Call for Papers

Corporate Governance: An International Review

Special Issue on

“Corporate Governance Mechanisms in light of the COVID-19 Crisis: How Financial Information and Regulation, Managerial Decision-Making, and Policy Intervention Can Shape the Economic Recovery”

Submission Deadline: August 1, 2021

Guest Editors

Amedeo Pugliese, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain & University of Padua, Italy

Massimiliano Bonacchi, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

Christine Botosan, Financial Accounting Standard Board, USA

Dhananjay Nanda, University of Miami, USA

BACKGROUND

The Covid-19 global pandemic has been extraordinarily disruptive with dramatic health-related effects in terms of the death toll, number of affected patients and worldwide negative economic consequences including significant job losses, corporate bankruptcies, and a global recession of about 3% of the GDP (IMF, 2020). Although prolonged halts to companies’ production facilities surely threaten their ability to survive, the severity of the loss companies face due to the disruption to their activities is not yet fully understood. There is little doubt that in the aftermath of the crisis, however, many companies and organizations will be the ‘patients’ to be treated. Whether the relief mechanisms implemented by governments worldwide and companies’ responses will be effective is currently unknown. The magnitude of the public health and economic consequences at stake and the related uncertainty shall call many researchers to action.

Visible signs of the downturn will feature in the financial statements of entities worldwide - private and public, large and small, for-profit and not-for-profit or governmental. The revenue shortfalls will severely depress net income and book value of equity and create pressure for short-term liquidity. In addition, current accounting standards may lead to subjective non-cash charges due to impairments of goodwill, inventory, and other assets and remeasurement of items measured at fair value, thus further decreasing net income and equity. Decreases in equity below a certain threshold will trigger debt-covenants violations, and in some countries, shall impose a bankruptcy filing. Investors’ ability to assess future cash flows and entity value and auditors’ ability to monitor reported amounts are challenged in this environment. The ongoing uncertainty is spurring different behaviors and responses by various economic actors. Therefore, we see the following questions as being particularly relevant and timely from an empirical standpoint:

1. What are the managerial (and workers-related) implications in terms of compensation, incentives, and (mis-)alignment with other corporate and social stakeholders?

2. How do organizations respond in terms of capital structure, investments and accounting policies (e.g., in the financial industry some banks are increasing provisioning of future losses whereas others are recording all-time high profit)?

3. How do policy makers like securities regulators (e.g., SEC), accounting standard setting bodies (e.g., IASB, FASB), national governments and supranational entities (e.g., European Banking Authority) enact, suspend and review policies and rules to safeguard the economic systems without generating too much moral hazard and ineffective public spending?

4. How is the balance of power among governments, regulators, standard setters, and the various stakeholders (preparers, auditors, and users) impacted and what are the effects of shifts in that balance on financial reporting and the decision-usefulness of the information?

5. What is the role of ESG strategies in responding to the COVID-19? How do corporations balance purpose and profits during the crisis? Which responsible best practices in these unprecedented times are value creating? How have stock markets reacted to the way companies deal with trade-off?

6. Has the disclosure of risk factors changed in the post-COVID-19? How do these changes manifest? And how do various stakeholders use them? Are firms more responsive to tail-risk post-crisis and is this reflected in disclosures?

Since Corporate Governance: An International Review (CGIR) is a leading journal devoted to the study of corporate governance mechanisms, defined broadly to include topics related to the exercise of power and control over corporate entities, the role and effectiveness of accountability mechanisms (e.g., financial information, auditing, analysts, managerial compensation, boards of directors), the devise of laws, regulations and interventions to safeguard multiple stakeholders, our intention is to help foster research and theory development through empirical analysis, relevant to managing the aftermath of the health crisis and natural events more broadly. This will ensure that we learn lessons from the crisis so that the responses of policy makers (e.g., standard setters, governments and central banks), organizations and managers, as well as other actors within the business arenas (e.g., auditors, equity investors, analysts, debtholders) will be more prompt in interpreting and reacting effectively when future crises occur.

CGIR will take on this challenge by providing a Special Issue as a venue for articles related to the responses of managers, organizations and policy-makers during and after the crisis. Consistent with the purpose and scope of the journal, this Special Issue will be open to multiple and diverse scholarly approaches to strengthen our knowledge on the economic consequences of crises and the most effective responses in terms of: (a) geographical areas, industry and institutional contexts; (b) levels of analysis, from micro (e.g., managerial) to mid-range (e.g., organizational) and meta-level (e.g., countries or regions), and (c) empirical approaches and settings (public and private, large and small, for-profit and not-for-profit). For example, we welcome research on how internal and external stakeholders react to the crisis: Do managerial compensation schemes change? Do investors revisit dividend policies and expected returns? How do auditors and analysts deal with uncertainty triggered by the lack of fully functional markets in assessing company performance and solvency? Do accounting standard setting bodies revisit (or not) the application or suspension of certain standards (e.g., impairment test or fair value accounting)? Did government suspend the application of accounting rules or delayed the contracting implications of ‘likely’ failed corporations?

In spite of a long history in terms of economic crises, its exogenous nature makes it different from the two most recent cases of financial turmoil (e.g., GFC and sovereign debt) and mimics the economic consequences of other natural disasters like earthquakes, floods or health crises, wars, refugee crises, political revolutions, terrorism, economic depressions and other unexpected events. Learning from the recent experience could be transferable to other settings. This Special Issue encourages empirical research and theorizing dealing with COVID-19 pandemic crisis that had harsh and unexpected human and economic consequences, thus calling for economic responses from individuals, organizations, and governments.

In sum, CGIR is issuing a call for papers that deal with how the responses of managers, organizations and policy makers have been shaped by, and/or affected, the role of financial information and information intermediaries in the aftermath of catastrophic events. Such challenge is in line with the editorial scope and mission of CGIR: its reputation for quality scholarship and openness to new ideas, methodological approaches and theoretical pluralism make it an ideal outlet for cutting edge research on these timely and important topics.

TYPES OF SUBMISSIONS SOLICITED

Given the nature of the topic area, this Special Issue is seeking contributions that deal with the responses of various actors to catastrophic events, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic. We are open to a wide range of studies in terms of the level of analysis: we welcome manuscripts that focus on individual, organizations, policy-makers or other institutions. The only requirement is that the activities studied have an explicit link with the governance role of accounting and financial information in crisis situations.

In terms of the type of study, we welcome empirical studies at any level of analysis. We particularly encourage cross-countries (or cross-regions) and comparative studies that can exploit the differential severity of the health crisis (e.g., longer or shorter halts to production and people mobility), as well as differential strength and timeliness of government responses. CGIR will prefer studies with a strong theoretical foundation. However, given the novelty of the topic and the urgency to learn from the current crisis, we will reward studies with clear (practical) implications of the research. For this reason, we particularly welcome pre-registered reports – following the guidelines of the Open Science Foundations (https://osf.io/) – that may entail an ex-post execution of the empirical research.

TIMELINE AND SUBMISSION PROCESS

The deadline for submissions of full papers is August 1, 2021. Late submissions will not be accepted. All submissions must be uploaded to the Manuscript Central/Scholar One website (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cgir) and indicate that the manuscript is intended for this Special Issue. The CGIR Author Guidelines must be followed. Submissions that do not adhere to the contributor guidelines will be returned to the authors. Papers will be subject to the CGIR standard double-blind reviewing process.

There will be a Paper Development Workshop at the 4th Accounting Summer Camp hosted online by the University of Padua on July 8-9, 2021. Authors are encouraged to submit either (1) an extended abstract (10 pages, references excluded) or (b) a full paper for consideration at this workshop. Submissions to the workshop can be made by e-mail (to: amedeo.pugliese@unipd.it) between February 1 and May 1, 2021. The most promising proposals will be selected for presentation at the workshop. Participation in the workshop is recommended but not required for submission to the Special Issue. Please note that acceptance to the workshop does not necessarily guarantee acceptance to the CGIR Special Issue.

The following criteria will be important in the evaluation of submitted proposals:

1. Theoretical relevance to corporate governance: A special interest will be placed towards articles tackling issues related to the role of accounting and financial information; the submitted manuscript deals with a topic that is likely to provide profound conceptual insights concerning the responses of managers, organizations and policy makers to crises or catastrophic events.

2. Contribution to practice: The study is likely to offer significant insights in how to deal with health or natural crises that are exogenous to the economic system.

3. Methodological rigor: The design and execution of the study are such as to give the reader a high level of confidence that the results are valid and generalizable. We very much welcome papers relying on open science foundations (e.g., pre-registration reports, open data, etc.). In the latter case, the authors should offer an explicit timeline of study completion (if the study is not yet completed) which they judge as feasible and realistic.

For questions about the content of this Special Issue, please contact Amedeo Pugliese (amedeo.pugliese@unipd.it).

征文

公司治理：国际评论

特刊

“鉴于 COVID-19 危机的公司治理机制：财务信息和监管、管理决策和政策干预如何影响经济复苏”

提交截止日期：2021 年 8 月 1 日

客座编辑

Amedeo Pugliese，西班牙庞培法布拉大学和意大利帕多瓦大学

Massimiliano Bonacchi，意大利博岑-博尔扎诺自由大学

Christine Botosan，美国财务会计标准委员会

Dhananjay Nanda，美国迈阿密大学

背景

Covid-19 全球大流行具有极大的破坏性，在死亡人数、受影响患者数量和全球负面经济后果（包括大量失业、企业破产和约 3% 的全球经济衰退）方面对健康产生了巨大影响。 GDP（国际货币基金组织，2020 年）。尽管公司生产设施的长期停工肯定会威胁到它们的生存能力，但公司因活动中断而面临的损失的严重程度尚不完全清楚。然而，毫无疑问，在危机之后，许多公司和组织将成为需要治疗的“病人”。世界各国政府实施的救济机制和企业的应对措施是否有效，目前尚不得而知。

经济衰退的明显迹象将出现在全球实体的财务报表中——私人和公共实体、大小、营利性和非营利性或政府实体。收入缺口将严重压低净利润和股权账面价值，对短期流动性造成压力。此外，现行会计准则可能会因商誉、存货等资产的减值和公允价值计量项目的重新计量而导致主观非现金支出，从而进一步减少净利润和权益。股本减少至低于某个阈值将触发违反债务契约，并且在某些国家/地区，应实施破产申请。在这种环境下，投资者评估未来现金流量和实体价值的能力以及审计师监控报告金额的能力受到挑战。持续的不确定性刺激了不同经济参与者的不同行为和反应。因此，从经验的角度来看，我们认为以下问题特别相关和及时：

1. 在薪酬、激励措施以及与其他公司和社会利益相关者的（错误）协调方面，对管理（和工人相关）有何影响？

2. 组织如何在资本结构、投资和会计政策方面做出反应（例如，在金融行业，一些银行正在增加未来损失的准备金，而其他银行则创下了历史最高的利润）？

3. 证券监管机构（如 SEC）、会计准则制定机构（如 IASB、FASB）、各国政府和超国家实体（如欧洲银行管理局）等政策制定者如何制定、暂停和审查政策和规则以保护经济系统不会产生太多的道德风险和无效的公共支出？

4. 政府、监管机构、标准制定者和各种利益相关者（编制者、审计师和使用者）之间的权力平衡如何受到影响，这种平衡的变化对财务报告和信息的决策有用性有何影响?

5. ESG 策略在应对 COVID-19 中的作用是什么？企业如何在危机期间平衡目标和利润？在这个前所未有的时代，哪些负责任的最佳实践正在创造价值？股票市场对公司处理权衡的方式有何反应？

6. 在 COVID-19 之后，风险因素的披露是否发生了变化？这些变化如何体现？各种利益相关者如何使用它们？公司是否对危机后的尾部风险更敏感，这是否反映在披露中？

自公司治理以来：国际评论（CGIR）) 是致力于研究公司治理机制的领先期刊，广义上包括与行使权力和控制公司实体相关的主题、问责机制的作用和有效性（例如，财务信息、审计、分析师、管理薪酬、董事会），制定法律、法规和干预措施以保护多个利益相关者，我们的目的是通过实证分析帮助促进研究和理论发展，更广泛地与管理健康危机和自然事件的后果相关。这将确保我们从危机中吸取教训，以便政策制定者（例如，标准制定者、政府和中央银行）、组织和管理者以及商业领域内的其他参与者（例如，审计师、

CGIR将通过提供特刊作为与危机期间和危机后管理人员、组织和政策制定者的反应相关的文章的场所来应对这一挑战。与期刊的宗旨和范围一致，本特刊将对多种不同的学术方法开放，以加强我们对危机经济后果和最有效应对措施的了解：(a) 地理区域、行业和机构上下文；(b) 分析水平，从微观（如管理）到中级（如组织）和元级（如国家或地区），以及 (c) 实证方法和环境（公共和私人、大型和小型、营利性和非营利性）。例如，我们欢迎关于内部和外部利益相关者如何应对危机的研究：管理层薪酬计划会改变吗？投资者是否会重新审视股息政策和预期回报？审计师和分析师如何应对因评估公司业绩和偿付能力缺乏功能齐全的市场而引发的不确定性？会计准则制定机构是否重新考虑（或不）某些标准的应用或暂停（例如，减值测试或公允价值会计）？政府是否暂停了会计规则的应用或延迟了“可能”倒闭公司的合同影响？减值测试或公允价值会计）？政府是否暂停了会计规则的应用或延迟了“可能”倒闭公司的合同影响？减值测试或公允价值会计）？政府是否暂停了会计规则的应用或延迟了“可能”倒闭公司的合同影响？减值测试或公允价值会计）？政府是否暂停了会计规则的应用或延迟了“可能”倒闭公司的合同影响？减值测试或公允价值会计）？政府是否暂停了会计规则的应用或延迟了“可能”倒闭公司的合同影响？

尽管在经济危机方面有着悠久的历史，但其外生性使其不同于最近的两次金融动荡（例如全球金融危机和主权债务），并模仿其他自然灾害（如地震、洪水或健康）的经济后果危机、战争、难民危机、政治革命、恐怖主义、经济萧条和其他突发事件。从最近的经验中学习可以转移到其他环境中。本特刊鼓励实证研究和理论化处理 COVID-19 大流行危机，这些危机对人类和经济造成了严重和意想不到的后果，因此呼吁个人、组织和政府做出经济反应。

总而言之，CGIR正在征集论文，讨论管理人员、组织和政策制定者的反应如何受到和/或影响金融信息和信息中介在灾难性事件后的作用。这种挑战符合 CGIR 的编辑范围和使命：它以高质量的学术和对新思想、方法论方法和理论多元化的开放性而著称，使其成为对这些及时且重要的主题进行前沿研究的理想渠道。

征求意见的类型

鉴于主题领域的性质，本特刊正在寻求有关各方对灾难性事件（尤其是 COVID-19 大流行）的反应的贡献。我们对分析水平方面的广泛研究持开放态度：我们欢迎关注个人、组织、政策制定者或其他机构的手稿。唯一的要求是所研究的活动与危机情况下会计和财务信息的治理作用有明确的联系。

在研究类型方面，我们欢迎任何分析水平的实证研究。我们特别鼓励跨国（或跨地区）和比较研究，这些研究可以利用健康危机的不同严重程度（例如，生产和人员流动的停工时间更长或更短），以及政府应对措施的不同强度和及时性。CGIR 将更喜欢具有强大理论基础的研究。然而，鉴于该主题的新颖性和从当前危机中吸取教训的紧迫性，我们将奖励具有明确（实际）意义的研究。出于这个原因，我们特别欢迎预先注册的报告——遵循开放科学基金会 (https://osf.io/) 的指导方针——可能需要事后执行实证研究。

时间表和提交过程

论文全文提交截止日期为 2021 年 8 月 1 日。逾期提交将不被接受。所有提交的内容都必须上传到 Manuscript Central/Scholar One 网站 (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cgir)，并注明该手稿是针对本期特刊。该CGIR作者必须遵循以下规则。不遵守贡献者指南的提交将退还给作者。论文将接受CGIR标准的双盲审查过程。

帕多瓦大学于 2021 年 7 月 8 日至 9 日在线举办的第四届会计夏令营将举办论文开发研讨会。鼓励作者提交 (1) 扩展摘要（10 页，不包括参考文献）或 (b ) 供本次研讨会考虑的完整论文。可在 2021 年 2 月 1 日至 5 月 1 日之间通过电子邮件（至：amedeo.pugliese@unipd.it）提交研讨会。最有希望的提案将被选中在研讨会上展示。建议参加研讨会，但不要求参加特刊。请注意，接受研讨会并不一定保证接受CGIR特刊。

以下标准对于评估提交的提案很重要：

1. 与公司治理的理论相关性：将特别关注解决与会计和财务信息作用相关的问题的文章；提交的手稿涉及的主题可能会提供有关管理人员、组织和政策制定者对危机或灾难性事件的反应的深刻概念见解。

2. 对实践的贡献：该研究可能会提供有关如何应对经济系统外生的健康或自然危机的重要见解。

3. 方法的严谨性：研究的设计和执行能够让读者高度相信结果的有效性和可推广性。我们非常欢迎依赖于开放科学基础的论文（例如，预注册报告、开放数据等）。在后一种情况下，作者应提供他们认为可行和现实的明确的研究完成时间表（如果研究尚未完成）。

有关本特刊内容的问题，请联系 Amedeo Pugliese (amedeo.pugliese@unipd.it)。