S. C. Lai

The purpose of this study was to explore whether the performance of the green innovation brought positive effect to the competitive advantage. This study found that the performances of the green product innovation and green process innovation were positively correlated to the corporate competitive advantage. Therefore, the result meant that the investment in the green product innovation and green process innovation was helpful to the businesses. This study argued that the businesses should cognize the correct value and positioning of the green innovation

Using a sample of 11,357 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market for the period of 2001–2011, we investigate whether and how religion can mitigate earnings management. Specifically, based on geographic-proximity-based religion variables, we provide strong and robust evidence to show that religion is significantly negatively associated with the extent of earnings management, suggesting that religion can serve as a set of social norms to mitigate corporate unethical behavior such as earnings management. Our findings also reveal that the negative association between religion and earnings management is less pronounced for firms with closer distance to the regulatory centers than for their counterparts, implying the substitutive effects between religion and the distance to regulators on mitigating earnings management. The above results are robust to different measures of earnings management, various religion variables, and a variety of sensitivity tests.

This study examines the influence of underwriter–auditor relationship on pre-initial public offering earnings management. Using a sample of Chinese to-be-listed firms, we find that a close UAR, as reflected in repeated collaborations between an underwriter and an audit firm in IPOs, is positively associated with pre-IPO earnings management. This association is more pronounced for firms with politically connected auditors/underwriters, firms with less reputable auditors/underwriters, firms located in provinces with weak legal environment, firms to-be-listed on boards with lax listing requirements, and firms whose auditors are with low industry specialization, and legal liability exposures. We provide further evidence that UAR is associated with greater likelihood of irregular activities in post-IPO period and poorer post-IPO financial performance. To the extent that we control for alternative explanations and potential endogeneity, our results suggest that the collusion incentive is likely to drive repeated collaborations between underwriters and auditors in the Chinese IPO market. Our findings provide interesting implications for auditors, investors, and regulators seeking to understand the Chinese IPO market.

Using the presence of at least one client with net-income-increasing misstatement as a signal of low audit quality for an audit firm, this study examines the existence of the contagion effect of low audit quality and further investigates whether financial distress and investment opportunity as two firm-specific financial characteristics moderate the contagion effect of low audit quality. Using a sample of 7887 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market over the period of 2007–2012, our study documents strong and consistent evidence to show that other clients audited by low-quality audit firms have significantly higher discretionary accruals ; financial distress reinforces the contagion effect of low audit quality; investment opportunity strengthens the contagion effect of low audit quality; the contagion effect of low audit quality persists over subsequent years for clients, and both financial distress and investment opportunity reinforce the contagion effect of misstatement to future misstatement. Above results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests and are still valid after using the change model to control for the potential endogeneity. This study extends the previous literature on the contagion effect of low audit quality across audit firms.

The article develops a methodological and empirical approach for gauging the ways Big Data can be collected and distributed through mobile apps. This approach focuses on the infrastructural components that condition the disclosure of smartphone users’ data – namely the permissions that apps request and the third-party corporations they work with. We explore the surveillance ecology of mobile apps and thereby the privacy implications of everyday smartphone use through three analytical perspectives: The first focuses on the ‘appscapes’ of individual smartphone users and investigates the consequences of which and how many mobile apps users download on their phones; the second compares different types of apps in order to study the app ecology and the relationships between app and third-party service providers; and the third focuses on a particular app category and discusses the functional as well as the commercial incentives for permissions and third-party collaborations. Thereby, the article advances an interdisciplinary dialogue between critical data studies, political economy and app studies, and pushes an empirical and critical perspective on mobile communication, app ecologies and data economies.

Drawing on the cognitive dissonance theory and the behavioral consistency theory, this study examines whether hypocrisy, proxied by the ethical dissonance between corporate philanthropy and environmental misconducts, triggers auditors to issue modified audit opinions (MAOs), and further investigates the moderating effect of hypocrisy on the relation between financial reporting quality (proxied by discretionary accruals) and MAOs. Using a sample of 20,852 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market over 2005–2019, our findings reveal that the likelihood of receiving MAOs is significantly higher for hypocritical firms than for their counterparts, suggesting that hypocrisy provides negative soft information about top managers' myopia, immorality and lack of integrity, elicits the perceived distrust from auditors, motivates auditors to have a higher extent of professional skepticism, and eventually triggers MAOs. Moreover, hypocrisy reinforces the negative (positive) relation between financial reporting quality (discretionary accruals) and MAOs. Furthermore, above findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests using alternative proxies for modified audit opinions and hypocrisy, as well as different sample compositions, and further our conclusions are still valid after using the propensity score matching approach and two-stage treatment effect regression procedures to control for the endogeneity issue. Lastly, the effect of hypocrisy on MAOs is more pronounced for remedial (ex post) hypocrisy than for preventive (ex ante) hypocrisy.

We provide insight into how firms’ trade credit decisions respond to the coevolution of business ethics practices, technological innovation, and institutional reform for firms located in pilot cities of China’s social credit reform. The reform implements an external monitoring mechanism that potentially shifts the business ethics frontier by punishing or rewarding certain (un)ethical credit behaviors. Following the reform, pilot city firms enjoy greater access to trade credit financing. Three plausible channels include reduced default risk, improved information quality, and enhanced legal protection. Suppliers provide more credit to young, small, private, politically unconnected firms, and those with geographically distant suppliers. Finally, we illustrate how increased access to trade credit translates into tangible strategic and performance benefits. Overall, this study underscores the importance of aligning business ethics practices with evolving societal values and technological advancements to facilitate companies’ willingness to provide trade credit within emerging markets.

A sympathetic critique of the postmodern discourse of the other, this dissertation argues that though postmodern celebration of otherness and difference since the sixties is politically empowering and culturally enriching for marginalized groups, the fashionable critique of speaking for others is finally logically unsustainable and, if unchecked, will be politically irresponsible, intellectually stifling, and culturally suicidal. ;Chapter One examines the raison d'etre behind the postmodern critique of speaking for others. With the realization of how our subjectivities are shaped by the power-related dominant discourses which are often inaccessible to marginalized groups, the seemingly innocent problem of "speaking for others" becomes crucial in postmodern cultural politics. Postmodernity marks the rise of these hitherto voiceless others, who refuse to be spoken for any longer and demand to have their own voices heard. ;Chapter Two demonstrates how Michel Foucault, the primary voice in this critique of speaking for others, cannot but speak for others himself. In Madness and Civilization, Foucault, despite his ambition to let madness speak for itself, cannot avoid speaking for madness in the language of reason, which excludes madness in the first place. ;Besides criticizing identity politics--another important rationale behind the critique, Chapter Three also speaks out for misrepresentation and appropriation--two common practices in any cross-cultural exchanges. Not only the strong appropriate and misrepresent the weak but vice versa, as can be seen in the Chinese counterpart of Eurocentrism--Sinocentrism. Since not all practices of speaking for others are inherently repressive, each misrepresentation should be evaluated in its particular context. The often-overlooked positive value of misrepresentation can be seen in how Pound and Eisenstein creatively misrepresent and appropriate the Chinese written characters and how their works are in turn misprised creatively by Chinese poets and critics. This shuttle of cross-cultural misrepresentations is just one of the numerous testimonies to the fact that our civilization--East and West--thrives on all sorts of cross-cultural misrepresentations. Judged from this cross-cultural perspective, the postmodern critique of speaking for others become all the more fallacious

This history of hermeneutics from the West and the modern study of Chinese philosophy, the situation, reflect on contemporary Chinese philosophy of the "methodology" of the problem context, made ​​with "critical knowledge" and "ontological interpretation" to conclude there is a world issue. This article and the philosophy of Lao Tzu's "ontological interpretation", as the methodology of contemporary Chinese philosophy solution to the problem of example. Through the history of the western onto-hermeneutics and the situation of the modern research of Chinese philosophy, we make a reflection on the problems with the "methodology" of contemporary Chinese philosophy, proposing the "critique of knowledge" and "onto-hermeneutics" to conclude this issue. This paper also makes approach Lao Zi's philosophy with onto-hermeneutics as one of the solutions to the methodological problems of contemporary Chinese philosophy