This paper studies the relationship between firm performance, proxied by Tobin's Q, and two distinct ownership types, managerial owned firms and outside owned firms. The sample consists of 2005 young firms from Europe and the US that incorporated since the dot-com-bubble 2001. Very similar to the pre-2001 period, young and highly funded firms are of popular concern. In particular their owners, founders and CEOs are topic of interest and serve as figurehead for their company, raising the question whether their firms perform better if they also own them or not and whether that differs with the institutional framework that the company is situated in. Thus the research question is the following: What is the effect of having management as majority shareholder(s) on the performance of the young firm in different environments? To find an answer, I used quantitative data from Orbis and analyzed it using time-series panel data, recent information using simple OLS as well as multiple analyses of variance. I find evidence of higher valuations of firms owned by managers, especially in countries with common law and stronger shareholder rights. I also find evidence of relatively lower valuations of firms owned by their managers when these are situated in code law countries or countries with stronger creditor rights. A surprising addition to the findings were extreme values of Tobin's Q that may indicate another bubble in the making, coincidentally closing the circle of this study.

Chinese firms are experiencing a rapid increase in technological diversification, which is referred to as maintaining their capabilities in multiple technologies. However, the research on the relationship between technological diversification and firm performance is inconclusive. This PhD thesis tries to re-investigate the technological diversification-firm performance relationship from three different perspectives using data on Chinese listed firms from 2003 to 2014. First, the thesis tries to overcome the shortcomings of previous technological diversification research by unpacking technological diversification into explorative and exploitative technological dimensions from the mechanical view and studying their roles in firm performance. The findings suggest that technological diversification that combines explorative and exploitative dimensions is positively related to firm performance. This relationship is conditional on intangible complementary assets and firm type (high or low-tech firms). Second, this thesis tries to investigate the technological diversification-firm performance relationship through an institutional view that has hardly been mentioned in the previous literature. Here it is argued that firms try to use technological diversification as a way to gain legitimacy. In order to do so, firms' technological diversification need to be similar to the industrial norms. The results reveal a positive relationship between firms' conformity in technological diversification and their performance. The results further delineate the boundary conditions that influence this relationship. While environmental dynamism strengthens the conformity-performance relationship, environmental munificence reduces it. Finally, this thesis tries to integrate both a mechanical view and an institutional view of technological diversification and find evidence to support the optimal distinctiveness view that firms should reach a balance between these views. The results reveal a curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) relationship between firms' conformity in technological diversification and their performance. I also test the boundary conditions of this relationship. While firm age strengthens the conformity-performance relationship, state ownership weakens it.

The empirical results indicate a strong positive link between three important elements: the duration as CEO, the market capitalization of the company and the non-executive ownership. Our findings also indicate an important but negative impact of two variables on the CEO compensation: the institutional and block holder shareholders. We also observed that there is no CEO pay-performance elasticity for the Total and base salary: the control variables do not have a significant impact on changes in CEO compensation.   These results are in line with the ones of Ozkan (2011, p. 260-285). Those elements would demonstrate the active monitoring of these investors on the top management and especially on their remuneration. Those are also consistent with the paper of Khan et al. (2002, p. 1078-1088), which demonstrates the negative impact on CEO compensation of institutional ownerships when they are concentrated.   Our study didn’t find a strong correlation between the other variables as the board size or sales for example and the level of remuneration of the CEO. That would mean that the number of member of the board doesn’t significantly impact the discussion about the CEO remuneration.

In this thesis I examine the impact of the educational background of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) on firm performance of listed firms in the Stockholm stock exchange. This area of research is important given that researchers in the area of behavioral finance and in management argue that CEO characteristics such as educational orientation, age and functional background influence the way business problems are perceived and the decision making process. The numerous and growing challenges which businesses face, particularly in the area of operations,cost-cutting and production efficiency makes the need to examine how CEO educational background could be beneficial for firm performance very relevant. Particular attention is on listed firms in the manufacturing, oil and gas, energy sector characterized by low instability (turbulence) and the IT industry characterized by rapid growth and high turbulence. Educational background information for 100 CEOs is examined between 2008-2010. The information gathered from the annual reports of these companies, shows that the educational path way for most CEOs in these industries has been an engineering degree. The regression analysis on CEO educational background and firm performance show no significant relationship. More specifically the regression analysis show no support for the assertion that firms controlled by CEOs with an educational background in engineering have a firm performance advantage or outperformed firms controlled by CEOs with other backgrounds such as law ,marketing and finance. In addition, the finding shows no significant relationship between CEO educational level (undergraduate or postgraduate) and firm performance. The analysis thus showed no support for the claim that firms controlled by CEO with a higher level of education (postgraduate degree) had a superior firm performance over firms controlled by a CEO who had an undergraduate degree.

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As a series of financial crisis and accounting scandals occur around the world, the government, many institutions and the public have put great emphasis on corporate governance. Most of the prior research focus on how the corporate governance monitoring system can enhance the firm value and reduce the financial crisis. This empirical analysis includes investment opportunity set (IOS) as an environmental factor and tests the interaction between IOS, firm performance and external corporate governance mechanisms (audit quality and institutional investor ownership) as well as internal corporate governance mechanisms (CEO duality and pledged shares ratio of directors and supervisors) in Taiwan. The sample consists of 999 Taiwan publicly listed companies both in electronics industry and non-electronics industries in 2003. This empirical study uses common factor analysis, Pearson¡¦s correlation analysis and regression analysis to test four hypotheses. The hypotheses are as follows: (1) the relationship between IOS and firm performance will be affected if the auditor is from the Big 4 auditing firm. (2) The relationship between IOS and firm performance will be changed due to the institutional investor ownership. (3) The CEO duality will influence the relationship between IOS and firm performance. (4) The pledged shares ratio of directors and supervisors has an influence on the relationship between IOS and firm performance. The results show that audit quality has no influence on the association of IOS and firm performance, but the institutional investor ownership has a negative and significant influence on that relationship. In non-electronics industries, CEO duality won¡¦t change the firm performance but a negative influence is reported in this study. Eventually, while many companies with financial distress have a higher pledged shares ratio than other normal companies, a positive influence is shown in this study when the investment opportunity set is considered.

The research aims to explore the relationships among entrepreneurial orientation, social capital and firm performance when Taiwanese SMEs are expanding their business territory in China. Apart from social capital, there would be more other moderating variables existing in the environment. However, after literature review and in-depth interviews with the SMEs owners/directors/executives, social capital has been regarded as the possible influential factor affecting the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance. In the second part of the research, comprehensive literature and studies relating to entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial orientation are investigated and summarized. Later, the literature of social capital and firm performance is summarized in order to develop the hypotheses to examine the relationships among entrepreneurial orientation, social capital and firm performance. This is an empirical research, assisting with in-depth interviews with Taiwanese SMEs owners/directors/executives to outline the findings more accurately. The statistical tools applied in the thesis include SPSS and AMOS. The findings of the research have come up with some practical implications and suggestion. The implications of the results might intrigue people who are interested in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on organizational success. Lastly, some suggestions are made accordingly for the further development.

This paper tests the relationship between corporate governance and corporate value and the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance. A ¡§Governance Index¡¨ is built based on three aspects of the company governance structure: 1. the performance of the broad of directors, 2. ownership structure 3. involvement of capital markets. This index is used as a proxy measure of the effectiveness of the governance mechanism. We propose the firms under good governance should outperform those under poor governance. This paper finds a striking relationship between Governance Index and firm performance. The results imply that the Governance Index built in this paper is successful in evaluating the effectiveness of the governance mechanism of firms in Taiwan.

There is growing evidence that a vast majority of CEO’s believe that sustainability-related issues are having or will soon have a material impact on their firms. Nearly all of the academic literature on the firm level impacts of corporate social performance (CSP) has focused on looking for a universally positive or negative effect of CSP on corporate financial performance (CFP). Recent literature in the CSP domain, however, has presented two questions that have been under-researched with respect to CSP by firms: 1) What are the processes and motivations that underlie the inclusion of CSP in firm strategic decisions? and 2) Why do some firms generate different market returns from their CSP? The present research consists of two studies that focus on developing an understanding of these two questions. The first study uses a Contingency Theory approach and proposes that several organizational, market, customer, environmental and competitive characteristics of a firm predict a firm’s level of CSP. Findings based on a longitudinal, multi-industry sample of 447 firms over the period from 2000 to 2007 show that firms that have a corporate branding strategy, serve consumer markets, and have a greater degree of globalization have higher levels of CSP. Finally, this study also finds that higher levels of CSP relative to a firm’s industry result in higher levels of firm intangible value (Tobin’s q). The second study examines the following: 1) Does CSP history moderate the relationship between CSP and CFP? and 2) Is there a CSR Black Hole with respect to a firm’s history of negative behaviors? That is, does past negative social performance of the firm negate potential benefits from current period changes in positive social performance? Using the Flow Signals framework proposed by Dekinder and Kohli (2008), this study finds that a (1) history of growth in negative CSP, (2) trend toward increasing negative CSP, or (3) more inconsistent history of positive or negative CSP (reversals) decrease the returns to positive social performance. This study also finds evidence of a CSR Black Hole, but show that firms may be able to exit this by consistently managing their social performance over time. / text

Corporate social responsibility is a widely discussed concept in today’s business, with different perceptions as well as explanations regarding the meaning and impact of the concept. Organizations are becoming more aware of the concept as well as their responsibilities to the society, which in turn results in organizations devoting more resources into CSR related activities. Nowadays, it is significant to establish a proper CSR performance while also having a solid financial foundation in order to reach a long-term sustainable success. The purpose of this study is to describe how CSR is connected to firm performance, in terms of market share and market growth. While a growing number of studies have been made regarding investigating CSR and its various dimensions, it is still unclear what the underlying factors that tie the relationship together are. This purpose was tested on a company in southern Sweden; this company Emballator Lagan Plast (ELP) produces plastic packaging solutions for a number of industries. Alongside the literature research, a case study with semi-structured interviews was conducted at ELP in order to collect data needed to answer the purpose and research questions. One of the essential findings of the study revealed from the literature, which was also proven in the case study, was that CSR is a fundamental element in an organization and it should be implemented throughout the entire organization to gain maximum effect. Moreover, the findings indicate that CSR has a positive impact on ELP’s performance. Even though the relationship is not direct, it still exists through mediating roles, and it has played an important role in the company’s growth and success. Keywords:Corporate social responsibility, firm performance, stakeholders.