Firms’ Rhetorical Nationalism: Theory, Measurement, and Evidence from a Computational Analysis of Chinese Public Firms
通过分析2000-2020年中国上市公司年报，用机器学习构建了企业修辞性民族主义的测量指标，发现国企、老牌、大型、盈利好、面向消费者、个人投资者多、海外销售低的企业民族主义水平更高，且修辞性民族主义与未来财务回报正相关。
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