Family businesses, in the process of internationalization, beyond the consideration of the economic aspects of international expansion, may take into account non-economic factors and goals aimed at benefiting the family. These non-economic aspects are referred to as socioemotional wealth (SEW). The main question raised in this dissertation is: how does SEW impact the internationalization in family firms? The SEW construct has been considered in previous theoretical and empirical research but, to date, an instrument allowing direct measurement of this phenomenon has not be developed. Therefore, part of this dissertation is dedicated to the development of a measurement instrument allowing for the direct assessment of SEW in terms of its importance to the family firm decision-maker. The scale development procedure is described and the final version of the developed three-dimensional SEW Importance scale is presented. Further, this dissertation includes the development and statistical testing of the model of the impact of SEW on the extent of family firm internationalization, as well as the moderating effect of environmental munificence on the above relationship. This is followed by the discussion of the results, limitations of the study, its contributions and the implications for future research and family firm practice. The aim of this dissertation is to develop a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the importance of SEW in family firms, as well as to further the understanding of the impact that SEW may have on internationalization decisions in family enterprises.

This study revelaed that the rank of Texas with other state in the United States in the expenditure for schools per pupil is thrty-fifth. It further discussed that there are possible sources of taxation in the properties. However, there is a wide variation that needs to be studied. It further justify that present administrative and legislative trends in searching for new source of taxation makes the problem an important one.

This study aim to determine the bookkeeping systems in use in the retail and wholesale businesses in Denton, Texas, and to determine what improvements could be made in the bookkeeping systems of these businesses.

This study tests an aspect of the environmental theory of Peter Huber outlined in his book <i>Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists: A Conservative Manifesto</i> (1999). Huber's thesis is that wealth leads to environmental conservation in two ways: 1) that wealthy nations develop and implement technologies to maximize the efficiency of land use, and 2) that wealthy individuals pour their wealth into the conservation of nature. Using secondary data analysis, I test the first national-level hypothesis with regressions of the variables "Gross National Income" and "ecological footprint," and test the second individual-level hypothesis with logistic regressions of the variables "income" and "donation to environmental groups," from both the General Social Survey and the World Values Survey. The results strongly refute Huber's national-level theory, with evidence that wealthy nations are actually less efficient at using land, but on an individual level the evidence suggests that the wealthy are indeed more likely to donate money to environmental groups. / Master of Science

The dissertation analyzes three issues related to corporate environmental performance. In the first essay, I analyze the stock price reactions of the defendant firms and their peer firms to environmental lawsuits. Empirical evidence finds that the defendant and their peer firms experience negative and significant cumulative abnormal returns to the announcement of environmental lawsuits. Additionally, cross-sectional analyses find certain firm characteristics, such as profitability, growth opportunities and leverage can influence the market reaction. Furthermore, if the plaintiffs are government agencies or corporations instead of individual citizens, the defendant and peer firms experience higher negative market reactions. The second essay examines if a firm's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance can moderate the negative market response to environmental lawsuits. The results are mixed. The overall sample of the defendant and their peer firms show that ESG performance is not a significant factor in mitigating the negative market response. However, an interesting finding shows, for defendant and peer firms in the environmentally sensitive industries, better ESG ratings help reduce the adverse market reactions. The final essay investigates whether the defendant and peer firms improve their ESG performance in the next two years following the lawsuits. The results indicates that firms generally experience a drop in their ESG ratings in the year the lawsuits are filed. However, post-lawsuit filing years, there is a general trend for the defendant and peer firms in the environmentally sensitive industries to improve their environmental performance.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of four variables, principal salary, district wealth, student socioeconomic status, and school size, on the achievement level of public school students in Mississippi. The first, principal salary, was found not to have been studied as a variable that may correlate with student achievement. One may have hypothesized that more effective principals would correlate with increased student achievement test scores and that those principals would have been rewarded with higher salaries. The results of this study did not support that idea. The data indicated that there was no meaningful correlation between highly paid principals and higher student achievement. There was no significant correlation between district wealth and student achievement. This may indicate that Mississippi school funding (MAEP) and federal funding have been effective in aiding low-wealth schools as was intended by lawmakers. There was a significant low positive correlation between school size and student achievement in non-urban elementary schools and a significant very low positive correlation with student achievement in high schools. That places this study in the minority camp of recent research in concluding that larger schools did not correlate with lower achievement. The most significant, meaningful, and important finding of this study was the dramatic impact that student poverty has on student achievement in Mississippi. In urban schools and rural schools, in elementary, middle, and high schools, poorer children scored poorly on their achievement tests. Correlations were significant moderate to high at all levels, with the highest at middle schools with a significant high negative correlation of -.636. The analysis indicates that a decrease in poverty will result in a dramatic increase in student achievement.

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China has been experiencing a great transition from a socialist collective economy to a market economy since 1978. Before the transition started, the Communist Party had established a socialist collective system with very low levels of income and wealth inequality. With the deepening of the rural reform and the development of rural industry, a large number of people were lifted out of poverty. However, as the people's living standards are rising, disparities in income and wealth are also being accentuated. This thesis's main purpose is to study the extent and determinants of income and wealth inequality in rural China. Based on a sample survey data from Anhui and Sichuan provinces, the thesis answers the following five questions: 1. How much income and wealth inequality is there in rural China in 1994-1995? 2. How has inequality in rural China changed since the reform of 1978? 3. How do the components of income and wealth in China affect the income and wealth distributions? 4. What social and economic factors are most responsible for influencing income and wealth in rural China? 5. How much of the inequality in income and wealth can be accounted for by the factors that predict income and wealth? The main findings of the study are, first, rural income inequality was low in the two provinces in 1994-1995 and wealth inequality was higher than income inequality. Second, in the industrialized Sichuan province, nonagricultural income made a big contribution to income inequality, while in the agricultural Anhui province, agricultural income played an important role in increasing income inequality. Third, education, good land, sufficient labor, and better communication resources are positively related to income and wealth. / Master of Science

No / The differences between family firms and nonfamily firms have gained increasing scholarly attention in the field of management, and socioemotional wealth has been argued as the main source of family firm distinctiveness. However, previous researchers have paid little attention to the heterogeneity in socioemotional wealth across family firms. Moreover, little is studied about the generational differences between founder-led family firms and descendant-led family firms. In this study, we address this gap by focusing on how these differences in family leadership are reflected in the gap between firms’ rhetorical CSR policies (CSR talk) and their substantive CSR implementation (CSR walk), which we refer to as CSR decoupling. We argue that the founders of family firms are distinct from descendants regarding three aspects: affective attachment, cognitive identification, and social concern. Our findings reveal that the relationship between socioemotional wealth and CSR decoupling is contingent on family generations. Family ownership decreases CSR decoupling only in founder-led family firms, while it increases CSR decoupling in descendant-led family firms. We discuss our contributions to research at the interaction of family business and CSR.