Sammansättningen i svenska börsnoterade bolags ledningsgrupper består till stor del av medelålders män med svensk härkomst. Mångfalden i dagens Sverige återspeglas därmed inte i näringslivets topp, vilket kan leda till negativa konsekvenser för både företag och samhället i stort. Med hjälp av en välkänd teori inom den strategiska forskningen, the upper echelon theory, och tidigare forskning inom området ämnar vi förklara samband mellan risknivån i företag och ledningsgruppens sammansättning i form av ålder och kön. Vi har genomfört en kvantitativ studie där vi samlat in data om 1991 ledningsgrupper, vilka tillsammans omfattar nästan 14 000 observerade ledande befattningshavare. Den statistiska undersökningen har resulterat i att samband har anträffats mellan risken i företaget och ledningsgruppens sammansättning avseende både kön och ålder. Vi har dessutom funnit att branschen har en viss påverkan på vilka personer som ingår i ledningsgruppen.

Det finns mycket forskning kring entreprenörskap samt rekrytering, dock är soloföretagarens upplevelse av sin första rekrytering ett outforskat område. Genom en kvalitativ forskningsmetod vill vi få en ökad förståelse för hur en soloföretagare upplever hinder och möjligheter när de tar sitt beslut om att bli arbetsgivare. Vi har fått en ökad förståelse genom att vi har genomfört en fokusgrupp samt fyra semistrukturerade intervjuer. De fick själva lyfta fram sina egna erfarenheter samt perspektiv på hur anställningen upplevdes. Vi har i denna studie valt att utgå från två dimensioner kön och ålder då vi har generella uppfattningar om att det kan skilja sig åt mellan dem. Studiens entreprenörer har yttrat sig om att de upplevt både hinder och möjligheter i samband med sin första rekrytering. Ytterligare har vi även en generell uppfattning om att anställa är ett mer riskfyllt beslut i jämförelse med att hyra in sina medarbetare. Studien visade dock att vår generella uppfattning endast stämde överens med två av våra entreprenörer.

Managerial characteristics have an important influence on strategy implementation. Previous studies have looked at the alignment of managerial characteristics with strategic type and aspects of performance. In all cases, the focus has been on corporate strategy and, predominantly, in private sector organisations. This study combines these objectives and investigates alignment between managerial characteristics, strategy and perceived performance. It focuses on management at the functional level in a public sector setting and demonstrates that classical upper-echelon theory is also relevant when applied at the functional level of management. The Miles and Snow (1978) typology is applied to the functional strategy for Dubai government organisations, to investigate whether functional units pursuing strategies are led by functional managers with dissimilar attributes, and whether the alignment between managerial characteristics and strategy is related to performance of the functional unit. Based on the extant literature, a research model has been developed, which yields two types of hypothesis. Data was collected by means of interviews and surveys to obtain knowledge of strategy types, and demographic and psychological characteristics for the functional managers. Regression techniques have been used for data analysis rendering support for two types of hypothesis. Consequently, this study supports the view that Upper Echelon theory can also apply at the functional level, emphasising the role of the functional managers, at the lower management levels of the organisations, in strategy implementation.

This paper examines the effect of executive board-level national culture and board nationality diversity on corporate social performance (CSP). The sample constitutes of 130 executive boards of non-financial firms from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK over the time period 2010-2014. Based on the upper echelon theory and the notion of national culture, board-level national culture is determined across Hofstede’s dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity and power distance. In this paper, no evidence is provided of a significant relationship between board-level national culture and the corporate social performance of the firm. In addition, nationality diversity as a double-edged sword could both enhance and hamper CSP. In this research, no significant relationship between board nationality diversity and CSP is found. In conclusion, alterations of the board composition in terms of nationality in order to foster CSP seem unjustified based on the results of this paper.

As new information technology (NIT) has become a critical instrument for an organization to gain its competitive edge, the issue of how best to exploit and adopt NIT is now a pressing challenge for organizations and researchers alike. Based on upper echelon theory and individual differences literatures, this research paper endeavors to address the issue concerning the knowledge gap present in previous literature: the correlation between a top manager¡¦s personal traits and his NIT championing behavior. To bridge this gap, this paper attempts to explore to what extent a top manager¡¦s personality, ability, and belief characteristics can affect NIT championing behavior. We venture to propose in this paper a comprehensive model in which top managers¡¦ individual characteristics are integrated to facilitate the analysis of NIT adoption in organization. To test research model, Partial Least Squares (PLS) is used to verify the feasibility of the model proposed. Survey results from 130 top managers in Taiwan strongly support our proposition that a top manager¡¦s personality, ability, and belief have significant influence on NIT championing behavior. At the conclusion section of this paper academic and practical implication is discussed.

Risk is something intrinsic to business, and something firms are exposed to on a daily basis. This means that there exists a great deal of pressure on the Top Management of a firm to successfully navigate the different risks to which they are exposed. The CEO holds a unique position in the firm, as she is ultimately responsible for deciding which strategies to employ in order to properly respond to these risks. But what influenced the CEO when making such decisions? The Upper Echelon Theory suggests that decisions made by the Top Management Team of a firm are influenced by their values and their cognitive base, which is formed throughout their upbringing. Researchers on Upper Echelon Theory suggest that these two abstract constructs can be difficult to measure and analyse, and should therefore be approximated using specific and observable characteristics of the Top Management Team. In our study, this theory has applied to Swedish CEOs as they are the ultimate decision-maker in a firm. The specific characteristics observed and analysed in our investigation into the relationship between the CEO and risk are; gender, age, nationality, and tenure. Thus, the purpose of this study is formulated as follows: “The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between CEO characteristics, specifically age, gender, tenure, and nationality, and firm risk-taking, as measured by the leverage ratio, stock return volatility, cash holdings, and R&D expenditure, on the Swedish market. As a sub-purpose, we intend to investigate whether there is a nonlinear relationship between CEO tenure and risk-taking.” By collecting data from the databases, Thomson Reuters Eikon and Amadeus, a dataset of 284 firms and their CEOs was collected and used in the cross-sectional analysis. Multiple linear regression analysis was employed to determine the relationships between the previously mentioned CEO characteristics and the proxies for firm risk-taking. The majority of the relationships found were of a non-significant nature, indicating that the relationship between Swedish CEO characteristics and the strategies they employ when running their firms is weak and differs from relationships found in earlier studies, using data from different markets. The significant relationships found were between cash holdings and age, long tenures and leverage ratio, and short tenures and stock return volatility. This indicates that older CEOs are more risk-averse, while longer seated CEOs maintain less debt, and shorter seated CEOs are perceived as more risky by the market. However, as these results only entail 15% of our observed results, none of the hypotheses constructed for this study were verified. Therefore, our conclusion is that the previously observed relationships between the characteristics of CEOs and their risk-taking is not present within our sample of firms listed on the Swedish market. Some tendencies that align with previous results have been found but are not generalisable and as a result, we cannot recommend that private actors act on these results.

Background & problem:  In a fast-moving environment where organizations are forced to meet changing stakeholder needs, the importance of understanding top management teams (TMT) becomes more prominent given their influential position. Further on, with a growing population, the demand in the real estate industry is deemed to have a continuous growth. For this reason, the urge to implement a sustainability strategy has become fundamentally important to stay competitive. Hence, corporate sustainability communication has purposely been served as a tool to provide misleading information, commonly referred as greenwashing.   Purpose: Building on that, by studying the attitude of TMT regarding the integration of corporate sustainability strategies, it is possible to explore how TMTs are being influenced by stakeholders in their strategic decisions. Furthermore, it is possible to identify characteristics that affect potential drivers of greenwashing.    Method: To serve the purpose of this study, data were collected through a quantitative online survey targeting TMT members of Swedish real estate companies. The framework created for this study is based on an extensive literature review and contains constructs based on observable characteristics drawn on the illuminations from upper echelon theory (UET) (Hambrick & Mason, 1984). To adequately analyse relationships between the different variables, descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis as well as multiple linear regression analysis were conducted.    Conclusion: The results show that the business career construct based on the UET items: financial position, different functional track, career experience and education, has a positive correlation with TMTs perceived gain of positive publicity by stakeholders if implementing a sustainability strategy. Moreover, this study adds knowledge of the underlaying characteristics of managers’ attitude towards corporate sustainability and provide support that business career characteristics follow a stakeholder-orientated logic of implementing a sustainability strategy.

Med bakgrund i tidigare forsknings tvetydiga resultat samt avsaknad av studier för svensk marknad ämnar denna studie undersöka huruvida styrelsens oberoende har ett samband med företagets finansiella prestation hos svenska börsnoterade företag. Urvalet baseras på bolag noterade på Nasdaq Stockholm Large-, Mid- och Small Cap samt Nordic Growth Market för åren 2014–2019 med totalt 478 observationer. Med hjälp av multipel regressionsmetod studerades styrelsens oberoende i förhållande till två prestationsmått, Return on Assets (ROA) och Tobins Q. Studien finner inget signifikant samband mellan styrelsens oberoende och företagets finansiella prestation oavsett vilket mått som används. Resultaten är robusta även för test över tidsperioden 2017–2019. Studiens resultat analyseras i relation till tidigare forskning samt agentteori och upper echelon theory. Utfallet för denna studie går inte i linje med teoriernas antaganden eller tidigare forskning i Europa, därav anses ytterligare studier krävas för att säkerställa sambandet.

Intresset för frivillig rapportering har under de senaste åren ökat. Tidigare studier har fått varierande resultat avseende vad som påverkar företags frivilliga rapportering, men managers personliga egenskaper har antagits kunna ha en påverkan. Syftet med studien är att förklara hur personliga egenskaper, som CEO:er respektive CFO:er i svenska börsnoterade företag besitter, påverkar den frivilliga rapporteringen i företagens årsredovisningar. Såväl påverkan på den totala mängden frivillig information som på vilka kategorier av frivillig information som läggs vikt vid studeras. Studien visade att kvinnliga CFO:er bidrar positivt till den totala mängden frivillig rapportering och att CFO:ers personliga egenskaper generellt har en större påverkan än CEO:ers personliga egenskaper på den frivilliga rapporteringen. Managers personliga egenskaper visades påverka den totala mängden frivillig rapportering mer än vilka kategorier som läggs vikt vid. Dock visade resultatet också på att agentteorin och de systemorienterade teorierna bättre förklarar vad som påverkar frivillig rapportering än vad managers personliga egenskaper gör. Studien bidrar till ökad kunskap om vad som påverkar företagens frivilliga rapportering. Genom att utgå från företagens CEO respektive CFO bidrar studien med förståelse för hur personliga egenskaper hos dessa påverkar den frivilliga rapporteringen, både den totala mängden och vilka kategorier av information som läggs vikt vid.

Hållbarhet är ett ämne som de senaste åren blivit allt mer viktigt i samhället, där allt fler krav ställs på företag att ta sitt ansvar. Tidigare studier visar på ett positivt samband mellan andel kvinnor i styrelsen och hållbarhetsprestation. Forskning kopplat till åldersmässig mångfald och hållbarhetsprestation är däremot bristfällig och resultaten är varierande. Denna kvantitativa studie syftar till att undersöka om mångfalden i styrelsen har någon påverkan på CSR-prestationen i svenska börsnoterade bolag. Undersökningen genomförs med hjälp av en multipel regressionsmodell. För att mäta hållbarhetsprestation används Refinitivs ESG-poäng, vilket delas upp i tre olika faktorer: miljö, sociala och bolagsstyrning. Studiens resultat tyder på att det finns ett positivt signifikant samband mellan andelen kvinnor i styrelsen och hållbarhetsprestationen. Det återfinns inte någon signifikant betydelse för åldersmässig mångfald och hållbarhetsprestation, förutom en aspekt av ESG-poängen, bolagsstyrning, där det dokumenteras ett negativ samband. Slutligen återfinns inga fler signifikanta samband mellan åldersmässig mångfald och hållbarhetsprestation.