The 20th Session of the Business School’s Excellent Academic Forum Lecture Series in 2024 Is Successfully Held

On the afternoon of October 15, 2024, the Business School held the 20th Session of the Business School’s Excellent Academic Forum Lecture Series in 2024 at the Conference Room 615 of the Main Teaching Building on the Xueyuan South Road Campus of the Central University of Finance and Economics. Professor Li Donghui from the School of Economics of Shenzhen University was invited as the guest speaker of this lecture. More than 20 people from the Business School, including teachers and postgraduate students, attended this event.

This meeting was chaired by Dou Chao, an associate professor from the Business School. Before the official start of this lecture, Professor Dou Chao introduced Professor Li Donghui’s resume in detail. Professor Li Donghui received his Ph.D in finance from the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 2001 and is currently a professor of accounting and finance at the School of Economics, Shenzhen University. His research focuses on corporate finance and capital markets. He has published papers in top accounting and financial journals such as Journal of Finance, Journal of International Business Studies and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. He also serves as a reviewer for many journals, including Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Risk and Insurance, Financial Management, and Accounting and Finance. Besides, he serves as a guest editor for the following academic journals, such as Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, British Accounting Review, and Accounting and Finance. Furthermore, he has chaired the Australian National Research Fund and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (twice). He is a highly cited scholar by global policy institutes and think tanks (e.g. World Bank 7 times; IMF 3 times; OECD 2 times; Deutsche Bundesbank 1 time). He was nominated by Elsevier, Scopus as a “Highly Cited Chinese Scholar” for 2021 and 2023. His research policy recommendations have been accepted by the Chinese government (5 times).

The topic of his lecture is “ESG Performance and Top Executive Promotion”. Based on the annual observation samples of 33,242 companies of 1,456 listed state-owned enterprises in China from 2010 to 2023, he manually tracked the subsequent employment records of senior executives (chairmans and CEOs) and found that their past ESG performance was conducive to their future promotion (for example, political promotion, or working in a larger company, or having a higher position or higher salary). There are also records showing that, for politically promoted executives, both financial and ESG performance sensitivity will reduce their salaries, and better financial performance of state-owned enterprises can strengthen the positive impact of ESG performance on executive promotion. In addition, he conducted three tests of moderating effects and found that the external attention of financial analysts could weaken this impact, except for political promotions, while corrupt governance could also weaken this impact, in particular political promotions. Meanwhile, provincial environmental governance plays a positive regulatory role. In general, the research findings indicate that the ESG performance of state-owned enterprises enhances the potential of executives in the labor market.

After the sharing, with regard to the topic of Mr. Li’s lecture, the attending teachers and students actively participated in the discussion about research directions and publication of high-level papers and so on, further deepening their academic exchanges.

The “Excellent Academic Forum” is an academic exchange platform established by the Business School to fulfill the mission of “contributing new management knowledge”, which focuses on cutting-edge theoretical issues and organizational development dilemmas in the discipline of business administration and the Chinese enterprise management practice, and brings together frontier ideas and innovative ideas in China and abroad, so as to explore Chinese solutions for China's social and economic development.