Confucian culture, artificial intelligence, and executive financial misconduct: Internal control and information disclosure as governance channels

Amid the rapid expansion of the digital economy and the modernization of corporate governance, the role of traditional culture in contemporary firms has drawn renewed attention. Using data from Chinese A-share nonfinancial listed companies from 2003 to 2023, this study constructs a Confucian culture text dictionary and identifies firms’ adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to examine how Confucian cultural values influence executive misconduct and how AI moderates this relationship. The results show that Confucian culture significantly reduces the likelihood, frequency, and financial penalties of executive misconduct, and that these governance effects are further strengthened when firms adopt AI technologies. Mechanism analyses indicate that internal control quality and information disclosure quality are key channels through which Confucian culture and AI jointly mitigate executive misconduct. Building on these findings, this study proposes an integrated governance framework that combines cultural governance with digital governance, offering practical implications for institutionalizing traditional cultural values, strengthening intelligent supervision, and advancing a modern corporate governance system with Chinese characteristics.