Corporate boards and ownership structure: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

This study examines the relationship between board structure and ownership structure for firms listed on the stock exchanges of twelve Sub-Saharan African countries, using data for the period 2006–2009. We find that ownership concentration, foreign ownership and managerial ownership are negatively associated with board size. We also find that government ownership is positively associated with the proportion of outside directors while ownership concentration is negatively associated with the proportion of outside directors. These results emphasize that board and ownership structure are both corporate governance mechanisms that are used as substitutes to one another in reducing agency problems.     

Corporate governance and firm performance in emerging markets: Evidence from Turkey

This is a study of the relationship between context, internal corporate governance and firm performance, looking at the case of Turkey, an exemplar of family capitalism. We found more concentrated ownership, often in the hands of families, led to firms performing better; concentrated ownership means that controlling families bear more of the risks of poor performance. Less predictably, given that the institutional environment is so well attuned to family ownership, we found that mechanisms that accord room for a greater range of voices and interests within and beyond families – larger boards and foreign ownership stakes – seem to also make for positive performance effects. We also noted that increase in cross ownership did not influence market performance, but was negatively associated with accounting performance. Conversely, we found that a higher proportion of family members on boards had no discernable effect on performance. Our findings provide further insights on the relationship between the type of institutions encountered in many emerging markets, internal corporate governance configurations and firm performance.     

Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosures: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

We examine the relationship between corporate governance and the extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures in the annual reports of Bangladeshi companies. A legitimacy theory framework is adopted to understand the extent to which corporate governance characteristics, such as managerial ownership, public ownership, foreign ownership, board independence, CEO duality and presence of audit committee influence organisational response to various stakeholder groups. Our results suggest that although CSR disclosures generally have a negative association with managerial ownership, such relationship becomes significant and positive for export-oriented industries. We also find public ownership, foreign ownership, board independence and presence of audit committee to have positive significant impacts on CSR disclosures. However, we fail to find any significant impact of CEO duality. Thus, our results suggest that pressures exerted by external stakeholder groups and corporate governance mechanisms involving independent outsiders may allay some concerns relating to family influence on CSR disclosure practices. Overall, our study implies that corporate governance attributes play a vital role in ensuring organisational legitimacy through CSR disclosures. The findings of our study should be of interest to regulators and policy makers in countries which share similar corporate ownership and regulatory structures.     

Outward foreign direct investment of publicly listed firms from China: A corporate governance perspective

This study examines the influence of key corporate governance factors on the internationalization decisions of emerging economy (EE) firms. By integrating the resource-based view and agency theory, it investigates the effects of controlling owner identity, non-controlling shareholder ownership, and the interactions of these with CEO power, in order to reveal their individual and joint effects on the outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) propensity of EE firms. This empirical study of 224 Chinese publicly listed firms found positive effects of ownership of domestic institutional investors and foreign corporations on the OFDI propensity of the firms, which were moderated by the power of the CEOs in these firms.     

Ownership structure and earnings management in emerging markets—An institutionalized agency perspective

Previous earnings management research has largely focused on firm-level governance mechanisms in single countries or on macro-level variables in multiple countries. Building on this research, we incorporate firm ownership predictors along with national institutional dimensions to explore why firm decision makers in emerging markets vary in their earnings management behavior. Our theoretical framework integrates agency and institutional theories proposing that firm-level ownership mechanisms do not function in isolation, but are reinforced or attenuated by elements of the institutional governance environment. The multilevel empirical analysis of 1200 firms in 24 emerging markets indicates that controlling ownership is positively related to earnings management. We find that the level of minority shareholder protection in a country weakens this positive relationship. We also find that regulatory quality strengthens the negative relationship between institutional ownership and earnings management activity. It is hoped that awareness of how firm ownership structures interact with national-level institutions in affecting firm-level behavior will help managers and investors develop skills and practices to better cope with business norms in emerging economies.     

Governance and Performance of Strategic Alliances in Africa: The Role of Institutions

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to contribute to the institutional perspective of the governance of strategic intercompany alliances in Africa, through examination and analysis of a typology of informal African institutions. We support the view that interactions in African institutions determine the pertinent choice of governance mechanisms for intercompany alliances. In African institutional environments, the success of strategic alliances is subject to differentiated interactions among the contract, institutional confidence, interpersonal confidence and inter-organizational confidence. In the area of strategic management, this article provides theoretical and managerial contributions to our understanding of the institutional approach to the governance of strategic business alliances in Africa.     

Perceptions of Governance in Africa

Abstract

This paper reviews a survey of 800 business leaders and civil servants in Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Like most African countries, these eight countries have undertaken governance reforms over the past decade, trying to include a wider range of views expressed by organized interest groups in the formulation of economic and commercial policies. This survey aimed to learn how business and government leaders perceive those recent governance reforms.

First, do managers and civil servants see local trade associations successfully representing the broader business point of view with decision makers, and keeping their members informed of current and proposed public policies? Second, to what extent do perceived principal/agent tensions divide companies from “their” business associations? Third, how does industry structure affect perceptions of business association perfor mance? A fourth issue is whether perceptions exist of “bureaucratic capture” or of excessive state power over business associations in the sample countries.

Most respondents see major problems with governance, though across countries they report the impression of improvement and expect further gains. This raises the risk of unmet expectations should the pace of reform slacken. Business associations are reported to work reasonably well as policy advocates for better governance. They are seen as doing a fair job of keeping members updated on the policy environment. There was little difference in opinion between larger and smaller companies, and surprising overlap between the public and private sectors. These findings are grounds for wary optimism about business-government relations in the region.

Progress will not occur automatically, however. Companies in Africa need to redouble their government relations and policy advocacy activities. The region's industry and trade associations are promising vehicles for expressing the interests of the business community.     

Cyclicality of lending in Africa: The influence of bank ownership

Ownership structure of banks has dramatically changed over the past two decades in African countries with privatization and foreign bank entry, including the expansion of Pan-African banks. The objective of this paper is to investigate how bank ownership influences cyclicality of lending in Africa. We are then able to assess how changes in bank ownership influence the economy. To this end, we measure the sensitivity of bank loan growth to GDP per capita growth of the host country with dynamic GMM estimations. We use panel data from 190 commercial banks covering 20 African countries spanning the period from 2002 to 2015. We find that lending of African banks is procyclical for all types of banks. However, we observe that Pan-African banks are the least procyclical banks, while no significant difference in procyclicality is observed between state-owned banks, domestic private banks, and other foreign banks. In addition, we find evidence that foreign banks are influenced by GDP per capita growth of their home country. Therefore, our findings support the view that the expansion of Pan-African banks contributes to reduce cyclicality of lending. However, foreign bank entry can enhance the transmission of external shocks.     

The performance dimension in symbolic management revisited: the functional role of traditional mechanisms in large Korean firms*

Symbolic management perspective argues that newly adopted shareholder-oriented mechanisms promote positive market responses, whereas traditional mechanisms assume sociopolitical power struggle for their sustainability. Beyond the dichotomous understanding, this study proposes that the continuation of traditional mechanisms is also attributable to their performance contribution. Using panel data on 100 large Korean firms (1998–2011), this study found that the positive influence of traditional mechanisms such as business group on performance, measured by ROA and R&D intensity, improves market responses, i.e. market capitalization and Tobin’s q. In the process, shareholder-oriented mechanisms, such as foreign ownership, positively moderates the influence of traditional mechanisms. For corporate governance reform, this study suggests that balanced attention should be paid to the performance contribution of traditional mechanisms in interaction with shareholder-oriented mechanisms.     

Bank governance,regulation and risk-taking in Ghana

ABSTRACT

Excessive risk-taking could spell doom for the financial market and the economy as a whole as evidenced by the recent global financial crisis of 2007/08. In this study, we document the impact of corporate governance on bank risk-taking behaviour whilst accommodating the moderating effect of forms of ownership on the relationship in a regulated environment as banks do not operate in a vacuum. A panel study with data spanning from 2000 to 2013 under the fixed effects model after several model diagnostics and performance of the Hausman specification test was used. We find reserve requirement regulation to significantly influence risk-taking positively. We advocate the reversal of the recent increase in the reserve requirement from 9% to 11% and rather recommend an increase in the regulatory capital adequacy ratio from the current 10%.     

Institutions-FDI Nexus in ECOWAS Countries

ABSTRACT

Of the foreign capital flows that are required for stimulating the process of economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI) has been the most elected candidate that is often sought. This explains why so much effort has been geared towards its attraction thus paving the way for enquiry into its determinants. Arguably, apart from the conventional FDI-drivers, the importance of institutions has been grossly undermined. On this basis, the study sets out to unravel the causal linkage between institutions and FDI with a special focus on ECOWAS countries. The results showed the existence of prevalent weak governance structure among the ECOWAS countries. Further, on component-by-component basis, this result was robust to the decomposition of the governance indicator into the six sub-indices, namely: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption. We split the sample size into low (poor institutions) and high regimes (better institutions) and found that countries with better institutions were able to attract FDI more than countries with poorer institutional infrastructure. Thus, instituting sustainable governance structure will offer a leeway towards attraction of more FDI into the sub-region.     

The Stakeholder Model: The Influence of the Ownership and Governance Structures

This paper addresses the possibilities to introduce the stakeholder model in the firm, especially the possibility to give property or decision rights to stakeholders. This paper argues that it is not practical to give full property rights to more than one group of stakeholders. Decision rights to employees and creditors are already in place in some countries, but the possibility to introduce them more generally to other stakeholder groups depends very much on the governance and ownership structure of the firm and the legal environment. The future of the stakeholder model in a globalised economy is also analysed.Eva Jansson is currently associate professor of managerial economics at the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona. She holds a BA in statistics from the University of Stockholm and graduated in economics from Universitat of Barcelona. She holds a Ph.D. from Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona. Her research interests have been in fiscal policy, regulations of service sectors and recently topics in corporate governance. Special interest has been given to international comparison of ownership structures, changes in ownership structure of Spanish firms and to the evolution of ownership structures of privatized Spanish firms. Recent works include topics on the stakeholder model.     

EU Enlargement,Institutional Governance and Innovation Environment in the Baltic Countries

Abstract

This paper presents institutional framework to implement innovative and co-operative procedures of industrial reorganization and economic growth in the Baltic countries. By using the recent features of organization mode theories and institutional economics, we apply how institutional development helps the Baltic firms to survive in the integration of EU25 markets. We present this framework as a dynamic process in three stages. The first stage identifies the main foundations from the transition period: macroeconomic stabilization, privatization, and financial governance. The second stage considers how to build up the institutional structure of the governance in production. The third stage points out those topics that enhance innovation environment and benchmarks the Baltic countries to EU innovation capacity. These progressive stages in financial, production, and innovation systems of governance can be overlapped or happen in sequential order but the final purpose of these improvements is to enhance the managerial incentives for higher innovative activity in the EU-Baltic industrial integration. It is found that the Baltic innovation input capacity is competitive compared with the EU25 average but a gap in innovation output is still essential.     

Institutions and the location strategies of South African firms in Africa

This study explores the influence of institutions on the location strategies of firms in Africa. Specifically, the research examines the effect of governance infrastructure, a country's overall public institutions and policies, on the expansion strategies of three South African firms as they entered selected African countries between 1996 and 2015. These firms include SABMiller, MTN, and Massmart. The study makes use of structured interviews with senior directors of the three firms, mini case studies, and the World Bank's Worldwide Global Governance Indicators, in an effort to understand the impact of institutions, or lack thereof, on these companies’ location choices. Results suggest that by and large, the quality of formal institutions did not have a direct effect on the location decisions of the three firms in this study, and that these firms found ways to mitigate the so‐called institutional voids.     

Global corporate governance: On the relevance of firms’ ownership structure

This article addresses reviews research on corporate governance of the modern corporation around the world, with particular attention to the key variable of ownership structure. We first review the evolution of ownership studies from the early days of the Berle and Means to more contemporary research on how ownership has defined the various corporate governance systems around the world. We maintain that concentrated and family ownership structures in emerging economies, the role of the diverse type of large blockholders, and the evolution to more dispersed structures can help to inform broader questions around corporate governance and its relationship to economic development and the role of institutions in these economies. We propose that future research should draw on micro data on firm specific ownership structures and their corporate governance practices to better understand the cross-national diversity of governance and its meanings and consequences. We close by identifying some fruitful areas of future research.     

The role of corporate governance in FDI decisions: Evidence from Taiwan

There has been a considerable literature on the determinants of why firms undertake foreign direct investment (FDI), but very little on whether firms with different governance characteristics are more or less likely to venture overseas. For example, are family-controlled firms more predisposed to FDI than firms, with similar attributes, but different forms of ownership? Does the presence of institutional shareholders suggest a greater propensity to invest abroad? Does the composition of the Board of Directors have an impact? Most extant studies of corporate governance focus on the impact of governance factors on firm performance. However, these performance outcomes are a function of the strategic decisions made by the firms, which suggests it might be useful to consider the relationship between corporate governance factors and particular strategic decisions. One example is the decision to undertake foreign direct investment. The two main strands of IB literature on the determinants of FDI have little or nothing to say about how corporate governance factors might affect the FDI decision. Both internalisation theory and the resource-based view see FDI primarily as a means by which firms can appropriate rents in overseas markets from the exploitation of their idiosyncratic resources and capabilities. This paper extends this literature by investigating the effects of governance factors on the decision to undertake FDI. In particular, we want to assess the impact upon the FDI decision of (a) the extent of family control, (b) the presence of domestic and foreign institutional shareholders, and (c) the composition of the Board of Directors. We investigate these effects using a sample of 228 publicly listed firms in Taiwan, and our results clearly indicate that family control and share ownership by domestic financial institutions in Taiwanese firms are associated with the decision to undertake FDI. We also find that corporate governance impacts in different ways with regard to Taiwanese FDI in China in comparison to Taiwanese FDI in the rest of the world.     

Effects of Foreign Institutional Ownership on Foreign Bank Lending: Some Evidence for Emerging Markets

Despite the large literature on developed countries, little is known about the interactions between corporate governance, foreign ownership, and foreign bank lending in developing countries. Using data from five Latin American countries from 2001 to 2008, we provide one of the first pieces of evidence of how foreign ownership affects the loan cost of borrowers in emerging markets. We find that in terms of foreign bank lending, the cost of debt financing is significantly higher for firms whose largest shareholder is a foreign institutional one. The results support the hypothesis that because of potential agency conflicts between shareholders and creditors, having block institutional shareholders tend to increase the borrowers’ debt burden. There is further evidence supporting this agency conflict hypothesis as we find that the effects of large institutional shareholders on borrowing costs become larger (smaller) when the conflicts are aggravated (mitigated).     

Aid,growth and institutions in Sub‐Saharan Africa: New insights using a multiple growth regime approach

Numerous sub‐Saharan African countries depend heavily on foreign aid. This paper explores the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in the continent using a finite mixture model. Contrary to previous studies, we hypothesise that the effect of aid on growth differs across groups of countries with similar but unobserved characteristics. The paper incorporates the potential presence of hidden heterogeneity and tries to explain group membership of countries by using various metrics of institutional variables. Focusing on a sample of 25 countries, we find that the impact of foreign aid on growth differs across three different groups of countries. Moreover, we find that aid works best in countries with effective government, good regulatory quality and low corruption. The results are robust to a battery of robustness checks. The paper underlines the importance of incorporating the heterogeneity in growth process in studies on aid effectiveness and provides evidence that sub‐Saharan African countries should undertake deep governance reforms to benefit from foreign aid.     

Multinational Enterprises’ Entry Mode Strategies in Syria and Jordan: The Impact of Ownership Advantages

This study addresses the issue of ownership advantages affecting multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) entry mode strategies in developing countries. Although a few studies have focused on such effects, very little attention has been devoted to the ownership advantages generated from the institutional environment of MNEs’ home countries. To bridge this gap, this study concentrates on three types of ownership advantages: intangible asset advantages (IAA), advantages of common governance (ACG), and home‐country‐specific advantages (HCSA). Using a sample of 303 foreign affiliates, this study empirically examines the choice of MNEs between a wholly owned subsidiary (WOS) and a joint venture (JV). The data were collected from senior executives of MNEs’ subsidiaries operating in Syria and Jordan. The findings of this study reveal that MNEs’ choice of entry mode strategies is significantly influenced by intangible asset advantages, advantages of common governance, and home‐country‐specific advantages. Hence, senior executives perceiving an increased importance of these assets will opt for a WOS rather than a JV when entering a new market in the Middle East. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Corporate governance,globalization and firm productivity

We examine the relationship between globalization, corporate governance and firm productivity. The results, using longitudinal data from Korea, indicate that the positive effect of liberalising equity ownership on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) was reinforced by indirect managerial effects when a firm improved its corporate governance. Our findings also confirm that the interaction of the managerial effect with increased foreign equity ownership is more significant than interaction with exports, suggesting that liberalising foreign investment in the host market is more effective in capitalising on the potential benefits of corporate governance reform than increasing exports to overseas markets, reflected in learning by exporting.