Deeksha Singh

Business Group Affiliation, Firm Governance and Firm Performance: Evidence from China and India

This study seeks to understand how business group affiliation, within firm governance and external governance environment affect firm performance in emerging economies. We examine two aspects of within firm governance – ownership concentration and board independence. Using archival data on the top 500 Indian and Chinese firms from multiple data sources for 2007, we found that group affiliated firms performed worse than unaffiliated firms, and the negative relationship was stronger in the case of Indian firms than for Chinese firms. We also found that ownership concentration had a positive effect on firm performance, while board independence had a negative effect on firm performance. Further, we found that group affiliation – firm performance relationship in a given country context was moderated by ownership concentration. This study utilizes an integration of agency theory with an institutional perspective, providing a more comprehensive framework to analyze the CG problems, particularly in the emerging economy firms. Empirically, our findings support, as well as contradict, some of the conventional wisdom, and suggest useful avenues for future research. This study shows that reforms in general and CG reforms in particular are effective in emerging economies, which is an encouraging sign for policy makers. However, our research also suggests that it may be time for India and China to stop the encouragement for the empire building through group formation in the corporate world. For practioners, our findings suggest that firms need to balance the need for oversight with the need for advice, while selecting independent directors.

Ownership concentration, board characteristics and firm performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of the relationship between firm-level governance mechanisms and firm performance using a contingency framework. The contingency framework is based on an integration of agency theory, stewardship theory, resource dependence theory and stakeholder theory of firm governance. Design/methodology/approach – The authors test the arguments on a sample of all the listed firms on the New Zealand Stock Exchange between 2004 and 2007. Given the longitudinal nature of the data, the authors employ random effects, generalized least square estimation to run the regression models. Findings – The authors find that the presence of internal directors, CEO duality, board size and presence of professional directors leads to superior firm performance. A lack of ownership concentration leads to agency problems resulting in inferior performance. However, the positive effect of board independence on firm performance reduces in firms that have a high-ownership con...

Impact of host country institutional context on subsidiary performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of quality of market supporting institutions (institutional quality) in host country and the similarities and differences of institutional quality between the home and host country (institutional distance) on subsidiary performance. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the conceptualization of new institutional economics, the authors divide quality of host country institutions into factor markets; product, capital, labor market and sociopolitical dimensions. The authors examine the impact of the quality these institutional dimensions in host countries and their difference between home and host country on the performance of 318 subsidiaries of 146 Korean listed manufacturing firms operating in 28 host countries from 2001 to 2006. Findings – The empirical results based on 1,129 observations show that institutional distance explains a significant variance in the subsidiary performance. In particular, the difference in quality of institutions in p...

Pro-Market Institutions and Global Strategy: The Pendulum of Pro-Market Reforms and Reversals

We review the literature analyzing the impact of pro-market institutions on firms’ global strategy. We propose that the ideological tension between whether the government or the market should drive...

Home Country Political and Legal Hazards and International Expansion of Emerging Market Firms

This study employs institution-based view to study the internationalization of firms from emerging markets. There are two competing arguments in institution-based view literature: institutional lev...

Institutional Distance and International Strategy

The Handbook provides an impressive state-of-the-art overview of the international strategic management field as an area of scholarly inquiry. The great strength of the work is the thoughtfulness of the messages conveyed by the expert team of authors.