Dr. Roberto García Castro (IESE Business School)

Program

• Date: 12.12.2007
  Time: 17:15 - 18:45
  Location: Room E004, Kaulbachstr. 45

Does social performance really lead to financial performance? Accounting for endogeneity

The empirical relationship between a firm’s social performance and its financial performance is still not well established in the literature. Despite more than 30 years of research and more than 100 empirical studies on the issue, the results are still mixed. We argue that the heterogeneous results found in previous studies are not due exclusively to problems related with the measurement instruments or the samples used. Instead, we posit that a more fundamental problem related with the endogeneity of social strategic decisions could be driving most of the empirical findings. We show, using a panel data of 658 firms from 1991-2005, how some of the results found in previous research change and some are even reversed when endogeneity is taken properly into account.

Paper (PDF, 333 kB); LMU CAMS Seminar Präsentation (PDF, 1,3 MB)

• Date: 13.12.2007
  Time: 16:15 - 17:45
  Location: Room 202, Kaulbachstr. 45

Is superior economic performance the same as sustained competitive advantage? The case of southwest airlines

Evaluating the sustained competitive advantage (SCA) of a firm according exclusively to superior economic performance sustained for a given period of time can hide alternative manifestations of SCA. We suggest that SCA is a multidimensional construct that may be subject to different operationalizations in empirical tests. We propose an untapped dimension of SCA related to the degree of autonomy of a firm with respect to its industry rivals and present a novel method, inspired in the CAPM model, to measure it. We illustrate the relevance of our measure in studies of SCA applying it to the US airlines industry (1982-2002).

Paper (PDF, 415 kB); LMU CAMS Seminar Präsentation (PDF, 289 kB)