This study examines how board diversity and characteristics of directors affect the financial and non-financial performance of Swedish state-owned enterprises (SOEs). SOEs are characterized by state ownership, goal complexity, governmental funding and control and are therefore typical examples of hybrid organizations that purse both commercial and political logics. The board of directors (BODs) of SOEs as representatives of the shareholder serve as corporate governance mechanism to control and monitor the organization to achieve financial and non-financial targets. Further, the boards should compose of directors with the appropriate competence and experience as well as integrity and ethical values to govern the challenges for hybrid organizations.Therefore, information of the BODs on Swedish SOEs are conducted regarding their educational background, professional experience, multiple appointments, tenure, gender diversity and age diversity, as well as the amount of state representatives. Financial performance was measured by using Return on Assets and Return on Equity, while non-financial performance was measured as the fulfillment of non-financial goals and the amount of reported and disclosed GRI standards. Our eight research hypothesizes are all based on prior research on corporate governance concerning board diversity and firm performance in both private as well as public organizations. Moreover, institutional logics and upper echelons theory are used to explain the effects of the diversity characteristics on corporate performance. All hypothesizes were rejected due to insignificant relationship. Even though a significant relationship was indicated between professional experience of the directors and financial performance, the hypothesis was rejected, since the relationship was the opposite of the expected.One of the reasons for these results can be that institutional logics and competing goals prevent the BODs from focus too strong on either financial or non-financial targets.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hkr-19950 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Moser, Fabian, Shabanaj, Valieta |
| Publisher | Högskolan Kristianstad, Fakulteten för ekonomi, Högskolan Kristianstad, Fakulteten för ekonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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