published_or_final_version / Geography / Master / Master of Arts in China Development Studies

published_or_final_version / Geography / Master / Master of Arts in China Development Studies

 A recent and rapid increase in U.S. listed Chinese firms has occurred since the 1990’s, with at least 495 firms attempting to raise capital on U.S. listing boards. This means of fundraising has allowed investors to participate in the opportunities provided by China’s growth, while enjoying the perceived benefits of the U.S. regulatory oversight. One such regulatory requirement is compliance with the provisions of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002, which is largely focused on the internal controls of publically listed firms. This study examines the internal control effectiveness and associated characteristics of 198 U.S. listed Chinese firms, for the fiscal year 2009. With the use of Sarbanes Oxley Section 302 data, this study provides support for a number of previous studies and contributes new findings to the academic literature relating to audit committee financial expertise and CEO duality. This study also provides interesting findings regarding the impact of regulatory environments, when the sample listing type is divided into direct listed firms and cross listed firms. Specifically, this study finds that with U.S. listed Chinese firms, higher percentages of audit committee accounting, supervisor and user financial expertise are positively associated with internal control effectiveness. This study next finds that for direct listed firms, only higher percentages of audit committee accounting and user financial expertise are positively associated with internal control effectiveness. Finally, this study finds that for direct listed firms, CEO duality is negatively associated with internal control effectiveness. / published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Economics / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Urban Studies / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Integrating the perspective of agency theory with that of institutional theory, we study how state ownership influences firms' growth performance in a large macro economy such as China's socialist market economy. Focusing on the effects of both internal and external institutional settings on firms' top managers or key agents, we propose a theoretical perspective of institutionally shaped agency. This perspective identifies several factors that shape the behaviours of firm managers or agents, which in turn should affect firms' growth performance. Hence, important predictions are developed based on this theoretical perspective. We propose the relationship between state ownership and firms' growth performance (hereafter the ownership-growth relationship) shall be positive while under certain conditions.. Analysing a set of panel data (N = 37,856) from 124 insurance firms in China during the period from 2005 to 2014, we find results different from prior research. While research in the West has shown that private ownership is generally preferred to state ownership when incentives to innovate and to contain costs are strong (e.g., Shleifer, 1998), we demonstrate that this ownership-growth relationship can be positive, which is contingent upon firm strategy and local institutional settings. Moreover, while research in emerging markets has shown that the effects of state ownership marketization can weaken one dimension of firm performance (e.g., Zhou, Gao, & Zhao, 2017), our findings suggest that both marketization and diversification can enhance the positive effects of state ownership on another dimension of firm performance. Finally, we also find the CEO tenure shall have positive three-way interaction effect of both marketization and diversification on the ownership-growth relationship.