I investigate the role of organizational form and ownership structure in corporate governance by examining CEO turnover decision in the property-casualty insurance industry. The likelihoods of turnover and non-routine turnover are significantly and negatively associated to firm performance, and the outside succession dominates when non-routine turnover occurs. Further, the firm's magnitude of turnover-performance sensitivity depends on its quality of the corporate governance mechanisms which are determined by organizational form and ownership structure. The sensitivity of non-routine turnover to firm performance is lower in mutuals than publicly held non-family firms. Non-family-member CEOs in publicly listed family firms have the highest likelihoods of turnover and performance-turnover sensitivity among all types of companies. Manager-owned stock insurance companies have the lowest turnover rate and sensitivity of non-routine turnover to firm performance. Also incoming successors mainly come from the controlling family no matter what the turnover type is. / Business Administration/Risk Management and Insurance

The investigation of employee stock ownership is undertaken using microeconomic theory and the in-depth empirical analysis of two metropolitan newspapers with long histories of extensive employee ownership. Economic theory suggests that there are four important considerations beyond current tax incentives in employee and employer decisions to institute employee stock ownership: (1) preference for ownership in the employing firm by employees, (2) expected incentive effects on productivity and information flows in the firm, (3) the potential for participation in the oversight of the firm by stock owning employees, and (4) job and portfolio mobility considerations of employees. A review of existing studies of firms with employee stock ownership suggests that the four important considerations suggested by economic theory have not been empirically documented to a great extent; particularly expected effects on information flows and actual production in organizations. An in-depth investigation of the importance of the four non-tax considerations in two metropolitan newspapers is undertaken using financial data. The results indicate the importance of the four theoretical considerations in determining the impact of employee stock ownership on the operation of a firm. In the analysis of newspapers the study suggests that important externalities to a locality may be involved in the ownership structure of the local news media. The microeconomic investigations at a theoretical and empirical level suggests several macroeconomic implications for public policy aimed at increasing employee ownership of stock through tax incentives to firms that adopt employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). Reaching macroeconomic policy. goals of increased production, employment and employee firm attachment as a result of increased employee stock ownership depends upon the inducement of changes in the internal operations of firms with stock plans as suggested and documented by this microeconomic investigation. / Ph. D.

This study examined framing in two Bulgarian television stations and their web sites. Framing within the web sites' news coverage of the United States was examined during the one-month period immediately following the 2008 United States presidential election. The news articles gathered from the two web sites were examined for amount of coverage, frame presence and valence, as well as hyperlinks, in order to offer insight into the fields of gatekeeping, framing, and corporate ownership bias. Suggestions of bias were found in terms of the overall tone of the articles but not in the amount of coverage. There was a significant difference between the two web sites in the tone of coverage concerning individuals and events. / Master of Arts

Yes / We analyse takeovers in an industry with bilateral capital‐linked firms in cross partial ownership (CPO). Before merger, CPO reduces the profitability of involved firms, confirming the “outsider effect.” However, the impact of CPO upon merger profitability is two‐sided in a Cournot setting. CPO, by cointegrating profits, increases output collusion leading to anticompetitive effects with facilitated mergers in most cases. Nonetheless, a protective threshold exists for which CPO arrangements can reduce the incentives for hostile takeovers. This has potentially significant regulatory implications. An illustrative example showcases the potential relevance of CPO as a defence against hostile takeovers across different industries.

This study analyzes the effect of changes in corporate ownership at three large metropolitan daily newspapers as reflected in the content of lead Sunday editorials at each newspaper. The study sought to determine whether changes in type of ownership would increase the number of neutral editorials in the post-incorporation era for the newspapers. The results suggest incorporation has an influence on the editorial content of the newspapers. Two of the three newspapers showed significant increases in the percentage of neutral editorials after changes in ownership. In addition, editorial domains were defined as either political, economic, or social. When controlling for these domains, logistic regression shows each newspaper altered its use of neutral editorials in a significant manner. The Atlanta Journal- Constitution increased the percentage of neutral editorials across each of the dimensions, the New York Times increased its use of neutral editorials across the economic and political dimensions while decreasing the percentage of neutral social editorials, and the Washington Post increased its use of neutral editorials across each of the three dimensions. / Ph. D.

Rust has gained traction in the technical community as a safe system programming language. A unique feature of Rust is the memory ownership model, which enforces memory safety at compile-time. This project investigated how the memory model is used in practice. This report defines patterns that categorize the usage of variables with owned values in Rust. An automated analysis was used to scan over 3 million function bodies with over 7 million owned variables from 8 951 open-source projects. The analysis indicates that only 18% of all owned variables are borrowed at one point. In fact, only 61% of all analyzed function bodies contained at least one borrow. The data indicates that owned values are either mutable or immutably borrowed, only 0.6% of the analyzed variables had both borrow kinds in the same scope. Another interesting observation is that most values are moved instead of dropped at the end of their scope.

The purpose of our paper is to study how ownership structure affects ARL (audit report lag) in Swedish companies listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. In particular, family ownership (FAMO), institutional ownership (INSO) and foreign ownership (FORO) are analysed. Audit report lag is defined as the period between the end of a fiscal year to the signing of the audit report, which is directly followed by the release of an annual report. Based on a sample of 814 firm-year observations for Swedish-listed firms for 2020-2022, this study finds a significant negative relationship between audit report lag and both family and foreign ownership. The results indicate that audit report lag decreases when family and foreign ownership increases. Moreover, the findings suggest that family-owned firms have a shorter audit report lag compared to non-familyowned firms. No statistically significant relationship was discovered between ARL and institutional ownership. Arguments for our results can be found in the agency theory, signalling theory, and consequently the reputational hypothesis. Companies with certain ownership structures may try to signal certain information to investors to achieve the best possible reputation and external perception. Signalling theory has implications for companies that want to combat agency theory type 2 through timely reporting.

This interpretive study explores the effect of employee share ownership (ESO) plans (SIP, EMI and SAYE) on employee attitudes and behaviours at work by taking into account the role of Psychological Ownership (PO), characterised by feelings of "mine" and "ours". The key concepts and relationships specified in positivist causal models of ESO and PO were translated into a set of interview questions and were used to explore with 37 ESO plan participants and 9 ESO plan managers whether the causal models fit with the way they explain for themselves their experiences of and reactions to employee share ownership. In doing this, the study has responded to suggestions made in the research literature to compare the attitudinal effects of different types of employee ownership, avoid the manipulation of large, readily available data sets, and to provide insights into the causal processes surrounding ESO. Overall, three main themes can be identified from employees responses, which appeared to have some influence on whether or not the share plan was felt to have an impact. First, employees interest in making money, and expectations of whether they would, played a large part in their explanations of ESO s impact. A number of employees felt the share plan helped retain them in the organisation. However, this did not appear to be because the plan was making then more committed, in the sense that they would feel more emotionally attached, or a greater sense of identification with the company. Instead, the plan was retaining employees by causing them to make an assessment of the costs associated with leaving (continuance commitment). Second, many of the ESO outcomes featured in the academic literature were already felt to be experienced by employees at work and ESO was felt to only be able to add in a small way to what was already being experienced. Finally, in some situations ESO represented something quite meaningful to employees. ESO was sometimes interpreted as being a sign that the company valued employees, wanted them to feel part of the company, or that the employees were important to the company. The offer to participate in ESO was interpreted in some cases as being an acknowledgement of hard work, and an indication of how the company wanted employees to feel. This was found to enhance ESO s capacity to impact how employees felt at work. However, with regards to most outcomes explored in this study, employees reported little or no impact from ESO. Findings suggested that the ESO plans, even when they were felt to lead to feelings of PO, provided little incentive to work harder. PO was also found to play little or no part in employees explanations of how share plans had an impact or why they did not. Employees felt they had a long wait before making a financial return and no tangible day to day benefits of ESO. This led the plans, and the potential gains that could be made, to be perceived as very long term, and easily forgotten. Finally, this study highlights a mismatch between the causal models of ESO and PO, the conventional wisdom of ESO, the views of the ESO managers, and the interpretations of the employees who were interviewed and raises the question of whether ESO achieves what it is intended (and often believed) to achieve.

published_or_final_version / Urban Studies / Master / Master of Social Sciences

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management