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The Impact Of Governance Mechanism On Performance And Survival Of Entrepreneurial Firms, Noura S. Metawa

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation consists of two essays.

The first essay studies governance structures and their effectiveness for start-up companies and their survival. We utilize data from the Kauffman Survey, which tracks a sample of firms from their inceptions through their first eight years of existence. We hypothesize and find evidence that a startup's governance system affects its survivability as well as its performance. We show that controlling for the firm size and the industry, cross-sectional variations in the performance of the start-up firms can be explained by governance variables; the presence of one or more independent board member on the board, …