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This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the executives’ team and firm performance by investigating the relationships between executives’ compensation, management gender diversity and firm financial performance in growth enterprises market (GEM) listed firms in China.

Data are collected from 461 companies listed on GEM boards during the period from the year 2016 to 2018. Specifically, executives’ compensation and female executives are set as the independent variables, and the proxy selected of corporate performance is Tobin’s Q ratio.

The results show that the correlation between corporate performance and executive cash payment is not significant, while executives’ equity-based compensation shows a significant positive correlation with firm performance. In addition, the participation of female executives is negatively associated with firm performance.

The results have practical implications for governments, policymakers and regulatory authorities, by indicating the importance of women to corporate success. In particular, the findings of this paper emphasize the specific background of GEM in China and provide empirical support for the value of women’s participation in corporate governance. In addition, the finding on the relationship between executive compensation and corporate performance of GEM listed companies provides guidance for the establishment of a performance compensation system of GEM listed companies in China.

This paper provides new evidence for the current literature of executive team and corporate performance. This is the first paper to adopt triangulation in theories from different disciplines including optimal contractual approach, managerial power approach as new perspectives of agency theory, upper echelons theory, motivational-hygiene theory and women leadership style theory. The results will contribute to provide guidance for enterprises to formulate an efficient compensation system and build a reasonable senior management team structure.

The purpose of this paper is to study whether there is correlation between valuation in initial public offering (IPO) and board composition, the ownership dispersion of top management teams (TMTs) and their human capitals, in entrepreneurial firms of China's new growth enterprise market (GEM). Also, it aims to evaluate the relative importance of various factors in determining initial public issuing value.

The SPSS 16.0 statistical package was used to perform the analysis. The authors compute descriptive statistics, calculate correlation coefficients for all variables and use multiple regression analysis test the hypothesis.

The paper shows that IPO valuation has significant positive correlation with board composition, significant negative correlation with TMT ownership dispersion, but it does not show significant correlation with TMT human capital. The empirical results also show that: the influence of variable “CEO also Founder” on IPO valuation is significant, which indicates that investors are concerned with the leadership of firms in IPO. Also the influence of the variable “underwriter prestige” on IPO valuation is also significant, but weaker, which indicates that investors still keep confidence in the well‐known underwriters for their vision and ability of judging the firms.

Based on the first batch of 28 entrepreneurial firms listed on Chinese GEM, the sample size is relative small. Also, the measure of TMT human capital, defined by the education degree level, is not an accurate rule in this paper.

Focusing on 28 new firms in China's new security market, this paper presents some interesting and new findings, by using data from the first batch of listed companies in China's GEM, which comprises many privately‐owned, high technology and entrepreneurial firms.

The mechanism of marketing strategy style and its impact on firms are research issues received wide attention. In particular, the aggressive style of marketing strategy has been chosen by many companies, but recent studies have shown that it has a negative effect on corporate performance. This leads to the core issue of this paper – does the aggressive style of marketing strategy always had a negative impact on corporate performance? Are there any factors that can alleviate this negative impact?

Based on the resource-based theory and agency theory, this paper takes the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) listed companies as the research objects, collects secondary data and conducts the research by regression model.

The empirical research shows that: (1) the aggressive style of marketing strategy significantly and negatively affects the performance of firm; (2) the resource constraint can moderate the main effect and resource control play a weak adjustment role.

In practice, this paper confirms the adverse impact of aggressive style of marketing strategy on the performance of listed companies on GEM and inspires the industry to strengthen the control and supervision of marketing resources.

This paper makes up for the research gap in the field of cross-research in finance and marketing theoretically.

The purpose of this paper is to model the Chinese unique regulation changes with the supply-and-demand analytical framework and structure the relationship between initial public offerings (IPO) underpricing and institutional changes with the comparative static method. A well-functioning stock market is crucial to the transition into a market economy, but the Chinese stock market is somehow twisted with frequent government interventions, particularly the IPO market. Can the underpricing issue be mitigated in the changing institutional settings? Can the market-orientated incremental reform of regulations succeed in the Chinese stock market?

The theoretical analysis confirms that IPO underpricing becomes relatively better with dynamic changes of relaxation of the approval and pricing systems. Collecting and examining the data of newly listed firms from 1993 to 2010, the influence of institutional changes on IPO underpricing with regressions, such as ordinary least square (OLS), bootstrap and two stage least square (2SLS) estimation methods was further empirically examined.

The magnitude of the Chinese IPO underpricing during the past two decades is as high as 181.6 per cent on the average. The sizes of IPO underpricing significantly reduce with an increase in the issuing sizes and the ratios of price-earnings ratios. The dummy variables of government-approved regulations are negatively associated with IPO underpricing. The dummy variables of pricing regulations are positively related to IPO underpricing and the coefficients become smaller with newer regulations. Generally, the magnitude of the Chinese IPO underpricing decreases over time.

This paper enriches the IPO literature by dynamically examining the effect of institutional changes on IPO underpricing in Chinese primary markets. We argue that institutional changes characterized by incremental marketization can help to alleviate extreme IPO underpricing and to promote financial development. The Chinese transition from the planning system to the market system in the IPO market will be a long and strenuous process, but it works.

The purpose of this paper is to compare influential factors of entrepreneurial activities over time in China and to compare China with other selected countries. The data are collected from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). The method used is decision trees and chi-square automatic interaction detector (CHAID) analysis, which isolates important factors and examines entrepreneurship predictor importance.

The method used is decision trees and CHAID analysis which isolate important factors and examine entrepreneurship predictor importance. The original contribution of this paper is that this is the first time where artificial decision trees are applied to data to isolate factors that influence business startups and used across countries for comparative purposes. It is also the first application of this model to Chinese GEM. CHAID trees and predictor importance show the value of motivations of people who have already started businesses and shed light on how public policy can be influential in promoting entrepreneurship.

Results indicate that solid knowledge and skills of how to start a business and knowing someone who has already started a business are the most important factors in China and in most of the selected countries. Fear of failure is becoming less important for Chinese entrepreneurs over the years from 2003 to 2012. Results show that countries, including China, have to enhance skill and knowledge education if they want to promote small business entrepreneurship as a policy. The findings support human capital theory.

The limitations of this study are due to using aggregated data from GEM surveys, which do not allow the authors to examine individual or household behavior. The authors do not know the variance and the distribution of responses to the questions asked and the locations in which the surveys were conducted. Another limitation is that GEM data do not report regional variations which can be modeled. For future work, the authors suggest more detailed data availability which will lead to isolating entrepreneurial problems and highlighting relevant attitudes important to entrepreneurs.

Better data collection is needed at household and regional levels to understand business starts and to promote entrepreneurship.

Social implication of this research is to find out effective ways to increase entrepreneurial activities, therefore creating job opportunities and boosting economic growth. Educational programs will also decrease disparity of opportunity and incomes between different geographical regions in the country. The original contribution of this paper is that this is the first time artificial decision trees are applied to data to isolate factors that influence business startups across countries.

The original contribution of this paper is that this is the first time where artificial decision trees are applied to data to isolate factors that influence business startups and used across countries for comparative purposes. It is also the first application of this model to Chinese GEM. CHAID trees and predictor importance show the value of motivations of people who have already started businesses and shed light on how public policy can be influential in promoting entrepreneurship. This research modeled the breakdown of reasons people would start a business by using GEM data surveys.

The impact of network centrality on innovation performance is inconclusive. The purpose of this paper is to examine how formal and informal institutions affect the influence of network centrality on firms’ innovation performance in emerging economies by integrating social network theory and institutional theory.

Multisource and lagged data from 234 technology-based entrepreneurial firms listed on the Chinese Growth Enterprise Market were leveraged to test a proposed research model.

Results suggest that formal institutions (marketization) positively moderate the relationship between network centrality and innovation performance, whereas informal institutions (social cohesion) negatively moderate this relationship. Moreover, formal and informal institutions have a strong joint impact on such relationship, that is, the effect of network centrality on innovation performance is most positive when marketization is high and social cohesion is low.

This empirical research provides new insights into whether and how firms can grasp the innovation benefits of network centrality by exploring institutional contingencies. It further sheds on light the scope of the network centrality–innovation issue by extending its research context to Chinese entrepreneurial firms.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the price limit policy implemented in 2014 affects initial public offering (IPO) underpricing and long-term performance in China.

The data are the IPOs from Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) between 2004 and 2018. The data are firstly divided into the IPOs before the price limit policy and the IPOs after the price limit policy according to the time of issuance. Then the two groups are divided into 4 subsamples according to the market blocks and the P/E ratio. The authors use multiple regression models to explore the effect of price limit policy in each subsample.

The first-day price limit system for IPOs is similar to the upward fuse mechanism, the purpose of which is to suppress IPO underpricing. However, this study finds that the policy does not suppress IPO underpricing, but increases the underpricing rate in all subsamples. Besides, the long-term performance in each subsample is different from each other. Main Board stocks’ long-term performance is worse after the policy. The policy makes Small and Medium Enterprise Board (SME Board) and Growth Enterprise Market Board (GEM Board) stocks with high P/E ratios perform better in the long term. For SME Board and GEM Board stocks with low P/E ratios, the policy makes no significant effect.

Good policy intentions may sometimes lead to counterproductive effects. However, since the long-term performance of each subsample is different, it is difficult to judge whether the policy should continue to be implemented or cancelled. Implementing different policies for different subsamples may be a better way to solve this problem.

This paper contributes to the study of IPO underpricing and long-term performance from the perspective of price limit policy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the Boardroom heterogeneity affects IPO underpricing for entrepreneurial firms, where Boardroom heterogeneity was classified in terms of functional background, educational background, age and length of tenure.

A national research design was conducted using data collected from 355 firms listed on China’s Growth Enterprise Market from its start in 2009 to 2012.

The author found that IPO underpricing has a significant negative correlation with functional heterogeneity, a positive correlation with educational heterogeneity, a significant negative correlation with age heterogeneity, but it does not show significant correlation with heterogeneity in tenure. Board heterogeneity affects IPO underpricing of entrepreneurial firms partially, which means functional, educational and age heterogeneity conveys signals to potential investors regarding a firm’s quality.

More entrepreneurial firms in more years for data and long-term performance research design in future research would be required for further understanding of the relationships among the variables in this study.

This paper suggests that IPO firms may make use of such an influencing mechanism to determine the issue price or to control the IPO underpricing by showing the Boardroom heterogeneity.

This paper revealed the influence of the characteristics of board members of such firms on IPO underpricing, which is rare in recent studies comparing to the study for the top management team; also this study provides empirical support for such effect.

This paper aims to examine the different impacts of six variables on firm technological innovation performance in different high-tech industries in China. Through a comparative analysis of data about growth enterprises market board (GEM)-listed companies, this study attempts to get some conclusions, to help firms in different high-tech industries use resources more rationally and to improve technological innovation performance more effectively.

This paper constructs semi-parametric models based on the relevant data of GEM-listed companies during 2010 to 2015 for different high-tech industries. These models can ensure that the influencing factors of firm technological innovation performance are no longer restricted to a particular aspect but can provide a comprehensive comparative analysis of the effects of factors on firm technological innovation performance in different high-tech industries.

The empirical results show that R&D expenditures have a significant positive impact on firm technological innovation performance in most high-tech industries, but not in electronic and communication equipment manufacturing industry; R&D personnel investment and government subsidies have significant positive impacts on firm technological innovation performance in knowledge-oriented industries; technology diversity has a significant positive impact on firm technological innovation performance in technology-oriented industries; the proportion of exports shows an inverted U-shaped relationship with firm technological innovation performance in electronic and communication equipment manufacturing industry, while firm size shows an inverted U-shaped relationship with firm technological innovation performance in general equipment manufacturing industry; and the effect of semi-parametric model fit is superior to the general parameters model.

Drawing on the resource dependence perspective, this paper is the first to consider a comprehensive treatment of differential effects of internal resources (R&D personnel, R&D expenditure), external resources (government subsides) and firm characteristics (firm size, export ratio) on firm technological innovation performance in different high-tech industries in an emerging country, in particular in contrast to previous studies that have focused on a single industry or taken the type of industry as a control variable. In addition, most studies about the determinants of firm innovation performance are based on survey questionnaires, which may introduce large subjective errors. Setting the relationship between variables in advance may also introduce fit error when using a general-parameter model. Semi-parametric regression which is used in this paper is able to prevent this shortcoming effectively. When constructing a regression model, this can be exempted from the formal constraints, thus estimating data more accurately and ensuring superior fit.

Product market competition may have various impacts on audit fees. On the one hand, according to the agency theory, product market competition can mitigate agency problems between management and shareholders. For clients with higher product market competition, auditors will lower the level of engagement risk assessment and reduce the required level of audit evidence, and hence audit fees will be lower. On the other hand, according to the audit risk model, product market competition will increase client business risk and audit engagement risk. Moreover, for clients with competition advantage, client business risk and audit engagement risk will be lower, and hence a lower audit fee. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In this paper, the authors collect financial accounting data and audit fee data from CSMAR database. Our sample selection starts with all available observations on the Chinese listed companies during 2006–2011. Since there is a big difference in accounting practices between financial companies and other industries, the authors delete observations on financial companies. The authors further remove observations with missing data, yielding 6,709 observations for the final analysis. To define the industry, the authors use the first two digits of standard industry classification code set by China Securities Regulatory Commission. In order to reduce the effect of extreme observations, the authors also truncate the data at 1 and 99 percent. The authors use the Herfindahl–Hirschman index (HHI) and the natural logarithm of the number of listed companies within the industry to measure product market competition intensity. HHI is calculated as the sum of the squared percentage of revenues of the client firm among the total revenues of all public companies, i.e. HHI = ∑ i = 1 N ( s i / S ) 2 . N is the number of listed companies in the industry, S_i is the revenues for an individual firm and S is the total revenues of all public companies within the same industry. A higher HHI score indicates fewer companies dominate the industry and hence lower intensity of competition in the product market. The second measure of industry competition intensity is LNN, the natural logarithm of the total number of public companies in the same industry of a client firm. A larger value of LNN indicates a larger number of competitors in the industry, and a higher level of competition intensity. Following the literature (Kale and Loon, 2011), the authors use Lerner index (or price-cost margin (PCM)) to measure the listed company’s competitive advantage. It is actually a measure of a firm’s power to influence product prices in the industry. The authors adopt the Peress (2010) method to estimate Lerner index as net operating income, divided by sales, i.e. PCM=(Sales–COGS–Selling expenses–Administrative expenses)/Sales. A higher value of PCM indicates more product pricing power and a higher competitive advantage of a company. The authors also use Lerner index ranking (R_PCM) to measure the competitive advantage of a company in the industry. The authors sort PCM values in ascending order in each industry and divide into ten groups. Then, the authors assign a value from one to ten to each listed company within each group in each industry. A higher R_PCM value represents higher market power and higher competitive advantage of a company. Based on Simunic (1980) framework, the authors develop the following model to test the relationship between product market competition, competition advantage and audit fees: LNAF_it=β₀+β₁ PMC_it+β₂ SIZE_it+β₃ INV_it+β₄ REC_it+β₅ GROWTH_it+β₆ PRELOSS_it+β₇ LEV_it+β₈ QUICK_it+β₉ OPIN_it+β₁₀ IBIG4_it+β₁₁ DBIG10_it+β₁₂ SWITCH_it+β₁₃ LOCATE_it+β₁₄ STATE_it+∑β YearDummies+ε_it.

Using a sample of 6,709 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market for the period of 2007–2011, the authors find that the product market competition intensity has a negative impact on audit fees, which means that agency cost effect is dominant in audit pricing at industry level. In addition, a company’s competitive advantage in the industry has a significant and negative impact on audit fees, which means that business risk effect also plays a critical role in audit pricing of individual engagement. The findings indicate that, in determining audit fees, auditors in the emerging market of China consider both the competition intensity of their clients’ product market at the industry level and the competitive advantage of the specific clients within the industry.

The findings indicate that, in determining audit fees, auditors in the emerging market of China consider both the competition intensity of their clients’ product market at the industry level and the competitive advantage of the specific clients within the industry.