Yin Yu-Thompson, Ran Lu-Andrews and Liang Fu
This paper aims to perform empirical analysis to test whether less severe agency conflict between managers and controlling shareholders may improve family firms’ corporate and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to perform empirical analysis to test whether less severe agency conflict between managers and controlling shareholders may improve family firms’ corporate and stock liquidity, compared to non-family firms.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use the ordinary least square and two-stage generalized method of moments regression analyses. They also use match-paired design for robustness check.
Findings
Focusing on Standard & Poor’s 500 firms, the authors find that family firms are more conservative by hoarding more corporate liquid assets (as measured by accounting balance sheet liquidity ratios) than their peer non-family firms to prevent underinvestment from external costly finance. These family firms also exhibit higher level of stock liquidity and lower liquidity risk as measured by effective bid–ask spread than non-family firms. The results are consistent with the motivation that organizations (i.e. family firms in this study) whose shareholders can efficiently monitor that their managers are associated with higher level of corporate liquidity and stock liquidity, and lower level of liquidity risk.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature on liquidity (both corporate liquidity and stock liquidity) and ownership structure, more broadly corporate governance. It provides insights into corporate and stock liquidity within a unique ownership context: family firms versus non-family firms. Family firms in the USA are subject to both Type I (agency problems arising from the separation of ownership and control) and Type II agency problems (agency conflict arising between majority and minority shareholders). It is an ongoing debate whether family firms suffer more or less agency problems from one type versus the other than non-family firms. The finding that family firms have higher corporate and stock liquidity is consistent with that family firms being subject to less severe agency conflict due to separation of ownership from control.
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Xiangru Wu, Kun Wang and Xiaowen Fu
This chapter reviews the competition between full-service carrier (FSC) and low-cost carrier (LCC) in China. More importantly, we discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on…
Abstract
This chapter reviews the competition between full-service carrier (FSC) and low-cost carrier (LCC) in China. More importantly, we discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on FSC–LCC competition. Specifically, the airlines' route choices and also the market contact between FSCs and LCCs in China are examined and discussed. Our review results suggest that, despite the rapid growth of the independent LCC Spring Airlines and the establishment of new subsidiary LCCs by FSCs, China's LCC sector still plays relatively minor roles compared with many fully deregulated markets. Subsidiary LCCs serve more as competitive tools for their parent FSCs, primarily deployed on their parent FSCs' routes to jointly compete against rival FSCs. This competition is primarily focused on niche regional markets rather than engaging in full-scale competition. Spring Airlines also strategically avoided direct head-to-head competition with FSCs before the pandemic by mainly connecting with the secondary cities. However, the pandemic has introduced significant changes, notably the network differentiation between FSCs and LCCs in mainland China. With the relaxation of government's regulations on airline route entries into hub airports during pandemic, Chinese LCCs have shifted their focus toward serving more dense routes, especially those connected to the top five cities. This shift has led to an intensified head-to-head competition between LCCs and FSCs following the outbreak of the pandemic. Such a process is likely to continue in the years to come. This chapter's discussions could also provide new insights into LCC development and the impact of the pandemic on FSC–LCC competition interactions to supplement existing literature studying other major airline markets.
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Yu-Ling Hsiao and Lucy E. Bailey
This chapter draws from a three-year ethnographic study focused on the educational and community interactions among working- and middle-class ethnic Chinese immigrants in a…
Abstract
This chapter draws from a three-year ethnographic study focused on the educational and community interactions among working- and middle-class ethnic Chinese immigrants in a mid-western town in the United States. Aihwa Ong (1999) argues that “Chineseness” is a fluid, cultural practice manifested within the Chinese diaspora in particular ways that relate to globalization in late modernity, immigrants’ cultural background, their place in the social structure in their home society, and their new social class status in the context they enter. The study extends research focused on the complexities of social reproduction within larger global flows of Chinese immigrants. First, we describe how Chinese immigrants’ social status in their countries of origin in part shapes middle and working-class group’s access to cultural capital and positions in the social structure of their post-migration context. Second, we trace groups’ negotiation of their relational race and class positioning in the new context (Ong, 1999) that is often invisible in the processes of social reproduction. Third, we describe how both groups must negotiate national, community, and schooling conceptions of the model minority concept (Lee, 1996) that shapes Asian-American’s lived realities in the United States; yet the continuing salience of their immigrant experience, home culture, and access to cultural capital (Bourdieu, 2007) means that they enact the “model minority” concept differently. The findings suggest the complexity of Chinese immigrants’ accommodation of and resistance to normative ideologies and local structures that cumulatively contribute to social reproduction on the basis of class.
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Yin Yu-Thompson, Seong Yeon Cho and Liang Fu
The purpose of this study is to examine how pension risk shifting can be explained and constrained by debt component in chief executive officer (CEO) compensation and to explore…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine how pension risk shifting can be explained and constrained by debt component in chief executive officer (CEO) compensation and to explore whether a CEO’s relatively large holdings of inside debt to equity compensation would result in a well-funded pension status.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use two-stage least-squares model to control the potential unobserved and uncontrolled firm characteristics that could drive both CEO inside debt determinants and firm pension funding status.
Findings
This paper finds a positive relationship between the CEO inside debt ratio and firm funding status. Additional tests show a positive association between the CEO inside debt ratio and financial slack measures and a negative association between this ratio and financial constraint measure. Additional evidence also shows that the CEO inside debt ratio is negatively associated with other contemporaneous investment activities. Overall, the findings suggest that CEO inside debt creates managerial incentives that can affect pension funding decisions and decrease pension risk shifting.
Research limitations/implications
One of the difficulties facing the compensation literature is the unobservable nature of the entire compensation negotiation and design process. Pension funding status is another challenging topic given that management has discretion over the pension assumptions and the calculations themselves are complicated. Therefore, the determinants of pension status used in this paper are not all-inclusive. Although a two-stage least-squares methodology is applied to mitigate endogeneity, it is still possible that an omitted variable problem exists in both cases.
Originality/value
This study provides direct evidence of the executive debt-like compensation’s effect on pension risk-shifting behavior and pension funding decisions and also contributes to the literature that investigates the association between CEO inside debt and firm risk by examining the trade-off between pension funding and other contemporaneous investment activities.
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Liangyin Chen, Jun Huang, Danqi Hu and Xinyuan Chen
This paper aims to examine the effect of dividend regulation on cost stickiness (i.e. the asymmetric change in firm expense between sales increase and sales decrease) and explore…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the effect of dividend regulation on cost stickiness (i.e. the asymmetric change in firm expense between sales increase and sales decrease) and explore the underlying mechanism.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the quasi-natural experiment of the Guideline for Dividend Policy of Listed Companies issued by the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) in 2013, the authors employ a difference-in-difference model to investigate the impact of dividend regulation on cost stickiness.
Findings
The authors find that the cost stickiness of treatment group firms has decreased significantly when compared with control group firms after the dividend regulation. Moreover, this effect is more pronounced among firms in lower marketization regions, in lower competition industries and those with less analyst coverage and lower cash flow levels. Further analyses show that dividend regulation reduces the cost stickiness of firms by mitigating agency problems. Finally, the conclusion holds after several robust tests, including controlling for firm fixed effect, propensity score matching (PSM), placebo test and reconstruction of expense variable.
Originality/value
This paper confirms that dividend regulation serves an important role in corporate governance, which reduces firms' agency costs and thereby decreases cost stickiness. The conclusions shed light on the dividend policies of listed companies and capital market regulation in the future.
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Khurram Shahzad, Shakeel Ahmad Khan and Abid Iqbal
For the provision of smart library services to end users, tools of the Internet of Things (IoT) play a significant role. The study aims to discover the factors influencing the…
Abstract
Purpose
For the provision of smart library services to end users, tools of the Internet of Things (IoT) play a significant role. The study aims to discover the factors influencing the adoption of IoT in university libraries, investigate the impact of IoT on university library services and identify challenges to adopt IoT applications in university libraries.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic literature review was carried out to address the objectives of the study. The 40 most relevant research papers published in the world’s leading digital databases were selected to conduct the study.
Findings
The findings illustrated that rapid growth in technology, perceived benefits, the networked world and the changing landscape of librarianship positively influenced the adoption of IoT in university libraries. The study also displayed that IoT supported library professionals to initiate smart library services, assisted in service efficiency, offered context-based library services, provided tracking facilities and delivered effective management of library systems. Results also revealed that a lack of technical infrastructure, security and privacy concerns, a lack of technological skills and unavailability of policy and strategic planning caused barriers to the successful adoption of IoT applications in university libraries.
Originality/value
The study has provided theoretical implications through a valuable addition to the current literature. It has also offered managerial implications for policymakers to construct productive policies for the implementation of IoT applications in university libraries for the attainment of fruitful outcomes. Finally, the study provides a baseline for understanding the adoption of IoT in academic libraries.
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Tanveer Kajla, Sahil Raj and Amit Kumar Bhardwaj
The purpose of the study is to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry during the rise of worldwide pandemic crises using Twitter analysis. The study is based…
Abstract
The purpose of the study is to analyse the impact of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry during the rise of worldwide pandemic crises using Twitter analysis. The study is based on 57,794 English-language tweets mined from Twitter from 1 April 2020 to 15 October 2020. Based on thematic and sentiment analysis, the study found that overall sentiments expressed on Twitter were negative. This chapter contributes to existing knowledge about the COVID-19 crisis and broadens the respondents’ understanding of the potential impacts of the crisis on the most vulnerable tourism and hospitality industry. This research emphasises the sustainable revival of the hospitality industry.
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Andreas Schwab, Yanjinlkham Shuumarjav, Jake B. Telkamp and Jose R. Beltran
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in management research is still nascent and has primarily focused on content analyses of text data. Some method scholars have begun to…
Abstract
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in management research is still nascent and has primarily focused on content analyses of text data. Some method scholars have begun to discuss the potential benefits of far broader applications; however, these discussions have not led yet to a wave of corresponding AI applications by management researchers. This chapter explores the feasibility and the potential value of using AI for a very specific methodological task: the reliable and efficient capturing of higher-level psychological constructs in management research. It introduces the capturing of basic emotions and emotional authenticity of entrepreneurs based on their macro- and microfacial expressions during pitch presentations as an illustrative example of related AI opportunities and challenges. Thus, this chapter provides both motivation and guidance to management scholars for future applications of AI to advance management research.
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Cheng-Kui Huang, Neil Chueh-An Lee and Wen-Chi Chen
Cryptocurrency, an important application of blockchain technology, has gradually circulated, and its use has become widespread. While cryptocurrency is growing rapidly, potential…
Abstract
Purpose
Cryptocurrency, an important application of blockchain technology, has gradually circulated, and its use has become widespread. While cryptocurrency is growing rapidly, potential risks are simultaneously emerging. Users thus may abandon their usage behavior of cryptocurrency, hindering the future development of cryptocurrency. While prior studies focus more on the intention to use cryptocurrency in the pre-adoption phase, less studies pay attention to discontinuance usage intention in the post-adoption phase. To fill this knowledge gap, this stfudy aims to explore factors that cause discontinuance usage intention regarding cryptocurrency.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the net valence framework theoretically grounded on the theory of reason action, a dilemmatic dual-factor model is proposed to figure out cryptocurrency users' discontinuance usage intention from the perceived risk and perceived benefit. This study identifies four potential risks and three potential benefits that affect perceived risk and benefit. The model with nine hypotheses were developed, and research data were collected by a survey method. A total of 343 valid responses were received, and PLS-SEM with SmartPLS was utilized to test the nine hypotheses, with seven hypotheses supported empirically.
Findings
Our findings demonstrate that financial, legal and operational risks are critical to increase users' perceived risk, and perceived usefulness and seamless transactions play important roles in enhancing users' perceived benefit. Moreover, while perceived risk can increase users' discontinuance usage intention to cryptocurrency, perceived benefit can mitigate such intention.
Originality/value
This study contributes nascent knowledge to the literature by examining factors that influence discontinuous usage intention in regard to cryptocurrencies, to firms that have issued or attempted to issue cryptocurrencies and to the potential users of cryptocurrencies by adjusting the mode of operation and investment strategies and reducing user costs, achieving a win-win situation for firms and users.
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As technology aspect of agriculture becomes more and more important with the time to increase agricultural productivity in a sustainable and smart way, agriculture practices…
Abstract
As technology aspect of agriculture becomes more and more important with the time to increase agricultural productivity in a sustainable and smart way, agriculture practices become more interdisciplinary. Furthermore, agricultural practices are affected by urban and rural planning enabling urban and rural farming. Architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry can support food security through the integration of agricultural practices and technologies into the built environment, its interior design, and greenhouses supporting urban and rural farming. Based on the literature review, this chapter aims to investigate ways for enhancing AEC industry’s and its professionals’ contribution to food security and sustainable agricultural practices. This chapter highlights roles of the AEC industry in enhancing food security and sustainable agricultural practices. This chapter emphasizes the importance of undergraduate and graduate curriculums of future AEC industry professionals (e.g., architects, interior architects, civil engineers) to equip them with the skills and knowledge of sustainable agricultural practices and technologies integrated greenhouses, built environment and indoor environment, and interior design. For this reason, agricultural policies need to cover food security-related interdisciplinary education and training (e.g., renewable energy-based agriculture integrated built environment) of AEC industry professionals. Agricultural policies need to be designed with the contribution of and considering AEC industry professionals as they are among the main stakeholders of food security and renewable energy-based agriculture-integrated built environment. Furthermore, this chapter highlights how AEC industry, in compliance with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and countries sustainable and resilient development plans, can contribute to food security and sustainability. This chapter can be beneficial to all stakeholders of the sustainable agricultural practices.