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Thesis advisor: Philip E. Strahan / In my first essay, I explain the rise of transferable managerial skills in the CEO market. I show that growing competition in the product markets is a key factor driving the increased importance of CEOs’ transferable managerial skills, specifically industry-transferable skills. To rule out the endogeneity of CEO-firm matching, I exploit the exogenous shocks of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement (FTA) of 1989 and the deregulatory policy in the 1990s. I show that CEOs with these skills outperform in competitive markets and are a good match for firms’ innovation-based competition strategy. In my second essay, we explain why firms in the same board-interlock networks tend to have similar corporate governance practices. Specifically, we utilize a novel instrument based on staggered adoptions of universal demand laws across states to identify causal peer effects in firms’ decisions to adopt various governance provisions. We find that a firm’s propensity to adopt these provisions increases after other firms in the same board interlock network choose to adopt similar policies. The impact of universal demand laws on the incentives faced by directors as they seek to maximize their career outcomes is a likely mechanism explaining these effects. In my third essay, I identify the effects of the gender of CEOs’ offspring on corporate performance. First, acquisitions, debt and equity offerings made by CEOs with more daughters are better received by the market. Second, CEOs with more daughters are less likely to overpay the targets, and better use newly raised capital. Third, CEOs’ daughter(s) decrease(s) corporate litigation risk. In sum, the gender of a child is arguably a random and natural experiment, which shows a clear effect on CEOs’ behavior. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

Fiercely global competition and Taiwan¡¦s readiness to go along with WTO¡¦s requirement have put tremendous pressure on companies on this island to be more responsive to market by becoming more internally integrated enterprise and leveraging limited resources to exert synergy. The motivation that ERP systems are implemented are from several sources: internal system integration from an Intranet prespective, process efficiency improvement, upgrading legacy system, imitation from competitors. The electronics industries, which have been taking orders outsourced from multi-nation companies, are under great pressure from their international partners to implement ERP systems in order to capture the synergy effect of supply chain management. In addition, government subsidies for IT related investment in responding to Y2K crisis has encouraged companies to replace their old systems with ERP systems. The major problem confronted to the company that has implemented an ERP system is how to realize the benefits accompanied with the ERP implementation. Managerial adaptation is usually required when companies introduce a new technology. Thus, this research applies Leonard-Barton¡¦s perspective as the reference structure and adopts case study methodology to investigate how the three dimensions (technical, delivery system and organizational performance) could be related to the four chosen companies (an adaptor manufacturer, a passive component manufacturer, an IC packaging company and a LCD/LCM manufacturer). The data was collected mainly through semi-structured interviews. By doing the above, this research would like to explore the relationship between ERP implementation and organizational adaptation. Based on conventional wisdom, business process reengineering(BPR) goes together with ERP implementation. The research results indicated that BPR in these four cases was conducted according to the built-in system flows of the ERP package adopted. Because of this system-oriented implementation, the targeted company can exploit the integrity and internal flow of the implemented ERP to improve its information flows and strengthens the connection across different departments in the company. The system integrity and the paradigm of built-in flow are the main benefits derived from ERP implementation from the technology perspective. Guided by the built-in flow, the company can adapt itself through learning and obtain potential synergy. However, by so doing, the company is exposed to the risk of system function inadequacy and the deleterious impact brought by BPR, which is conducted without active participation of the user organization. In summary, the potential hazard of technology dimension comes from system function inadequacy and system transplant without conducting proper BPR. This in turn will increase the risk of software project and incur potential costs such as compromise and system tuning. According to data available, this research suggests that: 1.In case that ERP system function does not meet customer requirement, the system integrity should be preserved. 2.Guided by the built-in ERP system flow, the company can keep learning and achieve evolutionary change. 3.Change management is essential to ERP system delivery in order to realize the benefits of implementation. In summary, ERP implementation requires a careful mapping analysis of system function and user requirement. In addition, companies should pay more attention to managerial adaptation to enable organizational change and gain benefits through continuous learning.

An enterprise's survival and development relies on executive manager's quality and performance. In order to equip the executive managers with the abilities they need at work, most of the companies will provide them with related training program including knowledge, skills, and behaviors which aims to enhance employees' capability. The case company has conducted such managerial training for long which is used to be held by different business units, but after the case company's reorganization, top executives decided to integrate the training program within the whole group. However, is this training schemes proper for different business units based on diverse industries? This research intends to reveal the effectiveness of the managerial training before and after the timing of company's reorganization. This research used case study as a method to analyze the merits of integrating managerial training. It concludes the following findings: the consolidation of training program, the connection among different business units' trainee in financial holdings, the consistency of training program, and the simultaneously reduce of the administrative cost. However, the implied factors to be further discovered in this research refers to the irrelevance of the training program and promotion, the failure of retention potential employees, and the fewer support from trainee's direct supervisor during the process, and etc.

This thesis examines the managerial roles of the academic deans in Canadian universities, particularly in the province of Ontario. It is important to study the roles of the academic deans since they are pivotal to any higher education institution’s success. Research indicates that organizational performances are very much influenced by what happens in the middle of organizations rather than at the top. (Currie and Procter, 2005) As middle managers, deans are compelled to manage both people and results, while providing vital links to the organization when translating top-level directives of the upper management – president, vice-president academic etc. - into operational plans that need to be understood and implemented by the departmental chairs and program coordinators. Understanding the roles of the academic deans within the context of new public management ideologies will help to increase our understanding about how universities are run and what challenges are presently being faced. The study involved participants from 15 Ontario universities. An online survey has been used in order to collect the data. The response rate was 39%, 41 academic deans out of 105 provided their input between May –July 2009. The data collected was subjected to a quantitative analysis which included descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. The findings confirmed the fact that the role of the academic dean has become more managerial in nature as Canadian universities are moving more towards a managed professional public organization model.

This thesis examines the managerial roles of the academic deans in Canadian universities, particularly in the province of Ontario. It is important to study the roles of the academic deans since they are pivotal to any higher education institution’s success. Research indicates that organizational performances are very much influenced by what happens in the middle of organizations rather than at the top. (Currie and Procter, 2005) As middle managers, deans are compelled to manage both people and results, while providing vital links to the organization when translating top-level directives of the upper management – president, vice-president academic etc. - into operational plans that need to be understood and implemented by the departmental chairs and program coordinators. Understanding the roles of the academic deans within the context of new public management ideologies will help to increase our understanding about how universities are run and what challenges are presently being faced. The study involved participants from 15 Ontario universities. An online survey has been used in order to collect the data. The response rate was 39%, 41 academic deans out of 105 provided their input between May –July 2009. The data collected was subjected to a quantitative analysis which included descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. The findings confirmed the fact that the role of the academic dean has become more managerial in nature as Canadian universities are moving more towards a managed professional public organization model.

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In the context of Human Resource Management (HRM), organisations have been increasingly encouraged to implement a range of practices which, it is argued, will improve their competitiveness in the global market place. Thus, change initiatives within organisations follow one after the other. Yet, although there is apparent acceptance among practitioners and academics that evaluation is a crucial step in any process of continual improvement the reality is often that little has been done to assess the impact and degree of success of each initiative before organisations progress to the next. However, despite wide acknowledgement within the literature that is a significant problem there are few explanations offered and little evidence of any in-depth empirical exploration of the issues involved. This thesis reports on a study which sought to identify and explain the factors which created barriers to evaluation. Using a case study approach the research explored the reality of the evaluation process as it occurred in three UK public sector organisations, each of which was seeking to evaluate a Human Resource Management (HRM) change initiative. Two distinct types of barrier were found to exist which were labelled primary and secondary. As anticipated, there were barriers (secondary) that arose during an evaluation process that related to the choices made about purpose, process and responsibility and which made it difficult for 'good' (thorough, unbiased, relevant) evaluation to occur. However, of greater significance was the discovery in all three organisations of other factors (primary barriers) which, in combination, created a context in which the failure to undertake formal evaluation could be justified as a reasoned, and reasonable, action on the part of managers thereby offering an explanation for why such evaluations are rare. These primary barriers relate to the organisational and individual value placed on the act of evaluating and the learning that occurs as a result of any findings, including the way that it informs the change. Among those responsible for the initiation and implementation of the initiative (normally those who have control of the resources necessary to enable formal evaluation to take place), informal evaluation of the initiative and the context in which it occurred determined the perceived degree of need for formal evaluation to take place. Past experience, observation and shared perceptions suggested that formal evaluation activity was neither valued nor required by the organisation and was likely to have negative personal consequences. Matters are further clouded by an academic and practitioner literature which actively promotes the benefits of HRM strategies, supported by simplistic prescriptions for success, while the majority of empirical studies offer examples which substantiate these claims. In each of the cases reported here the nature of the chosen HRM initiative was assumed to be inherently good, something which would inevitably benefit the organisation in some way, by those responsible for its adoption and implementation thus making formal assessment unnecessary. The research clearly identifies the complexity of the barriers; each type having its roots in different factors that need to be addressed in a variety of ways if they are to be overcome and thus enable the organisation is to achieve the collective, and productive, learning from experience increasingly called for by the management literature. Until evaluation is valued at senior levels and accompanied by the necessary incentives, responsibilities, resources and rewards, wider perception of it as an important and valued activity is unlikely to become an active reality. Thus, the failure to learn from experience, to share understanding and to achieve both continuous improvement and greater levels of success in the management of change will continue. It is also clear that the same academic literature which is currently advocating a key role for HR and evaluation in the context of change needs to offer more in the way of information, guidance and support to make a positive contribution to the changes in perception that are required.

Accounting numbers are not only the products of peripheral economic events, but, by and large, can be consciously influenced from the effects of calculated business decisions and the selective applications of alternative reporting procedures. In academic parlance, the term accounting quality, or lack thereof, is often used to describe the extent to which these convoluting influences create a disparity between economic fundamentals and their numerical portrayal. This doctoral thesis speaks to three aspects of accounting quality; (i) Earnings Thresholds: A Re-Examination of the Role of Earnings Management, (ii) Earnings Manipulation and the Investigation of 'Red Flag' Accounting Ratios, and (iii) An Empirical Analysis of Standard and Poor's (S&Ps) Core Earnings metric. Each topic is outlined in a separate research paper.