The Moderating Effect of CEO Power on the Board Composition–Firm Performance Relationship*

abstract Prior studies of the relationship between the composition of boards of directors and firm performance offer equivocal results. Drawing on agency and power circulation theories, we attempt to reduce this equivocality by asserting that CEO power moderates the relationship. Specifically, an outside director dominated board is needed to check a powerful CEO, but monitoring by other executives provides sufficient constraints on CEOs with low power. We used event study methodology to test the effects of the interaction between board composition and CEO power on stock market reaction to 73 unexpected CEO deaths. We found support for our theorizing among two of three sources of CEO power. Thus, although regulatory trends increasingly support outside director dominated boards, our findings indicate that this may not always benefit shareholders and that CEO power should be considered when constructing boards.     

Diversity,Social Goods Provision,and Performance in the Firm

Economists have studied the effect of diversity on the provision of social goods and the stock of social capital. In parallel, management scholars have studied the effect of diversity in the workplace on firm performance. We integrate these two growing literatures and explore these questions with a unique dataset. A firm provided eight years of individual‐level employee survey data, which include measures of the stock of social capital, plus office‐level measures of diversity and performance. We find some evidence that more gender‐homogeneous offices enjoy higher levels of social goods provision but those offices do not perform any better and may actually perform worse.     

The Relationship Between Mission Statements and Firm Performance: An Exploratory Study

This paper examines the relationship between mission statements and firm performance using a sample of 136 large Canadian organizations. Previous writings suggest that mission statements are essential for superior organizational performance results. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this claim. The data from the present study demonstrate that mission statements and some of their specific characteristics are selectively associated with higher levels of organizational performance. The paper concludes with several propositions to guide future research.     

Top Management Team Functional Diversity and Firm Performance: The Moderating Role of CEO Characteristics

Past research indicates that the effect of TMT functional diversity on firm performance is equivocal. We address this issue by focusing on the integrative role of the CEO, postulating that the CEO's expertise and background characteristics affect the TMT functional diversity–firm performance relationship, because of their impact on the exchange and integration of distributed knowledge within the TMT. Using a dataset of 33 Dutch and Belgian Information Technology firms we investigate the moderating role of three sets of CEO characteristics (functional background, status as founder, and shared experience with the other TMT members) on the relationship between TMT functional diversity and firm performance. Our results reveal that CEO and TMT characteristics do interact in realizing the potential advantages of distributed TMT functional expertise.     

Partner Type Diversity in Alliance Portfolios: Multiple Dimensions,Boundary Conditions and Firm Innovation Performance

Our research extends the current knowledge based view on the configuration of alliance portfolios and their deployment in different external knowledge environments. We study these alliance portfolios in a longitudinal sample (1996–2010) for over three thousand firms that operate in a large number of industries in the Netherlands. Our findings indicate that partner type variety and partner type relevance, as different dimensions of partner diversity in alliance portfolios, both have an inverted U‐shaped association with firm innovation performance. However, alliance portfolios characterized by both high partner type variety and high relevance cause inferior innovation performance. Different external knowledge environments, characterized by different levels of industry modularity and scope of knowledge distribution, moderate the inverted U‐shaped associations of partner type variety and relevance in alliance portfolios with firm innovation performance in opposing directions. While for partner type variety, a high level is found to be optimal in environments with greater modularity or broader scope of knowledge distribution, for partner type relevance it turns out that a low level is optimal under more modular industry conditions.     

人力资本与企业绩效关系的实证分析

国内外对企业绩效的实证研究主要是研究财务指标与企业绩效的关系,缺少对非财务指标的实证研究特别是人力资本与企业绩效关系的实证研究。本文选取反映人力资本的指标和反映企业绩效的指标,随机选取上市公司的数据进行多元回归分析,结果发现,员工高学历比例和员工专门技术人员比例,与企业绩效存在显著关系。笔者建议,要明确企业绩效与人力资本的关系,重视人力资本的作用,同时要结合行业特点和竞争程度综合考虑企业绩效。     

Battle in the Boardroom: A Discursive Perspective

This article examines the centrality of discourse in achieving managerially relevant outcomes, with a focus on the in-situ performance context of corporate storytellers. The Ricœurian concept of speech act, capturing both the intentionality of organizational discourse and the social context of its production and reception, implicitly guided our research effort. The article has at its core a story of how senior organizational officers exploited the volatile circumstances of a public takeover in Singapore. By looking at the social construction of narratives in their many fragments we come to see how a key protagonist carves out a powerful position. The efficacy of his performances can be seen to be dependent upon the effective use of poetic tropes and the receptiveness of listeners to particular Chinese archetypal relationship-driven themes. In crafting our story we use multiple texts which were produced in and around two case organizations. As such we offer a carefully constructed collage, a mixture of production and reproduction, sticking closely to forms of communication that key organizational actors used to plan, enact and interpret their actions and those of others. Whilst our story offers insights to readers with an interest in organizational discourse, corporate governance and Asian management practices, we refrain from imposing an authoritarian interpretation that insists on identifying with the intentions of the authors.     

创业企业招聘偏好与创业绩效关系理论研究

文章在已有研究成果的基础上展开理论研究,集中关注创业企业在招聘时是否存在对某一类型应聘者的普遍偏好、这种偏好与其组织绩效的作用关系、创业企业招聘偏好与人一组织匹配之间的关系以及人一组织匹配理论在创业企业招聘偏好与其绩效关系中的中介效用。并提出了相关理论假设,为今后的实证研究提供了理论依据。     

The Impact of Work–Family Programs on the Relationship between Gender Diversity and Performance

Work–family programs signal an employer's perspective on gender diversity to employees, and can influence whether the effects of diversity on performance are positive or negative. This article tests the interactive effects of nonmanagement gender diversity and work–family programs on productivity, and management gender diversity and work–family programs on financial performance. The predictions were tested in 198 Australian publicly listed organizations using primary (survey) and secondary (publicly available) data based on a two‐year time lag between diversity and performance. The findings indicate that nonmanagement gender diversity leads to higher productivity in organizations with many work–family programs, and management gender diversity leads to lower financial performance in organizations with few work–family programs. The results suggest different business cases at nonmanagement and management levels for the adoption of work–family programs in gender‐diverse organizations. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

上市公司代理成本与企业绩效关系研究——来自金融类上市公司证据

我国企业存在的代理问题主要表现为高管人员在获得高额薪酬的同时还会职务消费。本文以委托代理理论为基础,基于2001年至2007年的金融类A股上市公司数据,对高管代理成本与企业绩效的相关性进行了实证检验,结果显示:我国金融类上市公司职务消费不能对企业盈利能力、规模产生显著影响,高管薪酬激励能显著提高企业规模,但对企业盈利能力提高不显著。     

高新技术企业人力资本与企业绩效关系的实证研究

本文收集144家高新技术企业A股上市公司2011年到2015年数据,运用计量经济学方法研究了高新技术企业人力资本与企业绩效之间的关系;根据实证研究得出的结论,对高新技术企业可持续发展提出相关建议。     

创业板上市公司董事会特征与公司绩效关系研究综述

董事会是公司治理中的枢纽,而其不同的特征对公司绩效必然会产生不同的影响。一直以来,对于董事会特征对公司绩效的影响都是各国学者和管理者关注的焦点。文中主要从董事会的五个方面入手,系统地回顾了国内外与有关董事会特征相关的理论和实证研究成果。     

Family versus Non‐Family Firm Franchisors: Behavioural and Performance Differences

Drawing from resource‐based theory, we argue that family firm franchisors behave and perform differently compared to non‐family firm franchisors. Our theorizing suggests that compared to a non‐family firm franchisor, a family firm franchisor cultivates stronger relationships with franchisees and provides them with more training. Yet, we predict that a family firm franchisor achieves lower performance than a non‐family firm franchisor. We argue, however, that this performance relationship reverses itself when family firm franchisors are older and larger. We test our hypotheses with a longitudinal dataset including a matched‐pair sample of private U.S. family and non‐family firm franchisors.     

The Puzzle of Firm Performance in China: An Institutional Explanation

China has achieved phenomenal economic growth in an institutional environment that defies conventional economic rationales. Researchers offer different theories to explain this puzzle. But so far, due to the lack of data, little effort has been made to test these theories at the firm level. We develop a framework of endogenous institutional change to explain this puzzle and we test our framework with firm-level data. We argue that the decentralization from the central to the local governments and from government to firms are the driving forces behind China's institutional changes that have shaped the roles of government and market, which in turn significantly affect firm performance. We then submit our theory to a vigorous empirical test using data from China's industrial census, covering all 2000 counties and over 500 manufacturing industries. The test shows that two results of decentralization, the involvement of low-level governments in business and the process of privatization, positively affect firm performance.     

企业生命周期与董事会结构:资源依赖理论的视角

董事会是现代公司监督与控制体系的顶点,不同的结构特征会带来董事会行为的巨大差异。那么,董事会结构是如何形成的呢?研究发现,中国上市公司所在生命周期阶段越成熟,董事会规模越小,外部股东董事比例越低。进一步研究发现,与其他公司相比,这一特征在管理层权力较强的公司更为明显。这意味着,董事会结构并不是随机的、独立的变量,而是组织应对自身生命阶段与外部环境压力的理性反应。这些发现从资源依赖理论的角度出发,为中国公司董事会的构成提供了新的解释。     

CEO Stock‐Based Incentive Compensation and Firm Performance: A Quantile Regression Approach

This study employs the quantile regression model to examine the non‐monotonic impact of CEO stock‐based compensation on firm performance, using the data for U.S. non‐financial firms from 1993 to 2005. The results indicate that while the impact of CEO stock‐based pay on firm performance is positive for firms in the higher earnings quantile levels, the impact is negative for firms in the lower levels. In addition, the “V‐shaped” relationship between CEO stock‐based pay and firm performance satisfactorily explains the longstanding disagreement among earlier studies with regard to whether CEO stock‐based pay can enhance firm performance. Furthermore, the quantile‐varying pattern of the impact of stock‐based compensation on firm performance is robust after controlling for the industrial and yearly effects. It is also robust to the use of the pay‐for‐performance sensitivity as an alternative explanatory variable or the market‐based measure of performance as the dependent variable, or the consideration of the suspected endogenous problem between firm performance and stock‐based compensation.     

Environmental Compliance and Firm Performance: Evidence from China*

This article evaluates the impact of environmental compliance on firms’ innovation and financial performance using a panel dataset of Chinese firms for the period of 2000–5. Our results show certification of the ISO14000 has a significantly positive impact on firms’ profitability. This finding is robust when we take into account possible endogeneity of certification, effects of export and types of customers, and possible precertification time trends. In addition, we find that certified firms have larger per‐worker sales volumes and market shares in the country, which suggests an alternative mechanism for the Porter hypothesis in the context of a developing economy.     

Stock Options and Firm Performance: New Evidence from the French Market

This study investigates the effect of stock option‐based compensation on the short‐term and long‐term performance of French companies. To the best of our knowledge, we provide the first empirical evidence describing the market reaction following initiations and renewals of Employee Stock Option (ESO) plans in France. We find that the French market reacts positively to initiations of ESO plans but does not consider their renewal as relevant information. Our results on the long‐term effect of ESO plans suggest that neither the size nor the value of the grants affect the firm's accounting and market performance. Similarly, corporate performance prior to the grant has no explanatory power of the size or value of the grant. This implies that, over our sample period, the relationship between option‐based compensation and corporate performance in France was inexistent, regardless of the direction considered.     

Playing the Part: Reflections on Aspects of Mere Performance in the Customer–Client Relationship

The paper seeks to address the ways in which organizations are selective in the aspects of employees which they want and value, and those which are implicitly rejected by the organization. As such, the paper considers Diderot's famous comparison between acting and whoring in order to give emphasis to what might be termed 'performed synedoche' in the employee role. The paper draws on a range of examples from service occupations in order to explore what 'performed synedoche' might mean in practice. It concludes with a discussion of the necessary hypocrisy of certain aspects of the service role and examines the psychological costs which attach to this type of performance.