Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Geography Of Learning: Ferrari Gestione Sportiva 1929-2008, Mark Jenkins, Stephen Tallman

Management Faculty Publications

This article considers the mechanisms that permit and enhance the movement of highly tacit component (technical) knowledge and geographically sticky architectural knowledge across borders and between clusters and firms. We address a number of critical research questions that relate to intra- and inter-locational knowledge transfer. We use a theory-driven, longitudinal, single case study to develop a conceptual framework to examine and describe how shifting the geography of knowledge sourcing can facilitate architectural change by following the transformation of one business unit within a specialist global organization through a series of evolutionary steps that involved internalizing new component knowledge from other …

Macroconstants Of Development: A New Benchmark For The Strategic Development Of Advanced Countries And Firms, Andrey V. Bystrov, Vyacheslav N. Yusim, Tamilla Curtis

Publications

This research proposed a new indicator of countries’ development called “macroconstants of development”. The literature review indicates that the concept of "macroconstants of development" is not used at the moment in neither the theory nor the practice of industrial policy. Research of longitudinal data of total GDP, GDP per capita and their derivatives for most countries of the world was conducted. An analysis of statistical information has been done by employing econometric analyses.

Based on the analysis of the statistical data, which characterizes the development of large, technologically advanced countries in ordinary conditions, it was identified that the average acceleration …

When The Going Gets Tough: Board Capital And Survival Of New Economy Ipo Firms, Nongnit Chancharat, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, Gary G. Tian

Gary Tian

The high profile corporate collapse of Enron and WorldCom has been attributed to corporate governance failures. This implicit linkage between governance failures and corporate failures raises the important question of whether good governance will mitigate the probability of failure of a firm faced with extreme financial duress. Additionally, recent studies question the assumption that a single board structure will be optimal for all firms. We empirically address this issue in the context of survival of new economy Australian IPOs. We characterize governance by board structure and leadership. Our results show that one of the key principles of the Cadbury Code …

Disproportional Ownership Structure And Pay-Performance Relationship: Evidence From China's Listed Firms, Jerry Cao, Xiaofei Pan, Gary G. Tian

Xiaofei Pan

This paper examines the impact of disproportional ownership structure on the pay-performance relationship in China’s listed firms. We find that the cash flow rights of the ultimate controlling shareholder have a positive effect on this relationship while a divergence between the control rights and cash flow rights has a significantly negative effect. By dividing our sample into state owned enterprises (SOE), state assets management bureaus (SAMB), and privately controlled firms, we find that cash flow rights in SOE controlled firms have a significant impact on accounting based pay performance and cash flow rights in privately controlled firms also affect the …

An Exploratory Study Of Internationalization Strategies Of Malaysian And Taiwanese Firms, Ah Ba Sim, J Rajendran Pandian

Ah Ba Sim

There is as yet limited empirical research on the internationalization processes, strategies and operations of Asian MNEs from countries at different levels of development. Drawing on primary data from matched case studies of emergin Taiwanese and Malaysian MNEs in the textiile and electronics industries, this paper examines and analyses their internationalization characteristics and strategies within the IDP perspective. The findings indicate that the emerging Taiwanese and Malaysian MNEs, while exhibiting characteristics such as that described in extant theories also suggest some differences. The empirical findings, limitations and areas fro further research are discussed.

Earnings Management And The Effect Of Earnings Quality In Relation To Stress Level And Bankruptcy Level Of Chinese Listed Firms, Feng Li, Indra Abeysekera, Shiguang Ma

Indra Abeysekera

This paper investigates the link between earnings management and earnings quality for the Chinese firms listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2003 to 2007. The earnings quality is measured by four separate earnings attributes: accruals quality, earnings persistence, earnings predictability, and earnings smoothness. We find that the stressed/bankrupt firms prefer opportunistic earnings management; the non-stressed/non-bankrupt firms are more likely to choose more efficient earnings management than the stressed/non-bankrupt firms. We find that earnings management performs better than earnings quality in predicting future profitability. We also find that the earnings quality has deteriorated over the sample period; the …

Disproportional Ownership Structure And Pay–Performance Relationship: Evidence From China's Listed Firms, Jerry Cao, Xiaofei Pan, Gary Tian

Xiaofei Pan

This paper examines the impact of ownership structure on executive compensation in China's listed firms. We find that the cash flow rights of ultimate controlling shareholders have a positive effect on the pay–performance relationship, while a divergence between control rights and cash flow rights has a significantly negative effect on the pay–performance relationship. We divide our sample based on ultimate controlling shareholders' type into state owned enterprises (SOE), state assets management bureaus (SAMB), and privately controlled firms. We find that in SOE controlled firms cash flow rights have a significant impact on accounting based pay–performance relationship. In privately controlled firms, …

Managerial Compensation, Ownership Structure And Firm Performance In China's Listed Firms, Xiaofei Pan, Gary G. Tian, Shiguang Ma, Aelee Jun, Qingliang Tang

Aelee Jun

This paper investigates managerial compensation and its relationship with firm performance in China's listed firms. In China, the largest shareholder dominates other shareholders, controls the firm and therefore exercises substantial impacts on manager compensation. After controlling for other firm and industry characteristics, we find that manager remuneration is greater and pay-performance relation is stronger for privately-controlled firms than for state-controlled firms. We also document that state-controlled firms exercise performance-based manager incentive schemes, which is contrary to evidence found in some earlier studies. Our results also indicate that top executives in firms with a foreign ownership are more highly compensated, relative …

Financing Growth: New Issues By Australian Firms, 1920-1939, David Merrett, Simon Ville

Simon Ville

An expanding economy, new technologies, and changing consumer preferences provided growth opportunities for firms in interwar Australia. This period saw an increase in the number of large-scale firms in mining, manufacturing, and a wide range of service industries. Firms unable to rely solely on retained earnings to fund expansion turned to the domestic stock exchanges. A new data set of capital raisings constructed from reports of prospectuses published in the financial press forms the basis for the conclusion that many firms used substantial injections of equity finance to augment internally generated sources of funds. That they were able to do …

Size Still Matters When Firms Choose Business Collaborators, Yu Zhang, Charles Harvie

Charles Harvie

Collaborate with peer-sized or larger-sized partner helps the firm to enhance its process, product quality, reputation, and market position. Therefore, when choosing collaborator, firms prefer peer-sized or lager-sized partners. Many empirical researches try to link the firm’s size with the performance and result of collaboration. However, there are still many debates. Instead of using the firm’s size, this paper use the compared size or size difference between collaborating firms to examine its influence on the performance of inter-firm collaboration. The results from qualitative case study and quantitative online survey in both Australia and China supported that size matters when firms …

Managerial Compensation, Ownership Structure And Firm Performance In China's Listed Firms, Xiaofei Pan, Gary G. Tian, Shiguang Ma, Aelee Jun, Qingliang Tang

Shiguang Ma

This paper investigates managerial compensation and its relationship with firm performance in China's listed firms. In China, the largest shareholder dominates other shareholders, controls the firm and therefore exercises substantial impacts on manager compensation. After controlling for other firm and industry characteristics, we find that manager remuneration is greater and pay-performance relation is stronger for privately-controlled firms than for state-controlled firms. We also document that state-controlled firms exercise performance-based manager incentive schemes, which is contrary to evidence found in some earlier studies. Our results also indicate that top executives in firms with a foreign ownership are more highly compensated, relative …

A Comparative Case Study Of The Internationalization Strategies Of Malaysian, Singaporean And Taiwanese Firms, Ah Ba Sim

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Comparative empirical research on the internationalization strategies of Asian multinational enterprises (MNEs) from countries at different levels of development is lacking. This paper examines and analyzes the internationalization characteristics and strategies of MNEs from three Asian countries at two different levels of development. Primary data from matched sample firms from Malaysia (a fast developing economy) and Singapore and Taiwan (representing newly industrialized economies) in the textile and electronics industries are used for this study. The findings indicate some differences among the Malaysian, Singaporean and Taiwanese MNEs. These differences and their implications are examined. The empirical findings, particularly the contextual aspects …

Board Structure And Survival Of New Economy Ipo Firms, Nongnit Chancharat, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, Gary G. Tian

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Research Question/Issue: This study examines the relevance of currently accepted best practice recommendations regarding board structure on the survival likelihood of new economy initial public offering companies. We argue that industry context determines governance outcomes.Research Findings/Insights: We study 125 Australian new economy firms listed between 1994 and 2002. Each firm is tracked until the end of 2007 for monitoring their survival. We find that board independence is associated with an increase in the likelihood of corporate survival. We also find that the benefits of board independence increase at a decreasing rate.Theoretical/Academic Implications: The standard best practice recommendation of board independence …

The Effect Of Ownership Structure On Leverage Decision: New Evidence From Chinese Listed Firms, Qigui Liu, Gary Tian, Xiaoming Wang

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines the effect of state control and ownership structure on the leverage decision of firms listed in the Chinese stock market. Our results show that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have higher leverage ratios than non-SOEs, and SOEs in regions with a poorer institutional environment have higher leverage ratios than SOEs in better regions. We also show that the largest shareholding (the percentage of shares held by the largest shareholder) in the SOEs has a negative relationship with the leverage ratio, while the largest shareholding in non-SOEs has a non-linear relationship with the short-term and long-term debt ratios. Finally, this …

Disproportional Ownership Structure And Pay–Performance Relationship: Evidence From China's Listed Firms, Jerry Cao, Xiaofei Pan, Gary Tian

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines the impact of ownership structure on executive compensation in China's listed firms. We find that the cash flow rights of ultimate controlling shareholders have a positive effect on the pay–performance relationship, while a divergence between control rights and cash flow rights has a significantly negative effect on the pay–performance relationship. We divide our sample based on ultimate controlling shareholders' type into state owned enterprises (SOE), state assets management bureaus (SAMB), and privately controlled firms. We find that in SOE controlled firms cash flow rights have a significant impact on accounting based pay–performance relationship. In privately controlled firms, …

Informal Flexibility? Issues For Accountants Working Part-Time In Small Firms, Mary Barrett, Glenda Strachan

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Formally sanctioned flexible working conditions are now common in Australian workplaces. While large organisations have policies for part-time work, career breaks, and leave options, research indicates employees may still suffer employment disadvantage if they use them (French and Sheridan 2010; Lyonette and Crompton 2008). This paper examines this issue for a lesser known population: professional and managerial employees in small accounting firms (<50 employees), particularly those working fewer than 35 hours per week and those who took career breaks. Results are drawn from a survey of all CPA Australia members working in small firms.

Unsurprisingly, given that women undertake more family and household work (ABS 2009; Burgess and Strachan 2005), more women than men worked part-time, and women had taken longer career breaks. Arrangements for part-time work and other flexible options …

Earnings Management And The Effect Of Earnings Quality In Relation To Stress Level And Bankruptcy Level Of Chinese Listed Firms, Feng Li, Indra Abeysekera, Shiguang Ma

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper investigates the link between earnings management and earnings quality for the Chinese firms listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2003 to 2007. The earnings quality is measured by four separate earnings attributes: accruals quality, earnings persistence, earnings predictability, and earnings smoothness. We find that the stressed/bankrupt firms prefer opportunistic earnings management; the non-stressed/non-bankrupt firms are more likely to choose more efficient earnings management than the stressed/non-bankrupt firms. We find that earnings management performs better than earnings quality in predicting future profitability. We also find that the earnings quality has deteriorated over the sample period; the …

Revisiting A Proposed Definition Of Professional Service Firms, Asghar Zardkoohi, Leonard Bierman, Daria Panina, Subrata Chakrabarty

Subrata Chakrabarty

The Location Decisions Of Foreign Investors In China: Untangling The Effect Of Wages Using A Control Function Approach, Xuepeng Liu, Mary E. Lovely, Jan Ondrich

Faculty and Research Publications

There is almost no support for the proposition that capital is attracted to low wages from firm-level studies. We examine the location choices of 2,884 firms investing in China between 1993 and 1996 to offer two main contributions. First, we find that the location of labor-intensive activities is highly elastic to provincial wage differences. Generally, investors' wage sensitivity declines as the skill intensity of the industry increases. Second, we find that unobserved location-specific attributes exert a downward bias on estimated wage sensitivity. Using a control function approach, we estimate a downward bias of 50% to 90% in wage coefficients estimated …

The Influence Of Board Size On Intellectual Capital Disclosure By Kenyan Listed Firms, Indra Abeysekera

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of board size on firms disclosing more, rather than less, strategic and tactical intellectual capital resources using the top 26 of the 52 firms ranked by the Nairobi Stock Exchange for market capitalization in 2002 and in 2003. This study identifies intellectual capital disclosure by three separate categories: internal capital, external capital, and human capital. Hence, this study examines the influence of board size on six disclosure outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – The study develops hypotheses using the resource dependency theory. Using content analysis for data generation, this study classifies …

Size Still Matters When Firms Choose Business Collaborators, Yu Zhang, Charles Harvie

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Collaborate with peer-sized or larger-sized partner helps the firm to enhance its process, product quality, reputation, and market position. Therefore, when choosing collaborator, firms prefer peer-sized or lager-sized partners. Many empirical researches try to link the firm’s size with the performance and result of collaboration. However, there are still many debates. Instead of using the firm’s size, this paper use the compared size or size difference between collaborating firms to examine its influence on the performance of inter-firm collaboration. The results from qualitative case study and quantitative online survey in both Australia and China supported that size matters when firms …

Political Connections, Founding Family Ownership And Leverage Decision Of Privately Owned Firms, Qigui Liu, Gary G. Tian

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

In this paper, we examine the effect of political connections versus founding family ownership on the relationship between disproportional ownership structure and leverage decisions of privately owned firms listed in Chinese market. We find that disproportional ownership has positive effect on leverage, indicating that controlling shareholder tends to use both disproportional ownership structure and debt to expropriate. We also find that the interacted term between disproportional ownership and political connections has a positive impact on leverage ratio, and disproportional ownership structure is negatively related with leverage ratio of founding-family controlled firms, which indicate a substitute effect between political connections and …

Disproportional Ownership Structure And Pay-Performance Relationship: Evidence From China's Listed Firms, Jerry Cao, Xiaofei Pan, Gary G. Tian

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper examines the impact of disproportional ownership structure on the pay-performance relationship in China’s listed firms. We find that the cash flow rights of the ultimate controlling shareholder have a positive effect on this relationship while a divergence between the control rights and cash flow rights has a significantly negative effect. By dividing our sample into state owned enterprises (SOE), state assets management bureaus (SAMB), and privately controlled firms, we find that cash flow rights in SOE controlled firms have a significant impact on accounting based pay performance and cash flow rights in privately controlled firms also affect the …

Subsidiary Management In Malaysian Multinational Firms, Ah Ba Sim

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Research on Asian multinational enterprises (MNEs) from the newly industrialized economies (NIEs) has gained popularity recently. But there are limited studies on MNEs from the lesser developed Asian countries and even less research attention has been given to the area of subsidiary management in Asian MNEs. This paper aims to contribute to this knowledge gap with empirical evidence on subsidiary management from a study based on nine case studies of MNEs from Malaysia, a rapidly developing country. Some differences as well as commonalities in the management of their subsidiaries were found among our sample firms. These findings are discussed in …

Performance Implication Of Ownership Structure And Ownership Concentration: Evidence From Sri Lankan Firms, Athula S. Manawaduge, Anura De Zoysa, Kathleen M. Rudkin

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Purpose - This paper seeks to examine the impact of ownership concentration and ownership structure on firms’ performance of a sample of public listed companies in Sri Lanka in the premise of an agency theory framework.

Design/methodology/approach - The paper first investigates the nature of ownership structure and concentration and then examines whether there is strong evidence to support the observation that the variations of ownership structure across firms result in systematic variations in firm performance. This hypothesis is tested by assessing the impact of ownership structure and concentration on firm performance measured in terms of accounting profitability and market …

Fostering Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership In Family Firms: Ten Lessons, Mary Barrett, Ken Moores

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Women's potential to lead a firm - whether one started by a family member or a new venture of their own - is still not often enough acknowledged. With family firms acknowledged as the seeding grounds for the next generation of entrepreneurs, and with increasing attention in research and public policy to women's entrepreneurship, it is important to understand the factors in family firms which help and hinder their women members' leadership and entrepreneurship potential. This article, based on the authors' book Women in Family Business Leadership Roles: Daughters on the Stage (Edward Elgar, 2009), presents ten lessons for family …

Financing Growth: New Issues By Australian Firms, 1920-1939, David Merrett, Simon Ville

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

An expanding economy, new technologies, and changing consumer preferences provided growth opportunities for firms in interwar Australia. This period saw an increase in the number of large-scale firms in mining, manufacturing, and a wide range of service industries. Firms unable to rely solely on retained earnings to fund expansion turned to the domestic stock exchanges. A new data set of capital raisings constructed from reports of prospectuses published in the financial press forms the basis for the conclusion that many firms used substantial injections of equity finance to augment internally generated sources of funds. That they were able to do …

When The Going Gets Tough: Board Capital And Survival Of New Economy Ipo Firms, Nongnit Chancharat, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti, Gary G. Tian

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The high profile corporate collapse of Enron and WorldCom has been attributed to corporate governance failures. This implicit linkage between governance failures and corporate failures raises the important question of whether good governance will mitigate the probability of failure of a firm faced with extreme financial duress. Additionally, recent studies question the assumption that a single board structure will be optimal for all firms. We empirically address this issue in the context of survival of new economy Australian IPOs. We characterize governance by board structure and leadership. Our results show that one of the key principles of the Cadbury Code …

State Owned Vs. Privately Owned Firms: Whose Ceos Are Better Compensated?, Jerry Cao, Xiaofei Pan, Gary G. Tian

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper investigates CEO pay and pay-performance relationshipin China s listed firms. We distinguish four firm types based on theircontrolling owners: state owned enterprises affiliated with stateasset management bureaus (SAMBs), state owned enterprisesaffiliated with the central government (SOECGs), state ownedenterprises affiliated with a local government (SOELGs), and privatefirms controlled by private investors. We also distinguish betweenfirms with foreign investors and those without. Because thedifferent types of controlling owners have different objectives,motivations, and political interests, they affect managerscompensation in the firms in which they invest. Our results indicatethat CEO pay is lowest in SAMB controlled firms and highest inSOECG controlled firms. …

Managerial Compensation, Ownership Structure And Firm Performance In China's Listed Firms, Xiaofei Pan, Gary G. Tian, Shiguang Ma, Aelee Jun, Qingliang Tang

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper investigates managerial compensation and its relationship with firm performance in China's listed firms. In China, the largest shareholder dominates other shareholders, controls the firm and therefore exercises substantial impacts on manager compensation. After controlling for other firm and industry characteristics, we find that manager remuneration is greater and pay-performance relation is stronger for privately-controlled firms than for state-controlled firms. We also document that state-controlled firms exercise performance-based manager incentive schemes, which is contrary to evidence found in some earlier studies. Our results also indicate that top executives in firms with a foreign ownership are more highly compensated, relative …