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Family-owned enterprise is a typical governance structure around the world. In addressing the governance issues in family business, the founding family usually utilizes the direct or indirect ownership structure and also the management design to mitigate the typical agency-principal problem among founding family and the professional managers in family businesses. However, scholars indicate that the majority shareholders, such as the founding family in a family business, will induce the principal-principal agency concern, and also have the possibility to exploit the minority shareholder¡¦s interests in publicly traded family businesses. Thus, the corporate governance today will not only focus on mitigating the typical agency-principal problem, but also the principal-principal agency problem in family businesses. This study tries to examine the role of the internal audit¡¦s independence in addressing the performance issues in publicly traded family businesses in Taiwan. From the agency theory viewpoint, this study try to utilize the questionnaires method to estimate the degree of the internal audit¡¦s independence, and future examine its performance impact in family businesses in Taiwan. This study suggests that the internal audit power, and the internal audit independent execution, can be two kinds of independence indexes in estimating the degree of internal audit¡¦s independence. The results indicate that the internal audit¡¦s independence will generate direct and moderated impact on publicly trade family business¡¦s performance in Taiwan. Specifically, the more independent board of directors a family business has, the better performance that this focal firm behaves. Moreover, the internal audit¡¦s independence will generate positively direct impact on firm performance in a family business. Additionally, the degree of internal audit¡¦s independent execution will moderate the positive impact from independent board of directors and family leadership on firm performance in publicly trade family businesses in Taiwan. This study provides referable values in estimating the internal audit¡¦s independence in publicly trade businesses. And it also provides theoretical and practical implications in addressing governance issues in family businesses in Asia.

State multinationals were investigated in the 1980s. Since then, little work on the state multinational has been done because of the dramatic changes in the world in terms of both politics and economics, such as the waves of liberalization, deregulation and privatization. However, in the current global environment, we see the increase in the number of state multinationals, and thus initiate research of this study. This study investigates two sets of research questions. First, is the state multinational the overlap of two organizational forms (the state owned enterprise (SOE) and the multinational enterprise (MNE))? If so, what are the key characteristics and implications of the state multinational? Second, can the state multinational be considered a hybrid organizational form, which is different from that of its parents? Propositions are set forth to examine the first set of research questions. After clarifying the unit of analysis for this study, the second set of questions asks how state ownership influences the state multinational‘s international diversification and firm performance, and what is the impact of institutional ownership on the state ownership—international diversification relationship, and how home country institutional environments influence the proposed relationships. Hypotheses are proposed to investigate the second set of research questions and are tested with a three-year sample (2004-2007) and a seven year sample (2000-2007) of the state multinational. Results of hierarchical linear models indicate that the state multinational, first, does have characteristics that are different from its parents (i.e., the SOE and the MNE) and thus is considered a hybrid organizational form. Second, state ownership may improve the level of the state multinational‘s international diversification, but reaches a threshold, after which the positive influence diminishes due to the prominent agency costs. Third, institutional ownership has been verified as a useful mechanism to improve the effectiveness of corporate governance in the case of the state multinational. Fourth, home country institutional environments matter in the studied relationships. The state multinational in developed countries with an established institutional environment may not depend on state ownership as much as those in developing and emerging countries. Results also show the influence of state ownership on the state multinational‘s firm performance. The state ownership—performance relationship is also non-linear (inverted U-shaped). Moreover, in the case of the state multinational, the higher the level of international diversification, the higher the firm performance. In addition, international strategies of the state multinational function as a mediator for the relationship between state ownership and firm performance.

A channel rebate is a payment from a manufacturer to a retailer based on retailer sales to end consumers. The widespread use of rebates by manufactures is being met with growing retailer and consumer acceptance. Channel rebates are especially significant in the consumer industries. This kind of sales force compensation method involves the agency relationship between manufactures and retailers. Manufactures often make a specified contract, which rewards retailers when retailing sales exceeds the specified level in a certain period, to minimize the agency cost effectively and align the interests of manufactures and retailers. Since the employ stock option (ESO) transaction involves the exchange of labor inputs for a contingent equity claim on the firm, the economic intuition of ESO and channel rebates is such similar. However, the accounting treatments of channel rebates are often not recorded exactly in the period in which they are incurred. It is important to employ reasonable and correct methods for estimating the value of channel rebates. This article suggests that manufacturers should expense the channel rebates at the grant date. In addition, adjustments for rebate expenses are necessary to recognize the different value of rebates between grant date and statement date. This article estimates channel rebates using the options model, which is a more flexible and useful method to value intangible assets, to make it possible to report on the balance sheet the appropriate assets, liabilities, and stockholders¡¦ equity at the statement date and to report on the income statement the proper net income for the period. Because the analytical solution of our model is unknown, the numerical solution can be obtained by Monte Carlo simulation to determine the value of channel rebates reasonably and correctly. Thus, the financial statements of both manufactures and retailers will provide the most useful information to various user groups.

To Invest in Mainland China becomes Taiwan corporations¡¦ high priority by virtue of China¡¦s vast internal consumer market, the trade liberalization after joining WTO, low labor cost, and easy communication in Chinese language. However, the special relationship between Taiwan and China induces Taiwan corporations¡¦ investment risks due to political uncertainties. The establishment of information and communication network between headquarters in Taiwan and their mainland subsidiaries enables the governance and coordination between two sides. However, bearing these special relations, it is a nontrivial question to ask any unique information infrastructure and system that Taiwan corporations adopt which may be consistent with or different from prior literatures in multi-national corporations. This thesis develops a conceptual framework to identify the relationship between the factors and IT configurations, and then proposes propositions to explain findings from three Taiwan companies, which have subsidiaries in China. This study asserts that the political uncertainties that influence the IT configuration of Taiwan companies with subsidiaries in China are common with multinational firms whose headquarter and subsidiaries have normal relationship. The major contribution of this study is to explore the factors that affect Taiwan companies¡¦ IT governing practice toward their China subsidiaries.

The aim of this study is to discuss the query: ¡§When organizations apply different human resource (HR) systems in managing their employees with different characteristics, what will be the employees¡¦ possible performance patterns?¡¨ by modifying and extending Lepak & Snell¡¦s (1999) HR architecture. According to employees¡¦ contribution to the sustained competitive advantages (SCAs), we first identified two main characteristics of employees: complexity and uniqueness. The employees could be further categorized into core, unique, complex, and imitable HR and the HR architecture is thereby constructed. Furthermore, based on agency theory and transactional cost theory, we propose behavioral control and internal development as the two main strategies for managing employees with different characteristics: integration with HR architecture, and construction of human resource management (HRM) architecture. Finally, there are exchange relationships between employees and their organizations. Since psychological contracts reflect employees¡¦ beliefs in the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange relationship between them and their employers (Rousseau, 1995), they are viewed as the best linking mechanism between HR systems and employee behaviors (Wright & Boswell, 2002). Accordingly, we adopted psychological contract perspective to discuss the relationships between HR systems and employees¡¦ role behaviors and sequentially proposed the corresponding psychological contract architecture as well as the performance architecture. Multilevel analysis and t-test of data from 172 Taiwanese datasets (172 copies from immediate managers and 806 from employees) revealed that different HR systems not only are applied to manage different types of employees but also elicit different patterns of employees¡¦ performance. First, organizations would like to apply higher levels of internal development and lower levels of behavioral control in managing their core HR. These strategies caused employees to believe that they had a long-term exchange relationship with the organizations and simultaneously improve their in-role behaviors, OCBI, and OCBO. In contrast, organizations would like to apply lower levels of internal development and higher levels of behavioral control in managing their imitable HR. This governance made employees focus on specific performance-reward contingencies in their exchange relationships with the organizations, as well as to enhance their in-role behaviors. Next, organizations would like to apply higher levels of internal development and behavioral control in managing their unique HR. These strategies caused employees to believe that they had a long-term exchange relationship with the organizations, with an emphasis on specific performance-reward contingencies. For this reason, this HR system could prompt employees¡¦ appropriate in-role behaviors and OCBO. Finally, according to the HRM architecture, an organization should theoretically apply a lower level of internal development and behavioral control in managing its complex HR. Since it is not possible to form employees¡¦ psychological contract or create relevant role behaviors when organizations do not actively adopt specific strategies to manage them, we did not empirically examine the relationships between HR systems and employees¡¦ complex role behaviors. However, complex HR still contributes to the SCAs. Accordingly, future research could focus on complex HR and explore which types of HR system would be beneficial in regard to their role behaviors.

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<p>The Swedish code of corporate governance (the Code) was introduced 1 July 2005 aiming to raise the quality of corporate governance. This thesis investigates how the Code has affected internal audit. The purpose of this study is dual and aims to 1). Describe the internal audit, in companies on the A-list and O-list, and how it has and is believed to be affected by the Code. 2). Explain why the internal audit function varies between companies.</p><p>The first purpose has been carried out by using an inductive approach. The data has been gathered through qualitative interviews with companies, on the A and O-list, audit firms and the Institute of Internal Auditors. In order to fulfil the second purpose a deductive approach has been used. Quantitative data has been gathered from annual reports as well as homepages. The material has together with agency theory been used in order to analyse why the internal audit differs between firms.</p><p>The result of the qualitative interviews shows that the perceptions of internal audit differ. This can to a certain extent be explained by that there today are no accepted standards for internal audit. Neither does the Code explain what an internal audit function should involve. Overall, all respondents agree that the Code is nothing new nor revolu-tionary since the majority of the companies regard the regulations to be a matter of course. However, the demand of documentation and information has increased. The respondents also states that the acceptance and importance of internal audit has been raised further. All respondents believe that the role of internal audit will develop further. It is expected to become more consultative wherefore the internal auditor’s competence must be improved. Furthermore, the opinion is that COSO will be the framework that companies will apply.</p><p>The differences in internal audit practice have in this thesis also been analysed and explained by applying the agency model. The analysis has resulted in two proposals:</p><p>Proposal 1: The ownership structure affects the agency relationship which in turn leads to differences in the internal audit.</p><p>Proposal 2: Companies operating in complex business environments are more likely to have an internal audit function than entities in less complex businesses. Therefore, the existence of internal audit varies across business sectors.</p>

Zugl.: Köln, Univ., Diss.

Project management involves many different actors. Rather than solely looking at those actors as individuals, the interaction between them should not be forgotten either. This thesis tries to provide a better understanding of one specific type of interaction: the project owner-manager relationship. This relationship is approached as the dyadic interaction between one project manager and one project owner. Previous studies indicate that project owners and project managers depend on one another, but that they can have diverging perspectives as well. The goal of this study is to get a deeper understanding of how these different perspectives can influence the success of the project-owner relationship. In order to achieve this understanding, a multiple case study involving 8 project owner-manager relationships was employed. Both project owners and project managers were interviewed, in order to get closer to a multi-actor perspective. The results show that there are both similarities and differences between the perspectives of these actors. However, a lack of understanding between these perspectives can cause the project owner-manager relationship fail. In the end, the potential effects of this relationship cannot and should not be ignored, as this study shows that it can be the difference between project success and project failure. Therefore, in a world that is ever more dominated by projects, this thesis has multiple practical and scientific implications.