This paper explores the information perception channels of organizational identification (OID) in the context of Chinese traditional culture. Drawing on the grounded theory, the authors conducted a survey on employees in Shandong, Henan, Beijing, Guangzhou, Gansu, Jiangsu and Taiwan, and developed a five-factor scale for information perception channels of OID consisting of leader modeling, consideration for subordinates, external encouragement, rationalizing norms and rules, and behavioral consistency. Results of regression analysis show that all of these five factors have significant effects on employees’ OID, particularly the factors of external encouragement, behavioral consistency, and consideration for subordinates.

This study examines the roles of organizational learning, social network and corporate entrepreneurship (CE) in Chinese new ventures at different developmental stages. Several conclusions are drawn from structural equation modeling based on a large sample of 676 new ventures. First, most of the recursive positive relationships are supported by data of the overall sample, such as those between radical CE and exploration, incremental CE and exploitation, and strong ties and exploitation. Second, in the sub-samples, we only find support for the recursive positive relationships between radical CE and exploration, and incremental CE and exploitation among all the three subsamples. Third, for new ventures in the early stage, relationships are emphasizedconcerning incremental CE, strong ties, and exploitation; for new ventures in the middle stage, new relationships concerning weak ties, exploration, and radical CE come into effect and previous ones still have influence; and for new ventures in the late stage, new relationships begin to dominate and old ones evade.

This paper analyzes the real motivations behind independent directors’ (IDs) job-hopping behavior based on 75 cases from 2001 to 2005. Relevant extant literature is reviewed and an analytical framework based on reputation incentive mechanism (such as company reputation, a company’s position in the hierarchy of Chinese firms’ administrative reporting relationships, and job risks) and economic incentive mechanism (including IDs’ remunerations and HR costs) have been put forward. Results show that reputation-related factors, such as a listed company’s reputation and job risks, are the main influencing factors of IDs’ job-hopping behavior. This finding indicates that sole emphasis on IDs’ remunerations may not able to motivate IDs effectively and the reputation mechanism is more effective in motivating IDs. Contributions of this paper include enrichment of the extant literature on corporate governance from a brand-new perspective and provision of empirical evidence for further improvement in the incentive mechanisms for IDs.

The relationship between investment and financing, the two basic components of corporate finance, is of significant interest to researchers and practitioners alike. The free cash flow hypothesis and asymmetric information hypothesis are two important theories to explain the relationship between investment expenditure and cash flow. In this paper, we examine how consistency between the interests of management and shareholders influences investment-cash flow sensitivity, and how the nature of the controlling shareholder influences this relationship, so as to analyze how much the free cash flow hypothesis and asymmetric information hypothesis can explain the practice of investment and financing in China. We use pay-performance sensitivity as a proxy for the degree of consistency between shareholders and management interests. We find that investment-cash flow sensitivity is affected not only by financial constraints that caused by asymmetric information, but also by the shareholder-manager agency problem. It is found that the asymmetric information theory has more explanatory power than the shareholder-manager agency theory. In addition, the relationship between investment-cash flow sensitivity and pay-performance sensitivity is affected by the nature of controlling shareholders. Specifically, in the state-owned enterprises, the investment-cash flow sensitivity is mainly ascribed to information asymmetry problems, but in the non-state-owned enterprises, the investment-cash flow sensitivity mainly results from free cash flow.

Considering the cost of capital, systematic risk and the probability of being monitored and punished, informed traders are most likely to conduct informed trading at the small time gap between the disclosure of annual report of year t and 1st quarter reports of year t+1 because the gap is the best and safest time for informed trading. Meanwhile, due to the high cost and risks of informed trading, traders need huge trading volumes to gain abnormal returns. Based on these characteristics of informed trading, a research sample and a control sample are found for this paper. The former refers to companies with loss annual report in year t and profit-making 1st quarter financial report in year t+1 in tandem. The latter refers to companies announced loss in the previous year and profit-making 1st quarter financial report in year t+1 simultaneously or companies with loss annual report in the year t and loss 1st quarter financial report in year t+1 in tandem. Results confirm the existence of informed trading by measuring “extra abnormal trading volume”. Therefore, authors suggest that a good disclosure policy should not only consider the timeliness and accuracy of the financial reports, but also the overall information disclosure process to prevent potential informed trading.

Based on data of A-shares listed companies in China, this paper studies the relationship between managerial overconfidence and firms’overinvestment behaviors. We first define a manager as an overconfident one if his or her company’s announced earnings forecast is higher than its actual earnings at least once in 2002-2004. After controlling such factors as growing opportunity, size, etc., we find that overconfident managers tend to over-invest and their overinvestment behaviors have higher sensitivity to cash flow generated by financing activities. In other word, when their firms obtain an abundant cash flow from financing activities, overconfident managers will over-invest, or vise versa. Contrary to other relevant studies, we find that the sensitivity between over-investment and free cash flow has little to do with managerial overconfidence. Robustness testing is conducted to verify the reliability of our conclusions. We also use “whether top managers increase their holdings of company shares within the observation period” as a substitute variable for managerial overconfidence and run the tests again, and the results are consistent with the above. Finally, findings of this paper indicate that it is necessary for firms to establish a scientific and rigorous investment managing mechanism.

This study focuses on the issue of gender discrimination manifested in the process of human resources development (HRD). A theoretical model is developed based on prior literature. Scenarios of gender discrimination in enterprises are obtained from in-depth interviews. Results of content analysis indicate that gender discrimination in HRD have four forms of manifestation, namely occupational gender segregation, employment gender discrimination, glass ceiling, and gender salary discrimination. Compared with top and middle-level managers, employees can perceive more employment-related gender discrimination and less glass ceiling. There is no significant difference between female and male in the above four manifestations. Compared with other types of enterprises, gender salary discrimination is more likely to happen in private enterprises, and occupational gender segregation and glass ceiling are more prevalent in foreign funded enterprises. It is also found that gender discrimination often occurs at the stage of job arrangement in the process of HRD.