Hostname: page-component-669899f699-qzcqf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-26T13:01:46.609Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Firms’ Rhetorical Nationalism: Theory, Measurement, and Evidence from a Computational Analysis of Chinese Public Firms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2024

Lori Qingyuan Yue Open the ORCID record for Lori Qingyuan Yue [Opens in a new window] ,
Jiexin Zheng  and
Kaixian Mao
Lori Qingyuan Yue
Affiliation:
Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Jiexin Zheng
Affiliation:
Department of Information Systems, Business Statistics, and Operations Management The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China
Kaixian Mao*
Affiliation:
School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
*
Corresponding author: Kaixian Mao (kxm@ruc.edu.cn)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, we develop a computational measure of firm-level rhetorical nationalism. We first review the literature and develop a four-dimensional theoretical framework of nationalism relevant to firms: national pride, anti-foreign, dominant agenda (national revival), and corporate role. We then use machine-learning-based text analysis of over 41,000 annual reports of Chinese public firms from 2000 to 2020 and identify a dictionary of words for each dimension. Using a weighted ratio of nationalism-related words, we describe the overall picture of Chinese public firms’ rhetorical nationalism and provide the first empirical evidence regarding rising rhetorical nationalism among Chinese firms. Firms’ demonstration of rhetorical nationalism is related to both strategic and socialization factors; firms that are state-owned enterprises, older, larger, more profitable, consumer-facing, with more individual investors, and lower sales from overseas demonstrate a higher level of nationalism. Firms that demonstrate more rhetorical nationalism also have a better future financial return. Our study provides a theoretical framework for the organizational study of nationalism and a new measure for firms’ rhetorical nationalism, and demonstrates that rising rhetorical nationalism among Chinese firms is more strongly driven by firms’ motivations to appeal to domestic investors and consumers than to obtain government subsidies. Our dataset is publicly available at: https://sites.google.com/view/firms-rhetorical-nationalism

摘要

摘要

本文建立了企业民族主义的理论框架和概念测量。我们首先回顾了相关文献，并建立了一个四维的企业民族主义理论框架：民族自豪感、排外、国家民族主义、和企业在实现国家民族主义目标中的使命和角色。我们使用基于机器学习的文本分析方法，对 2000 年至 2020 年中国上市公司的 41000 多份年报进行分析，并为每个维度确定了一个词库。利用相关词汇的加权比例，我们创建了中国上市公司的语言民族主义的测量，并首次提供了中国企业的语言民族主义上升的实证证据。企业在语言上表现出的民族主义与其战略因素和社会化因素有关；国有企业、历史较长、规模较大、盈利能力较强、面向消费者、个人投资者较多、海外销售额较少的企业表现出较高的民族主义水平。那些在语言上表现出更多民族主义的企业，其未来的财务回报率也更高。本文为企业层面的民族主义研究提供了一个理论框架，为企业的语言民族主义提供了一个新的衡量标准，并显示了中国企业中日益高涨的民族主义语言更多地受到企业吸引国内投资者和消费者的动机的驱动，而不是获得政府补贴的动机。我们的数据集公开于：https://sites.google.com/view/firms-rhetorical-nationalism

Keywords

Chinese public firmsmachine learningrhetorical nationalismword embedding model企业民族主义机器学习词语嵌入模型中国上市公司
Type
Article
Information
Management and Organization Review , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 2024 , pp. 161 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Association for Chinese Management Research

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, N. S. 1950. The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Bajoria, J. 2008. Council on foreign relations: Nationalism in China. BBC. [Cited 13 June 2022]. Available from URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49995985Google Scholar
Balabanis, G., Diamantopoulos, A., Mueller, R. D., & Melewar, T. C. 2001. The impact of nationalism, patriotism and internationalism on consumer ethnocentric tendencies. Journal of International Business Studies, 32(1): 157–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, M. J. 2016. Ideological donors, contribution limits, and the polarization of American legislatures. The Journal of Politics, 78(1): 296–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barwick, P. J., Li, S., Wallace, J., & Weiss, J. C. 2019. Commercial casualties: Political boycotts and international disputes. doi: 10.2139/SSRN.3417194CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhagwat, Y., Warren, N. L., Beck, J. T., & Watson, G. F. IV 2020. Corporate sociopolitical activism and firm value. Journal of Marketing, 84(5): 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanchard, B. 2008. Olympics-Torch protests stir strident Chinese nationalism. Reuters. [Cited 13 June 2022]. Available from URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSPEK278227Google Scholar
Bonaparte, Y., Kumar, A., & Page, J. K. 2017. Political climate, optimism, and investment decisions. Journal of Financial Markets, 34: 69–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonikowski, B. 2016. Nationalism in settled times. Annual Review of Sociology, 42(1): 427–449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonikowski, B., & DiMaggio, P. 2016. Varieties of American popular nationalism. American Sociological Review, 81(5): 949–980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, R. 2004. In the name of the nation: Reflections on nationalism and patriotism. Citizenship Studies, 8(2): 115–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buckley, P. J., Clegg, L. J., Cross, A. R., Liu, X., Voss, H., & Zheng, P. 2007. The determinants of Chinese outward foreign direct investment. Journal of International Business Studies, 38(4): 499–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burbano, V. C. 2016. Social responsibility messages and worker wage requirements: Field experimental evidence from online labor marketplaces. Organization Science, 27(4): 1010–1028.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, C. 1997. Nationalism. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Casadesus-Masanell, R., Crooke, M., Reinhardt, F., & Vasishth, V. 2009. Households’ willingness to pay for ‘green’ goods: Evidence from Patagonia's introduction of organic cotton sportswear. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 18(1): 203–233.Google Scholar
Caserio, C., Panaro, D., & Trucco, S. 2019. Management discussion and analysis: A tone analysis on US financial listed companies. Management Decision, 58: 510–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Certo, S. T. 2003. Influencing initial public offering investors with prestige: Signaling with board structures. Academy of Management Review, 28(3): 432–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chavis, L., & Leslie, P. 2009. Consumer boycotts: The impact of the Iraq war on French wine sales in the US. QME, 7(1): 37–67.Google Scholar
Chen, G., Lu, P., Lin, Z., & Song, N. 2019. Introducing Chinese private enterprise survey: Points and prospects. Nankai Business Review International, 10(4): 501–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
China Securities Regulatory Commission. 1999. Standards No. 2 for the contents and formats of information disclosure of securities investment funds—contents and formats of annual reports (1999 amendment).Google Scholar
Click, R. W., & Weiner, R. J. 2010. Resource nationalism meets the market: Political risk and the value of petroleum reserves. Journal of International Business Studies, 41(5): 783–803.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connelly, B. L., Certo, S. T., Ireland, R. D., & Reutzel, C. R. 2011. Signaling theory: A review and assessment. Journal of Management, 37(1): 39–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deerwester, S., Dumais, S. T., Furnas, G. W., Landauer, T. K., & Harshman, R. 1990. Indexing by latent semantic analysis. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 41(6): 391–407.3.0.CO;2-9>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deng, P. 2009. Why do Chinese firms tend to acquire strategic assets in international expansion? Journal of World Business, 44(1): 74–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickson, B. J. 2007. Integrating wealth and power in China: The Communist Party's embrace of the private sector. The China Quarterly, 192: 827–854.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doshi, R. 2021. The Chinese Communist party has always been nationalist. Foreign Policy. [Cited 9 December 2022]. Available from URL: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/01/chinese-communist-party-nationalist-centennial/Google Scholar
Dreyer, M. 2019. BBC: China NBA: How one tweet derailed the NBA's China game plan. [Cited 13 June 2022]. Available from URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49995985Google Scholar
Druckman, D. 1994. Nationalism, patriotism, and group loyalty: A social psychological perspective. Mershon International Studies Review, 38: 43–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ertug, G., Cuypers, I. R. P., Dow, D., & Edman, J. 2023. The effect of nationalism on governance choices in cross-border collaborations. Journal of Management. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920632311727CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisman, R., Hamao, Y., & Wang, Y. 2014. Nationalism and economic exchange: Evidence from shocks to Sino-Japanese relations. Review of Financial Studies, 27: 2626–2660.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gellner, E. 1983. Nations and nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gries, P. H. 2004. China's new nationalism: Pride, politics, and diplomacy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Han, R. 2018. Contesting cyberspace in China: Online expression and authoritarian resilience. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Han, R. 2019. Patriotism without state blessing: Chinese cyber nationalists in a predicament. In Wright, T. (Ed.), Handbook of protest and resistance in China: 346–360. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.Google Scholar
Harris, Z. S. 1954. Distributional structure. Word, 10(2–3): 146–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hong, H., & Kostovetsky, L. 2012. Red and blue investing: Values and finance. Journal of Financial Economics, 103(1): 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, D., & Chen, C. 2016. Revolving out of the party-state: The Xiahai entrepreneurs and circumscribing government power in China. Journal of Contemporary China, 25(97): 41–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, Y., & Ding, Y. 2021. Domestic textile shares surge after Xinjiang cotton boycott. Shine. [Cited 25 November 2022]. Available from URL: https://www.shine.cn/biz/economy/2103256508/Google Scholar
Johnston, A. I. 2016. Is Chinese nationalism rising? Evidence from Beijing. International Security, 41(3): 7–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, D. A., Willness, C. R., & Madey, S. 2014. Why are job seekers attracted by corporate social performance? Experimental and field tests of three signal-based mechanisms. Academy of Management Journal, 57(2): 383–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerr, D. 2007. Has China abandoned self-reliance? Review of International Political Economy, 14(1): 77–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kozlowski, A. C., Taddy, M., & Evans, J. A. 2019. The geometry of culture: Analyzing the meanings of class through word embeddings. American Sociological Review, 84(5): 905–949.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavelle, K. C. 2008. The business of governments: Nationalism in the context of sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises. Journal of International Affairs, 62(1): 131–147.Google Scholar
Lawson, M. A., Martin, A. E., Huda, I., & Matz, S. C. 2022. Hiring women into senior leadership positions is associated with a reduction in gender stereotypes in organizational language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(9): e2026443119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, F. 2008. Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence. Journal of Accounting and Economics, 45(2–3): 221–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, F. 2010. The information content of forward-looking statements in corporate filings – A naïve Bayesian machine learning approach. Journal of Accounting Research, 48(5): 1049–1102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, K., Mai, F., Shen, R., & Yan, X. 2021. Measuring corporate culture using machine learning. The Review of Financial Studies, 34(7): 3265–3315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, W., Rhee, G., & Wang, S. S. 2017. Differences in herding: Individual vs. institutional investors. Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 45: 174–185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Y., Fu, X., & Fu, X. 2021. Varieties in state capitalism and corporate innovation: Evidence from an emerging economy. Journal of Corporate Finance, 67: 101919.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loughran, T., & McDonald, B. 2011. When is a liability not a liability? Textual analysis, dictionaries, and 10-Ks. The Journal of Finance, 66(1): 35–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loughran, T., & McDonald, B. 2016. Textual analysis in accounting and finance: A survey. Journal of Accounting Research, 54(4): 1187–1230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lubinski, C., & Wadhwani, R. D. 2020. Geopolitical jockeying: Economic nationalism and multinational strategy in historical perspective. Strategic Management Journal, 41(3): 400–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marquis, C., & Qiao, K. 2020. Waking from Mao's dream: Communist ideological imprinting and the internationalization of entrepreneurial ventures in China. Administrative Science Quarterly, 65(3): 795–830.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mikolov, T., Yih, W. T., & Zweig, G. 2013. Linguistic regularities in continuous space word representations. Proceedings of the 2013 conference of the North American chapter of the association for computational linguistics: Human language technologies: 746–751.Google Scholar
Mikolov, T., Sutskever, I., Chen, K., Corrado, G. S., & Dean, J. 2013. Distributed representations of words and phrases and their compositionality. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems: 3111–3119.Google Scholar
Mohr, A., & Schumacher, C. 2019. The contingent effect of patriotic rhetoric on firm performance. Strategy Science, 4(2): 94–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mounk, Y. 2018. The people vs. democracy: Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Musacchio, A., Lazzarini, S. G., & Aguilera, R. V. 2015. New varieties of state capitalism: Strategic and governance implications. Academy of Management Perspectives, 29(1): 115–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muslu, V., Radhakrishnan, S., Subramanyam, K. R., & Lim, D. 2015. Forward-looking MD&A disclosures and the information environment. Management Science, 61(5): 931–948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NBC News. 2008. Torch protests stir Chinese nationalism. [Cited 13 June 2022]. Available from URL: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna24222938Google Scholar
Neo, R., & Xiang, C. 2022. State rhetoric, nationalism and public opinion in China. International Affairs, 98(4): 1327–1346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ng, E. 2021. Anta, Li Ning shares surge as Chinese consumers back domestic brands in Xinjiang cotton row. South China Morning Post. [Cited 25 November 2022]. Available from URL: https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/3127107/anta-li-ning-shares-surge-chinese-consumers-back-domestic-brandsGoogle Scholar
Rohde, D. L. T., Gonnerman, L. M., & Plaut, D. C. 2006. An improved model of semantic similarity based on lexical co-occurrence. Communications of the ACM, 8(627–633): 116.Google Scholar
Schneider, F. 2018. China's digital nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle-White, J. 2001. The psychology of nationalism. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, A. D. 2009. Ethno-symbolism and Nationalism: A cultural approach. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, L. G., & Lynch, S. M. 2013. The pursuit of happiness in China: Individualism, collectivism, and subjective well-being during China's economic and social transformation. Social Indicators Research, 114(2): 441–451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stinchcombe, A. L. 1965. Social structure and organizations. In March, J. G. (Ed.), Handbook of organizations: 142–193. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally & Company.Google Scholar
Subin, S. 2021. The new U.S. plan to rival China and end cornering of market in rare earth metals. CNBC. [Cited 13 June 2022]. Available from URL: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/17/the-new-us-plan-to-rival-chinas-dominance-in-rare-earth-metals.htmlGoogle Scholar
Sugathadasa, K., Ayesha, B., de Silva, N., Perera, A. S., Jayawardana, V., Lakmal, D., & Perera, M. 2017. Synergistic union of word2vec and lexicon for domain specific semantic similarity. 2017 IEEE international conference on industrial and information systems (ICIIS): 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tabuchi, H. 2010. Chinese Honda strike a wake-up call for Japan. NY Times. [Cited 13 June 2022]. Available from URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/business/global/02honda.htmlGoogle Scholar
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. 2004. The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In J. T. Jost & J. Sidanius (Eds.), Political psychology: Key readings: 276–293. New York: Psychology Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Takeda, Y. 2021. Nationalism and corporate strategy: From Yamaha Pianos to motorcycles, 1945–1960. In Work, Organizations, and Markets Workshop presentation by Yusaku Takeda, HBS Management, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Theil, C. K., Štajner, S., & Stuckenschmidt, H. 2020. Explaining financial uncertainty through specialized word embeddings. ACM Transactions on Data Science, 1(1): 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tian, L., Tse, C. H., Xiang, X., Li, Y., & Pan, Y. 2021. Social movements and international business activities of firms. Journal of International Business Studies, 52: 1200–1214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsai, M. F., & Wang, C. J. 2014. Financial keyword expansion via continuous word vector representations. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing (EMNLP): 1453–1458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ullman, J. B., & Bentler, P. M. 2012. Structural equation modeling. In Weiner, I. V. (Ed.), Handbook of psychology, 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Unirule Institute of Economics. 2011. The nature, performance, and reform of the state-owned enterprises. [Cited 9 December 2022]. Available from URL: http://www.unirule.org.cn/xiazai/2011/20110412.pdfGoogle Scholar
Verma, R., & Verma, P. 2008. Are survey forecasts of individual and institutional investor sentiments rational? International Review of Financial Analysis, 17(5): 1139–1155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waldmeir, P. 2012. Step away from the metric, minister: China to ban foreign cars for official use. Financial Times. [Cited 13 June 2022]. Available from URL: https://www.ft.com/content/7153a316-6f22-3391-8b03-baac2101a3eeGoogle Scholar
Walt, S. 2019. You can't defeat nationalism, so stop trying. Foreign Policy. [Cited 13 June 2022]. Available from URL: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/04/you-cant-defeat-nationalism-so-stop-trying/Google Scholar
Wang, D., Du, F., & Marquis, C. 2019. Defending Mao's dream: How politicians’ ideological imprinting affects firms’ political appointment in China. Academy of Management Journal, 62(4): 1111–1136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, H., Yuan, H., Li, X., & Li, H. 2019. The impact of psychological identification with home-name stocks on investor behavior: An empirical and experimental investigation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47(6): 1109–1130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Z. 2014. The Chinese dream: Concept and context. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 19(1): 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, J. C. 2014. Powerful patriots: Nationalist protest in China's foreign relations. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, J. C. 2016. Putting concepts into practice: A call for measuring and explaining variation in Chinese nationalism. Nations and Nationalism, 22(3): 441–446.Google Scholar
Weiss, J. C. 2019. How hawkish is the Chinese public? Another look at ‘rising nationalism’ and Chinese foreign policy. Journal of Contemporary China, 28(119): 679–695.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhao, S. 2004. A nation-state by construction: Dynamics of modern Chinese nationalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhao, S. 2013. Foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism revisited: The strident turn. Journal of Contemporary China, 22(82): 535–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar