大客户地理邻近性能够抑制公司违规吗?

Can the Geographical Proximity of Large Customers Inhibit Corporate Fraud?

公司违规严重损害投资者利益,因此探索公司违规的抑制手段一直以来都是实务届和学术界共同关注的热点问题。本文使用2009-2015年我国A股非金融类上市公司为样本,手工收集大客户与公司间地理距离数据,构建大客户地理邻近性指标,探讨大客户地理邻近性与公司违规之间的关系。研究结果表明,大客户与公司间地理距离越近,公司的违规行为倾向越小,严重程度越低,即大客户地理邻近性抑制了公司违规。进一步分析发现,大客户地理邻近性对公司违规的抑制作用在公司治理水平较低以及大客户治理需求较强时更为明显,从而支持大客户地理邻近性的治理效应假说。此外,本文还发现大客户地理邻近性对公司的经营活动违规与信息披露违规均能起到抑制作用。本文证实大客户能够发挥积极的公司治理效应,同时也从供应链视角丰富了公司违规影响因素的相关文献。

Corporate fraud seriously infringe the interests of investors. Therefore, exploring the means of inhibiting corporate fraud has been a hot issue in practice and academia circle. Using Chinese A-share non-financial listed companies from 2009 to 2015 as the sample, this paper manually collects geographic distance data between large customers and companies and constructs geographical proximity index of large customers, then explores the relationship between geographic proximity of large customers and corporate fraud. The results show that the closer the geographical distance between large customers and companies, the lower the tendency and severity of fraud, that is, the geographical proximity of large customers can effectively inhibit the likelihood of frauds and fraud severity. Further analysis finds that the inhibiting effect of geographical proximity of large customers on corporate fraud is more obvious in companies with poor corporate governance or in the large customers with strong governance needs, which supports the governance effect hypothesis of geographical proximity of large customers. In addition, this paper finds that geographical proximity of large customers can inhibit the business activities fraud as well as information disclosure fraud. This study proves that large customers can play a positive governance effect and enrich the relevant research on the influencing factors of corporate fraud from the perspective of supply chain.