Managerial personal traits and corporate financial policy

Zusammenfassung

The objective of our study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of internal and external factors affecting directors’ behavior and empirically identify their influence on corporate strategy and performance. In other words, we address the relationship between managerial personality traits and behavior with corporate results. While the dissertation aims at a holistic picture of managerial perspective and personality outcomes, each chapter focuses on a particular question. In this sense, each one has its particular aim that will be more specified and developed in the following sections of the thesis. Figure 1 represents the main framework of the study and how each chapter contributes to the main aim. Big blocks represent that in each chapter we analyze directors internal and external factors and their impact on a company’s policy and performance. Thus, Chapter 1 explores remuneration as a method that allows to regulate a CEO behavior and raise company’s performance. Chapter 2 is dedicated to overconfidence, an internal behavioral bias that may influence managers’ decisions. In this chapter we analyze its impact on performance through risky decisions on research and development expenses. Chapter 3 is dedicated to a descriptive analysis of another type of internal factors, social capital of board of directors. Chapter 4 highlight several types of a CEO power and tests its influence on performance under the assumptions of agency theory. Chapter 5 analyses the impact of some traditional internal traits, age and tenure, together with country specific factors like political connections and social capital on a corporate risk.