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This paper aims to investigate the impact of the separation between control and cash flow rights (control-ownership disparity) on the earnings management practices of Chinese firms. The notable features of Chinese firms are those of concentrated ownership and the severe disparity that exists between the control and cash flow rights of controlling shareholders.

This study measures the level of Chinese firms’ earnings management by adopting two different methods of measurement: accrual-based earnings management (AEM) and real activity earnings management (REM). The authors also consider the possible trade-off effects between these two types of measurements. The data set in this study encompasses over 2,000 Chinese firms, using data from 2003 to 2015.

The results indicate that controlling shareholders are more likely to engage in AEM as their cash flow rights are more concentrated, while they are less likely to use REM as the disparity of control-cash flow rights increases. Further, this inverse relationship between REM and control-cash flow rights disparity becomes more pronounced in the case of a low cash flow rights group. As REM generally causes distortions in firms’ operations, it is possible that the controlling shareholders are more likely to constrain the use of REM as the disparity is perceived to grow. This result may indicate a reduced agency problem between controlling and minority shareholders due to the developing and/or existing ownership dispersions, which are mainly driven by recent reforms applied to Chinese capital markets. However, we do not entirely exclude the possibility of other types of expropriations by the controlling shareholders. It appears that the controlling shareholders are still able to exert a significant level of control, even following a substantial ownership dispersion, and they may seek alternative expropriation methods, including but not limited to intercorporate loan or related party transactions as the disparity of control-cash flow rights increases.

Although the Chinese economy is experiencing a series of reforms to infuse market forces into capital markets, little has been known about the effects of ownership-control disparity in Chinese firms. Our findings highlight the importance of the country specific context in this vein of research.

The paper examines the differential impact of various firm characteristics on firm value across various threshold levels of foreign ownership.

Using a panel of 408 Indian publicly listed companies for the period during 2010–2018, a fixed-effect panel threshold regression model is adapted to study the threshold effects between foreign ownership and firm value. Tobin's Q is used as a proxy for firm value.

The study identifies three threshold levels, that is, four threshold regions in which foreign ownership changes its slope considerably. Various firm characteristics impact firm value differently in these four regions.

The study employs observations of the past nine years on variables identified as firm characteristics impacting firm value. Some variables are dropped due to the problem of multicollinearity. The employed variables may not be exhaustive in nature.

The present study implies that there exists no impact of foreign ownership on the value of the firm. Foreign investors invest for financial considerations and not with the objective of governing the firms. The governance effect of foreign investments is negligible, so their activism in the firms needs to be encouraged.

The study employs a novel approach to study the impact of foreign ownership on firm value applying fixed effect panel data threshold regression, considering foreign ownership as a proxy of corporate governance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between ownership structure and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Specifically, this paper examines the impact of financial performance on the relationship between ownership structure and CSR.

This study uses panel data set of 200 French firms listed during 2007–2018 period. The direct and moderating effects were tested by using multiple regression technique.

The results indicate that investors have different attitudes toward CSR engagement. While institutional ownership affects positively CSR engagement, managerial ownership shows a negative effect. Findings also show that financial performance accentuates these effects.

The findings have practical implications that may be useful to regulators and managers interested in enhancing CSR. For regulators, the results advise policymakers to restrict managerial ownership and promote institutional investments to improve CSR. For managers, the results suggest developing more sophisticated intervention mechanisms to deal with conflicting voices that could result from different owners’ attitudes toward CSR. As an extension to this research, further study can examine the impact of audit quality on CSR.

This study proposes the establishment of dynamic links between ownership structure and CSR around firm financial performance. In addition, it investigates not only the overall CSR ratings but also each of CSR pillars, namely, environmental, social and governance.

This study investigates the impact of board independence on firm risk of Vietnamese listed firms and the moderating effect of capital expenditure on this relationship.

This paper applies fixed effects and dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) models to examine hypothesized associations between the proportion of nonexecutive directors and stock return volatility, as well as the moderating effect of capital expenditure. The robustness tests are implemented by applying alternative measures of overinvestment and firm risk.

The results show that the presence of nonexecutive directors on board increases firm risk. However, the combination of nonexecutive ratio and capital expenditure ratio has a significant negative impact on firm risk. The result is also confirmed by the difference between the monitoring role of nonexecutive directors in overinvesting and underinvesting firms.

The results imply that Vietnamese listed firms take stock return volatility into consideration before nominating and appointing nonexecutive directors into their board, especially in overinvesting firms. From another perspective, the shift toward having a majority of nonexecutive directors on boards can play a significant role in pursuing a stable or risky business strategy.

This paper investigates the influences of nonexecutive directors on firm risk in the context of Vietnam.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which Portuguese companies have incorporated equality‐ and diversity‐related issues into their management discourse, and examine the prevalent rhetoric on these matters.

A comprehensive content analysis of the web sites of the 500 largest companies plus the 20 best companies to work for in Portugal, in 2005, according to the ranking of The Great Place to Work^® Institute Portugal.

The analysis of the web site data shows that equality and diversity rhetoric mirrors, to a large extent, the dominant US discourse and ignores the necessary adaptation to the local context. However, there are significant differences in the adopted rhetoric according to the origin of the ownership control (native vs foreign) and the intended audience (local vs global). Native owned companies with web sites intended to a local audience tend to ignore diversity issues altogether.

The study was limited to a single country's data, and to the discourse rather than actual practices. However, the paper adds to the debate on the globalization of management knowledge stressing the limitations of adopting the “one size fits all” management rhetoric as opposed to developing rhetoric more appropriate and that fits into the local context.

The paper provides an account of the equality and diversity rhetoric adopted by the most prominent organizations operating in Portugal, suggesting that such rhetoric is mainly for external consumption.

The purpose of this study is to examine corporate governance practices in an emerging economy. It focusses on how ownership control and board control systems operate in corporate organisations in an emergent economy, assuming that these systems are essential for enhancing good corporate governance practices in emerging countries.

The paper builds on descriptive multiple-case study with multiple units of analysis to divulge how ownership control and board control systems function to ensuring effective corporate governance in publicly listed corporate organisations in Ghana. A criterion-based sampling technique is used to select the companies. Thereafter, three techniques of data collection are used to gather data from the companies: archival records, semi-structured interviews and observation.

By linking the gathered data to the paper’s theoretical propositions, the study highlights that all the companies are characterised by the presence of large shareholders, and, in consequence, they tend to exert extensive control over the activities of the companies through their involvement in the decision-making processes. However, whilst the presence of large shareholders has the tendency to solve the agency problem, it poses challenges in regards to minority shareholders’ interests in these corporate organisations. The study also reveals that boards of directors tend to exercise control over corporate organisations when majority shareholders stop interfering in their dealings. This implies that when major shareholders fully partake in corporate decision-making processes of companies, boards of directors seem to be sheer advisory bodies to management.

This is a paper to shed light on corporate governance practices in four large publicly listed corporate organisations on the Ghana Stock Exchange, so the observable facts do not apply to other emergent economies. In addition, the sample does not represent all corporate organisations in Ghana; thus, the empirical observations cannot be generalised to other organisations that have not been included in this study. However, the empirical results can be applied to other similar corporations in Ghana and other emergent economies in an analytical sense. With the application of inductive reasoning, the results can be applied to provide important appreciation in an effort to understand the structure of corporate governance practices in organisations in developing countries.

A comparative analysis of the empirical observations from this study and the recommended guidelines of corporate governance of Ghana has been carried out, and aspects in which organisations need to reform and improve to fully comply with the guidelines are highlighted: director independence, director evaluation, introduction of new directors and board education. This could possibly be the foundation upon which corporate governance structures in these organisations can be restructured and further enhanced.

The majority of the studies of corporate governance in emergent economies have used quantitative techniques to examine the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and firm performance. However, this study takes a different approach to examine corporate governance practice in an emergent economy by using a comprehensive and defensible qualitative analysis to examine relations between ownership structure and shareholder control, and board of directors and board control. In addition, it highlights how ownership and board control systems interact in corporate organisations in emergent economies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how claims to “ownership” are asserted over publicly accessible platform data and critically assess the nature and scope of rights to reuse these data.

Using Airbnb as a case study, this paper examines the data ecosystem that arises around publicly accessible platform data. It analyzes current statute and case law in order to understand the state of the law around the scraping of such data.

This paper demonstrates that there is considerable uncertainty about the practice of data scraping, and that there are risks in allowing the law to evolve in the context of battles between business competitors without a consideration of the broader public interest in data scraping. It argues for a data ecosystem approach that can keep the public dimension issues more squarely within the frame when data scraping is judicially considered.

The nature of some sharing economy platforms requires that a large subset of their data be publicly accessible. These data can be used to understand how platform companies operate, to assess their compliance with laws and regulations and to evaluate their social and economic impacts. They can also be used in different kinds of data analytics. Such data are therefore sought after by civil society organizations, researchers, entrepreneurs and regulators. This paper considers who has a right to control access to and use of these data, and addresses current uncertainties in how the law will apply to scraping activities, and builds an argument for a consideration of the public interest in data scraping.

The issue of ownership/control over publicly accessible information is of growing importance; this paper offers a framework for approaching these legal questions.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is any difference in the association among the board of directors, audit committee effectiveness and the cost of debt between the family- and non-family-owned companies in the Sultanate of Oman.

This study uses a panel data set that has multiple observations on the same economic units. Each element has two subscripts: the group identifier, i (68 companies listed on the Muscat Securities Market), and within the group index denoted by t, which identifies time (2005-2011). The regression model of this study is based on the random effects model, which, according to the Hausman and Breusch-Pagan (LM) (Breusch and Pagan, 1980) tests, is an appropriate model.

This study finds that the association between a board of directors’ effectiveness and cost of debt is negative and significant for the full sample and non-family firms. This relationship, however, is weak and not significant for family firms. Additionally, this study indicates that audit committee effectiveness has a significant effect on the cost of debt based on the full sample and family firms, but is not significant for non-family firms.

This study examines firms in the Sultanate of Oman, where family ownership control is common. Based on a framework conceptualized according to the agency theory, using data from Oman enables a comparison between family and non-family firms with respect to the effect of the board of directors’ and audit committee’s characteristics as a composite measure. This composite measure captures their combined effect on the propensity of the cost of debt.

This chapter investigates the differences in share-plan participation among various employee groups and why these differences exist. For strategic and tactical reasons, inequality may result from an employer’s choice to distinguish among groups when allocating or offering shares. Differences among groups are also based on employee preferences. In addition, differences may be caused by social stratification, which limits access to plans for certain groups. Using these three perspectives, this study found important demographic differences in participation and received benefits. The study revealed that employers tend to focus on high-level personnel. It also found that employees may differ in how knowledgeable they are regarding share plans and how they value the usefulness of participating in share schemes.