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Poverty remains the biggest challenge facing the world today. In 2016, the Chinese government launched a national campaign to eradicate poverty by 2020, among which Chinese listed companies have made significant contributions to. This paper focuses on the targeted poverty alleviation (TPA) and investigates the relationship between corporate participation in TPA and its corporate value. As compared to firm's own corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, participating in government-initiated CSR activities can better enhance corporate value. This is especially so when firms engage in penetrative "integrated poverty alleviation" rather than the direct approach of "donative poverty alleviation". This paper adopts the Mediating Effect Model to explain the relationship between corporate participation in TPA and their corporate value, with the shareholding ratio of institutional investors, government subsidies and corporate reputation as mediating factors. Findings suggest that corporations' active implementation of TPA actions can increase the shareholding ratio of institutional investors and government subsidies and improve corporate reputation, thereby significantly increasing their corporate value. However, the impact of participation in TPA on corporate value is limited by factors including the nature of property rights, the intensity of competition in the industry and the degree of marketization. The impact is generally more significant in state-owned enterprises, areas with lesser industry competition and higher marketization. This study provides a fresh perspective for theories related to CSR, poverty eradication and corporate value of listed companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City reputation is a valuable asset for the local economy and firms in the contemporary society. However, the impact of city reputation on micro-level firms has been largely overlooked by the literature. This paper uses the National Civilized City (NCC) policy in China as a quasi-natural experiment to enhance city reputation. We employ the DID approach to investigate the relationship between city reputation and corporate risk-taking. The result shows that corporate risk-taking significantly increases following the NCC policy adoption. Moreover, information asymmetry can strengthen the positive impact of city reputation on corporate risk-taking. Channel tests show that city reputation improves financial condition and decreases default risk, leading to improved risk-taking tolerance. Overall, our paper indicates that city reputation is an important mechanism to improve corporate financial performance, providing empirical evidence for local governments to pursue the NCC title. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the background that China puts forth the goals of "Emission Peak" and "Carbon Neutrality", heavily polluting corporations as the main source of carbon emissions, whether the restriction of carbon emission disclosure could promote the transformation and upgrading of heavily polluting corporations to raise their value, is a problem worthy of in-depth study. This paper selected listed companies in heavily pollution industries from 2009 to 2019 as the research samples, and analyzed the impact of carbon emission disclosure on short-term and long-term performance based on the perspective of ownership structure heterogeneity. This paper also discussed the moderating effect of carbon emission disclosure on state-owned enterprises and private enterprises taking into account government environmental regulations, media evaluation, and corporate image management based on the Gatekeeper Theory. Firstly, this paper found that in the short term, the improvement of carbon emission disclosure level will inhibit the value growth of enterprises in the initial stage, but will promote the value growth to a certain extent. In the long run, carbon emission disclosure plays a positive role in promoting enterprise value. Secondly, the government environmental regulation, media evaluation, and corporate image management produced different moderating effects under the difference in ownership structure. For state-owned enterprises, the higher the level of government environmental regulations and media evaluation, the more significant is the short-term and long-term value effect. While the higher the level of corporate image management, the more significant is the short-term value effect, however, the long-term value effect is not significant. For private enterprises, government environmental regulations, media evaluation, and corporate image management have no significant moderating effects. Based on the above findings, this paper presents countermeasures and suggestions for the high-quality development of enterprises from the perspectives of government management and enterprise operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry reputation crises trigger producers and consumers to switch to certification as a signal of quality, especially in a weak institutional environment. In this paper, we posit that firm certification as a signaling mechanism involves the co-evolution of firms and consumers. We investigate the impact of industry reputation crises on firm certification as a response strategy. Feedback between producers and consumers causes producers to seek more certifications over time to differentiate themselves from competitors. However, the proliferation of certifications may dilute their credibility and reduce the effectiveness of the signal. Competition from imports that command higher trust from consumers exacerbates the problem in developing countries. We conduct empirical tests using firms in China's dairy industry after an industry reputation crisis. The findings support our hypotheses. This study provides insights on the certification mechanisms through which producers and consumers interact and the effect of institutional environments on this interaction. It also offers implications for managers on how to better respond to industry crises and for policymakers on how to manage the certification market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of COVID-19 in the world, enterprises and consumers pay more and more attention to environmental protection, food safety and health issues. The purpose of this paper is to take China's food company as an example to study the impact of CSR on customer loyalty, mediating effects of company image and customer satisfaction, and moderating effects of COVID-19. The result shows that during COVID-19, company image and customer satisfaction have significant mediating effects, and COVID-19 positively moderate the impact of CSR on customer satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the impact of acquirer's ownership identity on corporate diversification decisions of Chinese companies in their cross-border acquisitions. Few studies to date have looked at the effect of ownership on corporate decisions to diversify abroad, particularly in the emerging market context. We find that certain characteristics of acquirer's ownership identity such as the government ownership, business group membership and being publicly traded will be negatively linked with industry diversification in international markets. Also, the effects of ownership identities are contingent upon the host country selection, and acquisitions into developed host countries are likely to be in unrelated industries. We observe that Chinese companies that buy in developed markets engage in global consolidation. These results support our arguments on domestic market protection strategies adopted by Chinese companies for mitigating competition from their developed market rivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a study of the key success factors of what have been recognized as successful service enterprises in China, each considered representative of its respective industry. The grounded theory approach was used to analyze information collected from these enterprises, resulting in the identification of the attributes shared by these enterprises: customer-oriented service, service management, service innovation, and corporate social responsibility. Based on these attributes, a survey was conducted to verify the relationships among these attributes and important outcomes, namely customer satisfaction, perceived service quality, and enterprise reputation. The results of the statistical analysis indicate that the four attributes have positive impacts on service outcomes. The findings are of far-reaching importance in view of the vast potential service markets in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental consciousness has grown over time, and businesses have been increasingly forced to adhere to international treaties and rules. In response to international environmental concerns and increased community expectations for corporate social responsibility (CSR), firms have begun to recognize the importance of environmental protection as part of corporate social responsibility. The present study assumes, based on the Green Theory (GT), that environmental CSR favorably impacts the environmental performance of the organization by using pro-environmental behavior and green corporate image as mediators and CEO's environmental commitment as moderator. The present study collected data from 314 employees of various international corporations operating in China utilizing a standardized questionnaire and a suitable sampling strategy for empirical investigation. Data were analyzed by using Smart PLS. The findings of this study indicate that environmental CSR has a beneficial effect on a company's environmental performance. Results also revealed that pro-environmental behavior and green corporate image mediate the association between environmental CSR and the environmental performance of a company. The data also demonstrate that CEO environmental commitment moderates the association between pro-environmental conduct and an organization's environmental performance. The studies also demonstrated that the CEO's environmental commitment does not mitigate the association between a company's green corporate image and its environmental performance. The present study has substantial implications for practice, theory, and management. Based on these findings, this study adds empirical research on environmental CSR and business environmental performance to the existing literature. Environmental CSR initiatives can enhance an organization's efforts to maintain a positive rapport with its internal and external stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unethical behavior of a business founder often leads to negative publicity which substantially affects positive corporate image. The amount of negative publicity relating to business founders' unethical behavior is on the rise in the age of online social media in China. Based on the stimulus-response theory and balance theory, this paper developed a theoretical model to examine how negative publicity about a business founder's unethical behavior affects corporate image. The proposed model was tested by the partial least squares technique. Results show that perceived severity, publicity intensity and recovery performance are predictors of corporate image: perceived severity has a negative impact on positive corporate image; publicity intensity and recovery performance have positive impacts on positive corporate image; and founder image mediates the relationships between the three predictors and corporate image. Moreover, initial consumer impression of business founders has a positive impact on positive corporate image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigated how corporate reputation (i.e., generalized favorability), motivation attribution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors, and income level impact local residents' support for a corporate new investment project (CNIP). By analyzing 133 new investment projects of listed firms in China from 2004 to 2017, we found that local residents' support for a CNIP can be positively influenced by generalized favorability and motivation attribution of CSR behaviors, but negatively influenced by their income level. The positive effect of generalized favorability is more effective when the motivation of CSR behaviors is attributed to higher altruism. Meanwhile, the interaction between generalized favorability and income level reveals that the positive effect of generalized favorability is stronger when local residents are at a higher income level. Our results also show that when altruism and income level are at a low level, the positive effect of generalized favorability will be overturned and its negative effect will emerge. Overall, this study contributes to the research on corporate reputation, CSR behavior and corporate project management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from China's public debt markets, we study the value of corporate reputation and how it interacts with legal and cultural forces to assure accountability. Exploring lawsuits that change corporate reputation, we find that firms involved in lawsuits experience a decrease in bond values and a tightening of borrowing terms. Using the heterogeneities in legal and social capital environments across Chinese provinces, we find the effects are more pronounced for private firms, firms headquartered in provinces with low legal protections, and firms headquartered in provinces with high social capital. The results show that lawsuits that allege misconduct are associated with reputational penalties and that such penalties serve as substitutes for legal protections and as complements to cultural forces to provide ex post accountability and motivate ex ante trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I examine the hidden connection between corporate philanthropic giving and corporate environmental misconduct. Using survey data from Chinese family-owned firms, I provide strong and consistent evidence to show that corporate environmental misconduct is significantly positively associated with corporate philanthropic giving, suggesting that some Chinese family-owned firms act philanthropically to divert public attention from their environmentally unfriendly behavior. Moreover, the positive association between corporate environmental misconduct and corporate philanthropic giving is less pronounced for politically connected family-owned firms than for their counterparts. The above results are robust to various sensitivity tests. My findings suggest that environmental misconduct dressing may be an additional motivation for corporate philanthropic giving and that different dimensions of corporate social responsibility may be inherently inconsistent in the given institutional setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how formal contracts moderate the relationship between a partner's reputation and cooperation effects in public-private (P-P) partnerships. We base our analysis on differences between formal contracts, which require a series of legal agreements, and informal contracts, which may be implicit and/or unwritten. We argue that a partner's reputation is more likely to impact cooperation effects in the context of strong formal or informal contracts. Using a sample of 244 partners from various P-P partnerships in the medical and healthcare fields in China, we find that the positive relationship between a partner's reputation and cooperation effects is stronger given the existence of strong formal and/or informal contracts. We conclude that in China, where there is a weak legal system that rarely offers or enforces sufficient protections to contract signatories, it is safer to cooperate with a partner who has a good reputation. Such a reputation correspondingly enhances cooperation effects. Moreover, this relationship may be amplified when there are strong formal and/or informal contracts, all of which may be associated with cooperation between the public and private sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research suggests that corporate credibility is associated with firm financial performance in developed countries. This article examines whether corporate credibility is related to firm performance using Economic Observer’s rating of corporate credibility in China, the largest emerging market in the world. Based on a four-stage valuation model, we find that more reputable and credible firms outperform those with low ratings by almost 20% in 3-year stock returns and have better 3-year net profit margins, return on equity, and sales growth. This study is the first to directly examine the relationship between corporate credibility and firm performance in emerging markets such as China, and our results confirm that firms with high credibility exhibit better financial and market performance at least in the following 3 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]