|
|
|
| Party Organizations in Chinese Privately Owned Firms and Corporate Donations |
| ZHENG Dengjin, XIE Deren
|
School of Accountancy / China's Management Accounting Research & Development Center, Central University of Finance and Economics;
School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University |
|
|
|
Abstract Most previous studies approach the relationship between enterprises and government from the perspective of macro government intervention or the government backgrounds of managers or shareholders. This, however, ignores the distinction between the government and political parties and the influence of party organizations in enterprises. Given that the role of the party directly depends on party organizations, we must explore the influence of such organizations on firms' behavior. During the 18th and 19th National Congresses of the Communist Party of China(NCCPC), Xi Jinping repeatedly stressed the importance of party organizations in corporate governance. At the National Conference on Party Construction in Non-public Enterprises, Xi emphasized that the key to building a corporate governance mechanism with Chinese characteristics lies in embedding party organizations into the corporate governance structure. Unfortunately, there is little empirical research on the economic consequences of such embedding in privately owned firms. Consequently, we focus on the influence of party organizations in privately owned firms in the corporate donations setting.
As mentioned, we take the social donation behavior of privately owned firms as the research setting. We choose the social donation setting (an important aspect of corporate social responsibility) to study the role of party organizations in privately owned firms for two reasons. First, corporate social donation behavior is consistent with the Party's beliefs and mission. Second, with the development of privately owned firms in China, charitable donations from privately owned firms have gradually become an important part of China's social public welfare. Since 2007, the donation rate of privately owned firms has been more than 50%. Therefore, the social donation of privately owned firms offers an ideal setting in which to test the economic consequences of the influence of party organizations in such firms.
The effect of party organizations on privately owned firms is largely ignored by the literature. We manually collect data on party organizations in privately owned listed companies for the period 2004-2015 to examine the real effect of party organizations on the donations of these firms. We find that donations are significantly positively related to party organizations in these firms, and the positive effect is still significant after donation data are adjusted to the industry or province level. The positive effect is more pronounced in privately owned firms that have more solid party organizations or managers that pay more attention to them, and during (NCCPC) periods. In addition, the results are robust after controlling for potential endogeneity. Finally, we find that province-level donations are significantly higher in provinces where the impact of party organizations is stronger.
The main contributions of this paper are as follows. First, we provide new perspectives and evidence for research on political parties and political party organizations. Previous studies mainly explore how party organizations in state-owned enterprises affect corporate governance and corporate performance. Due to the difficulty of data collection and other reasons, few empirical studies address the economic consequences of party organizations in privately owned firms. Second, we expand the cross-disciplinary study of government-enterprise relationships and corporate behavior. We study the relationship between government and enterprises from the perspective of party organization embeddedness; this topic spans the fields of sociology, politics, management, and economics and thus extends the literature on the relationship between government and enterprises. Finally, this paper has strong immediate significance. The results show that party organizations embedded in privately owned firms help them fulfill their social responsibilities. This is consistent with the mission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to strengthen party organizations in privately owned firms. The findings also offer useful insights on the experience of party organizations' construction in privately owned firms, which can serve as a reference for the reforms, such as strengthening the construction of grass-roots organizations.
|
|
Received: 19 July 2018
Published: 27 September 2019
|
|
|
|
|
| [1] |
陈德球、陈运森和董志勇,2017,《政策不确定性、市场竞争与资本配置》,《金融研究》第11期,第65～80页。
|
| [2] |
陈德球、李思飞和雷光勇,2012,《政府治理、控制权结构与投资决策——基于家族上市公司的经验证据》,《金融研究》第3期,第124～138页。
|
| [3] |
陈德球和陈运森,2018,《政策不确定性与上市公司盈余管理》,《经济研究》第6期,第97～111页。
|
| [4] |
陈运森,2015,《社会网络与企业效率:基于结构洞位置的证据》,《会计研究》第1期,第48～55页。
|
| [5] |
陈运森和崔宸瑜,2016,《官员主政关系、地域偏爱与政府补助》,《中国会计评论》第4期,第483～514页。
|
| [6] |
陈运森、孟庆玉和袁淳,2018,《关系型税收优惠与税收政策的有效性:隐性税收视角》,《会计研究》2018年第2期,第41～47页。
|
| [7] |
陈仕华和卢昌荣,2014,《国有企业党组织的治理参与能够有效抑制并购中的“国有资产流失”吗？》,《管理世界》第5期,第106～120页。
|
| [8] |
刘慧龙、张敏和王亚平,2010,《政治关联、薪酬激励与员工配置效率》,《经济研究》第9期,第109～121页。
|
| [9] |
龙小宁和杨进,2014,《党组织、工人福利和企业绩效:来自中国民营企业的证据》,《经济学报》第2期,第150～169页。
|
| [10] |
罗党论和甄丽明,2008,《民营控制、政治关系与企业融资约束——基于中国非国有上市企业的经验证据》,《金融研究》第12期,第164～178页。
|
| [11] |
马连福、王元芳和沈小秀,2012,《中国国有企业党组织治理效应研究——基于“内部人控制”的视角》,《中国工业经济》第8期,第82～95页。
|
| [12] |
马连福、王元芳和沈小秀,2013,《国有企业党组织治理、冗余雇员与高管薪酬契约》,《管理世界》第5期,第100～115页。
|
| [13] |
潘越、翁若宇和刘思义,2017,《私心的善意:基于台风中企业慈善捐赠行为的新证据》,《中国工业经济》第5期,第133～151页。
|
| [14] |
彭飞和范子英,2016,《税收优惠、捐赠成本与企业捐赠》,《世界经济》第7期,第144～167页。
|
| [15] |
许年行和李哲,2016,《高管贫困经历与企业慈善捐赠》,《经济研究》第12期,第133～146页。
|
| [16] |
余明桂和潘红波,2008,《政治关系、制度环境与民营企业银行贷款》,《管理世界》第8期,第9～21页。
|
| [17] |
张敏、马黎珺和张雯,2013,《企业慈善捐赠的政企纽带效应——基于我国上市公司的经验证据》,《管理世界》第7期,第163～171页。
|
| [18] |
曾建光、步丹璐和饶品贵,2017,《无偿划转、政府补贴与社会福利》,《世界经济》第7期,第147～168页。
|
| [19] |
Barro, R. J. 1990. “Government Spending in A Simple Model of Endogeneous Growth”, Journal of Political Economy, 98(5): 103～125.
|
| [20] |
Campbell, D. E. 2007. “A Matter of Faith: Religion in the 2004 Presidential Election”, Brookings Institution Press.
|
| [21] |
Chang, E. C., and S. M. Wong. 2004. “Political Control and Performance in China's Listed Firms”, Journal of Comparative Economics, 32: 617～636.
|
| [22] |
Fisman, R. 2001. “Estimating the Value of Political Connections”, The American Economic Review, 91(4): 1095～1102.
|
| [23] |
Ferguson, T., and H. Voth. 2008. “Betting on Hitler-The Value of Political Connections in Nazi Germany”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(1): 101～137.
|
| [24] |
Galaskiewicz, J. 1997. “An Urban Grants Economy Revisited: Corporate Charitable Contributions in the Twin Cities, 1979-81, 1987-89”, Administrative Science Quarterly, 42: 445～471.
|
| [25] |
Goldman, E., and J. J. Rocholl. 2006. “Does Political Connectedness Affect Firm Value？” SSRN Electronic Journal, 21(4): 1607～1652.
|
| [26] |
Granovetter, M. 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness”, American Journal of Sociology, 91: 481～510.
|
| [27] |
Julio, B., and Y. Yook. 2012. “Political Uncertainty and Corporate Investment Cycles”, The Journal of Finance, 67(1): 45～83.
|
| [28] |
Li, H., L. Meng, Q. Wang and L. Zhou. 2008. “Political Connections, Financing and Firm Performance: Evidence from Chinese Private Firms”, Journal of Development Economics, 87: 283～299.
|
| [29] |
Lin, N. 2002. “Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action”, Cambridge University Press.
|
| [30] |
Nordhaus, W. D. 1975. “The Political Business Cycle”, The Review of Economic Studies, 42(2): 169～190.
|
| [31] |
Portes, A. 1998. “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology”, Annual Review of Sociology, 24: 1～24.
|
| [32] |
Shleifer, A., and R. W. Vishny. 1994. “Politicians and Firms”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 109(4): 995～1025.
|
| [33] |
Uzzi, B. 1997. “Social Structure and Competition in Inter-firm Networks: The Paradox of Embeddedness”, Administrative Science Quarterly, 42: 35～67.
|
|
|
|
