Product diversity and performance: a macro study of 20 large swedish industrial corporations

Relations between major product diversity (diversification) and the economic performance of 20 large Swedish industrial corporations during the time period 1971–1991 have been studied. Publicly available data concerning major product groups and corporate economic performance have been used. The quite limited diversification/concentration of the corporations’ product portfolios has mainly taken place through purchase/sale of product groups. Many movements have taken place during the period but the corporations have all stayed with their established basic products. Very little diversification was based on internal development. Not surprisingly, sales and employment growth (both extensive variables) and diversity are positively related. Employment growth has taken place mainly outside Sweden through market expansion rather than new product development. None of the intrinsic parameters studied (for example profit margin) distinguishes between highly diversified or diversifying corporations and other corporations. Neither do R&D expenditures or numbers of patent applications. There is a clear tendency for the ratio of value added to sales to decrease during the period studied. This may mean that the corporations have specialised their operations to selected parts of the value added chain, thus concentrating core competencies.     

BOARD COMPOSITION FROM A STRATEGIC CONTINGENCY PERSPECTIVE

This study examined the association between corporations’environments, strategies, and past performance and the composition of their boards of directors as measured by size and outside director representation. The environment, strategy and past performance were viewed as posing a strategic contingency; each of these sets could determine the success or failure of the company. Data on 119 Fortune 500 industrial companies for the 1983-9 period were used. Canonical analysis showed that increased uncertainty of a firm's environment, use of external growth and diversification; reliance on leverage as a means of finance, and poor past financial performance were associated with large board size and increased outside representation in subsequent years. Most important, board composition was positively associated with future measurements of corporate financial performance.     

Returns to corporate diversification in the 1970s

This research analyzes the performance of large corporations during the business cycles of the 1970s. The analysis identifies the level of diversification preferred by a risk-averse investor at different stages of the business cycle. The data base is a group of 222 large industrial corporations for which the number of four-digit SIC production areas has been determined for each firm. The analytical method used is that of second-degree stochastic dominance, a method that is sensitive not only to mean differences in corporate performance but also to the skewness of profitability distributions. The findings indicate that risk-averters would prefer the ten-year performance of moderately diversified firms to the performance of firms with low levels of diversification. In addition, moderately diversified firms were preferred to highly diversified firms. Finally, the experience of the 1970s suggest that there are serious managerial diseconomies of diversification in recessions.     

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND INNOVATION: A SURVEY

Abstract The traditional economics of innovation, inspired by Schumpeter and more recent advances on his work, seem unable to explain why firms with similar external conditions may show greatly different performance in innovation. Contrastingly, the literature on corporate governance provides some useful insights for understanding corporate innovation activity, to the extent that such literature examines the economic effects of different modes of coordination between firm members. The process through which individuals integrate their human and physical resources within the firm is central to the dynamics of corporate innovation. This paper provides the first survey of the literature on this issue. We start by discussing how various theoretical approaches to the analysis of the firm deal with technological innovation. We then describe three main channels – corporate ownership, corporate finance and labour – through which a system of corporate governance shapes a firm's innovation activity. Finally, we examine the relationship between country‐level institutional settings, national patterns of corporate governance and the aggregate innovation activity of corporations. We conclude by suggesting that future research should focus more deeply on the interrelation between the various dimensions of corporate governance and on their joint effect on firm innovation.     

Asymmetric effects of corporate sustainability strategy on value creation among global automotive firms: A dynamic panel quantile regression approach

This study explores the asymmetric effects of corporate sustainability strategy on firm value at different conditioning quantiles by performing a dynamic panel quantile regression analysis on global automotive firms from 2011 to 2017. Further, this study measures the distinct effects of positive and negative corporate sustainability strategies on firm value, which has remained unconsidered as yet. The findings suggest that low-value and midvalue firms respond more strongly to positive and negative corporate sustainability strategies than high-value firms. This implies that for low-value and midvalue corporations that are in a growth phase, an investment in positive corporate sustainability strategies is essential to increase firm value by enhancing public perception of their efforts. Therefore, positive corporate sustainability strategy contributes substantially to future growth. Conversely, positive corporate sustainability strategy may not be a priority in increasing firm value for high-value corporations, because these strategies do not enhance the public's discernment of their efforts in ethics management and hence do not contribute to a future increase in value. Meanwhile, engagement in negative corporate sustainability strategy worsens firm value in all quantiles, although the effect is somewhat weaker for high-value firms. Nevertheless, however high valued and well established a firm is, it is not immune to crisis.     

Technologie, Innovation und Corporate Governance

This article shows that empirical research supports the existence of a relationship between corporate governance and technological change. This relationship can be split into two parts: a strategic choice relationship, where governance impacts technological change, and a technological imperative relationship, where the reverse can be observed. These relationships modify the direct influences of technological change as well as corporate governance on economic success. Therefore, regulators should be aware that by shaping governance structures they also affect the competitiveness of corporations. However, since not enough knowledge is available to design optimum governance systems that would fit all sorts of corporate objectives, it is argued that corporations should be allowed to choose from a pre-defined set of governance structures without having to change the location of their headquarters. The proof for the existence of the two relationships in question is marred by numerous problems of measurement and analysis. Thus, substantial research into this field is suggested.     

The evidence from Canadian firms on multinational diversification and performance

The purpose of this paper is to identify the effects of multinational diversification on corporate financial performance. This issue is examined for Canadian firms by using four years of individual as well as pooled time-series-cross-sectional data for the years 1992–1994 and 1997. Using three distinct measures of financial performance and two measures of multinational diversification and controlling for size, leverage, growth, and efficiency, we replicate the procedures in prior studies to show that, in general, lower performance is associated with multinationality. However, when a nonlinear specification is used, a hurdle level for foreign assets deployment is identified. Prior to this threshold level, financial performance is inversely related to degree of multinational diversification, but beyond this level, the relationship is positive. We provide an explanation for this U-shaped relationship.     

RELATIONSHIPS AMONG CORPORATE LEVEL DISTINCTIVE COMPETENCIES, DIVERSIFICATION STRATEGY, CORPORATE STRUCTURE AND PERFORMANCE

Recent evidence suggests that large multibusiness firms can enhance performance by developing and exploiting corporate level distinctive competencies. In this study of 185 industrial firms, the relationships between corporate level distinctive competencies and performance were examined across firms using different diversification strategies and having different corporate structures. The corporate level distinctive competencies/performance relationships were found to vary by type of diversification strategy but not by type of corporate structure. In addition, only a small relationship was found to exist between diversification strategy and corporate structure. The specific relationships between corporate level distinctive competencies and performance and their normative implications are explored.     

房地产上市公司多元化战略对绩效影响研究

我国房地产行业的竞争日趋激烈,越来越多的房地产企业选择实施多元化战略促进企业经营发展,但我国房地产企业多元化程度与公司绩效的关系仍存在争议.以我国90家房地产上市公司为样本,通过多元回归模型分析企业多元化程度与绩效的关系以及企业历年多元化类型与绩效的关系.研究发现企业多元化短期内与绩效呈显著负相关,但是随着时间的增长多...     

New evidence on the origins of corporate crime

The intuition that poorly performing corporations are more likely to engage in crime is found throughout the contemporary literature on the economics and law and economics of corporate misconduct. Yet little evidence of such a relationship exists. This paper presents new evidence on the relationship between prior performance and corporate crime, using panel data on public corporations, 1975–92. When prior performance is measured in terms of earnings, only very weak evidence of a relationship is found. However, we find that a low rate of sales or employment growth by the firm tends to be a good predictor of environmental crime, and that environmental crime tends to occur in industries that have had relatively high rates of growth, as measured by employment or sales. This suggests that it is the performance of the firm rather than or relative to that of the industry that matters. Support for this finding is robust. The data provide weaker support for the notion that prior performance affects the occurrence of other types of corporate crime, particularly fraud. This may reflect the presence of mechanisms through which potential fraud victims, unlike potential environmental crime victims, can and do respond to events that would increase their chances of becoming crime victims by taking steps to prevent it. Finally, larger firms are found significantly more likely to have engaged in crime than smaller firms, in contrast to recent suggestions in the literature.     

利益相关者对企业社会责任履行的影响——基于成本收益的经济学分析

借助经济学的成本收益分析法,对企业社会责任行为的影响因素进行分析,发现利益相关者的容忍度以及监督力度对企业实际履行社会责任水平会产生显著影响。研究结果表明,在企业声誉捷径欲望较强的情况下,要保障企业社会责任行为的有效履行,如果仅仅依靠企业自律,效果并不理想。而加强利益相关者的监督并提高企业对监督成本的负担比重,将有助于企业社会责任行为的改善。从长远来看,降低利益相关者的容忍度和企业捷径欲望系数,对企业社会责任水平提升至关重要。只有当利益相关者和企业双方的社会责任意识都非常高,利益相关者对企业才有很强的制衡力量。同时,企业声誉捷径欲望很低并且自律意识很高的时候,双方才会最终实现效用最大化的共赢局面。     

Tales in two countries: An insight into corporate environmental reporting in Denmark and the UK

The 1992 EC Fifth Action Plan, ‘Towards Sustainability’, expresses the Commission's commitment to ‘sustainable growth’. Detailed in the plan are requirements and areas of improvement which relate, predominantly, to environmental management. However, financial and environmental management conflict in important and fundamental areas. A failure of management practice and European policy to identify and address this conflict will not only prolong the ecological inefficiencies of industry but will isolate intent and action. This study examines this conflict with respect to training, operational time-horizons, opportunity costs, corporate governance and growth. The Annual Report is the authoritative statement of corporate performance, policy, objectives and culture. Although most reports do provide a broad if summary coverage of the main business activities, such reports are dominated by the needs of financial management. Extensive legislation and professional edicts dictate the contents of these financial reports. From the perspective of the Annual Report, it is a reasonable conclusion that financial performance is a part of whatever constitutes the core values of corporations. From this same perspective, it is also reasonable to infer that in many corporations environmental performance is not a part of corporate core values. This study compares and contrasts the Annual Reports of six environmentally significant companies in Denmark and the UK. The British environmental reports studied are thorough but separate from the Annual Report. On the other hand, the Danish firms incorporate all their environmental reporting within their Annual Reports. Which gives a better expression of a change in corporate core values?.     

Environmental proactivism and firm performance: evidence from security analyst earnings forecasts

There is an ongoing debate over the impact of corporate pro-environment actions and strategies (reflected, for example, in pollution prevention and emission reductions, product re-design, materials stewardship) on corporate financial performance in US corporations today. A review of the existing literature in this area yields no consistent pattern of relationships between corporate environmental proactivism and financial performance when historical corporate accounting performance and stock market measures of performance are used. We revisit this relationship using a novel measure of firm performance: security analyst earnings forecasts. Specifically, we demonstrate a significant, negative relationship between environmental proactivism (using Toxic Release Inventory data) and industry analyst 1- and 5-year earnings-per-share performance forecasts for a sample of 523 US firms in 1992. We discuss the implications of these findings and provide suggestions for future research. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Payments for ecosystem services and corporate social responsibility: Perspectives on sustainable production,stakeholder relations,and philanthropy in Thailand

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are environmental management tools that enable corporations to simultaneously enhance their environmental performance and fund sustainable development in rural areas. PES is primarily promoted as part of a sustainable production strategy for conserving natural resources, offsetting carbon emissions, and green supply chain management. Nevertheless, PES uptake by the private sector remains low, and few studies have analysed whether corporate‐financed PES schemes conform to this rationale. This study evaluates three of the first PES schemes in Thailand, financed by large corporations in the water utilities, aquaculture, and beverage sectors. Interviews with 39 business managers and project stakeholders suggest that PES may be viewed as a tool for philanthropy, public relations, and gaining license to operate—akin to many corporate social responsibility initiatives. Explanations and ramifications are discussed in the context of ecological uncertainty, risk management, financial performance, organisational learning, and the corporate‐engagement strategies of non‐governmental organisations.     

数字金融如何影响企业现金持有？

基于2011—2020年中国上市企业数据和城市层面的数字普惠金融指数,考察了数字金融对企业现金持有的影响。研究发现,数字金融发展显著增加了区域内企业的现金持有,且数字金融分指标中除了覆盖广度和数字化程度外,二级指标中的数字支付和互联网信贷业务均会显著增加企业现金持有。进一步分析发现,数字金融通过提高经营活动现金流、抑制企业杠杆率和降低债务融资等机制增加了企业现金持有。此外,对于规模较小、民营和弱银企关系的企业而言,数字金融对企业现金持有的影响更显著。研究结论丰富了数字金融发展的经济后果,也拓展了现金持有理论的分析框架。     

委托代理条件下资本结构与市场竞争强度关系研究

本文从公司金融和产业组织两学科交叉研究的角度,对基于产业组织理论的资本结构研究进行了新的拓展.对已有模型的理论假设进行完善,引入委托代理关系,使得原有的经济模型更加贴近现实.该模型分析表明,委托代理问题不会影响公司的负债水平,即随着管理层持股比例的增加,公司的资本结构不随之改变.同时,委托代理问题对已有的市场竞争强度与资本结构之间的正相关关系也无影响.本文根据中国证监会行业分类,对沪深A股上市公司进行了实证研究,结果与理论模型相一致.     

Corporate governance beyond the shareholder–stakeholder dichotomy: Lessons from Japanese corporations' environmental performance

Although corporate environmental performance (CEP) is determined by corporate governance (CG) typified by board and ownership structures, in‐depth research on stakeholder‐oriented CG is sparse. This study seeks to fill this void and promote an alternative vision of good governance. Japanese corporations have often been criticized for their stakeholder‐oriented practices such as less independent boards and the dominance of stable domestic shareholders. However, these practices are not necessarily problematic if effective monitoring mechanisms are in place. Using a database of Japanese listed corporations over 2012–2015, this study shows that both board size and composition enhance CEP, confirming the advisory function of boards. Contrastingly, foreign blockholders, who are expected to play a monitoring role, significantly constrain CEP. Japanese corporations are evolving toward a hybrid CG that aims to narrow the shareholder–stakeholder divide, and the findings will offer useful lessons for the modification of shareholder‐oriented CG.     

股权结构与公司绩效关系的实证研究——基于创业板上市公司的数据

公司的股权结构是公司所有权的一种结构安排,公司的股权结构会对公司的治理结构产生影响,公司的治理效率又会对公司绩效产生影响。鉴于创业板上市公司的特殊性,在对创业板上市公司股权结构的特点进行分析的基础上,从股权属性、股权集中度和股权制衡度、内部人持股比例三个方面检验了创业板上市公司的股权结构与公司绩效之间的关系,结果表明：国有股比例、内部人持股比例对公司绩效具有正面影响,但不显著;法人股比例、机构持股比例、股权集中度、股权制衡度与公司绩效正相关;流通股比例与公司绩效负相关。     

中小企业慈善责任研究

企业的慈善责任是企业社会责任最高层次的表现形式,企业履行慈善责任的收益大于成本。但是包括企业慈善理念的缺失、企业的经营状况、企业形象、政府行为、企业的生命周期在内的许多因素却制约了企业慈善责任的履行,为此需要在理念、机制和法律制度等方面加强创新与改进。     

Corporate giving in the USA: a model for meeting Russia's expanding social needs?

In the USA, corporations make substantial contributions to public‐serving organisations with no expectation of financial gain. This paper explores the factors that have encouraged corporate giving in the USA and compares them to circumstances in the emerging capitalist economy of Russia. The outlook for the emergence of a corporate giving model in Russia similar to that of the USA is poor, but improving. To make it work, organisational recipients of corporate generosity need to trust their benefactors, and corporations need to believe that their contributions of surplus profits make good business sense. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications