British Accounting Review最新文献

We investigate whether overpaid executives in Chinese listed firms engage in impression management by using forward-looking strategy-related disclosure (FLSD) in management discussion and analysis (MD&A) narratives to justify their excess compensation. Using a sample of 8437 firm-year observations of Chinese nonfinancial listed firms from 2007 to 2016, we find a significant and positive relationship between executive overpayment and impression management in FLSD. This positive relationship is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) than non-SOEs. We also find that a higher degree of board independence, higher institutional shareholdings, auditors, analysts, and the introduction of the anti-corruption campaign could lower such a positive relationship. These findings suggest that impression management in FLSD is reduced when corporate governance is strengthened. We also find that CEO duality could enhance this positive relationship. Further examining how the market reacts to such impression management, we find an immediate positive and significant market reaction to such impression management at the time of the annual report filing, which could further mitigate the negative perceptions from stakeholders due to excessive pay. Such a positive market reaction is reversed over a longer time horizon, which supports the opportunistic/symbolic nature of impression management in FLSD.

This study investigates how economic policy uncertainty affects within-firm corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure over time. Based on the institutional perspective, we propose that facing higher economic policy uncertainty, firms likely issue CSR reports that are similar to their own past reports (i.e. CSR time-series disclosure similarity), reflecting symbolic actions in corporate CSR disclosure. Further, this effect weakens for firms with state ownership but strengthens when those with financial constraints or experience net losses. Empirical results derived from a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2021 offer strong support for our hypotheses. Overall, our study contributes to the literature on CSR disclosure and research on the consequences of economic policy uncertainty.

Due to the institutionalization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its integration into firm strategy, firms are engaged in fierce competition, which has gained stakeholders' attention. As intermediary stakeholders, security analysts screen information on firms' CSR activities to make more accurate investment recommendations. Integrating signaling through CSR competition and screening theory, we develop a framework wherein firms' relative CSR performance and improvement across two years are viewed as complementary signals reflecting their ability and intent to engage in CSR and affect analysts' recommendations. Using a panel of Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2019 (n = 15,735 firm-year observations), we find that analysts respond positively to firms' relative CSR performance. Further analyses show that firms' CSR performance improvement has a decreasingly positive effect on analysts’ recommendations, and this effect is more pronounced for firms with higher relative CSR performance. Our study contributes to the literature on CSR and screening theory by highlighting the value of comparative CSR signals and generates practical implications for participants in CSR competitions.

A performance measurement system (PMS) is supported by the idea that performance measurements are drivers of organisational performance. Under that assumption, scholars have discussed and tried to develop comprehensive PMSs that include both financial and non-financial measurements. Building on the specific context of a hybrid organisation and findings from a case study, this paper explores how an incomplete and financially oriented PMS in a hybrid setting can nevertheless support collective sensemaking. The findings show how a PMS is used by managers at a cooperative bank as an artefact, supporting conversational and material practices. Combined with the organisation's strong socialisation process and managers and employees' need to defend their social and cooperative identity, a PMS supports the bank's hybrid nature and leads to the avoidance of tension and conflict. That shows that the PMS presents a specific feature: flexibility in its handling and use by managers and employees. This paper thus contributes to the call made in the literature for more studies on PMSs in hybrid organisations by showing that even an incomplete PMS can allow such organisations to avoid tension and conflict relating to their hybrid values.

This paper investigates how human capital in the financial sector affects corporate innovation. Based on China's National Economic Census in 2008, we construct a measure of the financial sector's human capital across prefecture-level cities and then match the data with nonfinancial listed firms over 2009–2017. We find that human capital in the financial sector plays a significant and positive role in firms' patent quantity and quality; this effect is more pronounced for firms with higher R&D intensity, more serious financial constraints, lower industry competition and those located in regions with lower bank density and lower marketization levels. Furthermore, the mechanism tests show that debt issuance and R&D investment increase as more highly educated workers flow into the financial sector, while the cost of debt and the cash flow sensitivity of fixed assets investment decrease, consistent with the credit constraints channel. Our findings argue that increasing human capital in the financial sector does not impede corporate innovation but strengthens corporate innovation by reducing the information asymmetry between the financial and productive sectors.

This paper focuses on hybrid board governance and the challenges faced by the board of directors when implementing social impact measurements. Interviews with 36 board chairs and general secretaries in social hybrids in Sweden show that while boards support social impact measurements, they face obstacles in implementing them. Drawing on the institutional logics framework, we identify three main reasons for these implementation problems. First, amid field level regulations focusing on cost efficiency, boards find it difficult to switch to a social impact that lacks a single metric that can be measured annually. Second, board members struggle to find sufficient time when they serve on a pro bono basis, and it is difficult to hold them accountable when limited progress occurs. Finally, acknowledging board practice variation, we highlight the need to distinguish between “beneficiary-driven” and “membership-driven” social hybrids. In the former, boards face the challenge of operationalizing the long-term benefits for end beneficiaries; in the latter, interactions with members are so operationally focused that boards struggle to maintain a long-term agenda for implementing social impact measurement. Given these challenges, we propose that future research should explicitly incorporate the board level in theorizing how hybrid organizations manage institutional logics and performance measurement.

This work examines a new form of second-level hybrid, Meso-Level Hybrid Organisations (MLHOs), which do not generate an entity with a legal form or boundaries and are composed by a set of members in the organisational field, linked by multiple relationships and engaged in solving complex problems that require both public and private efforts. Our research interest is in the role that accounting and reporting systems can play in these hybrids, which do not have to comply with mandatory accounting requirements but have to respond to information pressures from their internal and external stakeholders, having different institutional logics and conflicting values and goals. By interpreting accounting and reporting as boundary objects through which value work can be enacted, the research highlights the role that accountants play in recomposing multiple values through participatory processes of designing and implementing an accounting and reporting system. A case study narrated through the discursive lens of ‘mixing, compromising and legitimising mechanisms of value creation among hybrids' shows how the design of a voluntary reporting system can, under certain conditions, strengthen an MHLO. Our findings show that a tailored accounting system can counteract the centrifugal and disruptive forces inherent in these forms of hybrid settings.

Hybrid organisations are organisational forms that use different resources, governance models and institutional logics derived from public, private, for-profit and nonprofit. Hybridity can be referred to on multiple levels of analysis: macro-level related to the society, meso-level related to specific organisational fields or organisations, or micro-level related to groups or individual actors. This paper provides a comprehensive comment on the state of research on accounting and accountability themes in hybrid organisations. The paper also locates the articles included in this special section, identifying avenues for further research. The state of research in hybrid organisations shows that a growing number of studies focus on accounting and accountability practices in different types of hybrid organisations operating in different fields. This paper identifies diversity tensions in accounting and accountability for single hybrid organisations or networks operating at different levels, compromising multiple values and expectations of audiences/forums. The six articles in the special setion fill this gap in addressing questions of for who, for what, and where by exploring the multiple actors, values and forums involved in accounting and accountability practices in hybrid organisations.

Accounting has long been studied as a social and institutional practice structured by the actions of state agencies and market forces. Such studies are increasingly conducted in non-Western jurisdictions. This paper presents a review of extant studies investigating the dynamic connections among accounting, state agencies, and markets in modern China. Our aim is to critically evaluate extant literature, synthesize its insights, and open up new research avenues. We examine 92 accounting studies, which have been inductively classified into three distinctive thematic clusters. In so doing, three major features of current research are identified: first, an emphasis on the inexorable power of Chinese state agencies; second, a focus on national relations among accounting, state, and market; and third, a lack of attention to how accounting functions in specific local settings. Consequently, key research opportunities lie in (a) deeper theorization of the hybridity of China's state-market mix, (b) analysis of the local-global networks in which hybridity circulates and is manifested, and (c) contemporary studies of accounting in action in a Chinese context.

Family businesses in China differ acutely with respect to their historical origins. The initial institutional differences based on their origins affect investment behavior, which then impacts on the real economy. This paper investigates how the origins of family businesses affect their investment preferences. Using data on Chinese family firms for the period 2009–2021, we find that family businesses restructured by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) make more financial investments than those established through entrepreneurial activities. The period during which the business is under the control of the founding family and intergenerational succession moderates the differences in investment preferences between restructured and entrepreneurial family businesses, while the time of being as an SOE can strengthen the differences. Mechanism tests demonstrate that restructured family firms (RFFs) participate in less risky activities than entrepreneurial family firms (EFFs), suggesting that preference imprinting contributes to divergent investments. Such a divergence is unlikely to be driven by differences in entrepreneurship, agency costs, or resource endowments. Following robustness tests and after overcoming endogeneity problems, our results remain conclusive. Overall, this study demonstrates that a business’s risk propensity during its founding phase has a long-term impact on future preferences.