Abstract
The role of board secretaries is a unique institutional feature in China. Individuals in this senior executive role are responsible for coordinating information disclosure. We study the impact of board secretaries on management earnings forecasts and find that their legal expertise, accounting expertise and foreign experience help improve management earnings forecast quality. The quality of forecasts, as indicated by their occurrence, frequency, precision and accuracy, is also positively associated with the role duality (e.g. board director, CFO or other senior executive role) and equity holdings of board secretaries and negatively associated with their political connection. The quality of forecasts is found to increase the compensation of board secretaries. Finally, we show that the equity holding of board secretaries reduces litigation risks and increases corporate philanthropic giving.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 537-574 |
| Number of pages | 38 |
| Journal | Journal of Business Ethics |
| Volume | 154 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Jan 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We are grateful for helpful comments from the editor, two anonymous referees, Chen Wang, Lucy Liu and participants at the FMA Annual Meeting at Nashville and seminar participants at the University of Edinburgh.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, The Author(s).
Funding
We are grateful for helpful comments from the editor, two anonymous referees, Chen Wang, Lucy Liu and participants at the FMA Annual Meeting at Nashville and seminar participants at the University of Edinburgh.
Keywords
- Board secretary
- China
- Litigation risk
- Management earnings forecasts
- Top management team
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Business and International Management
- General Business,Management and Accounting
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Economics and Econometrics
- Law