Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-74).

This research explores leadership effectiveness in organisations in Kuwait from the perspective of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). This is an area that has been neglected by the extant literature, and no integrated model for assessing CEO effectiveness exists for us to fully understand the phenomenon. Based on a positivist qualitative research approach, evidence was drawn from 16 CEOs using semi-structured interviews. The evidence was corroborated by using data obtained from participant observations of two CEOs working in the same organisation as the researcher. The results indicated that CEOs perceive leadership effectiveness as driving execution and not necessarily the realisation of goals themselves. Their experiences of leadership lead to CEOs in Kuwait believing that leadership effectiveness depends on their leadership style, relationship with the Board and the Executives, experience and family ground, societal and organisational culture, the business environment and CEO characteristics. On the basis of the participants’ perceptions of leadership effectiveness, it is recommended that CEO leadership development in Kuwait should focus on these areas, as this should equip CEOs to be effective in formulating clear visions and executing strategies to enable economic development of the country, and this should help them to compete globally. As the study focused on private and public companies, future research could consider CEOs from governmental and not-for-profit organisations to expand the sample of CEOs.

CEO competence and development is a continuing concern in the NHS. As a key feature of any CEO leadership role is responsibility for organisationally critical decisions, and there is an increasing recognition of the role context plays in effective leadership behaviour. This study examines the role of contextual intelligence in relation to PCT CEO decision making behaviour. To do this, the research addresses four questions: a) what does the literature say about CEO contextual intelligence? b) what factors do PCT CEOs say they take into account in different decision making contexts? c) what contextual factors do they actually take into account? and d) what impact do the contextual factors have on their decision making behaviour. A systematic literature review resulted in a model of CEO contextual intelligence for CEO decision making. Semi-structured interviews with 24 PCT CEOs in a NHS region about factors influencing their decisions on generic strategies, national policies, regional strategies and local plans revealed a hierarchy among contextual factors applying to different decision strata. Semi-structured interviews and analysis of CEO diaries two months later of the same focal decisions show the real critical factors to be:- national policies themselves, the Strategic Health Authority and the decision making process, for regional strategies; and Top Management Team and structure for local plans. Altogether, the research reveals that the PCT CEO’s decision making context is rationally bounded; the relevant contextual factors differed significantly from the literature derived model; the actual factors in practice differed from what were espoused; choice of factors vary depending on decision trigger strata which links to degrees of CEO autonomy; and macro level factors which were indicated as significant from the systematic review were in fact ignored in practice. A PCT CEO model of contextual intelligence is developed together with a two dimensional model of underlying structures guiding PCT CEO decision making behaviour. The findings have implications for governance structures in the NHS, CEO decision making and senior leader development in ii the NHS in the context of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Areas for further research in public sector, NHS and contextual intelligence are also identified.

M.Comm. (Financial Management) / Although general studies have been conducted on the agency problem, such studies have not focused on the relationship between executive remuneration and company performance. Many of the studies conducted abroad have focused on quantitative methods using regression analysis to understand the relationships between diverse financial performance measures and a variety of performance appraisal techniques. This study aims at establishing the relationship between executive remuneration and company financial performance on the basis of 20 of the largest companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange Ltd (JSE). It has been observed that JSE-listed South African companies have almost a standard governance framework for determining salary structures of CEOs and directors. Furthermore it can be seen that most performance-linked payouts for CEO's and directors are based on measurement criteria established which are based on actual performance levels achieved. For this reason, it may be concluded that short-term targets are crucial to keeping a business going, to ensure positive cash flows, manage working capital, and achieve year-on-year growth of revenues and profits. However, to ensure survival and sustainability of the business in the changing global and local environments, long-term strategies should be formulated and various steps should be taken by CEOs, supported by other executive and non-executive directors. This research focuses on short-term goals and their influence on executive remuneration for CEOs and CFOs. The performance measures selected for this study were revenues, profits, share price and net asset value. These performance measures selected are supported by the relevant academic literature. The results of this study reveal that CEOs and CFOs have received lower remuneration in the form of bonuses as a result of companies not achieving their short-term goals.

The role and responsibility of the CEO of an organisation is an extensively researched field. This research project investigates the drivers of CEO turnover and the factors affecting the resultant post turnover corporate performance. An event study methodology, based on share price data from the JSE (Johannesburg Stock Exchange) was used to evaluate relative corporate performance. A pre event window of 250 trading days was used to establish corporate performance prior to the CEO turnover event, and a post event window of 500 trading days was used to evaluate the performance of the newly installed CEO. A sample of 143 CEO turnover events was examined, gathered during the period 1 April 2007 to 31 May 2012. 58% of the corporations undergoing CEO turnover were under performing their peers for one year prior to the turnover event, indicating that poor corporate performance was a major driver of CEO turnover. However, on further analysis, dissecting the data by corporation size yielded differing results, with 75% of small corporations undergoing CEO turnover in the ambit of under-performance, whereas in respect of large corporations, most CEO turnover was conducted in the circumstance of out-performance. Overall, CEO turnover yielded a statistically relevant improvement of 13.6% in post event corporate performance. However, if a corporation was significantly underperforming its peers prior to the turnover event, the new CEO was likely to improve corporate results by 96%, whereas, if a new CEO took over a significantly out-performing corporation, the post turnover corporate performance would reduce by 66%. A statistically relevant linear equation was formulated, predicting the level of post event corporate performance in relation to the pre event corporate performance. The variables of CEO tenure, CEO age, internal versus external CEO placements, and company size were also investigated, yielding interesting observations. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / zkgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

Orientation: The level of CEO compensation and its relationship with organisational performance has generated considerable interest worldwide. In light of compromised mining productivity as a result of the recent labour unrest in South African, some commentators have questioned the justification of certain CEO compensation in the country’s mining industry. Research purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to describe the relationship between CEO compensation and organisation performance in the South African mining industry. Motivation for the study: A deeper understanding of the relationship would enhance knowledge when developing optimal CEO reward systems to ensure sustainability of the mining industry within the South African context. Research design, approach and method: The research was a quantitative, archival study involving 30 mining companies over a five year period. The statistical analysis techniques used in the study included analysis of normality variance and multivariate regression. Main findings/results: The main finding of the research was that there was a moderate to strong relationship between CEO compensation and organisational performance in the South African mining industry. However, operating expenses have progressively increased, putting performance under pressure. Furthermore, it was also found that company size plays an influential role in CEO compensation levels. Practical/managerial implications: While the CEO compensation appears to be generally aligned with the organisational performance, the findings suggest that boards of directors should focus on structuring reward systems more optimally to mitigate managerial rent seeking in large companies and unsustainability in smaller companies. Contribution/value-add: This study has contributed to the body of existing knowledge on executive pay for performance in the context of the South African mining industry. In addition, the study has demonstrated that the other non-performance related measures need to be considered in executive compensation design. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lmgibs2015 / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / MBA / Unrestricted

This thesis provides an empirical investigation on how different public listing locations affect the CEO (chief executive officer)’s pay of Chinese SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) and whether such a pay differential would in turn affect the listing location choice by those firms, which have not received much attention in the current literature. In particular, we focus on two stock markets, the mainland (including Shenzhen and Shanghai) A-share market and Hong Kong H-share market. Unlike what have been found in many other markets, where firms listed in the foreign markets can normally enjoy a price premium, Chinese firms listed in the Hong Kong market (H-share) usually face a discount in prices comparing to what they can get in the domestic stock markets (A-share). So it is a real puzzle why they are eager to be listed in Hong Kong. Explanations have been sought in the past regarding to access to international capital markets and reputation or image effects for the Chinese firms. Our study contributes to the current oversea-listing literature by examining CEOs’ personal factors that affect listing location choice of SOEs in China. In this thesis, we aim to examine the association between CEO’s pay and different listing locations. Our sample covers all the Chinese listed SOEs in both A-share and H-share over the period of 1990-2009. First, we examined the effect of different listing locations on CEO’s pay and found that a positive CEO’s pay differential exists for H-share listing other things being equal, which means a wage premium for H-share CEOs. Furthermore, our evidences also support the hypothesis that such a wage premium does provide an incentive for CEOs to choose to list in Hong Kong.

This thesis includes estimating the probability of informed trading, PIN, developed by Easley, Kiefer and O’Hara (1996, 1997a, 1997b), for a large sample of listed firms in China from 2002 to 2008, and I use PIN to explore two independent research questions in corporate finance. First, the probability of informed trading is applied to explain the discount in value for firms with diversified business operations. Although aiming to increase firm value, the corporate diversification decision usually results in a firm value discount, for a variety of reasons, one of which is the transparency problem. My study directly tests the relation between the information asymmetry revealed from the stock market and the firm value discount due to diversification decision. The results show that the corporate diversification decisions result in a lower firm value in China, mainly because the diversified firms suffer from a higher level of information asymmetry or a lower level of transparency. After controlling for the measure of information asymmetry, the strategy of diversification itself does not reduce firm value. Second, the probability of informed trading is applied to explain the payperformance sensitivity of CEO compensation in Chinese listed firms. The payperformance sensitivity measures the change in managerial compensation based on the change in shareholder wealth. A higher information asymmetry helps and encourages shareholders to spend more on incentivizing the management team. My results show that higher level information asymmetry is associated with higher payperformance sensitivity of CEOs in China. The result also holds if information asymmetry is approximated by analysts’ forecast errors. According to the estimates of PIN in this thesis, Chinese firms are shown to exhibit a higher level of information asymmetry than what has been found in the U.S. market. The thesis ends with a brief discussion of the results and what future research could follow.

In essay 1, I investigate the association of place attachment and financial reporting quality. Management characteristics affect a wide range of corporate decisions, including decisions affecting financial reporting quality; however, the influence of managerial place attachment on corporate decision-making has received relatively little attention - even though place attachment is thought to play a significant role in forming individual identity. Place attachment affects the decisions that individuals make with regards to social and environmental policies, lifestyle, and, in the corporate context, firmlevel policies. Because firms hire local CEOs and CFOs five to eight times more often than expected if geography were irrelevant to the matching process, the question of how managerial place attachment affects financial reporting outcomes is an important one. I investigate the effect of managerial place attachment on financial reporting quality in a sample of publicly traded U.S. firms. My findings indicate that firms with place attached CEOs display higher financial reporting quality, indicating a significant caretaking bond between CEO and stakeholders. CFOs, on the other hand, are marginally associated with lower financial reporting quality, indicating that they are more likely than CEOs to extract personal gain when they are local to their firm headquarters. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This qualitative multiple-case study was designed to explore how CEOs in philanthropy learn to make strategic decisions. The study builds off the following premises: (1) as part of their role, CEOs need to make critical decisions in a complex and rapidly changing environment; (2) due to the role of a CEO there are power dynamics at play, and these may have an impact on how CEOs are able to engage in conversation; and (3) due to the staff reporting to the CEO and the CEO reporting to the board, they are essentially peerless within their respective organization, possibly contributing to a sense of isolation. The research site of this study was across a number of organizations, one for each participant. There were three primary sources of data: semi-structured interviews, data collection of publicly available documents, and critical incident reports. Key findings included that: (1) all participants engaged with staff and/or the Board of directors before making a strategic decision, either to obtain buy-in or get information needed to make the decision; (2) informal learning was the primary way participants learned what activities they needed to partake in, in order to make a critical decision; and (3) having full authority and responsibility helped CEOs in their decision-making, while power and other interpersonal dynamics hindered a CEOs ability to make a critical decision. Two main categories of CEOs emerged during the data collection process, those who were deemed Reflective and those who were Action-Oriented. Although not part of this research study’s original design, the data collection took place during the COVID-19 pandemic and also after a resurgence of attention to police brutality against Black people in the United States and other violence towards historically marginalized groups. These themes were prevalent throughout the data gathered for this study and findings and analysis. The overarching recommendation emanating from this research is that succession plans should be put in place in order to best develop potential candidates for the role of CEO.