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Business Ethics and Finance in Greater China: Synthesis and Future Directions in Sustainability, CSR, and Fraud

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Abstract

Following the financial crisis and recent recession, the center of gravity of global economic growth and competitiveness is shifting toward emerging economies. As a leading and increasingly influential emerging economy, China is currently attracting the attention of academics, practitioners, and policy makers. There has been an increase in research interest in and publications on issues relating to China within high-quality international academic journals. We therefore organized a special issue conference in conjunction with the Journal of Business Ethics (JBE) in Lhasa, Tibet, on May 19–20, 2014, on Business Ethics in Greater China: Past, Present and Future. The papers for the special issue focused on the intersection of ethics and finance, and fit within one of the three themes: environment and sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and fraud. Within these themes, issues of intellectual capital protection, gender equality, political connections, regional development, investor protection, corporate stewardship, trust and corruption, and corporate transparency each play a significant role. In this paper, we survey these studies and the related literature to provide a comprehensive coverage of business ethics and finance issues that affect China.

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  1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2016/04/29/global-economic-news-china-will-surpass-the-u-s-in-2018/#2d4f5fbf474b.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Tinghua Duan for his excellent assistance in organizing the special issue conference in Tibet. We thank Jiafu An and Yelin Zhang for their excellent research assistance. Sofia Johan provided useful comments on this paper. Douglas Cumming owes thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for generous financial support.

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  1. Schulich School of Business, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada

    Douglas Cumming

  2. University of Edinburgh Business School, 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9JS, UK

    Wenxuan Hou

  3. Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Booth St W, Manchester, M15 6PB, UK

    Edward Lee

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  1. Douglas Cumming
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  2. Wenxuan Hou
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Correspondence to Douglas Cumming.

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Cumming, D., Hou, W. & Lee, E. Business Ethics and Finance in Greater China: Synthesis and Future Directions in Sustainability, CSR, and Fraud. J Bus Ethics 138, 601–626 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3288-2

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