You are asked to work in teams of 4-5. Each team must select a sample of 30 UK listed companies from Morningstar Company Intelligence (available under Learning Centre, electronic databases). For each of the companies, you are asked to collate data for the following variables (year 2014 or 2015 if available) and input these into SPSS:
1) Company size: Turnover, number of employees,
2) Company performance: ROCE, EPS, degree of internationalisation (% turnover derived from non-UK activities – from company facts report)
3) Board data: size of board, proportion of non-executive directors, proportion of women directors, average age of board, number of interlocking directorships
You are then asked to write a report on the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and firm performance which should include:
a) An introduction to your report and your selected companies (including an explanation of your sampling procedures).
b) A summary of descriptive statistics for key variables in your sample (min & max values, mean, standard deviation), and necessary variable transformations
c) The results from statistical tests about the relationship between board variables and firm performance, controlling for firm size
d) A discussion of your results. Here, you should discuss which organisational theories best explain your empirical observations and what other explanations there may be for your results.
e) A concluding summary in which you put forward recommendations on corporate governance that can influence companies’ performance, including internationalisation.
