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A great deal of prior literature on corporate governance in China has asserted that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are inefficiently run and badly governed—either worse than privately-owned enterprises (POEs) or just as bad. There is, however, no solid empirical evidence that underpins either claim. Using a unique, hand-coded dataset on corporate charter provisions with a random sample of nearly 300 publicly listed Chinese firms, this paper demonstrates that political hierarchy, state shareholding level, and political compliance are key factors in the governance and performance of Chinese SOEs. The corporate governance of SOEs that are firmly controlled by the Chinese central government favours minority shareholders, whereas that of SOEs firmly controlled by provincial governments appears to be less protective of them. Overall, SOEs, particularly those controlled by the central government, do not perform any worse than POEs, as measured by Tobin's Q. Nonetheless, more politically compliant firms do perform worse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After two decades of uncertainties and legislative instability, following the anti-communist Revolution of December 1989, the reform of Romanian state-owned enterprises' management to a system of corporate governance was imperative. The Government Emergency Ordinance no. 109/2011, subsequently amended by the Law no. 111/2016, has modernized their management and administration system, ensuring greater transparency and increased control over the operations of public enterprises. At the base of these entities' relationship with their administrative and executive management structures there are mandate contracts, which impose specific obligations on the agents, as well as a system of accountability meant to ensure that the state is permanently informed on the operations of the enterprise, that the acts concluded on its behalf are correct and legal and that, should the public authority loose trust in the management, it could immediately hold them accountable, in order to recover the losses and put the activity of the enterprise on the right and lawful path again. In our study, we shall analyse the content and the juridical nature of this mandate relationship, with its national specificity, given by the incidental regulations from Romanian legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Have China's mixed-ownership reforms helped to boost enterprise innovations? How? • We study the topic from the theoretical perspective of organizational controls. • State shareholding is found to be conducive to enterprise innovations. • This conducive effect depends on the capability of organizational controls. Mixed-ownership reforms have been the mainstay of reforming China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in recent years. In relation to the broader context of the continuous slowdown in economic growth under the New Normal, the reshaping of the innovative capacity of SOEs has been widely considered to be of systemic importance. Yet, in the relevant literature, the effects of mixed-ownership reforms on innovations have remained unclear. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by means of studying such effects for China's listed companies in the period 2007–2018, from the theoretical perspective of organizational controls in innovative firms. Our study finds that SOEs tend to be more innovative than non-SOEs, and increases in state shareholding do raise the innovative capacity of mixed-ownership enterprises. Further analyses reveal that, for mixed-ownership enterprises, the lower the level of state shareholding the more reliance of innovations on the capability of organizational controls in corporate governance. These findings offer useful policy lessons for China. Additionally, we discuss the contribution of our study to the broader literature at a conceptual level, with an emphasis on the novelty of highlighting the importance of organizational controls in the reform of SOEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses political state capture in the context of party patronage. Evidence of this is delivered from state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the rotations of members of their management and supervisory boards. In this case, it is deemed that an interest group, which consists of politicians and representatives in the government administration, decides about the appointment and dismissal of board members through the corporate governance of SOEs and ownership policy of the state. We analyzed the scale and intensity of rotations in Poland of about twelve thousand joint-stock companies in the years 2001–2017 according to their ownership structure. We show that changes of managers and supervisory board members in state-owned enterprises are higher than in private companies and are related to political elections. We estimated that on average three months after a new government is formed, a peak of changes in the composition of boards is observed, though they are earlier in the case of a supervisory board. We conclude that this can be regarded as an example of state capture by politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper offers a novel theoretical framework for knowledge creation in state-owned enterprises. • The paper combines the theory of the entrepreneurial firm and the theory of knowledge management to understand innovation is state-owned enterprises. • state-owned enterprises as both firms and public entities, a double nature that combines the advantages of state-ownership and corporate governance. • The theoretical development finds two enabling factors: managerial autonomy and government coordination. • The two factors are discussed to depict the advantages of state-ownership and corporate governance in state-owned enterprises. The understanding of knowledge creation in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a rising issue in the academic debate and in the political agenda; still, there is a lack of a comprehensive theory despite the number of research published so far. This paper offers a novel theoretical framework for knowledge creation in SOEs by the study of innovation in SOEs from the perspective of the theory of the entrepreneurial firm and the theory of knowledge management, which together provide new insights that explain the factors that enable innovation in SOEs. These factors are managerial autonomy and government coordination. The theoretical development is important because considers SOEs as both firms and public entities, a double nature that combines the advantages of state-ownership and corporate governance. The theoretical contribution provides support to the increasing academic attention on the entrepreneurial state and the rise of SOEs as innovative actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) play an important role in the Chinese economy and are also crucial instruments for implementing the Party-state's policies and strategic initiatives. SOE reform is not only crucial to China's transformation from an economy overly dependent on exports and investment to one more driven by domestic consumption, but is also a test of the political will and capability of the Chinese authorities to develop a market-based domestic economy. Despite the Chinese government's commitment since 2013 to forging ahead with the SOE reform process, little real progress has been made so far. Reform of the SOEs is a central component of the government's agenda for sustaining domestic economic growth and tightening the political control of the Chinese Communist Party over all aspects of the nation. The current wave of SOE reform has, however, focused on the state's push for consolidation through mergers and acquisitions, rather than pursuit of improving corporate governance. Far from being in retreat, the state is marching in and the market is retreating. This SOE reform process appears to contradict the state's proclaimed commitment to deregulation and development of a market-based competitive economy in China by allowing "the market to play a decisive role". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massive overseas expansion of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is a central aspect of China’s ‘rise’ to great-power status. There is significant disagreement, however, over how to interpret SOEs’ role. Are they instruments of Chinese statecraft, being directed purposefully from Beijing as part of a ‘grand strategy’? Or are they relatively autonomous, profit-maximising businesses, their free-wheeling behaviour often undermining Chinese foreign policy? Finding that there is evidence for both theses, we provide a framework to explain this. We propose theorising party-state/SOEs relations using the concepts of state transformation and regulatory statehood. We show that the Chinese state’s fragmentation, decentralisation and internationalisation since the late 1970s has substantially increased SOE autonomy and weakened but also transformed the executive’s control, reconfiguring it towards a regulatory mode of governance. Party-state/SOEs relations are thus characterised not by direct command and control but weak oversight and ongoing struggles within the party-state. We illustrate this using a case study of China Power Investment Corporation and its Myitsone hydropower dam project in Myanmar. Here, a central SOE clearly defied and subverted central regulations, profoundly damaging Sino-Myanmar state-to-state relations. Party-state authorities are now struggling to rein in this and other central SOEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]