Nurturing overconfidence: The relationship between leader power, overconfidence and firm performance

The initial survival of the Unicorns: a behavioral perspective of Snapchat

Purpose

Unicorn companies, such as Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb, significantly impact our economies. This happens although they had a dramatic initial start – at least in terms of financial performance – that would have let any other “conventional” business close. In other words, Unicorns challenge the start-ups’ problems traditionally associated with early failure (liability of newness). This paper aims to understand what helps Unicorn firms initially survive despite huge losses.

Design/methodology/approach

By adopting a behavioral lens, this historical case study article focuses on key strategic decisions regarding the famous social media Unicorn Snapchat from 2011 to 2022. The case combines secondary data and a thematic analysis of Snapchat founders’ and investors’ interviews/comments to identify the behavioral antecedents leading to Snapchat’s honeymoon.

Findings

Snapchat network effect triggered cognitive biases of Snapchat founders’ and investors’ decisions, leading them to provide initial assets (i.e. beliefs/goodwill, trust, financial resources and psychological commitment) to the nascent Unicorn. Therefore, the network effect and biases resulted in significant antecedents for Snapchat’s honeymoon.

Originality/value

The authors propose a general, theoretical framework advancing the possible impact of biases on Unicorns’ initial survival. The authors argue that some biases of the Unicorns’ founders and investors can positively support a honeymoon period for these new ventures. This is one of the first case studies drawing on a behavioral approach in general and on biases in particular to investigate the liability of newness in the Unicorns’ context.

The effect of board members’ education and experience on the financial performance of German state-owned enterprises

Within state-owned enterprises (SOEs), supervisory board mandates are often given to politicians, many of whom are selected through political processes in which competence is not necessarily the decisive factor. This paper analyzes the impact of this form of governance, examining the business competence level of supervisory board members and their influence on the financial performance of 58 state-owned utility companies in Germany from 2011 to 2016 by applying OLS regression. For this purpose, the biographical backgrounds of 3350 supervisory board members were compiled to discern their education, management, and industry experience. Contrary to our hypotheses, the empirical analyses show no effects for any of the competence dimensions on companies’ profitability. In a more detailed analysis, we find that board members with management experience from outside the energy sector seem detrimental to the company, which may indicate self-overestimation bias. This result is robust across different specifications and opens up an interesting new approach to analyzing the impact of board member competence on firm performance. The insignificance of the other competence areas indicates a rather low impact of supervisory boards on SOEs based on their unique institutional setting and in comparison to private sector corporate governance. Overall, this study contributes to both scholars and practitioners by providing new insights in the field of public corporate governance, focusing on the unique situation of the competence of politically connected boards and their influence on SOEs.

Mapping knowledge domains on managerial overconfidence

Managerial overconfidence issues have attracted extant research interest given its influence on corporate strategy and operating performance with the growing development of modern behavioural economics. In this paper, bibliometric tools of VOSviewer and CiteSpace are used to reflect the research trend, hot spots and evolving route of managerial overconfidence theme. The publishing and citation numbers of managerial overconfidence paper are experiencing an overall increasing trend from 1992 to 2021. We sum up the top source journal, institutions, countries and the top 10 highly cited papers, and 272 keywords are distributed in the occurrence graph related to the theme of managerial overconfidence. Twelve keyword clusters from individual, organisational and social levels are identified. The research span is divided into four periods: preliminary, exploratory, growth and outbreak periods, and important research hot spots are summed up with highly cited keywords. The extant literature measurement and variables of managerial overconfidence are summarised in four types, and the integrated research frame of managerial overconfidence is proposed. Future research expansion of managerial overconfidence can be carried out from five aspects of harmony classification, improved measurement, multivariate test, positive paradigm and cultural distinction.

Managers' and auditors' narcissism on the management team's stability and relative corporate performance

Purpose

Success in corporate relative performance is one of the factors for the growth and durability of firms. Since the relative performance is a function of managers' decisions and such decisions are under the influence of behavioral and psychological characteristics, this paper aims to assess the managers’ and auditors’ narcissism's effect on the management team's stability relative to corporate performance.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper has used the signature magnitude for examining narcissism and the regression model of Jenter and Kanaan (2015) for assessing relative corporate performance. The logistic regression is used to test the model of the management team's stability, and the multivariate regression is used to test the model of relative corporate performance. Research hypotheses were also examined using a sample of 768 listed year-companies on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2012–2017 and by employing a panel data approach and fixed effects method.

Findings

The obtained results show a negative and significant relationship between managers' and auditors' narcissism and the management team's stability. The relationship between the narcissism of managers and auditors and relative corporate performance is positive and significant. Moreover, managers' narcissism positively and significantly impacts the relationship between auditors' narcissism and team management stability. A negative and significant relationship is evident between auditors’ narcissism and relative corporate performance.

Originality/value

This study's results can identify the effect of psychological components such as narcissism on people's performance by directing and influencing their decisions. Many studies have been conducted on narcissism, but none of them have examined the impact auditors’ and managers' narcissism has on the management team's stability and the corporate relative performance. Therefore, considering the importance of success in the corporate relative performance and benefits of the management team's stability, this study's results can reveal the importance of such features in accounting research. Also, the results of this research can make it important to know more about financial behavioral theory.

The relationship between managers' narcissism and overconfidence on corporate risk-taking

Purpose

The primary purpose is to investigate the relationship between narcissism and managers' overconfidence in listed companies' risk-taking.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, two criteria of signature and reward are used to measure manager's narcissism; manager's overconfidence, using multiple regression models and finally to measure companies' risk-taking by using companies' monthly returns. Multiple regression is employed to test the model using a sample of 890 firm-year participation on the Tehran Stock Exchange from 2012 to 2017 with panel data and model with fixed effects.

Findings

The findings indicate that the CEO's narcissism and the board of directors positively and significantly affect corporate risk-taking. Also, managers' overconfidence has a positive and significant relationship with corporate risk-taking.

Originality/value

The results of this study identified other factors affecting companies' risk-taking. This study also contributed to the development of the literature on narcissism, overconfidence and corporate risk-taking.