Gregorio Sánchez Marín

Top Managers’ Compensation, Strategic Orientations, and Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from Spanish Firms

This paper analyzes the links among executive compensation, a firm’s strategic orientation, and firm performance. A number of key questions relative to the relationships among these elements remain unanswered because prior research on this subject has reported mixed results, and, moreover, has been confined almost exclusively to U.S. firms. We develop a framework that draws on arguments from agency theory to identify such links. A research design with both archival and survey data is used to test hypotheses in a sample of 253 Spanish companies. We found that top managers’ compensation systems are linked with a firm’s strategic orientations, but in a different form than that of previous studies. Results show two differentiated groups of firms: (1) prospective firms that adapt their managerial compensation systems to the requirements of strategic context, consequently obtaining positive performance effects; and (2) conservative firms that design managerial compensation systems independent of strategic context, consequently not obtaining additional performance benefits.

Managerial Compensation and Firm Performance: The Moderating Role of Firm Strategy as a Proxy of Managerial Discretion

This paper analyzes the effect of strategic context on managerial compensation design, and the interactive influence on firm performance for a set of Spanish companies. Specifically, this study examines the performance implications of the fit between different managerial compensation systems and diverse firm’s strategic orientations – representing various levels of managerial discretion. Based on a framework combining agency theory and managerial discretion concept, a research design with both archival and survey data is used to test hypotheses in a sample of 82 firms. The findings offer sufficient confirmation of theoretical arguments, providing extensions of this research stream for non‐U.S. firms. Results show that firms benefit from the design of managerial compensation systems when they match the managerial control and risk‐bearing requirements imposed by the strategic context. Specifically, risk‐encouraging compensation systems are better for prospector firms – high level of managerial discretion – whereas risk‐discouraging compensation systems are better for defender firms – low level of managerial discretion.

Orientaciones competitivas culturales en la empresa familiar

This paper analyses the make-up of strategic cultural resources in the family business to establish important declarations which can define better the differences and similarities between family and non family businesses. The tool used here is the culture valuation tool proposed by Cameron and Quinn (1999) which identifies four types of cultural, competitive foci (market, hierarchy, clan and adhocracy). The organizational culture varies according to the nature of the business in terms of the degree of family ownership and management. Specifically, the clan and adhocracy culture are what best characterize the culture of family owned and managed businesses, while it is the market culture which best characterizes nonfamily businesses. Professionalized family businesses show no cultural differences with respect to family owned and managed firms.