In this paper, we document basic facts regarding public debates about controversial political issues on Chinese social media. Our documentation is based on a dataset of 13.2 billion blog posts published on Sina Weibo—the most prominent Chinese microblogging platform—during the 2009–2013 period. Our primary finding is that a shockingly large number of posts on highly sensitive topics were published and circulated on social media. For instance, we find millions of posts discussing protests, and these posts are informative in predicting the occurrence of specific events. We find an even larger number of posts with explicit corruption allegations, and that these posts predict future corruption charges of specific individuals. Our findings challenge a popular view that an authoritarian regime would relentlessly censor or even ban social media. Instead, the interaction of an authoritarian government with social media seems more complex.

We examine how firm characteristics, particularly the degree of firm complexity and the firm’s need for specialty knowledge, affect the relationship between corporate governance and the risk of bankruptcy. We find that having larger boards reduces the risk of bankruptcy only for complex firms. Our results also suggest that the proportion of inside directors on the board is inversely associated with the risk of bankruptcy in firms that require more specialist knowledge and that the reverse is true in technically unsophisticated firms. The results further reveal that the additional explanatory power from corporate governance variables becomes stronger as the time to bankruptcy is increased, implying that although corporate governance variables are important predictors, governance changes are likely to be too late to save a firm on the verge of bankruptcy.

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T his paper attempts to bridge a gap between organizational economics and strategy research through an analysis of knowledge and communication in organizations. We argue that organizations emerge to achieve the intensive use of the knowledge that is acquired to perform specific tasks and to integrate dispersed knowledge that is embodied in different human minds. The attributes of the tasks undertaken determine the optimal acquisition and distribution of knowledge. Depending on the codifiability of knowledge, different communication modes arise as a coordination mechanism to deepen the division of labor, leverage managerial talent, and exploit the increasing returns to knowledge. Organizational processes can be adapted through codes and culture to facilitate coordination; organizational structure can be designed to complement the limitations of human ability. We stress that organizational process and structure construct the core of organizational capital, which generates rent and sustains organizational growth. From the analysis, we draw implications for the strategic management of knowledge and human resources in organizations.

This paper examines whether and how market competition affected the political bias of government-owned newspapers in China from 1981 to 2011. We measure media bias based on coverage of government mouthpiece content ( propaganda) relative to commercial content. We first find that a reform that forced newspaper exits (reduced competition) affected media bias by increasing product specialization, with some papers focusing on propaganda and others on commercial content. Second, lower-level governments produce less-biased content and launch commercial newspapers earlier, eroding higher-level governments’ political goals. Third, bottom-up competition intensifies the politico-economic trade-off, leading to product proliferation and less audience exposure to propaganda. (JEL D72, L31, L82, O14, O17, P26, P31)