Univ., Diss.--Basel, 2001.

Agency theory, which discusses the conflict between agent and principle, was developed by Jensen and Meckling in 1976. Owing to the separation of ownership and management, shareholders and management authority have agency relationship. The one reason that shareholder hand in company affairs to management authority is that management authority has better management ability. Another reason is that shareholder cannot handle by himself for some reasons and must hand in to other people. Management authority has the advantage of information and they also seek for their own interest. But these behaviors may damage shareholder¡¦s right and agency problems occur in the situation. Agency problems occur not only between shareholder and management authority but also between management authority and lender in a company with debt. Shareholders often supervise management authority more strictly and make more rules to confine management authority in order to reduce agency problem or protect their own interest. But these actions disturb management authority when management authority is full of ambitions and endeavor. If agency problems between shareholder and management authority cannot be solved properly, it will make company operate abnormally and damage the nation¡¦s economic further. On the contrary earning forecast can reduce information asymmetry. If management authority can disclose earning forecast voluntarily, it is helpful to reduce the agency problem and the information asymmetry between shareholder and management authority. The article assumes management authority disclose earning forecast voluntarily in order to get shareholder and debtor¡¦s trust in this point of view and use firm size¡Bfree cash flow¡Bleverage as the proxy of agency cost. In this research we find that the more debt the company have, the higher voluntarily the company discloses earning forecast. It is the same as we expect. But free cast flow is not significant. When firm size is bigger, the management authority is less voluntary to disclose earning forecast. The result is contrary to the view of agency problem.

None

Univ., Diss.--Copenhagen, 2005. / Enth. 4 Beitr.

Univ., Diss.--München, 2003.

M.Com. (International Accounting) / Without me trying to rewrite history or steal the thunder from many historians, it was William Pollard who said: “without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable” (Brainyquote, 2014). In the words of the famous George Bernard Shaw, “progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything” (Brainyquote, 2014). These truths equally apply to accounting practice. Over the past few years, many factors have contributed to changes in accounting practice.

During the last decades we have seen a growing number of new start-ups in the service/knowledge sector. These types of companies often have no fiscal assets to secure loans with. What types of financing alternatives are there in those situations? I will in this thesis show that there are two directions to choose between to get financial support. By gathering of information I have been able to show that there are more than one alternative to consider when needing funding and that using different alternatives will lead to different results. I will not say which one is the right one, but that there are different ways and there will be different outcomes depending on which one you choose. The study also shows that there are a lot of things you need to take into consideration before using a venture capitalist. An empirical study is made between two companies that decided to use different ways to get the financial support they required. The result shown in this study is that the entrepreneurs own financial situation affect what direction the entrepreneur will take.

A política de dividendos é um tema amplamente pesquisado no Brasil e no mundo ao longo de várias décadas. Consequentemente, inúmeras teorias foram desenvolvidas para explicar esse assunto. Contudo, recentemente, o arcabouço da Teoria de Agência tem proporcionado novas descobertas sobre os fatores que influenciam as políticas de dividendos das empresas. Especificamente, foram propostas teorias que sugerem que os dividendos refletem boas práticas de governança corporativa, tornando a distribuição de proventos um complemento à proteção legal do acionista. Em contrapartida, em um ambiente com proteção mais fraca e regras menos rígidas de governança, a distribuição de dividendos atua de maneira substituta à essa carência de proteção. No Brasil, devido às características legais mais frágeis quando comparada com mercados como o Norte Americano e do Reino Unido, seria esperado uma situação na qual os dividendos fossem substitutos à proteção oferecida pelos padrões de governança. Entretanto, pesquisas relacionadas à América Latina, aos mercados emergentes e, mais especificamente, ao mercado brasileiro, têm apontado para situações diferentes do que é apontado pela teoria, mas não de maneira unânime. Além disso, considerando o ambiente institucional brasileiro, de elevada concentração de propriedade, estudos anteriores não conseguiram determinar de que forma esse fenômeno influencia a política de dividendos das companhias. Assim, para contribuir com essa discussão, este trabalho investiga conjuntamente como a governança corporativa e a concentração de propriedade afetam as políticas de dividendos das empresas brasileiras. Esta pesquisa abrangeu 171 empresas no período de 2008 a 2017. De maneira inédita, foi utilizada como variável dependente o valor total dos dividendos dividido pelo patrimônio líquido. Os resultados das estimações por efeitos fixos com erros-padrão robustos por empresas mostraram uma relação positiva entre as proxys para governança corporativa e concentração de propriedade com a distribuição de dividendos. Como contribuições adicionais, foi mostrado que os resultados da estimação com a variável dependente dividendos pelo patrimônio líquido são melhores que os resultados da estimação com a variável dependente payout. Também foi identificado que a propriedade dispersa e altamente concentrada afetam positivamente e de maneira mais intensa a distribuição de dividendos, em comparação com outros níveis de propriedade do maior acionista / The dividend policy is a widely researched topic in Brazil and the world over several decades. Consequently, numerous theories have been developed to explain this subject. However, recently, the Agency Theory framework has provided new insights into the factors that influence corporate dividend policies. Specifically, theories have been proposed that suggest that dividends reflect good corporate governance practices, making the distribution of proceeds a complement to shareholder legal protection. On the other hand, in an environment with weaker protection and less rigid rules of governance, the distribution of dividends acts in a substitute way to this lack of protection. In Brazil, due to the more fragile legal characteristics when compared to markets such as the United States and the United Kingdom, a situation in which dividends would be a substitute for the protection offered by governance standards would be expected. However, research related to Latin America, emerging markets and, more specifically, the Brazilian market, have pointed to different situations than is pointed out by theory, but not unanimously. Moreover, considering the Brazilian institutional environment, with a high concentration of ownership, previous studies have not been able to determine how this phenomenon influences the companies\' dividend policy. Thus, to contribute to this discussion, this work investigates jointly how corporate governance and concentration of ownership affect the dividend policies of Brazilian companies. This survey covered 171 companies in the period from 2008 to 2017. In an unprecedented way, the total amount of dividends divided by shareholders\' equity was used as the dependent variable. The results of fixed-effect estimate with robust standard errors by companies showed a positive relationship between the proxies for corporate governance and concentration of ownership with the distribution of dividends. As additional contributions, it was shown that the results of the estimation with the dependent variable dividends by the equity are better than the results of the estimation with the dependent variable payout. It has also been identified that dispersed and highly concentrated ownership positively and more sharply affect the distribution of dividends as compared to other ownership levels of the largest shareholder

Uma das bases do sistema de franquias é a relação entre franqueado e franqueador. O franqueador, proprietário da marca, é responsável pela formatação do negócio e por formar as bases de uma rede padronizada, um dos pilares desse tipo de sistema. O franqueado desempenha o papel de manter a sua unidade segundo os preceitos e modelos impostos pela franqueadora. A rede pode se prejudicar por decisão de franqueados que não se engajam e apresentam comportamento diferente. A pergunta que orientou o trabalho foi: O que leva os franqueados a não se engajarem na rede de franquia? Para responder a pergunta foi elaborado um modelo de fatores que influenciam no engajamento e que serviram de base para o objetivo da tese - buscar os fatores que influenciam os franqueados a não se engajarem. O estudo apresenta a relação entre os agentes envolvidos, aprofundando os conceitos da teoria da agência em franquia, principalmente na escolha de novos parceiros e na manutenção dos atuais. Além disso, verifica-se a importância de fatores comportamentais, tais como pró-atividade e capacidade de adaptação e não apenas dos econômicos, usualmente considerados pelos franqueadores. Para a elaboração da tese utilizou-se a Theory Building from Cases (Teoria Baseada em Casos), estudando franqueados de três redes de franquia estabelecidas com mais de dez anos de atuação que totalizam por volta de 400 franqueados em seus quadros (setenta, noventa e duzentas e trinta unidades respectivamente). Para a elaboração da tese foram realizadas 37 entrevistas (3 franqueados; 8 consultores de campo; 24 franqueados e 2 entrevistas teste) totalizando mais de 60 horas de entrevistas. Qualitativo e exploratório, o estudo comparou franqueados engajados e não engajados por meio de dados primários se utilizando das técnicas de analise de conteúdo por meio do software MAXQDA12. O estudo, que partiu de trinta fatores de influência, apresenta um modelo de não engajamento de franqueados de seis fatores, divididos em duas dimensões, Franqueador: Problemas de Comunicação, Falta de Supervisão e Monitoramento e Influência na Rentabilidade e; Franqueado: Pouca Capacidade de Adaptação, Não Conhecimento do Sistema e Baixa Pró-Atividade. Esses fatores dificultam a construção da confiança no franqueador e problemas de agência. Destaca-se que a falta de comunicação com a equipe pode ser um fator desencadeante desse processo, um gatilho desse não engajamento. Na tese também fica claro que o nível de empreendedorismo pretendido pelas franqueadoras para seus franqueados ainda é algo difícil de mensurar e não muito claro. / One of the franchising foundations is the relationship between franchisee and franchisor. The franchisor, brand owner, is responsible for formatting the business and establishing the bases of a standardized franchised chain, one of the pillars of this type of system. The franchisee plays the role of keeping its unit according to the precepts and models imposed by the franchisor. The franchise chain may be harmed by franchisees who decide not to engage and present different behavior. The question that guided the work was: What leads franchisees not to engage in the franchise chain? In order to answer this question, a model of factors that influence engagement was developed. It served as basis for the purpose of the thesis, which is to look for the factors that influence franchisees not to engage. The study presents the relationship between the agents involved, deepening the concepts of the agency theory in franchising, mainly regarding the choice of new partners and maintenance of the current ones; moreover, the importance of behavioral factors is verified as well, such as, proactivity and adaptability and not only the economic ones which are usually considered by franchisors. In order to elaborate the thesis 37 interviews were conducted (3 franchisees, 8 franchise field consultants, 24 franchisees and 2 test) totaling more than 60 hours of material. Qualitative and exploratory, the study compared engaged and not engaged franchisees through primary data using content analysis techniques by operating MAXQDA12 software. The study, which started off from thirty influence factors, presents a six-factor model of franchisees non-engagement, divided into the following two dimensions: Franchisor (Communication Problems, Lack of Supervision and Monitoring and Influence on Profitability) and Franchisee (Poor Adaptability, No Knowledge of the System and Low Pro-Activity). These factors hinder confidence building in the franchiser resulting in agency issues. It is accentuated that the lack of team communication can be an initiating factor to this process, a trigger of this nonengagement problem. In this thesis it is also clear that the entrepreneurship level intended by franchisors to their franchisees is still something very difficult to measure and it is very unclear.

This thesis is an empirical investigation into the control mechanisms of headquarters (HQ) exercised over their subsidiaries and is conducted with the help of primary data collected from 147 Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) operating in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Following on from the literature review, this study proposed that the headquarters-subsidiary mechanisms could be linked to agency theory (with the 'classical' principal-agent relationship as its core) and to resource dependency theory (implying relations between the subsidiary and other partners based on interdependence). Our results show that the agency and resource dependency mechanisms are indeed used side by side and complementary to each other to exercise control. The Headquarters-subsidiary model used in this study has four components of control in it: personal centralised control (PCC), bureaucratic formalised control (BFC), output control (OUT) and informal control (INFO). These controls (as an agency mechanism) provide a solid platform on which other mechanisms can be built. The complementarities of these control mechanisms may be linked to earlier studies that show that successful organisations combine tight control with more open, informal and flexible information and communication exchanges. A focus that bends too much towards formal control or too much towards informal control may threaten a company's existence. Our research provides an empirical explanation on this premise. The study found that Anglo-Saxon countries heavily use impersonal types of control mechanisms, specifically bureaucratic formalised control and output control. Compared to the US, the level of control in Oriental subsidiaries is less; or, put differently, the latter enjoy a greater degree of autonomy than US subsidiaries. Once a unit is operational, Oriental parent companies grant many more degrees of freedom than US parent companies. When we deconstructed the results for Europe, comparing German and British MNEs as a group to Oriental MNEs, we found that the latter exercised greater overall control. With regard to output and bureaucratic control, we found that both US MNEs and those from the Middle East exercised greater control than Oriental MNEs. The study drew the aspect of international transfers into the picture and investigated the role of expatriates in controlling subsidiaries. It has been recognised that expatriates can form both direct and indirect means of control. In executing direct types of control, expatriates directly supervised decisions taken at subsidiaries. The study found that this role is particularly strong in MNEs from Asia-Pacific countries and German MNEs, and is much less important in subsidiaries of Anglo-Saxon MNEs. We found that subsidiaries of German MNEs experienced a very high level of control; indeed, the only control mechanism that German MNEs did not implement among subsidiaries was control by socialisation and networks. German and Japanese MNEs are perhaps more rooted in business systems concerned with the management of issues internationally than American or British companies. The second group reflected that Anglo-Saxon countries heavily used impersonal types of control mechanisms, specifically bureaucratic formalised control and output control. When we deconstructed the results for Europe, comparing German and British as a group to Oriental MNEs, reveals the latter as possessing greater overall control. With regard to output and bureaucratic control, we found that both US MNEs and those from the Middle East exercised greater control than Oriental MNEs. Headquarters can strategize to implement control by the informal and social means method by positioning a sizeable number of managers from the home country within the subsidiary. Indeed, our results revealed this as true. It seems that their presence has positive and significant effects on most levels of control: personal, output, bureaucratic and informal. Contrary to this, however, we found that the presence of a sizeable number of expatriates (as opposed to headquarters managers) leaded to greater autonomy in subsidiaries. In terms of strategy and structure, we indicated that the three distinct organisational models identified for MNEs could be recognised in our study. Control INFO was significantly, positively related to global strategy, multi-domestic and transnational strategy compared with PCC, BFC, and OUT control mechanism. Conversely, BFC had a significant, negative and weak relationship with global strategy and transnational strategy, and no relationship with multi-domestic strategy. In general however, we can deduce the existence of a tendency for global, transnational and multi-domestic MNEs to use indirect control mechanisms and informal control suited to their integrated organisational models to a larger extent. Our results confirmed previous studies in the field of organisation theory, in the sense that size is an important explanatory factor for differences in control mechanisms. In contrast to these studies, however, a dominant effect was found only for the indirect control mechanisms. Few detailed studies that have investigated the effect of size on the two indirect control mechanisms; in actuality, most previous studies have focused on the direct control mechanisms (personal centralised control and bureaucratic formalised control) only. As such, our study reconfirmed the importance of the variable size, but concluded that it is mainly associated with higher levels of indirect control. The age of the subsidiary does not seem to have a significant influence on the type of control mechanism that is exercised by headquarters towards a particular subsidiary. Our study investigated the importance of various MNE characteristics in an attempt to explain performance differences between MNEs. The advantage of this study is that many of the characteristics that have been identified in previous literature as being important factors influencing performance were included in our research design, in order for us to be able to answer the other research questions. This therefore allowed us to assess the relative importance levels of different variables in explaining performance differences between companies, such as: country of origin, industry, size, interdependence, local responsiveness, knowledge flows, and the strategy and structure of the MNEs.