This report examines the effect that the legal and financial corporate location choices made by corporations have on company performance. These corporate location choices are investigated for stand-alone companies, and for companies that form part of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). A further distinction is drawn between companies that hail from developed and developing markets. The study examines data from the perspective of the company, and uses 4,308 listed companies found in the following sectors on Bloomberg, namely: Mining, General Retailers, Telecommunications, and Pharmaceuticals, and finds evidence that both the legal and financial home chosen by a company has a significant impact on company performance, and that distributing legal and financial homes opportunistically amongst developed and developing markets lead to markedly improved company performance. The research finds that generally MNEs outperform national companies; companies with a corporate function located in a developed market outperform companies with corporate functions located in developing markets, and lastly that increased corporate function dispersion is associated with increased performance, with the bulk of the benefit delivered by opportunistically location the legal home in a developed market. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This dissertation approaches the question of sustainability and its influence on company performance, with special focus on the manufacturing industry. In the contemporary production environment, manufacturing operations must take into account not only profit, but also environmental and social performance, in order to ensure the long-term development of the company. Companies have to decide whether they should allocate resources to environmental and social practices in order to improve their competitive advantage. Consequently, in decision-making processes concerning operations, it is important for companies to understand how to coordinate profit, people, and planet. The objective of this dissertation was to investigate the current situation regarding manufacturers’ sustainable initiatives, and to explore the relationship between these sustainable practices and companies’ performance, including financial performance, operational performance, innovation performance, environmental performance, and social performance. First of all, a structured literature review was conducted to identify sustainable factors considered to be important in the decision making of manufacturing operations. The findings were synthesized into a conceptual model, which was then adopted as the basis for designing the survey instrument used in this dissertation. Drawing on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reports, empirical research was performed to explore the relationship between environmental management practices and company performance. Interestingly, the findings showed that many environmental management practices had a strong positive impact on innovation performance. Sustainability disclosures and financial performance were further analyzed using extended data from the GRI reports. The results also showed that several sustainability performance indicators, such as product responsibility, human rights, and society, displayed a significant and positive correlation with return on equity in the sample companies. In order to further explore the research area and to verify these findings, a triangulation approach was adopted and new data were collected via a survey conducted among middle and large sample companies in the Swedish manufacturing industry. The results indicated that the sustainable improvement practices had a positive impact on company performance. Some environmental and social improvement practices had a direct and positive correlation with product and process innovation. Furthermore, findings suggested that better cooperation with suppliers on environmental work could help to strengthen the organizational green capabilities of the focal companies. When considering the company’s general approach to implementing sustainable practices, some interesting findings emerged. There were limited significant differences in sustainable practices when comparing different manufacturing sectors, and different countries and regions. However, the results showed that Swedish manufacturing companies often place higher priority on implementing economic and environmental sustainability practices than on social ones. This dissertation contributes to the literature on manufacturing sustainability. The study expands the understanding of how environmental, social, or economic perspectives as a triple bottom line can influence company performance and to a certain extent the supply chain. Identifying and understanding such relationships gives companies the opportunity to integrate sustainability into their manufacturing operations strategy in order to sustain their manufacturing operations over the long term.

Lic.-avh. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Kungliga Tekniska högskolan, 2007. / Härtill 3 uppsatser.

Corporate Governance and in particular, the role of the board of directors, have been placed at the centre of attention due to the recent well-publicized corporate scandals (Adams, Hermalin,&Weisbach, 2009). In South Africa, both the King II and recently published King III reports emphasise the importance of the board of directors, as being the crucial aspect of the South African corporate governance system (Institute of Directors, Southern Africa, 2002, 2009).The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between corporate governance and company performance. This was achieved by defining six specific characteristics of the board of directors in relation to corporate governance (independent variables of board independence, CEO-Chairman duality, staggered boards, board size and the presence and composition of the board remuneration committee), as well as identifying five company performance measures (dependent variables of net profit margin, return on equity, return on assets, share price and dividend payout).In reviewing the available literature, it was found that there is a lack of an appropriate and publicly available corporate governance measurement tool in South Africa. The Delphi technique was used to garner the views of four experts in the corporate governance field, in order to obtain their views as to what constitutes the research selected independent variables. The emergent themes from these interviews guided the measurement of these board variables and empirical testing against the selected company performance measures using the 21 Consumer Goods Companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange with published financial statements over the time period commencing on 01 January 2006 and ending on 31 December 2010.The overall results of this study indicate that the vast majority of board selected variables relating to corporate governance had a positive relationship with company performance. Of the six independent variables selected for testing, board independence, board size and composition of the board remuneration committee were found to have statistically significant relationships with the dependent variables of company performance, while the presence of a board remuneration committee indicated a moderate relationship (with only return on assets and net profit margin indicating a significant relationship) and staggered boards revealed no statistical significant difference.The relationship between CEO-Chairman duality and company performance could not be assessed, due to the sector data set revealing only one instance in which this duality existed. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Issues as to the suitability of executive compensation packages have obtained an ever increasing profile in recent years. Whilst there has been quite extensive empirical investigation of pay-performance sensitivity, the framework of performance-pay has received less attention in the literature and examination to date. Besides this - whilst there has been a quantum of investigation of relationships between compensation and performance, there has been less focus on case study based analysis. In this context, the current study makes a twofold contribution to the examination of executive directors’ remuneration in FTSE 350 companies. First, this research aims to empirically investigate linkages between the nature and amount of compensation packages and company performance with a particular focus on examining the extent of interrelationships between pay and performance over a ten year period from 1999 to 2008. Within the scope of a variety of theoretical perspectives, this deductive study puts a focus on addressing the question of whether managerial compensation is the greater influence on firm performance or whether it is the latter which has the greater influence on the former. Second, this study seeks to qualitatively add to the relevant literature by means of a longitudinal case study of remuneration at UK based major multi-national company, BP, over a ten year period from 2001 till 2010. Within the context of a variety of theoretical and institutional perspectives, this inductive study explores, by means of investigation of BP’s Directors Remuneration Reports, the role of the BP remuneration committee in setting the mechanisms and structures which determine the nature and extent of executive remuneration packages at BP and considers the wider generalisability of the findings therefrom. Overall the current study utilises a mixed methods approach via a combination both quantitative and qualitative modes of analysis – an approach which is relatively rare in the discipline of research into corporate governance and related issues. The outcomes from the empirical work show evidence of the presence of dual positive associations between executive compensation and company performance. However, the results do indicate that executive compensation is more influential in its effect on firm performance than the framework of performance-related pay. This finding is interpreted as lending support to the stewardship and/or tournament theories as to underlying drivers of executive remuneration in comparison with agency theory, represented by agent-principal or managerial hegemony perspectives, as an explanatory of the construction of executive remuneration and the link with firm performance. Similar to prior literature, the empirical findings indicate that equity-based compensation is more robust in the linkage with firm performance than cash pay dominated packages. However, the results showed that the existence of remuneration committees in general reveals insignificant and negatively related to total CEO/executive remuneration. This finding highlights therefore the need to put a focus on the actual role of compensation committee in setting the type and extent of executive pay packages in a large UK company. The outcomes from the archival case study also suggest that it is difficult to find significant support for a pure agency theory approach whereby shareholders seek to align their interests directly with those of their managers as a driver of executive compensation packages. There is more evidence suggestive of a managerial power/hegemony perspective which is heavily mediated by the presence of powerful non-executive directors and the institutional presence of the remuneration committee. Perhaps the most significant aspects to emerge from the case study are the importance of personal relationships and power at boardroom level. Beyond this the inferences of the supplementary content analysis conducted specifically on the Directors Remuneration Reports are suggestive of a focus on overall BP performance rather than on the specific activities and achievements of individual executive directors. In conclusion, the findings of the present study provide a wealth of detail both quantitative and qualitative as to the manner in which executive remuneration has been set in the UK in recent years and as to linkages both with corporate performance and underlying theories of the determinants of executive remuneration. As such it sheds light on an area of importance and one of continued private and public concern and may be of interest to those responsible for governance within firms and to wider public and regulatory interest as well as future researchers in the field.

New firms are crucial for economic growth and development, especially in the knowledge-intensive service and manufacturing industries that compose an increasing portion of developed economies. As many new firms fail and performance varies widely for surviving firms, studying new firm entry and pre-formation processes is necessary but not sufficient to create increased understanding of the important contribution of new firms to economic growth. In order to better understand and possibly predict economic development we must also understand the drivers and dynamic of new firm survival and performance. Absorptive capacity is an established firm-level capability theory that explains sustained firm performance through the interaction of internal capabilities and competencies and the access and assimilation of external knowledge and information. However, absorptive capacity was mainly developed by studying established firms. In this dissertation I develop new measures of absorptive capacity suitable for empirical research on new micro firms; specifically using human capital as a proxy for the knowledge acquisition component and organizational tenure to represent the knowledge assimilation and exploitation component of absorptive capacity. Developing and testing a conceptual model of new firm performance including these measures on a panel dataset of knowledge-intensive new firms in Sweden 1995-2002, I find that absorptive capacity is a useful theory to explain several aspects of new firm terminations, acquisitions, and profitability. In developing and testing these new measures, this dissertation provides theoretical and methodological contributions to the empirical entrepreneurship literature for the benefit of researchers, policy-makers, and industry practitioners with an interest in new firm survival and performance. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2009</p>

Under current GAAP principles convertible debt is valued and accounted for using an outdated practice. Only one aspect of these complex financial instruments are valued at a time resulting in flawed financial statements. Although the Accounting Principles Board agreed with this sentiment, originally proclaiming that both the debt and equity aspects be valued together, significant resistance by the public forced the Board to amend its Opinion to the current standard. In this paper three ratios that measure company performance and health will be tested against the amount of convertible debt in selected companies in the hopes that a correlation will be found that shows the impact of the current accounting method.

Service industry in Taiwan has a great advance during these decades, but one characteristic of the service industry is that service is easily and immediately copied by competitors. In order to cultivate more loyal customers, it is important to create excellent customer relationship management process and to expend every marketing budget wisely. Based on previous study, Reinartz, Krafft & Hoyer (2004) argued two outcomes. One is that CRM process measure outlines three key stages: initiation, maintenance, and termination; the other one is that the implementation of CRM process has a moderately positive association with both perceptual and objective company performance. This research is a case study aims to verify the result by interviewing the managers of nine travel agencies in Taiwan. This research concludes the following results from the interviews of nine travel agencies; especially focuses on the fulfillment of CRM process and the tourism classifications. First, the more a travel agency puts emphasis on service quality, the higher implementation of CRM process they perform. Secondly, it is difficult to evaluate the effects of the CRM process by judging the sales revenue between tourism wholesalers and retailers in 2005, because there are different in their business components. With respect to the classifications of travel agencies, the connections between CRM process and performances are as follows: (1) for the tourism wholesalers, the more cooperative retailers a wholesaler has, the better financial performance it shows. (2) The retail agencies that have enterprises as customers have better financial performances than that only have mass customers.(3) In the tourist industry, if the companies concentrate more on CRM, they would have better non-financial performances. (4) For tourism wholesalers, the more they concentrate on CRM, the better non-financial performances they represent. Finally, it is not significant that the organizational differences have impacts on CRM process and company performance.

The diploma thesis focuses on enterprise performance assessment. Based on financial analysis methods the company's financial health is evaluated. Results are compared with three competing companies. Comprehensive company performance also contains strategic analysis, credit management analysis and analysis of stakeholders' satisfaction. Recommendations and suggestions to sustain company performance are defined at the end of this thesis.

The crucial decisions that impact the performance of an organisation are usually taken by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). However, little is known about the impact that a CEO's risk appetite has on the decision making processes and its ultimate impact on company performance. A greater understanding of the relationship between CEO risk appetite and organisational performance will facilitate the improvement of strategy formulation for the purpose of managing risk appetite at an executive level.A qualitative exploration into the factors that have been acknowledged as contributory aspects in the development of executive risk appetites highlighted the aspects which had the greatest association to the formation of CEO risk appetite. These aspects were utilised in the formation of an interview schedule that evaluated the perceptions of seven CEOs regarding their risk appetite preferences.Using the findings of the CEO interviews, a model was formulated to quantify CEO risk appetite and test its relationship with company performance, which had been calculated via a quantitative analysis of company financial records.The findings of the analysis into the relationship between CEO risk appetite and company performance indicated a positive linear relationship between the two variables. The research findings regarding the factors contributing to CEO risk appetite also proved consistent with the majority of the literature on the subject.The implication of the findings for South African organisations will be an improved understanding of the relationship between CEO risk appetite and organisational performance and the ability to develop strategy around managing this relationship. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted