Returnee executives and corporate fraud: Evidence from China

Abstract

Whether and when returnee executives influence corporate fraud remains an important unresolved theoretical and practical problem. Referencing upper echelons theory and the literature on managerial discretion, we propose that firms with more returnee executives are more likely to engage in corporate fraud. In addition, we propose that the relation between returnee executives and corporate fraud is subject to organizational indicators that reflect executives’ managerial discretion. Specifically, we propose that long-term performance surplus and corporate visibility diminish the positive impact of returnee executives on corporate fraud. We use privately controlled Chinese public firms, including 11,519 firm-year observations of 2215 privately controlled Chinese public firms from 2010 to 2021, as our research object and adopt a bivariate probit model to investigate our theoretical assumptions. Our test results are consistent with our predictions. This study enhances the existing understanding of the dark side of returnee executives from a corporate fraud perspective.