Search Results (17)

As sustainability reporting and ESG disclosure gain global importance, understanding the factors influencing ESG outcomes becomes crucial for policymakers, investors, and corporate decision-makers. China, a major player in the global economy, has recently taken steps to align its stock exchanges with international ESG reporting standards. In this context, the study examines the individual and joint effects of digital transformation and CEO compensation on ESG performance, considering moderating factors such as firm size, state ownership, and CEO age and gender. The research employs a comprehensive dataset containing 16,205 firm-year observations from 2018 to 2022, combining financial data, ESG ratings, and a matrix of word frequencies related to digital transformation extracted from annual reports. The study adopts a firm-year two-way fixed effect model, utilizing panel data and control variables to address potential endogeneity concerns and unobserved firm heterogeneity. The findings provide evidence supporting the positive impact of digital transformation and CEO compensation on ESG performance. The level of digital transformation is positively associated with ESG performance. This relationship is stronger for larger firms and firms with older CEOs, while state-owned enterprises show mixed results compared to non-SOEs. However, the effect of CEO compensation and ESG performance is stronger for male CEOs. This study thus contributes to the growing literature on ESG performance, digital transformation, and executive compensation by providing insights into their relationships in the context of Chinese listed companies. Full article

In response to the increasing global emphasis on environmental accountability, the issue of greenwashing requires urgent resolution. This research investigates how state ownership affects greenwashing behaviors in Chinese A-share private companies over the period from 2010 to 2021, utilizing resource support and supervisory governance as analytical frameworks. Empirical analysis reveals that state-owned shareholder holdings significantly inhibit greenwashing practices in private enterprises, with this result remaining robust across various sensitivity tests. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that these holdings reduce greenwashing through both resource support and supervisory governance pathways. This study enhances the scholarly understanding of how state capital impacts private firms and underscores the distinctive roles and benefits that state-owned shareholders bring to the mixed-ownership reform process. The results suggest new pathways for fostering the sustainable development of private enterprises and offer crucial insights for policymakers focused on advancing mixed-ownership reforms and ensuring corporate accountability. Full article

Against the background of the increasing financialization of manufacturing enterprises, whether green financial policies can inhibit the financialization of manufacturing enterprises is a major practical issue worth exploring. It can help government departments to guide the sustainable development of the real economy of enterprises, effectively curbing the trend of over-financialization of enterprises, thus preventing potential systemic risks and safeguarding the sustainable development of the economy. Because the green credit guidelines function as a more mature development of green financial policies, this paper takes Chinese A-share listed companies from 2005 to 2022 as the research sample, adopts the propensity score matching and double difference method, and constructs a quasi-natural experiment with the “Green Credit Guidelines” as the policy shock to analyze the multiple impact effects of green financial policies on the financialization of manufacturing enterprises. The results of the study show that (1) green finance policy has a significant inhibiting effect on the financialization of manufacturing enterprises; (2) due to the different motives of manufacturing enterprises in holding financial assets, green finance policy has a more significant inhibiting effect on the long-term financialization of “substitution”; (3) state-owned enterprises (SOEs) bear more social responsibilities and have credit advantages. Green finance policy has a more obvious inhibiting effect on the financialization of non-state-owned manufacturing enterprises; (4) major shareholders can play a better supervisory role in enterprises with high equity concentrations, so green finance policy has a more significant inhibiting effect on the financialization of manufacturing enterprises with low equity concentrations; (5) financing constraints have a masking effect in green finance policy and enterprise financialization. Based on this, this paper puts forward the following targeted recommendations. For the governmental level: first, to establish a sound manufacturing credit system; second, to focus on enterprise-financing constraints. For the enterprise level: first, to optimize the asset structure to promote transformation; second, to deepen the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosures are pivotal in steering listed companies toward a balanced trajectory of economic efficiency and environmental/social accountability. Disclosure of ESG information can enhance consumer confidence, create shareholder value, and promote sustainable corporate development. Based on the ESG information disclosure data of Chinese listed companies, this study investigates and empirically analyzes the frequency, content, and quality of ESG information disclosure by Chinese listed companies using a mixed-methodological research approach combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. The findings indicate a low and unreliable frequency of ESG disclosure among Chinese listed companies, with a predominant focus on descriptive content primarily in the “E” and “G” dimensions, while neglecting information disclosure in the “S” dimension. The results of subgroup analyses show that industry classification and the regional economic development level do not increase the disclosure rate. Although the nature of ownership, industry classification, and the level of regional economic development can contribute to improving the overall quality of disclosure, there are differences in the “E”, “S”, and “G” dimensions. In addition, mandatory disclosure requirements can improve disclosure quality, but some differences in the “G” dimension are not significant. The findings provide empirical support for improving the ESG disclosure performance of Chinese listed companies to achieve the “dual-carbon” goal. Full article

From the perspectives of ownership dispersion degree after the entry of foreign shareholder and the foreign ownership participation level, respectively, this paper takes Chinese hybrid OFDI state-owned listed industrial companies from 2007 to 2019 as samples, using 3799 observations, to study the impact of foreign ownership on the innovation of OFDI SOEs. We find that compared to the ownership dispersion degree after the entry of foreign shareholder, the foreign ownership participation level plays a more active role in the innovation of OFDI SOE. This positive effect is stronger for non-state-holding enterprises and high-pollution industries. Further analysis reveals that the relationship between foreign ownership and the innovation of SOE is mediated and moderated by the host country’s innovation level and government innovation subsidies, respectively. In addition, in comparison with the ownership dispersion degree after the entry of foreign shareholders, the mediating effect of the host country’s innovation level and the moderating effects of government innovation subsidies are significantly enhanced by the foreign ownership participation level. These findings can promote the study of the relationship between mixed-ownership reform and the innovation of Chinese OFDI SOEs. By verifying the impact of foreign ownership on the effectiveness of OFDI SOE innovation, this paper provides a new perspective on the study of mixed-ownership reform. This paper aims to expand the research field on the relationship between mixed-ownership reform and OFDI SOE innovation, providing theoretical implications and facilitating the policy design of promoting SOE reverse technology spillovers through their governance structural reform. Full article

Governments worldwide have launched climate policies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). These policies aim to enhance businesses to be active actors in the process of decarbonisation. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to identify the drivers of voluntary corporate decarbonisation illustrated by climate target-setting practices. In particular, this paper aims at diagnosing whether European Union (EU)-wide and country-level policies foster material corporate commitment to mitigating the carbon footprint in two countries that are exceptionally heavily dependent on fossil fuels: Poland and Hungary, which are characterised by a specific political-economic situation. This analysis focuses on policies related to the EU sustainable finance initiative that enhances companies to voluntarily reduce their GHG emissions: (1) sustainable financial sector, (2) corporate disclosure, and (3) corporate governance policy. At the country level, the national policies for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are analysed. The empirical research is conducted based on the financial and economic data for a group of Polish and Hungarian publicly listed companies exposed to these regulations. The exposure to certain policies is approximated through selected corporate characteristics. Logistic regression analysis is applied to firm-level data gathered from Refinitive and corporate reports. The dataset covers the period 2014 to 2021, with 214 data-points. The response variable is a binary indicator of whether a company sets emission targets. The empirical research proved that state ownership, belonging to the financial sector, and performance-oriented corporate governance factors have a significantly negative impact on the probability of a company setting target emissions. On the other hand, the company’s size and leverage have a strong positive impact on the probability of setting emission targets. Also, it was confirmed that after 2020 the frequency of corporate target-setting in Poland and Hungary increased. Additionally, it was observed that Polish firms are more willing to set climate targets than Hungarian ones. Therefore, from the analysed policies, only the corporate sustainability disclosure policy proved to have a positive impact on the practices of setting climate targets in Polish and Hungarian firms. The policies related to the sustainable financial sector and to state-owned enterprises proved to have a negative impact on the probability of setting climate targets, while for the corporate governance policy, the results are mixed. In this vein, it was shown that, by a majority, policies to stimulate voluntary corporate commitment to decarbonisation are counter-effective in countries characterised by exceptional fossil fuel dependence and particular institutional features. The original value of this study stems from the applied methodology focusing on a mix of policies addressing the deep decarbonisation process in the specific country settings. The presented research contributes to an on-going debate on the drivers of voluntary corporate decarbonisation, in particular the impact that policy mixes framed under the sustainable finance agenda may have on material commitments to GHG emission reduction targets. In this context, the main findings are important for policymakers who are responsible for creating and implementing policy measures devoted to the deep decarbonisation process. It is recommended that policymakers should consider national specificities while designing policies for a Europe-wide net-zero transition and account for potential tensions arising from different goals as they may have impact on the effectiveness of the decarbonisation process. Future research may focus on the verification of the observed relationships between variables on a larger sample of the European firms to identify the key drivers of deep corporate decarbonisation. Full article

Demand for foreign nurses and medical staff is rapidly increasing due to the severe labor shortage in U.S. hospitals triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, empirical studies on the effect of the racial diversity of medical staff on hospital operations are still lacking. This research gap is thus investigated based on the foreign medical staff working in 3870 U.S. hospitals. Results show that workforce racial diversity has a significantly positive relationship with hospital operational efficiency regarding occupancy rate, manpower productivity, capacity productivity, and case mix index. Notably, this study empirically supports that increasing the ratio of foreign nurses positively affects the overall operational efficiency of hospitals. In addition, the study results also indicate that the hospital location, size, ownership, and teaching status act as significant control variables for the relationship between racial diversity and hospital efficiency. These results imply that hospitals with these specific operating conditions need to pay more attention to racial diversity in the workplace, as they are structurally more sensitive to the relationship between racial diversity and operational efficiency. In short, the findings of this study suggest that hospital efficiency can be operationally improved by implementing workforce ethnic diversity. For this reason, hospital stakeholders and healthcare policymakers are expected to benefit from this study’s findings. Above all, the results of this study imply that if an organization adapts to extreme external environmental changes (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic) through appropriate organizational restructuring (i.e., expanding the workforce racial diversity by hiring foreign medical staff), the organization can gain a competitive advantage, a claim that is supported by contingency theory. Further, investors are increasingly interested in ESG, especially companies that embody ethical and socially conscious workplaces, including a diverse and inclusive workforce. Thereby, seeking racial diversity in the workforce is now seen as a fundamental benchmark for organizational behavior that predicts successful ESG business practices, a claim that is supported by stakeholder theory. Therefore, in conclusion, the findings of this study suggest that workforce racial diversity is no longer an optional consideration but should be considered as one of the essential determinants of competitive advantage in organizations, particularly in the healthcare sector. Full article

To achieve carbon neutrality, China is working toward a green transition where a key focus is to promote green innovation among privately-owned enterprises (POEs). Reverse mixed ownership reform, represented by the participation of state-owned capital, is a major direction in the current reform of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Nevertheless, few studies have thoroughly investigated the impact of state-owned capital participation on green innovation in POEs. Thus, this research aims to analyze how state-owned capital influences POEs’ green innovations. Using an unbalanced panel dataset of 12,206 firm-year observations of Chinese listed companies from 2011 to 2019, we employ the fixed-effect ordinary least square (FE-OLS) as an effective estimation method to control unobserved individual heterogeneity and potential endogeneity. The results show that state-owned capital can significantly promote POEs’ green innovation. Mechanistic analyses suggest that state capital eases financial constraints and attracts more creative talent to work for the private sector, thus promoting green innovation. In addition, our baseline findings are more salient for enterprises with political connections, those operating in heavily polluting industries, and those located in areas with more stringent intellectual property rights (IPR) legislation. Finally, these findings are confirmed significant, even with endogeneity concerns and robustness checks being considered. The contribution of this research outlines the key role of state-owned capital in alleviating financial constraints and attracting talent to promote POEs’ green innovation. Full article

In recent years, the development of China’s state-owned companies (SOEs) has slowed dramatically due to the improvement of the government–enterprise relationship and maturity in the market system. To accomplish the market-oriented transformation of the management model and promote sustainable development, some SOEs have incorporated private capital to conduct mixed-ownership reforms. Nonetheless, the emergence of heterogeneous shareholder conflicts seriously hampers the transformation of businesses. This paper proposed a two-party evolutionary game model between state-owned and private shareholders in the management transformation of mixed-ownership companies. Based on the proposed model, the evolutionary stability of heterogeneous shareholders’ action strategies was analyzed to obtain the evolutionary stability strategies for the system. The crucial factors of the ideal equilibrium strategies are studied at the same time. The analysis results show that the probability of “change” in private shareholders is positively proportional to factors such as the success rate of change, change dividend, control gain, and policy burden, and it is inversely proportional to the factors including the cost of change, contractual cost of private shareholders, the additional cost of change, hidden income, state-owned shareholders’ shareholding ratio, and loss of change failure. Finally, the findings of this study provide a theoretical foundation for the transition of mixed-ownership enterprises’ management systems. Full article

The mixed ownership reform aims to improve the property rights structure of the state−owned enterprises (SOEs) and reduce agency costs, and the current mixed reform strategies mainly include equity blending by introducing external non−state capital, executive assignments, and employee stock ownership. In this paper, 953 valid data of A−shares listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2008 to 2020 are used as samples to construct the indicators of mixed reform strategy by the literature statistics method. After obtaining multiple impact indicators, the regression impact model of corporate agency cost suppression strategy is constructed by MATLAB software using a machine learning algorithm. On this basis, the performance of multiple machine learning algorithms is compared, and it is found that the integrated optimization−based bag−boosting model is used to study the effect of hybrid reform strategy to reduce the agency costs of SOEs, and the proportional setting of indicators when the effect is optimal is also explored. Finally, the laws of different influencing factors on the agency costs of enterprises are explored separately by the eigenvalue method. The results of the study show that the proportion of shareholding of the first largest non−state shareholder is sin−functional with the agency costs of SOEs when non−state majority shareholders are introduced into SOEs’ equity mix, and the agency costs tend to decrease after SOEs become privately held enterprises. The greater the number and proportion of supervisors appointed by non−state shareholders, the greater the supervisory restraint effect on SOE managers and the better the effect of suppressing agency costs. The participation of non−state−owned shareholders in the company’s business decisions by appointed executives and the special resource advantages of SOEs intensify the occurrence of the self−interest of appointed executives and the increase of agency costs of SOEs. The implementation of an employee stock ownership plan plays the role of employee supervision and restraint on SOE managers, which reduces the agency costs of SOEs. Based on this, it can provide support for the government to improve the hybrid reform policy and promote the process layer by layer, and also provide theoretical reference for SOEs to deepen the equity mix, incentivize employee shareholding, and empower non−state shareholders to govern and thus reduce agency costs. Full article

Industrial migration is a hot topic in economic geography. This study traces the migratory process of key high-tech enterprises in Beijing during 2008–2016, revealing the migratory characteristics and patterns of high-tech enterprises within the metropolitan area by using spatial analysis methods and mathematical statistics. The results show that: (1) Migrating enterprises are mainly mixed-ownership and foreign-funded or privately-owned enterprises. Medium-sized enterprises are more likely to relocate than small and large enterprises, especially in lucrative sectors. (2) The migration of high-tech enterprises is mainly based on proximity migration. More than 77.19% of enterprises tend to move to agglomerations or agglomeration expansion areas such as Jiuxianqiao and the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (BDA) in Daxing District. In addition, 33 enterprises experience varying degrees of scale expansion after relocation. (3) Most high-tech manufacturing enterprises are in the growth stage of their life cycle. They initially relocate between 7 and 16 years after their establishment, which means that there is roughly a 7-year adaptation or development period for firms within a region after their establishment. During the adaptation period, companies do not tend to relocate; afterwards, as they grow, they need to find other spaces in which to do so. For reasons such as familiarity with the environment, enterprises give priority to finding new locations within the agglomeration and the surrounding area. These results deepen the understanding of the temporal and spatial characteristics of the migration of enterprises within the city from the microscopic perspective and provide a scientific basis for the optimization of industrial space in a metropolis. Full article

Nitrogen (N) fertilization is a commonly applied silvicultural treatment in intensively managed coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco var. menziesii) plantations. Field trials were established in a randomized complete block design by Stimson Lumber Company (Gaston, Oregon), to test the economic viability of N fertilization on their ownership and to better understand Douglas-fir growth responses. The 23 stands comprising the trials were Douglas-fir dominated, had a total age of 16–24 years, had been precommercially thinned, and had a density of 386–1021 trees ha⁻¹. Fertilizer was applied aerially at a rate of 224 kg N ha⁻¹ as urea during the 2009–2010 dormant season. In the dormant season of 2016–2017, seven growing seasons following application, 40 trees were felled and measured with the objective of assessing crown attributes and aboveground allometrics. Branch-level foliage mass equations were developed from 267 subsampled branches and were applied to the 40 felled sample trees on which the basal diameter and height of all live branches were measured, allowing estimation of both the total amount of foliage and its vertical distribution. A right-truncated Weibull distribution was fitted to data, with the truncation point specified as the base of live tree crown. The resulting tree-level parameter estimates were modeled as functions of tree-level variables. Stand-level factors not explicitly measured were captured through the use of linear and nonlinear mixed-effects models with random stand effects. Fertilization resulted in more total crown foliage mass in the middle crown-third and caused a downward shift in the vertical distribution of foliage, with implications for feedback responses in crown development and photosynthetic capacity. Defining the morphological responses of Douglas-fir crowns to nitrogen fertilization provides a framework for studying influences on stand dynamics and should ultimately facilitate improved site-specific predictions of stem-volume growth. Full article

The article addresses the issue of disclosing Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) issues by corporations in Romania, under the influence of recent changes in the legislative framework imposed by the adoption of the EU Directive 2014/95/EU on non-financial reporting by large corporations exceeding 500 employees. The goal of our study consist in determining the relevant factors that influence the level of the Romanian companies’ OHS disclosure. To this end, we have compiled a sample of 35 organizations that have elaborated and published non-financial reports during 2016–2017 and we have analysed the impact of some relevant determinants upon the reporting phenomenon. With the aim of providing a clear picture of the regional context of our study, we put together many pieces of information regarding the corporations that played the trend-setters role in Romania, by disclosing corporate social responsibility (CSR)/sustainability reports between 2003 and 2017, although this practice has been characterized by a voluntary and unsteady approach in many cases. The importance of outlining the regional context of the Romanian reporting companies is given by the urge to raise the local managers’ level of awareness towards sustainability issues and to use the recent legislative changes as opportunities to catch up with more advanced EU countries. The research methods used in order to identify the interdependencies established between the key factors involved in the disclosure practices included a mixed quantitative-qualitative approach, and referred to: content analysis of sustainability reports; descriptive analysis of the statistical variables which were taken into consideration; correlation analysis of numerical variables; and the ANOVA method for investigating the interdependencies between the categorical and numerical variables. Among the influencing factors that impact with a greater or lesser intensity the quality of OHS reporting performed by the local companies, the following were highlighted: the corporations’ market share, their field of activity, and the ownership structure. Full article

This paper takes China’s A-share listed companies of the mixed ownership of state-owned enterprises from 2007 to 2016 as a sample, and examines the impact of state-owned business mixed reform on corporate performance. Research shows that under different equity restriction ratios, there exists a difference in the connection between corporate performance and equity restriction ratio. Corporate performance reduces with the subjoin of equity restriction ratio, and they are negatively correlated when the stockholding ratio of the largest stockholder is less than 25%; on the condition that the stockholding ratio of the largest stockholder is in the range of 25 and 40% and 40 and 60%, it presents an “inverted U-shaped” connection between corporate performance and equity restriction ratio. At this time, the threshold value of the optimal equity restriction ratio is 1.1336 and 0.7297, respectively. On the condition that the stockholding ratio of the largest stockholder is equal to or more than 60%, there exists no threshold value for equity restriction ratio. However, the regression results present that corporate performance increases with the increase of equity restriction ratio, and the two are positively correlated. Full article

This work proposes a model starting from the Three-Circle Model, based on the reality of the small and medium-sized family business sector in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area. The present paper proposes a new model that was built based on the Three Circle Model, but it is based on the reality of the Small and Medium Mexican family business sector. The model does not include the Ownership Subsystem, but it includes the Environment Subsystem, a subsystem that has a vital influence on the life and performance of an organization of that size. These three subsystems intersect in common elements such as culture, economy or company vision, triggering the success or failure of the company itself. The methodology used was a mixed methodology, with both qualitative and quantitative elements. First, the Delphi method was used on a scale that was applied to 25 owners of Small and Medium Enterprises and then, to make an additional confirmation, hypothesis testing, factorial analysis and the technique of structural equations were used. It was seen that the ownership subsystem has a lower weight than the business, environment and family subsystems, is the least relevant. Full article