Corporate politics, philanthropy and governance: their impacts on unit performance

Purpose – This aim of this article is to review the 12 manuscripts accepted into the special issue of “Corporate Politics, Philanthropy and Governance” in Chinese Management Studies. It explains basic concepts, provides brief introduction to each manuscript and presents the related findings. Design/methodology/approach – Most manuscripts in this special issue used primary empirical data (collected from field surveys or interviews) or secondary historical data (extracted from published literature, corporate reports or financial databases) for analyses. Both qualitative (case studies, comparative reviews) and quantitative (logistic regression, multiple regression, simultaneous equations) methods were used to draw conclusions. Findings – The results of the studies in this special issue show: Singapore, rather Hong Kong, is a better governance model for China in reforming her society to be corruption free; corporate governance structure affects a firm’s performance and foreign direct investment decision; corporate governance can affect auditor selection only in low and medium agency conflict conditions; trustworthy characteristic of benevolence can mitigate the damages of perceived politics on affective commitment; the firms who selected to expense their research and development expenditures have lower stock price and return; organizational citizenship behavior can mediate the relationship between psychological contract and organizational performance; both relational and formal governance mechanisms can facilitate knowledge transfer in the alliance; companies with political connections are more likely to enter into industries with high entry barriers; circular-economy accounting information disclosure quality has low correlation with the profitability and the location of the listed companies; media self-regulation has a significant influence on philanthropic marketing and brand resonance. Originality/value – The manuscripts in this special issue cover a wide range of topics, including corporate governance, corruption, politics, philanthropy, agency conflict, organizational citizenship behavior, media self-regulation and firm performance. The findings from the studies provide leaders of corporate governance with valuable insights, allowing them to adjust governance mechanisms properly to heighten governance quality and improve firm performance. The author is grateful to all the authors who submitted their manuscripts to this special issue and patiently underwent the lengthy review process; without them this publication would not be possible. To Prof Check-Teck Foo, the Editor-in-Chief of ChineseManagement Studies, I sincerely thank him for his guidance and trust in completing this special issue. Special thanks go to the anonymous reviewers who contributed their outstanding voluntary effort to provide detailed comments and constructive suggestions that greatly enhanced the quality of the manuscripts. Lastly but not least, I would like to thank Ms Annie Simmons and the staff of Emerald Group Publishing who tirelessly supported the entire editorial and production processes. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1750-614X.htm Corporate politics, philanthropy and governance