Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

none

The proverb ¡§Knowledge is power¡¨ points out the importance of knowledge. The advancement of information technology and increased competition among enterprises has pushed many researchers to study knowledge management. Most organizations understand the importance of knowledge and treat knowledge as a vital resource. However, it is not quite clear whether knowledge resource can increase organizational performance in the constantly changing environment. Although literature has indicated the key role of knowledge resources and their impact on organizational performance, empirical study is still lacking in this research domain. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between knowledge resources and organizational performance. An empirical study was conducted to evaluate the research model. Major findings include: (1) The degree of knowledge documentation has significant positive effect on the market performance of an organization; (2) Organizational culture and the degree of information technology applications have significant positive effects on both management performance and market performance. Organizational structure has significant positive effects on management performance, but the explicit-orientation of knowledge management strategy has negative effects on both management performance and market performance; (3) The nature of organizational knowledge has a moderating effect on the effect of the degree of information technology applications on management performance. Our findings can help managers and chief knowledge officers better the nature of organizational knowledge and organizational performance in order to cope with the dynamic environment.

This thesis investigates abnormal returns for 60 Swedish acquiring firms within multipleindustries during a stock market peak. The research is limited to 2021, a year in which theM&A market saw an upswing in the number of transactions and volumes. Moreover, theconducted study will compare numerous deal and firm characteristics to determine if they arerelated to market performance. Our findings indicate that no substantial abnormal returns werefound for Swedish acquiring firms during the event. In contrast to prior international findings,our research concludes that large firms perform better than small. In addition, a significantrelationship between abnormal return and Tobin’s Q was discovered, indicating that a firm’sover- or undervaluation characteristics affect the stock market performance of acquirers.

Yes / This article examines the impact of small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) proactive environmental strategy on market performance through the mediating mechanism of environmental reputation. In addition, we investigate the potential moderating role of competitive strategies on the environmental reputation-market performance nexus. Data were collected from 223 SMEs. Using the hierarchical multiple regression analysis, the results show that a proactive environmental strategy positively enhances environmental reputation. Also, the influence of proactively environmental strategy on market performance is mediated by environmental reputation. In addition, our findings show the relationship between environmental reputation and market performance is greater for firms that adopt the differentiation strategy but not significant for firms adopting the low-cost and integrated strategies. Our study offers several theoretical and practical implications.

Significant structural changes in the retail sector, due to retailer consolidation within and across countries as well as retailer internationalisation, lead to significant changes of the sales function within the FMCG industry. Whilst formally sales functions acted traditionally predominantly locally, manufacturers are recently pressured to act more integrated, i.e. centrally, regarding its sales function. From an IB perspective this study strives to investigate into the result of the competing forces for integration and responsiveness at the manufacturers side in the special context of Germany, being a pivotal market for this industry. Identifying the potential division of strategic sales activities between subsidiary and HQ, the study investigates into how such division impacts on the subsidiary market performance. Using the I/R framework as a starting point, network theory and the concept of subsidiary importance are utilized to understand the interrelationships a subsidiary is embedded in and its potential strategic importance to the wider MNE. The framework connects the antecedents of the division of strategic sales activities between HQ and subsidiary, to subsidiary market performance. The research follows a mixed-method approach using contextualising interviews and a quantitative survey. The data analysis has been conducted with PLS SEM reflecting both the more explorative character of the study and the relatively small sample size. Empirical evidence showed that most strategic sales decisions are still made at subsidiary level, pointing at a low level of division between HQ and subsidiary. The results show that strong customer relationships as well as the positive impact of a formalised sales strategy, which ideally follows a global strategic framework, seem to be the main contributors to subsidiary market performance. Unexpectedly, subsidiary importance, the visibility and relevance of sales capabilities to other subsidiaries, fails to be a driver for the subsidiary strategic role within the MNE, mainly due to the functional (sales competencies stay rather local) and country (sheer importance of the German market) context of the study. The key contributions of this study are related to the area of IB and the sales literature. This study adds to the extant IB literature from a downstream value chain perspective supporting existing findings regarding the network theory and subsidiary market performance. The irrelevance of the concept of subsidiary importance highlights the importance of the empirical context in IB research. Finally, the study sheds light on the sales function from a strategic perspective in the IB context and thus adds to the sparse literature regarding the sales strategy as well as it starts bridging both fields.

Studies on earnings management usually hypothesise that managers manage accruals opportunistically. Few studies however, argue that managers can also use accruals to improve the value relevance of reported earnings to help investors better assess the firm's operating performance. While substantial evidence on managers' opportunistic behaviour on accruals has been documented in the literature, empirical evidence on the informativeness of accruals is scarce and inconclusive. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether managers use accruals to communicate private information regarding the firm's operating performance, or as reported in the literature, use them for their own benefit. This thesis finds that on average, firms reporting high earnings accompanied by high accruals have significantly negative subsequent period stock returns suggesting that these firms manage their accounting earnings. Focusing on stock dividend issues as an incentive to opportunistically increase accruals, the results are found to be consistent with the earnings management hypothesis. Stock dividend issuing firms are reported to significantly increase accruals in the issue year followed by poor earnings and stock price performances in the subsequent year. Moreover, discretionary accruals of the issuing firms are negatively correlated with both future earnings and abnormal stock returns. This evidence attempts to complement the earnings management literature. The analysis on the incentive to decrease accruals related to share repurchases, however, does not provide sufficient evidence to suggest that managers use their discretion to decrease accruals. To investigate the hypothesis that managers use accruals to convey information regarding their firm's future profitability, this thesis employs the contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements as the research setting. This choice was made to increase the likelihood of detecting the use of accruals as private information communication while simultaneously mitigating the likelihood of the opportunistic income smoothing hypothesis to explain the results. The evidence strongly indicates that managers use both accruals and dividend increases as their private information communication regarding their firm's future profitability. Dividend increasing firms report positive accruals which are positively correlated with future profitability. This finding contributes to the literature by providing evidence on the accrual signalling hypothesis. Overall, the results of this thesis suggest that, depending on the incentives, managers can use the discretion accorded under the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in estimating accounting accrual, either to manage accruals opportunistically or to help investors better assess the firms' operating performance.

Due to the rapid revolution in trading strategies, market environment is very different from the past, and the market intervention in national stock exchanges has been taken seriously again . However, very few studies discussed the rule-based trading suspension for individual stocks in the past, and most of them only focused on the impact of trading halt on market performance. For this reason, this study in addition to measures impact of market performance, another major analysis focuses on the differences between individual and institutional investors order behavior under different halt conditions. We try to understand whether the current halt mechanism achieves the purposes of reducing the information asymmetry and the abnormal volatility. The market performence empirical results show that transitory trading halt can reduce the overreaction of re-opening, but the halt of follow-up 5 minutes of the liquidity decreased, and volatility increased. Next, we find the individual investors order aggressive tend to be conservative in the period of suspension. In contrast, Institutional investor behavior will tend to be more positive with higher information asymmetry and will not be affected by the trading halt. Moreover, from follow-up 20 minutes individual-institutional transaction VWAP ratio, we find that the trading halt will improve the performance of individual investors transactions.

The application of the internet technology on securities markets has been increasing over recent years, so is the influence it has caused on the way the stock market is operated. There is no doubt that internet technology is changing the access between investors and issuing firms, as well as the access between investors and exchanges. How would this affect the stock market microstructure? Little study has been done thus far in this regard, and, as far as we know, none has looked into the issue of IPOs on internet and its related impact on IPO returns. In addition to the impact on the primary market, internet tradings also have immense impact on the underlying performance of the secondary market. The purposes of this study are mainly twofold:(1) To explore the related issues in IPOs or DPOs on internet, e.g., the disclosure requirements, the restriction of investors, and the effect it has on IPO discounts,(2) To empirically test how the internet trading affects the daily and intraday performance (i.e., liquidity, volatility and efficiency) of the market.This is the first study attempting to examine the pricing issue of IPOs on the internet. We hope to compare the returns of initial public offerings on the internet with those of the traditional IPOs and analyze the differences, if any. In addition to provide useful analyses to the security authority on DPOs or IPOs on internet, the result of this study should contribute to our understanding of the market microstructure.

Studies on earnings management usually hypothesise that managers manage accruals opportunistically. Few studies however, argue that managers can also use accruals to improve the value relevance of reported earnings to help investors better assess the firm's operating performance. While substantial evidence on managers' opportunistic behaviour on accruals has been documented in the literature, empirical evidence on the informativeness of accruals is scarce and inconclusive. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether managers use accruals to communicate private information regarding the firm's operating performance, or as reported in the literature, use them for their own benefit. This thesis finds that on average, firms reporting high earnings accompanied by high accruals have significantly negative subsequent period stock returns suggesting that these firms manage their accounting earnings. Focusing on stock dividend issues as an incentive to opportunistically increase accruals, the results are found to be consistent with the earnings management hypothesis. Stock dividend issuing firms are reported to significantly increase accruals in the issue year followed by poor earnings and stock price performances in the subsequent year. Moreover, discretionary accruals of the issuing firms are negatively correlated with both future earnings and abnormal stock returns. This evidence attempts to complement the earnings management literature. The analysis on the incentive to decrease accruals related to share repurchases, however, does not provide sufficient evidence to suggest that managers use their discretion to decrease accruals. To investigate the hypothesis that managers use accruals to convey information regarding their firm's future profitability, this thesis employs the contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements as the research setting. This choice was made to increase the likelihood of detecting the use of accruals as private information communication while simultaneously mitigating the likelihood of the opportunistic income smoothing hypothesis to explain the results. The evidence strongly indicates that managers use both accruals and dividend increases as their private information communication regarding their firm's future profitability. Dividend increasing firms report positive accruals which are positively correlated with future profitability. This finding contributes to the literature by providing evidence on the accrual signalling hypothesis. Overall, the results of this thesis suggest that, depending on the incentives, managers can use the discretion accorded under the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in estimating accounting accrual, either to manage accruals opportunistically or to help investors better assess the firms' operating performance.