The implementation of corporate governance in Germany and Brazi l: a comparative case study

The recent promotion of best corporate governance standards by several different government institutions and non-for profit organizations resulted in the implementation of more sophisticated governance mechanisms. As consequence to the separation of ownership and control the concept of agency theory arose. Agency theory argues that without out proper control mechanism managers would behave exploit owners due to information asymmetry. Regulators have promoted corporate governance mechanisms in order to address this issue. This paper aims to contrast the implementation of best corporate governance practices in Germany and Brazil on the example of two practical examples. With this purpose in mind, this paper analyzed two companies listed in the main stock exchange in Germany and Brazil throughout a period of 5 years. In order to measure the degree of corporate governance practices implemented 3 different parameters have been chosen. In line with great part of the literature the parameters considered to be relevant are; composition, procedures and deviation from the local corporate governance code. The comparison of the data revealed that board composition in the two analyzed companies is similar regarding the proportion of independent representatives but does distinguish in size. While committees are related to the same topics it can be implied that Natura’s board is more involved in the actual management of the company. Lastly, Beiersdorf has been able to comply to a larger extend with the recommendations of the local German code than Natura to the recommendations published by Brazilian code of the IBGC.

Decision making process: a comparison between the public and private sector

The problem of decision making, its mechanisms and consequences is the very core of management, it is virtually impossible to separate the act of manage from this knowledge area. As defined by Herbert Simon – "decision making" as though it were synonymous with "managing". A decision is a selection made by an individual regarding a choice of a conclusion about a situation. This represents a course of behavior pertaining to what must be done or what must not be done. A decision is the point at which plans, policies and objectives are translated into concrete actions. Our behavior during decisive moments is closely linked with our brain dominance profile. Over the years, our decision-making processes develop a consistent pattern, which can be described as a decision-making style. Our style is grounded in our preferences, which arise from our brain dominance characteristics […]. The importance of understanding the impact of our thinking preferences and how to improve the effectiveness as a leader of organizations are the main justifications for this thesis; the main problem addressed is the behavioral profile diversity in a selective Master’s cohort formed by students from several different countries. The research methodology approach has been quantitative, through questionnaire administration using the HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument), a validated framework developed by William "Ned" Herrmann when he was the leader of General Electric's Crotonville facility. This questionnaire has been administered in hundreds of thousands professional, enabling the possibility to establish correlations between a certain group and several historical databases. The selected group of analysis is the first cohort (23 students) from the CIM (Corporate International Master's), a joint program between Georgetown University (USA), ESADE (Spain) and FGV (Brazil). Besides decision preferences, the obtained profile enables the discussion on leadership style, heuristic's pitfalls and a base to compare with future cohorts. The fundamental research question is: how diverse is the dominant decision-making profile for the CIM students?

Processo de tomada de decisão em fundos de private equity no Brasil

Apesar dos princípios da indústria de Private Equity (PE) datar-se do início do século, foi apenas há algumas décadas que este segmento da indústria financeira tomou grandes proporções no mundo e voltou seus olhos para o Brasil, onde vem crescendo substancialmente nos últimos anos. Neste cenário, além de grandes volumes financeiros e expressivos retornos, está inserido também um elevado nível de risco e uma forte presença de assimetria de informação. É neste contexto, portanto, que este trabalho buscou analisar o processo de tomada de decisão de fundos de PE no Brasil. Para tal, o estudo foi conduzido com quatro representativos gestores brasileiros de Private Equity onde a coleta de dados deu-se por entrevistas abertas e presenciais no período de agosto a dezembro de 2013. Encontrou-se um processo de tomada de decisão semelhante ao visto na literatura estudada, com algumas particularidades em cada gestor. Notou-se também que existem diferenças em algumas partes específicas do processo de decisão entre os gestores que adotam estratégia de investimento majoritária e os de estratégia predominantemente minoritária. Por fim, encontrou-se uma particularidade relevante entre a tomada de decisão dos gestores que possuem em seus fundos cotistas locais e àqueles unicamente com cotistas estrangeiros.

Market timing as a motive for IPOs: evidence from IPOs of Japanese keiretsu firms

This paper examines the relevance of market timing as a motive for initial public offerings (IPOs) by comparing IPOs of firms that are members of Japanese keiretsu industrial groups with IPOs of independent Japanese firms. We argue that Japanese keiretsu-linked IPOs form a favorable sample to find evidence of the market timing motive. Instead, the data provide strong evidence for a restructuring motive and little evidence for market timing. We find that long run returns to keiretsu and independent IPOs are not negative, contrary to U.S. evidence, and are indistinguishable from each other; initial returns to keiretsu-linked IPOs are significantly higher than to independent firms; and a significant number of keiretsu IPO firms adjust their linkages with the group following the IPO, with both increases and decreases.

Valuation and performance of firms in complex ownership structures : an application to Korean chaebols

We propose several new metrics to describe the complex ownership structure of business groups, and provide simple formulas and algorithms to compute these metrics. We use these measures to describe in detail the ownership structure of Korean chaebols in the period of 2003 to 2004. In addition, we validate the usefulness of our new metrics by showing empirically that they are important for understanding the valuation and performance of group firms. In particular, we show evidence that firms that are central to the control structure of the chaebol (central firms), firms in cross-shareholdings, and firms that are placed at the bottom of the group (i.e., with lower ultimate ownership) have lower profitability than other group firms. The valuation results suggest that central firms and firms in cross-shareholding loops have lower valuations than other public Chaebol firms. The lower valuation of these firms is not explained by variation in measures of ownership concentration and separation between ownership and control.

Why merger talks collapse: an exploratory study about contributing factors to ‘wedding cold feet' and deal making failure in mergers and acquisitions from the perspective of active deal making professionals in Brazil

Why merger talks collapse: an exploratory study about contributing factors behind ‘wedding cold feet' and deal making failure in Mergers and Acquisitions from the perspective of active deal making professionals in Brazil. One basic question encouraged this study: after all the effort, expectations and money usually invested in dealmaking, why are so many transactions simply abandoned, even when the benefits are clear for the business, shareholders, customers and employees?

Educação executiva e carreira: a contribuição do MBA brasileiro sob a ótica dos egressos

A década de 90 foi um período de transformações, especialmente, no desenrolar de dois temas: a discussão sobre carreiras e a expansão dos MBAs no Brasil. Os estudos de carreira passaram por uma profunda transformação ao longo das últimas décadas e a responsabilidade pela gestão de carreira que, inicialmente, era da empresa, assumiu novos contornos passando para o profissional, agora denominado “proteano”, por sua capacidade de se adaptar às mudanças e aos ambientes, o leme de sua carreira. Esta mudança lhe conferiu mais liberdade na definição de seus rumos e de suas prioridades pessoais, mas lhe imputou mais incertezas e responsabilidades dotando-o da necessidade de manter sua empregabilidade. No nível gerencial profissionais buscam cursos de educação executiva, como o Master in Business Administration (MBA), como instrumento para a gestão de carreira, se capacitando para se manter empregável ou para fazer movimentos de carreira. No entanto, as críticas sobre a contribuição real destes cursos para a carreira de seus egressos levantam a necessidade de se avaliar qual a real contribuição de cursar um MBA para a carreira, sob a ótica daqueles que fizeram tal curso e observaram os reflexos que o título gerou em suas carreiras. Para tanto, foi realizada uma pesquisa quantitativa com uma amostra de 2.027 egressos, dos últimos 10 anos, de cursos de MBA da FGV. Os resultados revelam que os profissionais respondentes da amostra relatam ter observado resultados positivos na carreira e que foram bem sucedidos, além disto, apresentam características proteanas e demonstram necessidades de gerenciar e desenvolver sua carreira.

Information asymmetry and transaction costs in a cross-cultural business transaction

The intent of this paper is to provide a practitioners insight into the present and foreseeable future of problem of transaction cost economics related to culture and business etiquette that may increase the of complexity of business communication. We will also explore whether it impacts participant's mindsets regarding opportunistic or passive aggressive behavior. We will study the role of culture, ethics, information asymmetry, and legal systems regarding their importance towards the business contracts and lack of knowledge in local environments. We will make connections to contract theory strategies and objectives and recommend business practices. Furthermore, economic theory explores the role of the impossibility of the perfect contract. Historical and present day operational factors are examined for the determination of forward-looking contract law indications worldwide. This paper is intended provide a practitioners view with a global perspective of a multinational, mid-sized and small corporations giving consideration in a non-partisan and non-nationalistic view, yet examines the individual characteristics of the operational necessities and obligations of any corporation. The study will be general, yet cite specific articles to each argument and give adequate consideration to the intricacies of the global asymmetry of information. This paper defends that corporations of any kind and size should be aware of the risk of international business etiquette and cultural barriers that might jeopardize the savings you could obtain from engaging international suppliers.

Gestão do conhecimento

Continuando a Pesquisa realizada em 2002, a presente pesquisa examinou os conceitos e tecnologias envolvidas na Gestão de Conhecimento no contexto nacional e comparou-os com os conceitos e tecnologias que têm norteado as empresas. Para tanto, utilizamos o Survey como metodologia de pesquisa.

Overconfidence and confirmation bias: are future managers vulnerable?

Decision makers often use ‘rules of thumb’, or heuristics, to help them handling decision situations (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979b). Those cognitive shortcuts are taken by the brain to cope with complexity and time limitation of decisions, by reducing the burden of information processing (Hodgkinson et al, 1999; Newell and Simon, 1972). Although crucial for decision-making, heuristics come at the cost of occasionally sending us off course, that is, make us fall into judgment traps (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974). Over fifty years of psychological research has shown that heuristics can lead to systematic errors, or biases, in decision-making. This study focuses on two particularly impactful biases to decision-making – the overconfidence and confirmation biases. A specific group – top management school students and recent graduates - were subject to classic experiments to measure their level of susceptibility to those biases. This population is bound to take decision positions at companies, and eventually make decisions that will impact not only their companies but society at large. The results show that this population is strongly biased by overconfidence, but less so to the confirmation bias. No significant relationship between the level of susceptibility to the overconfidence and to the confirmation bias was found.

Uma análise de conteúdo escrito sobre as referências à responsabilidade social corporativa em instituições de ensino superior no Rio de Janeiro

Diante da importância dos conteúdos de responsabilidade social corporativa para a sociedade e empresas no mundo atual, a pesquisa foi realizada com o intuito de observar mais detalhadamente nos textos oficiais das instituições de ensino superior, as referencias à responsabilidade social corporativa, de acordo com Elkington (1997), e ao ensino oferecido em dez cursos de graduação em administração de empresas na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. O trabalho se baseia na análise de conteúdo de documentos disponibilizados pelos cursos de graduação na rede mundial de computadores, seguido de reflexão por meio de lentes teóricas de matrizes curriculares, aspectos de sociologia das profissões e formação de grade oculta. Conclui-se que há evidências de pouco foco dedicado às questões de RSC nos cursos de graduação, assim como um pequeno percentual de carga horária dedicada exclusivamente ao tema. No entanto, levando em consideração que os currículos podem estar relacionados à manutenção de poder e o apaziguamento de conteúdos emergentes para manutenção de forças hegemônicas, observamos que não podemos averiguar por meio da pesquisa baseada em análise de conteúdo de documentos escritos se o conteúdo relacionado à RSC está sendo ensinado de forma transversal no currículo, deixando aberta a possibilidade de pesquisa adicional para averiguar tal possibilidade.

Diagnóstico empresarial: uma visão sistêmica

Este trabalho tem como finalidade abordar a análise de empresas, através do diagnóstico empresarial. O enfoque adotado correlaciona o estudo do diagnóstico empresarial com a visão sistêmica, isto é, analisa-se a empresa como um todo. Este trabalho é uma preocupação em detectar os problemas das empresas e as alternativas a serem tomadas para eliminá-los, através da incorporação da Teoria dos Sistemas .

Apresentação 2: Um modelo de produção e disseminação de pesquisa com a colaboração dos principais agentes do setor

Coordenador: Matias Spektor