When traditional financial institutions faced difficulties in the task of assisting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) with capital allocations, crowdfunding can upsurge as an innovative and vibrant vehicle that can support and assist the activity of such MSME’s, by financing their activity and instrumenting the process of risk-sharing. Simultaneously with its enormous growth and popularity, crowdfunding is faced by several key challenges, one of biggest such challenges referring to the problem of information asymmetry that can exist between fundraisers and potential backers. Based on the signaling theory, a research taxonomy has been developed for a comparative analysis between China and the UK. This has been accomplished by retrieving secondary data from the following crowdfunding platforms: Dreamore (Chinese platform) and Crowdfunder (UK platform). The objective of the study is to investigate both the effect and the impact that signals (goal setting, project comments and updates) have upon mitigating the problem of information asymmetry, in order to make the project successful. We have thus deployed an Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression and validated the models through a robustness check. The findings reveal that signals actively mitigate the problem of information asymmetry in both countries, but this varies in the sense that higher goal setting has a more positive/impactful relationship with project success in the UK than it does in China. Project comments are more positively associated with project success in China as compared to the UK, whereas project updates are more negatively related to project success in China as compared to the UK. These findings demonstrate the importance that signals have upon successful crowdfunding activities/campaigns, highlighting the theoretical and practical influence and relevance for potential fundraisers in the two aforementioned economies.

PurposeThis research aims to examine the moderating role of CEO power on the relationship between retrenchment strategy and firm performance by framing the relationship under an agency theory, and power circulation theory.Design/methodology/approachThis study focuses on a sample of 319 non-financial public listed companies in Malaysia from the year 2011–2016 and estimates the model under two-step GMM panel regression to eliminate the endogeneity issue.FindingsThe results show that the retrenchment strategy increased firm performance. Meanwhile, greater CEO power changes that retrenchment effect into increased performance. This study also indicates the CEO power strengthens the relationship between firm performance and retrenchment. However, CEO power does not have any effect on the performance of low retrenchment, and the performance of big firm size.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings show that the higher CEO power cause higher firm performance and higher retrenchment. This research suggests that CEO power can make retrenchment strategy works and the decision made can affect the firm performance significantly.Originality/valueThis study examines the effect of CEO power on the performance of retrenchment strategy implementation by contesting agency theory, power circulation theory, and resource-based view theory within the emerging country context.

This study examines the relationship between religiosity and Islamic debt financing based on Malaysian non-financial listed firms from 2012 to 2018. We find that Muslim CEOs allocate more Islamic financing in their debt financing compared to non-Muslim CEOs, which support the upper echelons theory. However, we find that the sociological pressure from Muslim Stakeholders display no significant effect on Islamic financing. Interestingly, we further find that Islamic debt financing will incline no matter whether the Muslim population is high or low if the CEO was a Muslim. This implies that our findings support the upper echelon theory, but not the stakeholder orientation theory.

This research examines the effect of corporate reputation for firm risk in a developing country for a sample of 256 Indonesia firms for the period 2011-2015. Using two-step generalized method of moments approach, this research documents five important findings: (a) firm with higher reputation exhibits lower total risk (stock return volatility) and lower tail risk, yet, no significant effect on default risk; (b) Firms with high leverage use reputation effect for less total risk, tail risk, and default risk; (c) Firms with low leverage only enjoy the reputation effect on less total risk, but no reputation effect on tail risk and default risk; (d) Firms with high profitability utilize reputation to reduce the tail risk and default risk; and (f) firm with low profitability has less tail risk when their reputation is high. This evidence contributes to the literature by uncovering important and previously unidentified determinants of risk, namely, reputation. It offers an insight to stakeholders that reputation does matter.