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The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of economic policy uncertainty on firms' labor investment decision, which includes labor investment level and efficiency, especially human capital allocation.

This paper uses Economic Policy Uncertainty Index for China and Chinese A-share listed firms in the period 2002–2016 to constructs a sample of 20,779 firm-year observations and applies the methods of pooled OLS regressions to do an empirical study.

This paper finds that firms' labor investment is negatively correlated with economic policy uncertainty. And firms' labor investment efficiency (and overinvestment in labor) is positively (negatively) correlated with economic policy uncertainty, which is more significant for non-SOEs and firms with less government intervention. Further, the positive relation between economic policy uncertainty and labor investment efficiency is more significant for labor-intensive firms, firms in competitive industry, firms in developed labor market and firms under strong labor law protection. In addition, economic policy uncertainty induces firms to make adjustment on human capital structure and allocate more employees with high human capital, which eventually helps firms achieve higher total factor productivity.

The study of this paper indicates that the government needs to consider economic policies' impact on firms when introducing and changing policies and guide firms to improve human capital allocation under different internal and external conditions to finally realize the optimal allocation of social resources.

This paper studies the influence of external economic policy environment on firms' labor investment decision, which lacks adequate attention in the literature and indicates that under economic policy uncertainty, firms actively decrease labor demand and increase labor investment efficiency by optimizing human capital allocation.

Corporate site visits increase labor investment efficiency.

Our empirical model for the baseline analysis follows those of Jung et al. (2014) and Ghaly et al. (2020).

We show that corporate site visits are associated with significantly higher labor investment efficiency; more specifically, site visits reduce both over-hiring and under-hiring of employees. The effect of site visits on labor investment efficiency is more pronounced for firms with higher labor adjustment costs, greater financial constraints, weaker corporate governance and lower financial reporting quality. We also find that site visits mitigate labor cost stickiness.

First, while the literature has suggested how the presence of institutional investors and analysts may affect labor investment decisions, we focus on institutional investors and analysts’ activities and interactions with firm executives. We provide direct evidence that institutional investors and analysts may use corporate site visits to improve labor investment efficiency. Second, our study adds to a line of recent studies on how corporate site visits reduce information asymmetry and agency conflicts. We show that corporate site visits allow institutional investors and analysts to influence labor investment efficiency. We also provide new evidence that corporate site visits reduce labor cost stickiness.

This study aims to examine the effect of political connection on operational efficiencies in the case of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and to discover the channel through which political ties affect a firm's decision-making process.

Following the scope of the study, panel fixed effect has been adopted to explore the impact of political connection on a firm's operational efficiencies. The data were collected every two years from 2005 to 2015 from SMEs in Vietnam under the collaboration of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), the Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs (ILSSA) and the Development Economics Research Group (DERG) of the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).

The results suggest that political connection has a significantly negative effect on both investment efficiencies and employee productivity. Significantly, the impact of political connections on employment decisions is more significant than it is on investment decisions. Furthermore, the findings also indicate that high-growth firms experience the interference of political connection in the decision-making process less often than their low-growth peers.

This paper provides some empirical evidence of the negative impact of political connections on a firm's operational efficiencies. It analyzes the channels through which political connection influences a firm's operational efficiencies. Providing empirical evidence demonstrates a dimension to capture the negative side of the political link to small and medium enterprises in developing economies.

This study aims to investigate whether and how corporate seniority culture (a form of high power distance or hierarchy), a typical feature of Confucian norms, affects the corporate innovation efficiency in emerging markets.

This study defines and measures seniority culture through the ranking method of independent directors in company’s annual report. Unlike most companies in the USA where directors are listed alphabetically, the ranking of directors in China is meaningful and reflects hierarchy. This study considers a firm with seniority if independent directors are ranked according to their status, including age, social position and political connection. Using data from Chinese listed companies between 2009 and 2013, this study conducts multiple regressions to examine the impact of seniority on innovative efficiency.

The empirical results show that seniority culture is negatively associated with innovative efficiency. Moreover, the negative association between a corporate culture of seniority and innovative efficiency is more pronounced in firms with more male executives and knowledge-intensive firms. Further analysis reveals that seniority culture expands pay disparities among different classes, hinders their enthusiasm to communicate and ultimately damages the corporate efficiency of innovation.

Corporate seniority culture is an essential factor that may hinder employee communication and inhibit innovation efficiency. Therefore, companies should break the identity barrier at different levels and advocate a culture of equality to promote information exchange and knowledge sharing among employees.

This study extends the field of literature on the determinants of corporate innovation efficiency and deepens our theoretical understanding of the negative impact of corporate seniority culture.

This study aims to investigate the effect of the dynamics and potential of the board of directors on investment efficiency and the comparability of financial information in companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange.

The number of observations for this study includes 1,218 observations from companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2014–2020. The authors used econometric statistical methods such as multiple linear regression, the Chow and Hausman test and the Kendall correlation coefficient using Eviews software to conduct the research. To measure the board’s effectiveness, two variables are used, including board dynamics and potential.

The results showed a positive and significant relationship between dynamics, board potential and investment efficiency. Also, no significant relationship was observed between the board dynamics and the comparability of financial information. Finally, a positive and significant relationship exists between the board’s potential and the comparability of financial information.

The importance of this research is the use of board proxies, including the dynamics and potential of the board. In addition, other variables of board characteristics, such as size, independence, ownership and gender, and the relationship between these variables with investment efficiency and comparability of financial information, have been examined in this study.

This study aims to examine the effect of corporate risk disclosure on investment efficiency. This study also seeks to contribute to existing literature of corporate risk disclosure by investigating voluntary and mandatory risk disclosure and its effect on the investment efficiency.

This study used two measures of corporate risk disclosure, level and quantity of corporate risk disclosure. A content analysis approach is adopted for non-financial Malaysian firms over the period 2010–2018.

The empirical results show that level of corporate risk disclosure leads toward efficient investment, whereas quantity of corporate risk disclosure causes inefficient investment when firms disclose more voluntary risks. Further, categorizing corporate risk disclosure into mandatory and voluntary risk disclosure, this study finds that voluntary risk disclosure tends to have higher investment inefficiency, while no evidence was found for mandatory risk disclosure.

This paper contributes to narrow stream of research investigating corporate risk disclosure through level and quantity contributing to the understanding of the level and quantity of risk disclosure in determining organizational investment efficiency.

This chapter elaborates on Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things to develop a strategy of optimization and achieve sustainable industrial development of Russia. We propose a framework strategy for perfecting the process of management of Industry 4.0 in Russia. The provision of the development strategy with financial resources is to be ensured by a public–private partnership and implementation of transnational initiatives for cooperation in the sphere of Industry 4.0. The critical result of this chapter is that Industry 4.0 must become a top-priority direction of modernization and sustainable growth.

This study investigates the relationships among digital transformation, technological innovation, industry–university–research collaborations and labor income share in manufacturing firms.

The relationships are tested using an empirical method, constructing regression models, by collecting 1,240 manufacturing firms and 9,029 items listed on the A-share market in China from 2013 to 2020.

The results indicate that digital transformation has a positive effect on manufacturing companies’ labor income share. Technological innovation can mediate the effect of digital transformation on labor income share. Industry–university–research cooperation can positively moderate the promotion effect of digital transformation on labor income share but cannot moderate the mediating effect of technological innovation. Heterogeneity analysis also found that firms without service-based transformation and nonstate-owned firms are better able to increase their labor income share through digital transformation.

This study provides a new path to increase the labor income share of enterprises to achieve common prosperity, which is important for manufacturing enterprises to better transform and upgrade to achieve high-quality development.

Relying on an international panel data set, the purpose of this paper is to quantify the economic impact of labor unionization on corporate financial performance.

Static panel regression analysis is performed for a firm-level multinational data set to elucidate the postulated empirical relationships between employee unionization and corporate performance. The transmission mechanisms intermediating the studied effects are discussed and operationalized.

The empirical evidence demonstrates that firms with a higher level of employee unionization spend more on wages and labor-related expenses. The concomitant downside of higher resource extraction by unions is a lower rate of net employment creation and a higher possibility of redundancy layoffs.

Overall, the authors demonstrate that by creating a credible threat of employee disobedience manifested through strikes and internal wage disputes, labor unions remain an effective mechanism of increasing employees’ bargaining power. Despite the discovered weak negative associative link between the degree of unionization and corporate financial performance, the authors perceive the overall evidence to be inconclusive on this matter.

The present study aims to explore the impact of managerial attributes on cash holding and investment efficiency and the mediating role of cash holding for companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange.

Information about 178 companies in 2014–2021 was examined. In the present study, managerial overconfidence, managerial myopia and managerial ability were considered as the managerial attributes.

The present findings showed that managerial attributes (i.e. overconfidence, myopia and ability) have a significant effect on investment efficiency. In addition, cash holding has a significant positive effect on investment efficiency. Furthermore, cash holding plays a mediating role in the relationship between managerial attributes and investment efficiency.

There is a gap in the impact of managerial attributes on cash holding and investment efficiency and investigating the mediating role of cash holding. This gap creates an opportunity for studying these variables in depth. The present study contributes to the identification of factors influencing investment efficiency to advance future studies and support practical efforts. This study contributes to a better understanding of the effect of managerial attributes on investment decisions in the context of diverging opinions about manager-specific effects on company’s outcomes.