OWNERSHIP, CONTROL, FINANCIAL STRUCTURE AND THE PERFORMANCE OF FIRMS

Abstract. The notion that the separation of ownership from control may create a divergence of interests between managers and shareholders has led to a large number of studies which investigate the influence of ownership structures upon a firm's financial structure and its performance. The purpose of this paper is to review and critically evaluate the literature that empirically analyses the effects of ownership and control structures on both the financial structure and the performance of the firm. In addition, further consideration is given to the dynamic relationships between ownership, control, financing and firm performance.     

Contract Complexity, Incentives, and the Value of Delegation

In settings where the revelation principle applies, delegation arrangements are frequently inferior to centralized decision making, and at best achieve the same level of performance. This paper studies the value of delegation when organizations are constrained by a bound on the number of contingencies in any contract. For a principal-agent setting with asymmetric information, we compare centralized mechanisms where the principal retains sole responsibility for contracting and coordinating production, with delegation mechanisms where one agent (a manager) is delegated authority to contract with other agents and coordinate production. Relative to centralization, delegation entails a control loss, but allows decisions to be more sensitive to the manager's private information. We identify circumstances under which the flexibility gain outweighs the control loss, so that delegation emerges superior to centralized contracting.     

The Brazilian bankruptcy law reform,corporate ownership concentration,and risk-taking

We investigate whether a bankruptcy reform, which increased creditors' protection, affected the risk taking of Brazilian firms. Collecting data from Brazilian (treatment group) and Argentinian, Chilean, Colombian, Mexican, and Peruvian firms (control group) and using a difference-in-difference technique, we show that Brazilian firms with concentrated ownership structure decreased risk taking after the reform. Our results suggest that these firms reduced risk in response to increasing creditors' protection, possibly because controlling shareholder fear losing control. Moreover, our results indicate that the reform probably provoked a wealth transfer from minorities to controlling shareholders.     

企业金融化、内部控制与审计质量

企业金融化在资本市场与金融市场领域的研究比较深入,但学者对企业金融化在审计领域的研究关注较少。以2010—2018年我国A股上市公司为研究样本,实证检验企业金融化对审计质量的影响以及内部控制对两者关系的调节作用。研究发现,企业金融化与审计质量显著负相关,内部控制能显著抑制企业金融化对审计质量的负向影响。进一步研究发现:审计业务复杂程度和审计风险在企业金融化对审计质量的影响中发挥显著的中介效应,即企业金融化通过增加业务复杂程度和审计风险,从而降低审计质量;来自四大的审计师具有更强的专业胜任能力和独立性,且连续审计中,其能更好地利用内部控制以应对企业金融化带来的风险;内部控制五要素中内部监督能显著抑制企业金融化对审计质量的负向影响,而内部环境、风险评价、信息沟通、控制活动均未能显著抑制企业金融化对审计质量的负向影响。研究结论丰富了企业金融化与审计质量领域的相关文献,拓展了企业金融化经济后果的理论边界,同时也为推行建立健全良好的内部控制制度提供了经验证据。     

Controls,service type and perceived supplier performance in interfirm service exchanges

Control offers a critical differentiator between successful and failed interfirm service exchanges. The application of informal control to improve supplier performance has been well established, but the effect of formal control appears profoundly equivocal. This study proposes that the actual effect of formal control depends on its mode (output vs. behavior) and its relationship with the service type (mass vs. professional) and informal control. With survey data from 252 service buying organizations, the results indicate that output control interacts with service type to determine perceived supplier performance (PSP). Buyers’ reliance on high output control has a positive effect on PSP in mass service exchanges; this effect becomes negative in professional service exchanges. The effect of the interaction of behavior control and service type also depends on the presence of informal control. Buyers’ reliance on high behavior control exerts a more positive effect on PSP in professional service exchanges than in mass service exchanges, but only in the presence of informal control. These findings have key implications for both theory and practice.     

An agency theory perspective of the Israeli labor market segmentation: Past,present, and future

In this paper we use agency theory to present a process of the dichotomization of the Israeli workforce into two structures, each representing distinct organizational cultures. The first structure is the private sector, led by the high-tech industry; a model where the principal has strong control over the activities of the agent. The second is the public sector, an opposing model in which the principal has virtually no control over the activities of the agents and as a result, the effectiveness within this sector deteriorates. We argue that such conflicting systems cannot exist side by side without affecting each other and we suggest a role for human resource management (HRM) in future developments. Within the public sector it is the responsibility of the principal, the Israeli government, to gain more control over the agent and employ professional HRM systems for this purpose.     

Fairness,legal compliance,and organizational commitment

Attribution theory is used to hypothesize a positive relationship between one's perception that a fairness motive underlies personnel/human resource management activities and one's organizational commitment. The hypothesis is tested via a survey of 48 operating managers in a Midwestern department store chain. Using hierarchical regression to control for job satisfaction and length of service, a significant positive relationship exists between commitment and the perception that a fairness motive underlies personnel/human resource management activities. Commitment is not significantly related to the perception that a legal compliance motive underlies the activities.     

企业内部控制、融资约束与突破式创新

在全球创新的浪潮下,突破式创新成为学者们关注的热点,文章从企业内部控制视角出发,以2007-2018年沪深两市A股上市公司数据为样本,实证研究了内部控制对企业突破式创新的影响机制.研究表明,良好的内部控制可以有效促进企业突破式创新.并且通过进一步检验发现,融资约束在内部控制与突破式创新之间发挥中介效应.研究结论丰富了内...     

Organizational change techniques: their present, their future

To help carry out their responsibility of managing rapid and often unexpected change, managers have an available set of techniques: organizational behavior modification, management by objectives, management development, organization development, management auditing, and a control cycle of planning, implementation, and control. Each of these has a format that species the procedures to be followed to bring about organizational change. Michael emphasizes that such formats are preferable to a haphazard, trial-and-error approach that may produce unanticipated results. In part because some techniques are newer than others, data from a research project of planning and control that Michael conducted show different rates of usage by a sample of Fortune 500 companies. The control cycle is the most widely used; organizational behavior modification the least widely used. The use of these techniques of organizational change is likely to vary in some ways and experience may bring about changes in the techniques. Michael concludes that the newer breed of managers who are versed in the social sciences, mathematics, and the computer are likely to spread new techniques in the organizational world.     

环境不确定性、内部控制质量与权益资本成本

以2008—2011年深沪两市A股公司为检验样本,检验了环境不确定性与内部控制对权益资本成本的影响。检验结果发现:环境不确定性与公司权益资本成本正相关,同时高质量的内部控制有助于缓解环境不确定性与资本成本之间的正相关关系,当公司被行业专长机构投资者持股时,这一缓解效应更为显著;进一步检验发现,与其他内部控制要素相比,拥有良好的内部控制环境更能够显著地缓解环境不确定性对资本成本的不利影响。     

Voting, bargaining, and factor income distribution

The effect of possible price control on factor income distribution under a democratic system is examined in the context of a collective bargaining model. A solution concept of the cooperative game theory called the Harsanyi-Shapley value is chosen to predict a likely outcome. The explicit solution for a non-atomic production economy, with two production factors and a fixed coefficient technology, is obtained. We find that this solution can be realized through prices. It is observed that in this solution, factor income shares respond to the ratio of the total endowments of two factors.     

Entrepreneurial Financing, Advice, and Agency Costs

We develop a model to study the interplay between advice and agency costs in entrepreneurial financing. We demonstrate a tension between the entrepreneur's motivation for effort and the investor's willingness to finance the project. Advice to the entrepreneur exacerbates this tension. Consequently, optimal financing contracts may involve full, partial, or no advice. With partial advice, information flows need to be controlled carefully. Such control is better when advice and finance are integrated as observed by venture capitalists.     

Modeling social,economic, and health perspectives for optimal pandemic policy decision-making

While different control strategies in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic have helped decrease the number of infections, these strategies have had an adverse economic impact on businesses. Therefore, optimal timing and scale of closure and reopening strategies are required to prevent both different waves of the pandemic and the negative economic impact of control strategies. This paper proposes a novel multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MOMILP) formulation, which results in the optimal timing of closure and reopening of states and industries in each state to mitigate the economic and epidemiological impact of a pandemic. The three objectives being pursued include: (i) the epidemiological impact, (ii) the economic impact on the local businesses, and (iii) the economic impact on the trades between industries. The proposed model is implemented on a dataset that includes 11 states, the District of Columbia, and 19 industries in the US. The solved by augmented ε-constraint approach is used to solve the multi-objective model, and a final strategy is selected from the set of Pareto-optimal solutions based on the least cubic distance of the solution from the optimal value of each objective. The Pareto-optimal solutions suggest that for any control decision (state and industry closure or reopening), the economic impact and the epidemiological impact change in the opposite direction, and it is more effective to close most states while keeping the majority of industries open during the planning horizon.     

Exploring the efficacy of healthcare quality practices, employee commitment, and employee control

This exploratory study examines healthcare quality program practices, employee commitment and control initiatives, and perceived results by surveying the directors of hospital quality programs. U.S. hospitals are renowned to be among the highest in quality, but recent studies assert that the majority of error-related deaths per year are preventable. In response, healthcare organizations have adopted quality management programs. Employee commitment and control theories propose that employee initiatives are critical to patient safety. However, little research has focused on the efficacy of employee commitment and control initiatives for quality programs at healthcare organizations. This study examines the responses from Quality and Risk Directors of 372 U.S. hospitals. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) demonstrate that perceived quantitative and qualitative quality program results are more highly related to employee commitment and control initiatives than they are related to quality practices.     

内部人控制、审计监督与管理者利益侵占

股东、经理和内部审计师利益博弈的结果表明:经理的控制权越大,侵占股东利益的可能性越大;公司的内部审计监督越严,经理侵占股东利益的可能性越小。实证研究为此提供了经验证据:若总经理兼任董事长,经理人员在董事会中所占比例越高,越易造成经理层控制董事会的局面,管理层侵占股东利益就越严重;内部审计监督越强,越有利于抑制管理层的利益侵占行为。国有企业由于内部人控制现象更为突出,监督不力,管理者对股东的利益侵占更加严重。     

Real Estate,Public Works,and Political Organization in Winnipeg, 1870–1885

The second half of the 19^th century represented an era of great territorial expansion in almost all the countries of “recent settlement.” In Canada, Winnipeg, the capital of the Province of Manitoba, went from a small hamlet located at the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers to become the third largest Canadian city at the turn of the century. I argue that the development of a real estate market and the organization of the local political institutions in Winnipeg were interconnected mechanisms that the emerging business elite used to obtain political and economic power during the years of city organization (1870–1885). The disputes over land ownership and the uncertain distribution of land titles among parties related by business and family ties showed how individuals exploited the weakness of the state to secure personal benefits. In this era, old settlers, newcomers, speculators, and business representatives of central Canada and British firms, acting alone or in partnership, attempted to obtain political control of a city in its making and to acquire power and economic benefits through the commodification of urban land. After a period of corruption and mismanagement, a new group organized within the Board of Trade obtained political control of the city and initiated a new cycle of political stability.     

Implicit Contracts, Managerial Incentives, and Financial Structure

This paper examines how managers may be given incentives to exert effort, and to implement efficient implicit contracts with workers. Under certain assumptions, this can be achieved by tying managerial compensation to shareholder value. However, if reputation effects are weak, it is more efficient to adopt an incentive scheme in which the manager is punished by outside investor intervention when performance falls below a critical level, and otherwise retains control, receiving a fixed reward. The required form of outside intervention can be implemented through a financial structure combining hard debt with a dispersed ownership structure.     

Managerial shareholdings, firm value, and acquired corporations

Prior research on the relationship between managerial shareholdings and firm value provides conflicting evidence. We take a different approach to its analysis and focus on managerial shareholdings in acquired firms. We argue that in a relatively unfettered market for corporate control, prior evidence of a nonlinear relationship between moral hazard costs and managerial shareholdings suggests that acquired corporations can be segmented according to managerial shareholdings, and that these segments will differ according to the source of wealth gains, managerial resistance, who acquires the company, and how target shareholders are paid. We find evidence consistent with these predictions.     

Net-zero emission targets and the role of managerial environmental awareness,customer pressure,and regulatory control toward environmental performance

To avoid the worst effects of global warming, countries agreed to limit warming below 2.0°C and ideally to 1.5°C preindustrial level. This requires countries to drop half of their greenhouse gas emission by 2030 and reach net-zero emission by 2050. In this regard, current study explores the role of green production as a mediator in the impact of managerial environmental awareness, customer pressure, and regulatory control on environmental performance. The data collected from 381 managers was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Results indicate that customer pressure, regulatory control, and managerial environmental awareness play a pivotal role toward green production, whereas only managerial environmental awareness among them directly influences environmental performance. Green production fully mediates the relationship from customer pressure and regulatory control to environmental performance. However, it partially mediates the relation between managerial environmental awareness and environmental performance. Similarly, the importance of green production for environmental performance is highlighted.     

Technology transfer, specific local knowledge and entrepreneurial partner control in international joint ventures

Previous research has sought to demonstrate the influence of control of an IJV on achieving the learning objectives of the partners involved. However, the effect that certain types of learning have on the control of the IJV, which are vital for the success of the internationalization of the entrepreneurial firm, has yet to be explored. The results from case studies of six IJVs show that, during the post-formation stage, the configuration of entrepreneurial partner control over the IJV is conditioned by both technology transfer and by learning specific local knowledge by the entrepreneurial partner. The study also shows that the negative relation between trust and control suggested by the literature is limited to cases where trust has broken down. Greater levels of trust are also compatible with greater control with a view to appropriately exploiting when firms see the need to intensify control or need to implement new control mechanisms in order to properly exploit the resources contributed to the IJV.