A presente dissertação parte de uma análise dos principais corpos regulatórios nacionais e internacionais da governança corporativa para buscar os traços essenciais que caracterizam tal sistema. Uma vez identificados os traços essenciais a partir dos elementos regulatórios, passa o texto a analisar os elementos caracterizadores da governança corporativa por meio das principais disposições doutrinárias sobre o tema. Após estabelecido um conceito funcional de governança corporativa, busca-se compreender as bases econômicas que originaram e auxiliaram no desenvolvimento do sistema da governança corporativa. A partir deste ponto são levantadas as principais Indagações acerca do funcionamento do mercado em um ambiente de informações assimétricas, ressaltando-se o impacto advindo dos agency costs. Finalmente, após levantados os problemas relacionados à assimetria de informação, essencialmente focados no agency problem, se propõe a dissertação a vincular o desenvolvimento do sistema da governança corporativa à mitigação dos problemas de assimetria de informação. / The present work starts from an analysis of the main national and international regulatory provisions in connection to corporate governance searching for the essential traces that characterize such system. Once the essential traces are identified by means of the regulatory elements, the dissertation moves on to analyze the characterizing elements of corporate governance through the main academic considerations on the subject. After a concept of corporate governance is reached, the intent of the works shifts to comprehending the economic basis that have originated and further developed the corporate governance system. From this point forward, the dissertation addresses the main questions on the working of markets under asymmetric information, mainly taking into consideration the impacts arising from the agency costs. Finally, after the problems related to asymmetric information are addressed, basically related to agency problems, the work deals with the objective of bonding the development of the corporate governance system with the reduction of the problems arising from asymmetric information.

Deux types de motivations ont été identifié liées au comportement de surinvestissement : le conflit d’agence (Jensen, 1986) et la surconfiance (Heaton, 2002). Si la littérature sur le lien entre surconfiance et surinvestissement examine une de ces motivations, au sujet de surinvestissement liées au problème d’agence, la littérature existante se concentre sur les caractéristiques financières des entreprises et mécanismes de contrôle pour expliquer le phénomène. Cependant, ces facteurs n’influencent l’acte de surinvestir qu’indirectement, via l’opportunité de surinvestir. En nous appuyant sur la littérature, nous pouvons établir que la culture influence l’opportunité de surinvestir selon l’environnement institutionnel dans lequel s’inscrit l’entreprise et certaines techniques utilisées pour atténuer le surinvestissement au niveau de l’entreprise. Nous avançons que la culture exerce une influence plus directe sur le surinvestissement, en affectant les décisions des gestionnaires de passer de l’opportunité à l’acte de surinvestir. Pour empiriquement vérifier notre proposition nous avons construit un échantillon de 1 550 sociétés surinvestisseur potentielles, qui sont cotées et ne sont pas engagé dans le secteur financier, de 36 pays pour la période comprise entre 2001 et 2011. Nous trouvons qu’un haut niveau de Masculinité et l’Évitement-Incertitude conduisent à un surinvestissement exacerbé. Nous considérons que nos résultats accroissent notre compréhension des facteurs comportementales de surinvestissement, et soutiennent dans une certaine mesure la vue que la théorie de l’agence n’est pas entièrement transférable entre les cultures. / Two behavioral motivations have been identified for overinvestment: agency conflict (Jensen, 1986) and overconfidence (Heaton, 2002). While the literature on overconfidence and overinvestment studies one of these motivations, with regards to agency related overinvestment, extant literature tends to focus on financial characteristics and control mechanisms to explain the phenomenon. However, such factors influence the act of overinvestment only indirectly through affecting the opportunity to overinvest. Based on literature we can establish that culture influences the opportunity to overinvest through the institutional environment in which the company operates, and the cultural influence on some of the techniques used to mitigate overinvestment at the company level. We posit that culture exerts a more direct influence on overinvestment in affecting management’s decisions to move from the opportunity to the act of overinvestment in capital expenditures. To empirically verify our assertion we construct a sample of 1,550 quoted, non-financial, potential overinvestor firms from 36 countries for the period between 2001 and 2011. We find that higher masculinity and uncertainty avoidance in a culture leads to more overinvestment. We believe that our findings, besides advancing understanding of the behavioral drivers of overinvestment, lend support to those who question the cross-cultural transferability of agency theory.

Magister Commercii - MCom / This literature study aims to identify international best practice concerning the role of the board and more particularly that of the independent director in ensuring good corporate governance. The study is based on sources which include a large contingent of up to date sources on the subject ranging from newspaper articles, journal articles, various corporate governance codes, company reports and reports on governance such as Cadbury and Higgs. / South Africa

Real earnings management has been a subject of increasing debate ever since the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley act in the united states. As research has pointed towards real earnings management increasing this has sparked discussions on whether real earnings management is damaging to companies, or if it is benefiting them, or if it lies somewhere in between. Forthis paper we wanted to examine how the financial incentives of a CEO would affect the usage of real earnings management. Are CEO’s being poorly motivated, and as a result harming their companies? To guide the paper,we decide to formulate our research question thusly: How do different forms of CEO compensation affect real earnings management? In this paper we attempt to find correlations between indicators of realearnings management and threedifferent forms of CEO compensation. For our indicators we follow to a paper by Roychowdhury, titled “Earnings Management Through Real Activities Manipulation”and calculate abnormal cash flow from operations, and abnormal production. These indicate usageof overproduction, reduction of discretionary expenses, and moving sales across periods (Roychowdhury, 2006). For forms of CEO compensation,we measure them as a ratio of total compensation. We track salary, bonuses, and stock ownership. In our results we can see that all three of these are significantly correlated to both of our real earnings management indicators. Bonuses have a positive correlation to abnormal production, and a negative correlation to abnormal cash flow from operations. Salary is positively correlated to both our indicators, and ownership is negatively correlated to both our indicators. Our final conclusion is that yes, the makeup of a CEO’s compensation has a significant effect on the usage of real earnings management within the company.

Magister Legum - LLM / Timely, adequate and affordable access to finance is pivotal to bolstering the participation of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in both domestic and international trade. Regrettably, despite their immense contributions to the economy, most SMEs in Nigeria and across Africa find it extremely challenging to access finance from banks and the stock market. As a result, they cannot fund their working capital and trade financing needs conveniently, and this undermines their growth and capacity to contribute even more to the economy. This situation has made it imperative to continue exploring alternative sources of finance that may be more accessible and align better with the peculiarities of SMEs.

Executive compensation and its potential importance in aligning shareholder and management interests has been an extensively researched area within corporate finance. We study executive compensation while addressing several unresolved issues in the literature. In essay one, we examine CEO compensation following spin-offs. We find that CEOs are rewarded for undertaking a spin-off. Change in compensation for CEOs of spin-off firms following spin-offs is significantly higher than that for matching firms. We also find that the increase in compensation following spin-off is negatively associated with the change in firm size following the spin-off. Unlike mergers and acquisitions through which increases in executive compensation seem to be more related to size than performance, we show that CEO compensation increases following spin-offs even though spin-offs reduce firm size. In the second essay, we study changes in CEO salaries and their relation to firm performance. We document that changes in CEO salaries, which are a more permanent form of compensation change, are related to long term measures of performance. We find that CEO salaries change much more in relation to long term stock returns than short term stock returns. We also study the asymmetry in the relation between salary changes and firm performance. We find that while short term negative returns are related to changes in CEO salaries; only long term positive returns are significantly associated with CEO salary changes. This asymmetric relation is also present between total CEO compensation changes and stock returns. In essay three, we examine managerial decision horizons for target and acquirer firms in mergers and acquisitions. We find that acquirer CEOs have longer decision horizons than target firm CEOs in stock financed mergers. Acquirer CEOs in cash financed mergers and acquisitions also have longer decision horizons than target CEOs. Acquirer CEOs in both stock and cash financed mergers have significantly higher proportions of equity based compensation and significantly lower proportions of cash based compensation than target CEOs. In logistic regressions, measures of decision horizons for target and acquirer CEOs are not significantly related to the odds of stock financing in mergers and acquisitions. Our results do not offer strong support to the implications from the Shleifer and Vishny theory on the rationale for stock financed acquisitions.

Family firms are replete with problems concerning family and business issues but they remain the most dominant form of business worldwide. Decisions about strategy, structure, and goals of the firm play an integral part in the distinction of family firms from nonamily firms (Chrisman, Chua & Sharma, 2005) and these decisions are further complicated in the family firm by the interaction of the family and business systems (Stafford, Duncan, Danes & Winter, 1999). Sharma (2000) and Chrisman and colleagues (2005) call for research of this interaction through the utilization of stakeholder theory because family firms involve a specific array of stakeholders with different stakes and different levels of salience. This dissertation further investigates the interaction of the family and the business in a new and interesting way. This will be the first attempt to investigate the way stakeholders and their salience affects the goals and performance of family firms. The dissertation developed below focuses on the differences that exist among the salience of stakeholders in the family firm. I first develop theory-based hypotheses on a variety of relationships within the family and family firm that will contribute to a better understanding of the behavior of family firms. Second, I describe the research methodology and sample design to be utilized to test the developed hypotheses. I expect my results to not only empirically validate my research questions but to also provide practical and useful information for future research in this area. The aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge by empirically testing a framework for stakeholder salience in the family firm as well as assessing how the salience of particular groups affect the performance of family firms.

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Studiens syfte: Denna studie har som syfte att undersöka hur svenska venture capital aktörer minimerar asymmetrisk information i samarbetsprocessen med entreprenören. Metod: Studien är av fallstudiedesign med kvalitativ ansats där semistrukturerade intervjuer samt enkät med slutna frågor har använts för att samla in data. Empiri: Det empiriska materialet visar hur tre svenska venture capital aktörer noggrant och effektivt väljer investeringsobjekt och sedan arbetar aktivt för att dessa bolag ska bli så bra som möjligt. Slutsats: Studien visar att svenska venture capital aktörer använder sig av en kombination av olika verktyg och att bygga förtroende mellan de olika parterna för att minimera risken med asymmetrisk information. / Purpose: The aim of this study is to examine how the Swedish venture capital operators minimize the asymmetric information that may occur during an investment process. Method: This study has a case study design using a qualitative approach in which semi- structured interviews and a questionnaire with closed-end questions were used to collect data. Research: The empirical data shows how Swedish Venture Capital operators accurately and efficiently selects investment targets and then actively work for the companies they invest in. Conclusion: The main result of this investigation is that Swedish venture capital operators use a combination of different tools and trust to minimize the risk of asymmetric information.

Bakgrund: Flera organisationer runt om i Sverige använder sig idag av en prestationsbaserad lön för att motivera sina anställda att prestera bättre. I dagens samhälle har en rättvis lön blivit ett allt mer relevant område då priserna på livsmedel, drivmedel, el samt räntor har stigit markant. Inom Human Resources är det viktigt att veta hur de anställda motiveras för att de ska prestera i arbetet. Tidigare forskare har konstaterat att det finns en påverkan på individers motivation samt prestation när det kommer till prestationsbaserad lön. Det finns däremot en avsaknad av forskning som belyser hur motivationen och prestationen påverkas hos individer i en organisation som använder sig av ett löneupplägg med dels fast lön samt dels prestationsbaserad lön. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att förklara hur prestationsbaserad lön samt fast lön kan påverka motivationen hos individer i en organisation som använder sig av båda löneuppläggen samt huruvida detta kan bidra till klyftor inom en organisation i Sverige. Metod: Studien har ett konstruktionistiskt och objektivt förhållningssätt samt en deduktiv forskningsansats. Forskningen har sin grund i två centrala teorier som är SDT samt Agency theory. Studien har vidare en kvantitativ forskningsdesign som baseras på en fallstudie. Insamlingen av empirin har samlats in med hjälp av en kvantitativ enkät, där vi har samlat svar från 72 respondenter. Svaren från enkäten analyseras sedan med tre olika analysmetoder i statistikverktyget SPSS. Slutsats: Studiens resultat förklarar att i en organisation som använder sig av dels en prestationsbaserad lön och dels en fast lön kan detta bidra till att de anställda med fast lön upplever en orättvisa kring lön samt bonusar inom organisationen. Detta i sin tur leder till minskad inre motivation hos dessa anställda. Resultatet förklarar även att den yttre motivationen hos dem med prestationsbaserad lön är högre. Det finns dock ingen tydlig indikation på att detta bidrar till klyftor inom organisationen. / Background: Several organizations around Sweden today use a performance-based salary to motivate their employees to perform better. In today's society, a fair wage has become an increasingly relevant area as the prices of food, fuel, electricity and interest rates have risen significantly. Within Human Resources, it is important to know how employees are motivated to perform at work. Previous researchers have established that there is an impact on individuals' motivation and performance when it comes to performance-based pay. There is, on the other hand, a lack of research that sheds light on how motivation and performance are affected in individuals in an organization that uses a pay structure with part fixed pay and part performance-based pay. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to explain how performance-based salary and fixed salary can affect the motivation of individuals in an organization that uses both salary arrangements and whether this can contribute to gaps within an organization in Sweden. Method: The study has a constructionist and objective approach and a deductive research approach. The research has its basis in two central theories which are SDT and Agency theory. The study also has a quantitative research design based on a case study. The collection of empirical evidence has been collected using a quantitative survey, where we have collected answers from 72 respondents. The answers from the survey are then analyzed with three different analysis methods in the statistical tool SPSS. Results: The results of the study explain that in an organization that uses partly a performance-based salary and partly a fixed salary, this can contribute to the employees with a fixed salary experiencing an injustice regarding salary and bonuses within the organization. This in turn leads to reduced internal motivation among these employees. The result also explains that the extrinsic motivation of those with performance-based pay is higher. However, there is no clear indication that this contributes to divisions within the organization.