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Is the sharing economy a field? Answering this question is crucial to understanding how sharing organizations look and behave, as well as how the sharing economy might develop. In this chapter, the authors applied two different field conceptions – organizational field and issue field – as a starting point for an explorative empirical analysis. To capture both field concepts, the authors collected relational data and data on organizations’ self-representations to see how organizations engaged in the debate on the sharing economy relate to each other. The observed network of organizations suggests that the sharing economy is an issue field. In addition, the core of this network shows the relational structure of an organizational field. Surprisingly, it is not an organizational field of the sharing economy. Instead, it is a field of organizations heavily engaged in proselytizing new organizational forms that will change other fields. What the authors observed is a new field configuration – the authors call it a disruptive field – that is, less inward-oriented than other fields but much more engaged in changing other fields’ structures and dynamics. With these insights, the authors contribute to institutional research on field configuration and shed light on the phenomenon of the sharing economy and its potential development.

The following is an introductory profile of the fastest growing firms over the three-year period of the study listed by corporate reputation ranking order. The business activities in which the firms are engaged are outlined to provide background information for the reader.

This chapter examines China’s corporate governance and accounting environment that shapes the adoption of internationally acceptable principles and standards. Specifically, it examines international influences, including supranational organizations; foreign investors and international accounting firms; domestic institutional influences, including the political system, economic system, legal system, and cultural system; and accounting infrastructure. China’s convergence is driven by desired efficiency of the corporate sector and legitimacy of participating in the global market. Influenced heavily by international forces in the context of globalization, corporate governance and accounting practices are increasingly becoming in line with internationally acceptable standards and codes. While convergence assists China in obtaining legitimacy, improving efficiency is likely to be adversely affected given that corporate governance and accounting in China operate in an environment that differs considerably from those of Anglo-American countries. An examination of the corporate governance and accounting environment in China suggests heavy government involvement within underdeveloped institutions. While the Chinese government has made impressive progress in developing the corporate governance and accounting environment for the market economy, China’s unique institutional setting is likely to affect how the imported concepts are interpreted and implemented.

In this chapter we investigate whether the pricing of IPOs on Europe’s new stock market differs from that of IPOs on main market segments. We report a 22.3 percentage point difference in the average first-day return of new market IPOs (34.3%) and the average first-day return of main market IPOs (12%). We show that reduced incentives to control wealth losses and different firm and offer characteristics partially explain the higher average first-day return on new market segments. We also find that the bundling of IPO deals has been more important to control underpricing costs on new market than on main market segments.

One of the surprising developments in the privatization processes of post-socialist economies was the high incidence of employee ownership. However, the available evidence suggests that the number of employee-owned firms is declining quite rapidly. This paper approaches the decline by using data on individuals in Estonian employee-owned firms. The key idea is that employee ownership can be sustainable only if it is extended also to new, incoming employees.We analyze the determinants of ownership in employee-owned firms and find out that new employees are excluded from ownership. While this finding is consistent with the literature on “degeneration” of employee-owned firms, it is not consistent with earlier empirical research. We argue that in developed economies, there are many countervailing forces that prevent the decline, but these are not in operation in Estonia. The peculiarity of Estonian findings is explained by different motives of entry of employee ownership vs. advanced market economies. However, the findings from this study may carry over to other transition economies as well.

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the steps involved in obtaining venture capital funding for a start-up business. The chapter first discusses access to Venture Capitalists (VCs) and provides the reasons behind VCs’ preference for investing in a traditional C corporation rather than a limited liability company or other pass-through entity. The chapter then describes both the due diligence performed by VC's counsel and the documentation a start-up must provide to satisfy that diligence need. Next, the chapter addresses typical terms of financing deals with VCs, including the types of securities issued and the rights, preferences, and pricing of those securities. Finally, the chapter concludes with a chart identifying the VC financing terms available before and after a significant market downturn and a sample term sheet summarizing the terms of preferred stock to be issued to a hypothetical VC or VC group investing in a start-up business.

We study institutional investors’ influence on the use of related party transactions (RPTs) in China. We test the significance of potential factors in the cross-sectional regression analysis of the amount of RPTs reported by Chinese listed companies. We also analyze intraday trading activities and stock prices in days around public announcements of RPTs. Our findings suggest that institutional investors do not have a significant influence on Chinese firms’ usage of RPTs but they react to RPT announcements through buying or selling shares.

Cryptoassets have recently attracted the attention of national and international financial regulators. Since the mid-2010s blockchains have increasingly been adapted to automate and replace many aspects of financial intermediation, and by 2015 Ethereum had created the smart contract language that underpins the digitization of real assets as asset-backed tokens (ABTs). Those were initially issued by FinTech companies, but more recently banks active on international capital and financial markets, and even central banks, for example, the Bank of Thailand, have developed their own digital platforms and blockchains. A wide variety of real and financial assets underpins ABTs, viz., real-estate, art, corporate and sovereign bonds, and equity. Consequently, owing to the significant market capitalization of cryptocurrencies, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) published two consultative papers delineating its approach on cryptoasset regulation. In this study, the authors analyze the mechanics of ABTs and their potential risks, relying on case studies of recent issuance of tokens in equity, real-estate, and debt markets, to highlight their main characteristics. The authors also investigate the consequences of the increasingly oligopolistic structure of blockchain mining pools and Bitcoin exchanges for the integrity and security of unregulated distributed ledgers. Finally, the authors analyze the BCBS’ regulatory proposals, and discuss the reaction of international financial institutions and cryptocurrency interest groups. The main findings are, firstly, that most ABTs are akin to asset-backed securities. Secondly, nearly all ABTs are “off-chain/on-chain,” that is, the underlying is a traditional asset that exists off-chain and is subsequently digitized. The main exception is the World Bank’s bond-i that is genuinely native to the blockchain created by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and has no existence outside it. Thirdly, all ABTs are issued on permissioned blockchains, where anti-money laundering/anti-terrorist funding and know-your-customer regulations are enforced. From a prudential regulatory perspective, ABTs do not appear to pose serious systemic risks to international financial markets. This may account for the often negative reactions of banks, banking associations, and cryptocurrency interest groups to the BCBS’ 2021 proposals for risk-weighted capital provisions for cryptoassets, which are viewed as excessive. Finally, we found that issuance of ABTS and other smart contracts on permissionless blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum could potentially generate financial instability. A precedent involving Ethereum and The DAO in 2016 shows that (i) there is a significant accountability gap in permissionless blockchains, and (ii) the core developers of blockchains and smart contract technology, and Bitcoin mining pools, exercise an unexpectedly high- and completely unregulated-amount of power in what is supposedly a decentralized network.

In this paper, we explore a new leadership theory termed “Issue Leadership,” where a leader is considered to be a person who looks for critical issues in the ordinary, involves the audience (i.e. those who are directly or indirectly related to a particular issue) in an effective way, and achieves outstanding performances and desired changes through efficient implementation of a proposed issue. Specifically, an issue leader is required to exhibit three distinctive behaviors: issue-creating, audience-involving, and issue-implementing. Antecedents and moderators of issue leadership behavior are identified, and their interrelationships are proposed in a comprehensive issue leadership model. After a detailed explanation of the issue leadership theory, we researched, and tried to answer the question, “How do we apply the theory to global business settings?”