The Influence Of Merchant Guild Culture On The Quality Of Accounting Information In Enterprises

Culture is implicitly promoting the development and innovation of the economic market from the macro level and influencing the behavior and decision making of enterprises from the micro level.At present,the distortion and falsification of accounting information of Chinese enterprises are frequent,and the quality of accounting information is generally low,which is not conducive to the healthy development of socialist market economy.In recent years,scholars have linked religious culture,clan culture and Confucian culture to business management activities,but there is less literature on the economic consequences of merchant guild culture.In long-term business practice,the merchant guild culture has gradually developed the "treating people with sincerity","receiving things with faith","righteousness for profit" and "benevolence for quality The spiritual connotation of "treating people with sincerity","receiving things with trust","righteousness for profit" and "benevolence for quality" makes managers want to send positive business signals to the outside world,establish a good image and attract more investment.At the same time,the "integrity" concept of the merchant guild culture can influence the business decision-making behavior of enterprises through implantation in the mindset of managers,thus improving the quality of accounting information of enterprises and realizing the continuity and spiritual enlightenment between ancient business and modern enterprises.In this paper,we use Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020 as a sample,summarize the origin of merchant guilds by reading references and calculate the minimum value of the distance between them and corporate offices as a measure of the degree of corporate influence by merchant guild culture,and investigate the influence of merchant guild culture on the modern business behavior of companies by means of empirical research based on the perspective of accounting information quality.It is found that the stronger the role of the merchant guild culture,the higher the quality of accounting information,and this result still holds after taking into account the endogeneity issue and conducting robustness tests.It is also found that the quality of corporate accounting information is improved mainly through the mechanism of increasing the level of social integrity.In addition,it is found that the level of internal control and the level of external marketization enhance the positive relationship between the merchant guild culture and the quality of accounting information,suggesting that there is a complementary relationship between the merchant guild culture as an informal institution and the formal institution in the scenario that affects the quality of corporate accounting information.The study further shows that the effect of the merchant guild culture on the quality of accounting information is more pronounced in non-state enterprises than in state-owned enterprises.Finally,in a test of economic consequences,it is found that the improvement of accounting information quality by the merchant guild culture is conducive to further increase in firm value.This paper contributes empirical evidence unique to merchant guild culture to the study of factors influencing business behavior,complements the empirical research on merchant guild culture,expands on the informal institutional influences on accounting information quality,and enriches the research on the relationship between formal and informal institutions.In practical terms,this paper helps Chinese firms to explore their own ’localized’ business experiences and to explore the unique paths of development of firms in emerging market countries.It also helps to explore the interaction between the "soft constraints" of culture and the "hard norms" of formal institutions in regulating corporate behavior,to promote the integration of formal and informal institutions,and to build a "hard and soft" institutional system.