Family firms play a significant role in the U.S. economy, making up about 35 percent of S&P 500 or Fortune 500 companies and contributing about 65 percent to the U.S. GDP. This research explores differences in strategic behavior and firm performance between family firms and non-family firms, and further explores whether family firms such as Dell Inc. that use their founding family’s name as part of their firm name (termed family-named firms, or FN firms) behave and perform any differently versus family firms such as Gap Inc. whose firm name does not include their family’s name (termed non-family-named firms, or NFN firms). The first study which is based on a multi-industry sample of 130 publicly listed U.S. family firms over a five-year period (2002–2006), reveals that compared to NFN firms, FN firms have significantly higher levels of corporate citizenship and representation of their customers' voice (i.e., presence of a chief marketing officer) in the top management team. FN firms also have a higher strategic emphasis (i.e., a greater emphasis on value appropriation relative to value creation) compared to NFN firms. Furthermore, FN firms perform better (i.e., have a higher ROA) than NFN firms, and their superior performance is partially mediated by their higher corporate citizenship levels and strategic emphasis. In the second study — an event study of 1294 product introduction announcements of 107 publicly listed U.S. family firms from 2005-2007 — I find that relative to NFN firms, FN firms are rewarded more by the stock market for introducing new products. Superior returns to FN firms’ new product introductions are partially mediated by these firms’ history of trustworthy product-related behavior: FN firms, particularly those with corporate branding, and those wherein a founding family member holds the CEO or Chairman position, are more likely to exhibit a history of avoiding such product-related controversies as product safety issues, and deceptive advertising. The third study explores differences in strategic behavior and firm performance between family firms and non-family firms in the context of 7 U.S. economic recessions between the years 1970 and 2008. Findings based on a sample of 428 U.S. publicly listed firms reveal that family firms consistently outperform non-family firms during economic recessions. This superior performance is partially driven by family firms’ unique strategic behavior: during recessions, family firms maintain higher levels of advertising intensity, exhibit lower financial leverage, and get involved in fewer social and employee-related unethical actions than non-family firms. The three studies taken together have important implications for family firm, branding, CSR, firm valuation, and innovation-related theory and practice. I highlight these implications in my dissertation. / text

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education

Today, gender quotation in the Board of Directors has become an important political question that is being discussed not only in Sweden but in several other countries as well. However, research on gender diversity and, for that matter, other forms of diversity in the corporate world is not something new. Diversity in Board of Directors and Top Management Teams and how it affects firm performance have been the topic of many researches the last two decades. Nevertheless, there are still many unanswered questions in this field that need to be answered. The purpose of this dissertation is to study how diversity in BoDs and TMTs affect firm performance. We used five different diversity variables, tenure, age, education, nationality and gender in our research and we tested them separately to see how they each affect firm performance. Because there is limited previous research conducted on diversity in Sweden and on Swedish firms, this dissertation attempts to fill that gap. This study is conducted on Swedish firms that are listed on large cap on Stockholm stock exchange. We used several ways to measure the five different diversity variables in both BoDs and TMTs. Firm performance was measured by using two well established measurements, Return on Equity and Return on Assets. We developed ten hypotheses to test how diversity affects firm performance; some diversity variables had positive effect on firm performance, while others had negative effect. The hypotheses are based on earlier research. There are mixed results from our study; seven out of ten hypotheses had to be rejected due to insignificant relationship between diversity and firm performance. Three hypotheses were rejected, even though they showed a significant relationship between diversity and firm performance, because the relationship was the opposite of our hypotheses. One reason for these results can be that there is low diversity in both BoDs and TMTs, and this makes it difficult to measure and establish a relationship between diversity and firm performance.

Abstract not available. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2007.

The purpose of this study was to explore the Staff Development Team’s (SDT) promotion of quality education within the context of Integrated Quality Management System. The study explored aspects that the SDT does to promote quality education, processes by which the SDT engages itself in to promote quality education and the reasons why the SDT promotes quality education. Provision of quality education in South Africa passed different stages that eventually culminated in Integrated Quality Management System being gazetted in 2003. With this instrument in place, the Department of Education (DoE) hoped schools, in particular and the Education Department in general, would perform well. Mixed responses from the respondents reflected that there are numerous factors that hamper the implementation of IQMS. These factors range from inadequate training of teachers for IQMS, scanty meetings in which discussions about IQMS are held, lack of involvement of all teachers in the school on issues related to IQMS, implementation of many quality education improvement strategies by the DoE within a short period of time and fear by teachers of being evaluated. The main findings showed that there is a dire need for teachers to be retrained on IQMS and frequent holding of IQMS related meetings. The main findings also revealed that the monetary component of IQMS, namely, pay progression, is a cause for concern in that it compels teachers to be dishonest in evaluating one another. This suggests that if IQMS is to be successful, the pay progression component should be divorced from it (IQMS). The study recommends that there should be regular meeting for IQMS at school so as to bring every teacher on board about IQMS. The study further recommends that although it is good to learn from other countries, but the context should be taken into consideration if a new strategy has been copied from other countries because what is good for one country may not be good for another country. Finally, the study recommends that while counter opinions always exist when a new initiative is being implemented, steadfastness should be upheld and adherence to the policy will ensure the realisation of its (policy) intended aim. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Edgewood, 2012.

The advent of democracy in South Africa in 1994 led to new areas of research interest, not least in the field of educational leadership and management (ELM). However, besides the Project on Postgraduate Education Research (PPER), not much research has been conducted to investigate the trends in research conducted by postgraduate students in South African universities. This study therefore aimed to contribute by investigating the trends in postgraduate research in ELM at a selected institution in the decade 1995-2004. Working in the interpretivist paradigm, the study employed an institutional case-study approach to conduct a study of 53 M.Ed. dissertations in the PPER database from the selected institution. The dissertations dealt with ELM topics. Statistical analysis on this dataset and content analyses of three selected dissertations were used to identify trends in education research at the selected institution. Robin Usher’s four concepts of con-text, pre-text, sub-text and inter-text were employed as a framework within which to interpret the findings. From the analysis it is evident that the first ten years of the democratic era in South Africa witnessed a change in the demographic profile of postgraduate research. The trends are that Black students completed more dissertations followed by Indian, White and Coloured students; there are more dissertations from males than females, although by the end of the decade the number of woman writing dissertations had increased significantly; research of ELM is mostly qualitative in approach and of small-scale studies; dissertation topics cover a range of five ELM areas of interest, with few authors exploring the con-text of ELM within the broader socio-political context of the decade under consideration. / M.Ed. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2012.

The purpose of this study is to determine the roles and skills needed by rural schools governors of the Mafikeng area project office of North West Province. Lack of uniformity, competency, skills and commitment are still encountered in the SGB structures. Little has been done to empower the rural school governors with relevant skills for effective job performance. An empirical investigation was employed to find ways of empowering the encountered incompetency of rural governors. Literature survey was employed to determine the nature and scope of roles and skills needed by rural schools governors. The subjects of the study were adults (teachers, parents, principals) and students. The responses of 220 respondents were analysed. The findings revealed that school governors in rural areas experience problems in areas like addressing parent's annual meetings, financial management, control and feedback in their job. Recommendations were made by respondents on how to empower rural school governors with the necessary skills. On the basis of the problems and skills identified, more emphasis was put on commitment of all stakeholders, training of governors to develop their management skills, financial skills, regular workshops by the Department of Education, and the old SGB members to train the new ones. The new SGBs should ask questions when they are not clear and translation of back-up materials into the SGB's home language and a certificate for course completion to be granted to the members who completed their office term. / Thesis (M. Ed.) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2005

Due to various corporate scandals and failures, there has been a renewed interest on the role of boards in the performance of firms. This thesis examines the relationship between the key board characteristics and firm performance. Unlike most studies on boards which predominantly use only financial variables affecting governance, I take a different approach by combining them with non-financial variables. This combined set of variables is used for theoretical and empirical modelling. Based on the extant literature, I develop a conceptual framework and a set of hypotheses to examine the relationship between board characteristics and firm performance. Board characteristics considered in this research include board size, director ownership, CEO duality, gender diversity, educational qualification of board members and number of board meetings. Additionally, I use board size as a moderating variable to examine how the effect of other board characteristics is contingent on board size. Firm performance is measured by return on assets. I test my hypotheses on a longitudinal sample of 156 firms over a four year period from 2004 to 2007. My sample includes all firms listed on New Zealand stock exchange as on November 2007. Empirical analysis is undertaken using Generalised Least Squares analyses. The findings of the study show that board characteristics such as board size, CEO duality and gender diversity were positively related with firm performance, where as director ownership, board meetings and the number of board members with PhD level education was found to be negatively related. Board size was found to be moderating some of these relationships, indicating the critical role being played by board size in the design and role of corporate boards. The findings also provide partial evidence to different governance theories, further indicating the need for theoretical pluralism to gain insights into boards’ functioning. The study contributes to the understanding of board-performance link by examining both the traditional variables such as board size, CEO duality, and number of board meetings as well as other organisational attributes such as gender diversity and competence variables represented by women and PhD holders, respectively. The theoretical framework and the findings of my thesis are expected to stimulate scholars for further research to identify the contingency conditions upon which the board characteristics and firm performance may be dependent.

Thesis (D.B.A.)--University of Western Australia, 2006.