific characteristics into the analysis: psychic and geographic interorganizational distances. Our findings contribute to the international business literature on social capital and suggest that while an investment in social capital with distant foreign customers always reinforces SMEs’ foreign performance development, relational and cognitive social capital have the same positive effects only for low levels of interorganizational psychic distance.     

The impact of privatization on efficiency and profitability

Over the past three decades, China has undergone tremendous economic and social change as a consequence of the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. This paper examines a key feature of this transition – the privatization of the state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) – through both a theoretical model and empirical analysis. Using newly collected primary data from a variety of sources, we study how privatization of listed SOEs affects employment, wages, profits and other aspects of economic performance at the firm level. Our major finding is that privatization results in substantial downsizing of employment, increased labour productivity and rising profitability.