Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Universiẗat, Diss., 2004.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / China Area Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Master / Master of Economics

published_or_final_version / Law / Master / Master of Laws

China's once dilapidated state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have grown into powerful giants. After three decades of reform, China's SOEs now comprise over 60 percent of the largest 500 companies in China and more than 15 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies in the world. Pervasive state ownership continues with no sign of vanishing as a salient feature of Chinese corporate governance. Despite their economic importance, the SOEs' organizational structure and governance remain obscure to outsiders. The obscurity is attributable partly to the secretive culture of the Chinese government but also more importantly to the way scholars have approached this topic. Scholars of Chinese corporate governance have focused on listed firms, but China's listed SOEs are embedded in business groups which have extended ties with various corporate and non-corporate entities. To fully understand the governance and behavior of China's SOEs, it entails an approach that looks beyond the listed firms and considers the complex organizational relations surrounding the SOEs. This dissertation shows that China's large industrial SOEs are organized as vertically integrated corporate groups under the government ownership agency (SASAC) with strategic linkages to other business groups as well as to various governmental organs. The vertical ownership structure helps power centralization and masks many actual governance practices from the public eye. There are many hidden institutionalized connections to various state/party organs that play a more influential role than visible shareholding ties. The SOEs also have constructed intergroup strategic ties that facilitate cross-group collaboration to achieve their globalization ambition. Furthermore, the making of the managerial elite presents a high degree of cohesion and closure, which strengthens the relations across SOEs themselves and with other government organs. The party-state uses such various connections to embed SOEs in a control network that facilitates resource collaboration across multiple spheres of the state system and maintains the economic foundation of the Party's ruling. The anatomy of the relations surrounding China's large SOEs provides contextualized explanations for the malfunction of many governance institutions such as the board of directors, independent directors and executive compensation The density of the state's control network also suggests the limitation of reforming SOE governance through partial privatization and internationalization.

No description available.

The study addresses three research questions posed by the nature of government business enterprises. The three questions are (1) Does the way management (including the board) aligns the development of GBE organisational capabilities and the formulation of strategies have an influence on the financial performance and management's emphasis for discharging accountability requirements of that GBE? (2) Does the extent of adoption of board governance structures have an influence on financial performance and accountability-emphasis given by management of a GBE? (3) Does board composition moderate the relationship between capabilities-strategy configurations and performance of a GBE? The research questions are addressed as follow. First, the study explores the concepts of corporate governance, board governance in particular, strategy, capabilities and accountability in the context of GBEs. Second, the study investigates relationships between GBEs' governance arrangements and performance, on the one hand, and capabilities-strategy match and performance on the other hand. The concept of performance used in this study is separated into financial performance, measured by economic rate of return (ERR) (a government-developed algorithm for GBEs comprising financial accounting and market measures), and accountability-emphasis (ACCBTY) (management's attention to systems and processes used for discharging aspects of accountability). Third, the study investigates the moderating effects of GBEs' board governance arrangements on the relationship between capabilities-strategy match and performance. The findings of the study are as follow. First, the results of a set of multivariate analyses indicate that board governance index (BGI) has a positive and significant relationship with ERR, but has no significant relationship with ACCBTY. At the individual governance mechanism level, the percentages of non-executive directors (NEDs), politically-related directors (PRDs) and financial-literate directors (FLDs) are all strongly and positively related to ERR. These findings are supported by certain prior studies from different contexts. On the ACCBTY side, these specific board governance variables are not found to support a hypothesis that the composition of the board will impact on the GBE's attention to accountability processes. Second, the findings indicate that capabilities-strategy match (CSM) has no significant influence on ERR but has a strong and positive impact on ACCBTY. The results indicate that only the alignment between defender strategic-type and outside-in capabilities has a positive relationship with both ERR and ACCBTY. Other than the defender strategic position, alternative strategy-types will align with capabilities (e.g. prospector strategy and inside-out capabilities) to have a significant positive affect on ACCBTY, but not on ERR. Third, the study finds that GBE's board governance arrangements (BGI) have a positive moderating affect on the relationship between capabilities-strategy match and ERR. However, BGI has no moderating impact on capabilities-strategy match and ACCBTY relationship. The findings draw the conclusion that in order to achieve their dual objectives of concurrently fulfilling financial performance and accountability-emphasis, GBEs need to adopt a defender strategic-type, develop strengths in outside-in capabilities and have their boards of directors comprise of non-executive directors, politically-linked directors and financial-literate directors. Given the limitations underlying the findings that are mentioned, the conclusion from this study has implications for government-owners and managers of GBE.