Rodrigo Bandeira-de-Mello

Performance Financeira Corporativa e Performance Social Corporativa: desenvolvimento metodológico e contribuição teórica dos estudos empíricos

One of the roles of accounting is to provide information on business performance, either through financial accounting indicators or otherwise. Theoretical-empirical studies on the relationship between Corporate Financial Performance (CFP) and Corporate Social Performance (CSP) have increased in recent years, indicating the development of this research field. However, the contribution to the theory by empirical studies is made in an incremental manner, given that each study normally focuses on a particular aspect of the theory. Therefore, it is periodically necessary to conduct an analysis to evaluate how the aggregation of empirical studies has contributed to the evolution of the theory. Designing such an analysis was the objective of the present study. The theoretical framework covered the following: stakeholder theory, the relationship between CSP and CFP, good management theory, and slack resource theory. This research covered a 15-year period (1996 to 2010), and the data collection employed a search tool for the following databases: Ebsco, Proquest, and ISI. The sampling process obtained a set of 58 exclusively theoretical-empirical and quantitative articles that test the CSP-CFP relationship. The main results in the theoretical field reinforce the proposed positive relationship between CSP and CFP and good management theory and demonstrate a deficiency in the explanation of the temporal lag in the causal relationship between CSP and CFP as well as deficiencies in the description of the CSP construct. These results suggest future studies to research the temporal lag in the causal relationship between CSP and CFP and the possible reasons that the positive association between CSP and CFP has not been assumed in some empirical studies.

Heterogeneidade do desempenho de empresas em ambientes turbulentos

Empirical researches on firm performance heterogeneity usually model year, industry and firm effects to assess their contributions to total firm performance variation. In this paper, we use three indicators to compose a performance measure of firms operating in Brazil. We argue that a single indicator is not capable of taking into account the effects of a turbulent environment. Data on firm performance were collected for 177 listed firms in 15 industries, for a 5-year period (1998-2002). We found that, similar to previous studies that used a single indicator for performance, firm effects accounted for most of the variation found in data. Conversely, the amount of total variation associated with transient industry effects was greater than the stable effects. Results also indicate that attractive industries “buffer” negative effects of environmental turbulence and the characteristics of firm capital structure appear to be associated to the efficacy of such “buffering”.

Innovation and Knowledge Transfer in Clustered Interorganizational Networks in Brazil

ABSTRACT This article analyzes whether firm innovation is influenced by the transfer of knowledge among cluster firms. To test the hypotheses, we directly estimated the measurement and the structural model parameters where cooperation, workforce mobility, and institutions were defined as manifest indicators of the latent exogenous variable knowledge transfer, modeled as a second-order construct. Firm innovation was defined as a single item endogenous latent variable. We found knowledge transfer to be related to the way firms are managed vis-à-vis (a) the role of institutions as discussion arenas; (b) the adaptability of the workforce; and (c) the indirect cooperation among firms.

Drivers of discretionary firm donations in Brazil

Discretionary firm donation is usually related to the stakeholder theory and corporate social performance. Although theoretical explanations for this social behavior are pervasive in related literature, empirical modeling remains underdeveloped. We developed an explanatory structural model of discretionary firm donation using firm and industry level indicators. Unlike previous research, we estimated the explanatory power of the construct we called stakeholder orientation. Our tentative model was tested on a Brazilian sample of 101 publicly traded donor firms, using data on firm donations to social projects and to political candidates in electoral campaigns. The main results suggest that discretionary donation seems to be a strategy for managing conflicting claims in highly stakeholder oriented firms; the characteristics of the firm are more important than industry effects in explaining firm donations; and large firms, showing slack resources, and with a less concentrated ownership structure tend to engage in discretionary donation more intensively.

Firm performance effects of nurturing political connections through campaign contributions

In a research context suggesting that there are positive effects of political connections on firm performance, this paper addressed one mechanism generating performance superiority: cash giving to political candidates in exchange for favors. A dataset from the major 2006 election for president, governor, senator, federal and state deputies was used to estimate a multilevel model of listed firms operating in Brazil, an interesting setting because political institutions favor a close one-to-one relationship between managers and politicians. The main results indicated that campaign contributions related positively to firm capital structure performance (Return on Equity) and to investors’ expectations of profit and value (Tobin’s q), but not operational profitability (Operational Return on Assets). Such a political strategy seemed to be a non-market source of advantage since connectedness apparently related to the reduction of transaction costs leading to financial advantage, but not significantly to opportunities associated with the generation of market failures. The results reinforced theoretical arguments that political connections directly improve firm performance by means of providing superior and lower-cost access to financial debt and foster market expectation and valuation due to close relations between businesses and politicians.

Do institutions matter in Latin America

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of institutional changes on business landscapes and companies performance in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach – The authors have developed a multiple empirical strategy, including qualitative and quantitative methods. As a qualitative method, we used business landscapes to describe how clustered firm performance varies across industries. We collected return on equity (ROE) and equity data from Brazilian listed companies in a 24-years range, and compared three different 8-years institutional periods. As a quantitative method, the authors compared variance across periods and developed a panel analysis assuming fixed and random effects models. Findings – The main results indicate that ROE differences among institutional periods in Brazil are relevant, indicating that there is an important institutional effect on performance and the impacts of those institutional effects may be different across industries. The impact of institutional changes see...

Financial dimension of internationalization: serving two masters

Purpose Drawing on the agency and institutional theory, this paper aims to explore how financial internationalization shapes firm performance through the influence of foreign actors. Design/methodology/approach By using a unique panel database, composed of over 26,000 curricula and 4,000 corporate reports from approximately 450 Brazilian companies, the effects of financial internationalization were explored in a longitudinal view by using multiple regression analysis with fixed effects. Findings The results present consistent and non-trivial effects of financial internationalization on firms’s performance. When tested together, foreign ownership showed inconclusive results, foreign directors and depositary receipts showed a positive association with performance and foreign currency debt showed a negative association. Research limitations/implications In most cases, the data on foreign stakeholders, foreign directors and foreign currency debt do not address the home country. Practical implications Serving the interest of foreign stakeholders from multiple institutional perspectives can be a challenge for managers. The findings of this study provide an opportunity for research focusing on institutional duality and financial internationalization. Originality/value This paper extends the prior literature on corporate governance and financial internationalization by investigating the latter on a perspective of firms from an emerging market. The empirical evidence section provides support for the argument that the simultaneous presence of foreign actors in multiple mechanisms of the corporate governance structure impacts the performance of emerging market firms.

Doing Research and Publishing on Latin America

Emerging market firms have become an important topic of research in recent times. However, it is somewhat surprising that little has been published about Latin American firms in top management journals, neither by Latin American scholars nor by North American and European scholars for that matter (Perez-Batres, Pisani, and Doh, 2010). In fact, Latin American scholars and PhD students have not only been virtually absent from publications (or else have published in their native languages and gotten only local readership), but they have also been underrepresented in the most important conferences and fora on management. A report by UNESCO (2010) indicates that total publications by Latin American researchers in 2008 were only 18.3% of that of US researchers. However, the good news is that growth in publications, from 2000 to 2008, was 109.0% in Latin America and 24.4% in the United States.