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This study aims to examine whether Chinese firms increase their concerns about analysts’ earnings forecasts following the split-share structure reform (SSR) in 2005, which removed trading restrictions on approximately 70% of the shares of listed firms.

Using data from 2002 to 2019, the authors empirically test the association between meeting or beating analysts’ earnings expectations and the implementation of SSR.

The authors find that firms are more inclined to meet analysts’ earnings expectations after the introduction of SSR. Further analysis shows that firms guide analysts to walk their forecasts down by manipulating third-quarter earnings, suggesting enhanced value relevance between analysts’ forecasts and third-quarter earnings management in the postreform period.

The findings reveal an undesirable side effect of SSR and suggest that policymakers and regulators should consider and carefully manage the complex relationships between firms and analysts.

In contrast to prior studies that predominantly focus on the positive effects of the reform, this study reveals the side effects of SSR and provides new evidence on the mechanisms of meeting or beating analysts’ earnings expectations.

This study aims to investigate whether and how auditors responded to the documented increases in earnings management after split-share structure reform (SSSR) in China, as manifested in auditors’ propensity to issue modified audit opinions (MAOs) after the SSSR. This study further investigates how client importance and auditor size influence auditors’ response to earnings management after the SSSR.

This study adopts logit regression models to investigate auditors’ propensity to issue MAOs to their clients that appear to manage earnings after the SSSR. Initially, including all Chinese publicly listed firms from the CSMAR database, the sample for final analyses consists of 21,904 firm-year observations for 1,290 unique listed firms during the period 2001–2020. The sample period surrounds the implementation of the SSSR, which started in 2005, allowing the examination of auditors’ propensity to issue MAOs after vis-à-vis before the SSSR.

The authors find that non-Big10 auditors in China were less likely to issue MAOs to their economically important clients who appear to manage earnings after SSSR. However, in the years of non-tradeable shares being released to the markets, both Big10 and non-Big10 auditors were less likely to issue MAOs to their economically important clients who appear to manage earnings. The findings suggest that auditors may have compromised auditor independence in response to earnings management after the SSSR, likely due to the pressure from their economically important clients.

This paper contributes to the literature, specifically the practice and theory in auditing, by shedding light on ever-changing auditors’ reporting behaviour, especially with regard to auditor independence. It also adds to the growing body of literature on the impact of institutional changes on auditing practices worldwide. The findings of this study further suggest that the recently documented declining demand for high-quality audits after the SSSR may be motivated by the clients’ intention to manage earnings after the SSSR.

In public firms, the largest shareholder can make decisions on cash dividends in favor of its own interests at the expense of other investors. While the second largest shareholder can actively participate in corporate governance and protect the interests of investors, its impact has not been fully understood. This research investigates how shareholding ratio and ownership type of the second largest shareholder moderate the relationship between controlling shareholder's shareholding ratio and cash dividends.

The authors conducted econometrics analysis based on a panel data of China's A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2017.

The authors find that the controlling shareholder's shareholding ratio has a significant negative impact on cash dividends. However, this influence is conditional on the shareholding ratio of the second largest shareholder. The negative impact is weakened when the second largest shareholder holds a large proportion of shares or when the shareholding gap between the second largest and the controlling shareholder is small.

This research extends the existing literature by highlighting the nuanced moderating effect of the second largest shareholder on the relationship between the controlling shareholder and cash dividends, thus making a unique contribution to the understanding of corporate governances in the emerging financial market in China.

Sustainability development goals (SDGs) cannot be achieved without a concerted effort from businesses and other organisations, being the corporate level is one of the keys to the achievement of SDGs. This study aims to explore the relationship between firms' adoption of SDG reporting in China and two main corporate-level factors, namely, board characteristics and ownership factors. Also, this study aims to determine which set of drivers – those related to board or ownership factors – exerts a greater influence on this reporting.

This research examines the impact of ownership and board-level factors on the SDG reporting of Chinese firms in the period 2016–2018, with a final sample of 455 firm-year observations operating in 11 activity sectors.

The results support the following: firstly, that board independence and size and the existence of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee favours firms addressing SDGs in their sustainability reporting while greater levels of foreign or institutional ownership are negatively related to a company's adoption of SDG reporting; secondly, two-stage logit regression results revealed that board-level factors exert greater explanatory power in the prediction of this reporting and have bigger weights in affecting the SDGs reporting.

This study focuses on assessing the drivers of SDGs; namely, what internal factors will facilitate companies' better implementation of SDG reporting to bridge the gap in this field, not only extending the investigation of corporate governance factors affecting SDGs but also examining the impact of corporate ownership on SDG reporting.

This study enriches and provides support for previous studies examining the drivers of SDGs in the private sector. In academia, addressing SDGs in business is still an emerging research stream that is still in an embryonic state; the reporting of SDGs in business is quite under-investigated in the sustainability literature. Moreover, literature on the drivers that promote better implementation of SDGs in business is even more scarce and incomplete. Some previous studies have ignored the impact of board size and the CSR committee. At the same time, there is no research to date on the impact of ownership on companies' SDGs reporting, which has been proved to play a large role in firms sustainability reporting.

The determinants that contribute to reducing stock price crash risk have garnered attention from scholars and practitioners. However, our understanding of the relationship between board diversity and stock crash risk, as well as the contextual factors that influence this relationship, remains limited. To address this gap, this study aims to investigate how different attributes of board diversity affect stock price crash risk, particularly under conditions of higher performance hazard and ownership concentration.

Using a two-stage least squares fixed-effects estimator, the authors analyze a panel data set of 1,792 firm-year observations across 282 firms listed on the KOSPI200 from 2010 to 2019.

Relation-oriented diversity reduces future stock price crash risk, particularly when firms experience performance shortfalls and have concentrated ownership structures, but task-oriented diversity has no significant effects. The results imply that only relation-oriented diversity strengthens governance mechanisms by curtailing managerial bad news withholding behaviors, and the role of relation-oriented diversity in reducing stock crash risk becomes more crucial when firms have higher performance hazard and concentrated ownership.

This study makes crucial contributions as follows: the authors contribute to the stock crash risk literature by shifting the focus from how to when board diversity matters in assessing stock crash risk; the authors extend the board diversity research and enhance scholarly understanding of the effects of board diversity on corporate governance by highlighting that not all aspects of board diversity improve firm governance mechanisms; and the authors widen the lens from a single attribute to multiple attributes of diversity to reveal the effects of diversity on boards in assessing future crash risk.

This study examines the impact of China’s mixed-ownership reform on the innovation of non-state-owned acquirers, with a particular focus on the impact on firms with high financing constraints, low-quality accounting information or less tangible assets.

We use a proprietary dataset of firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges to investigate the impact of mixed ownership reform on non-state-owned enterprise (non-SOE) innovation. We employ regression analysis to examine the association between mixed ownership reform and firm innovation.

The study finds that non-state-owned firms can improve innovation by acquiring equity in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) under the reform. Eased financing constraints, lowered financing costs, better access to tax incentives or government subsidies, lowered agency costs, better accounting information quality and more credit loans are underlying the impact. Additionally, cross-ownership connections amongst non-SOE executives and government intervention strengthen the impact, whilst regional marketisation weakens it.

This study adds to the literature on the association between mixed ownership reform and firm innovation by focussing on the conditions under which this impact is stronger. It also sheds light on the policy implications for SOE reforms in emerging economies.

This study tests the signaling and tunneling models of dividend policies by examining the relationship between the ownership structure and the dividend payout in a setting where strong institutional governance and weak firm-level governance coexist.

Chinese American Depository Receipts (ADRs) listed in the US offer an excellent opportunity to study dividend policy where strong institutional governance and weak firm-level governance coexist. Using a sample of 161 Chinese ADRs from 2004 to 2018, this study examines the relationship between the firm's ownership structure and cash dividend policy.

This study shows that high levels of controlling shareholder ownership and high levels of state ownership are associated with high dividend payouts. A high level of controlling shareholder ownership has a negative effect on its firm value. Dividend payments in those firms mitigate the negative effect, consistent with the signaling (substitution) model. A high level of state ownership is beneficial to its firm value. However, high dividend payment in those firms decreases the benefit, supporting the tunneling model.

This study covers 161 Chinese ADRs listed in the US with a total market capitalization of over $2 trillion and reveals that dividend tunneling could occur in Chinese government controlled ADRs. Findings in this study would offer valuable insights for US investors and regulators.

This paper extends the tunneling hypothesis to the topic of dividend policy in a setting where strong institutional governance and weak firm-level governance coexist. This study shows that tunneling through dividends can happen among Chinese government controlled ADRs in the US. It also complements the literature by extending the examination of the dividend tunneling model from a relatively small universe of master limited partnership (Atanssov and Mandell, 2018) to a larger universe of Chinese ADRs listed in the US with a total market capitalization over $2 trillion US dollars.

How does context shape the way in which corporations contribute to or impede progress toward sustainable development goals (SDGs)? In this chapter, the author studies how the state as corporate owner and in its broader function in the institutional environment affects companies’ involvement in misbehaving practices related to human rights issues, with a focus on the banking industry. Based on a longitudinal analysis of 178 banks over the cohort 1996–2018, the results show that state-owned banks, as well as those from institutionally weak environments, are more involved in business-related misbehaving practices. Moreover, in a strong institutional environment, state-owned banks are more involved in corporate misbehavior than non-state-owned banks. These results contribute to the literature on corporate misbehavior, focusing on the state’s role in preventing or facilitating banks’ involvement in misbehaving practices. The author concludes by discussing the findings’ implications and providing suggestions for future research.

This study, using stakeholder approach, aims to examine the impact of corporate governance and risk-taking on the performance of the top 100 nonfinancial listed firms in Vietnam from 2015 to 2019.

The theoretical and empirical studies are reviewed for rational hypotheses development. Firm performance is represented by return on assets, return on equity and Tobin’s Q.

Specifically, concentrated ownership structure, large workforce, being a great workplace, quick sales growth, high receivables turnover, being funded by both the state and foreigners and high-risk exposure positively affect firm performance. However, a high level of state ownership or foreign ownership, more independent members on board, large board size and chief executive officer (CEO) duality show an inverse effect. Besides, an inverted U-shaped relationship with firm performance is recognized for liquidity ratios.

This study uses three triangles, including governance, risk, and performance. The paper offers some evidence-based recommendations to improve firm performance in Vietnamese businesses.