Going Public and the Internal Organization of the Firm
Daniel Bias, Benjamin Lochner, Stefan Obernberger, Merih Sevilir
SSRN Working Paper,
May
2022
Abstract
We examine how firms adapt their organization when they go public. To conform with the requirements of public capital markets, we expect IPO firms to become more organized, making the firm more accountable and its human capital more easily replaceable. We find that IPO firms transform into a more hierarchical organization with smaller departments. Managerial oversight increases. Organizational functions dedicated to accounting, finance, information and communication, and human resources become much more prominent. Employee turnover is sizeable and directly related to changes in hierarchical layers. New hires are better educated, but younger and less experienced than incumbents, which reflects the staffing needs of a more hierarchical organization. Wage inequality increases as firms become more hierarchical. Overall, going public is associated with a comprehensive transformation of the firm's organization which becomes geared towards efficiently operating a public firm.
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Employee Treatment and Contracting with Bank Lenders: An Instrumental Approach for Stakeholder Management
Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Liuling Liu, Haizhi Wang
Journal of Business Ethics,
2019
Abstract
Adopting an instrumental approach for stakeholder management, we focus on two primary stakeholder groups (employees and creditors) to investigate the relationship between employee treatment and loan contracts with banks. We find strong evidence that fair employee treatment reduces loan price and limits the use of financial covenants. In addition, we document that relationship bank lenders price both the levels and changes in the quality of employee treatment, whereas first-time bank lenders only care about the levels of fair employee treatment. Taking a contingency perspective, we find that industry competition and firm asset intangibility moderate the relationship between good human resource management and bank loan costs. The cost reduction effect of fair employee treatment is stronger for firms operating in a more competitive industry and having higher levels of intangible assets.
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Indirect Effects of Unfair Employer Behaviour on Workplace Performance
Matthias Heinz, Sabrina Jeworrek, Vanessa Mertins, Heiner Schumacher, Matthias Sutter
VOX CEPR's Policy Portal,
2017
Abstract
Any organisation that needs to restructure, cut wages, or make layoffs needs to know how the employees who are not affected will respond. This column presents a field experiment which revealed that the perception that employers are unfair – in this case, as a result of layoffs – reduces the performance of employees who have not been not directly affected. As part of the experiment, experienced HR managers were able to successfully anticipate the consequences of unfair employer behaviour on unaffected workers.
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What are the Long-Term Benefits of the Economic Stimulus Package II for German Local Governments? – The Case of Saxony
Peter Haug
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 4,
2010
Abstract
This article deals with the question whether the investments subsidized by the economic stimulus package II („Konjunkturpaket II“) do not only have short-term effects on demand but also long-term effects e.g. on local economic growth. As far as the short-term effects are concerned, the case of the German state of Saxony shows – with some delay – a rise in local government´s investments. Hence, the time-lag problem inherent in all governmental spending programmes seems to keep within reasonable limits. Up to now there have been no signs of inflationary price tendencies in the construction sector.
According to - for example - the „new“ economic growth theory, one ought to be sceptical about the long-term effects of the projects supported by the programme: Even for genuine public intermediate goods the withdrawal effects of financing have to be weighed against the positive effects on private enterprise sector productivity. Furthermore, the effects on factor prices caused by the investment grants might encourage the excess use of physical capital in public production.
This sceptical attitude of the theory is confirmed for Saxony by the fact that primarily public consumption goods (sports and leisure facilities) or educational facilities (kindergartens, primary schools), which are of no direct relevance to the local enterprises, are supported by the programme. Investments in vocational training, research and development play only a minor role at the local government level or are explicitly excluded from the programme.
Especially because of the incentives to misallocate public resources it is recommended to rely on unconditional grants in future support programmes. Then the local governments could use the grants for either „investments” in human capital (new [fixed-term contract] hires, qualification) or in physical capital, according to their needs.
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20 years of innovation policy in East Germany – from a pure “survival support” to high-tech subsidy
Jutta Günther, Nicole Nulsch, Katja Wilde
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
20 Jahre Deutsche Einheit - Teil 2 -
2010
Abstract
The article uses the occasion of “20 years German re-unification” in order to provide an overview of the range of innovation policy schemes in East Germany with the intention to identify changing patterns or paradigms in its philosophy and priorities over time. In general, innovation policy schemes aim at increasing research and development (R&D) activities of companies in order to strengthen their competitiveness as market incentives for R&D are usually too low (problem of market failure). However, in East Germany in the early 1990s the situation was different. At the very beginning, the transformation process in East Germany was accompanied by innovation policy schemes that aimed at the pure maintenance of industrial research and the stock of R&D personnel since the potential for innovation was at a risk to be eliminated completely. In the late 1990s the intention of innovation policies changed. Instead of financial support primarily for human resources, innovation policy schemes since then focused on the support of cooperation projects between different research entities (companies and scientific organizations) and, later on, also the setup of networks in order to close the economic differences between East and West Germany.
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Size and Focus of a Venture Capitalist's Portfolio
Paolo Fulghieri, Merih Sevilir
Review of Financial Studies,
No. 11,
2009
Abstract
We take a portfolio approach to analyze the investment strategy of a venture capitalist (VC) and show that portfolio size and scope affect both the entrepreneurs' and the VC's incentives to exert effort. A small portfolio improves entrepreneurial incentives because it allows the VC to concentrate the limited human capital on a smaller number of startups, adding more value. A large and focused portfolio is beneficial because it allows the VC to reallocate the limited resources and human capital in the case of startup failure and allows the VC to extract greater rents from the entrepreneurs. We show that the VC finds it optimal to limit portfolio size when startups have higher payoff potential - that is, when providing strong entrepreneurial incentives is most valuable. The VC expands portfolio size only when startup fundamentals are more moderate and when he can form a sufficiently focused portfolio. Finally, we show that the VC may find it optimal to engage in portfolio management by divesting some of the startups early since this strategy allows him to extract a greater surplus.
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Co-existence of Unemployment and Skilled Labour Shortage? Evidence from Thuringia
Dirk Trocka, Marco Sunder
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 4,
2009
Abstract
In the light of favourable business conditions during the previous years, business organizations have repeatedly cautioned about a skilled labour shortage that could constrain future development of enterprises. While shortages may be typical of phases of economic expansion, the skilled labour shortage might turn into a permanent phenomenon if one takes into account the shrinking of the working-age population. The demographic transition occurs at an especially rapid pace in Eastern Germany. At the same time, this region still exhibits high rates of chronic unemployment, which renders the possibility of a skilled labour shortage questionable.
We focus on the federal state of Thuringia and investigate two questions. Firstly, we evaluate to what extent occupation-specific bottlenecks exist both in Germany and in Thuringia, using a set of criteria based on official labour market statistics. We find evidence of high utilization of labour supply in technical and metalworking professions in Germany. In the majority of these occupations, the same is true for Thuringia. Hence, a high level of unemployment and skilled labour shortage may coexist, at least in a transition phase. Secondly, we investigate whether companies in Thuringia already expect problems when searching for skilled personnel in the near future. For this purpose, the IWH has conducted a survey among approximately 1 000 companies. It turns out that 61% of the interviewed companies anticipate such problems, with statistically significant differences with respect to the companies’ characteristics. In addition, we discuss selected policies that companies plan to implement in the field of human resource management when anticipating problems.
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