This dissertation examines the impact of chief executive officers’ (CEO) numeracy on strategic decisions and outcomes. CEO numeracy refers to the capacity of a CEO to perform one or more mental activities on information and/or concepts that are numerical in nature. Although numeracy is widely studied in disciplines such as health sciences, education, and psychology and is commonly associated with superior and more effective decision making, it is largely missing from organizational scholarship. Numeracy is particularly relevant in the context of top management teams as the conditions in which executives operate compromise the effectiveness of strategic decision making. As such, I examine the effect of CEO numeracy on acquisition decisions and outcomes. Despite global growth in acquisition investments over the years, studies suggest that acquisitions more often erode instead of improve acquiring firm value. Therefore, I propose that CEO numeracy is negatively associated with acquisition decisions such as the number of acquisitions, value of acquisitions, and number of large acquisitions undertaken by a firm. Moreover, among CEOs that engage in acquisitions, I propose that more numerate CEOs will experience better acquisition-related outcomes compared to less numerate CEOs. Specifically, I hypothesize that CEO numeracy is negatively related to acquisition premiums and positively related to post-acquisition performance. I use a longitudinal sample comprised of 250 randomly selected U.S. based firms from the S&P 500 index to empirically test my hypothesized relationships. Furthermore, I use CEO-attributed text from earnings calls transcripts and a closed-language analytical approach to develop a novel and accessible measure of CEO numeracy. My analyses did not yield support for my hypotheses. I discuss potential theoretical and empirical explanations for the null findings in my research and propose directions to mitigate those issues in future research.

Entrepreneurship entails a transition from status quo to a founder/leader of a new organization, and the dominant view in the literature focuses on opportunities in a hypothetical situation, namely an entrepreneurial option. This study shifts the attention from an entrepreneurial option to a current situation and proposes that a perception of costliness in status quo as a driver of entrepreneurial decisions and strategies. Specifically, I propose that a perception of inequality due to the local hierarchy of an organization engenders motivation of disadvantaged employees to become a leader of his/her own entrepreneurial organization. Utilizing hierarchy-based power dynamics and attribution biases, I theorize that i) status gap between a leader and a member and ii) status distinctiveness of a leader in the current organization affect an entrepreneurial decision because of inequality perception. Furthermore, I hypothesize that entrepreneurial organizations driven by such status inequality are more likely to replicate the local structure of the previous employer in terms of status hierarchy to compensate for the perceived disadvantages in the previous employer. The empirical analyses of this study investigate entrepreneurial decisions and entrepreneurial team formation of jazz musicians from jazz discographies between 1950 and 2018, and I found supportive results. This study contributes to the entrepreneurship and inequality literature by bridging two research spaces. It first uncovers the roles of a negative perception of the status quo in entrepreneurship, in addition to the established idea of a positive perception of an alternative option. It also suggests a novel explanation of the long-standing question of inequality reproduction by looking at whether and how inequality spreads via entrepreneurship.

Managers’ control over the timing and content of information disclosure represents a significant strategic tool which they can use at their discretion. However, extant theoretical perspectives offer incongruent arguments and incompatible predictions about when and why managers would release inside information about their firms. More specifically, agency theory and theories within competitive dynamics provide competing hypotheses about when and why managers would disclose inside information about their firms. In this study, I highlight how voluntary disclosure theory may help to coalesce these two theoretical perspectives. Voluntary disclosure theory predicts that managers will release inside information when managers perceive that the benefits outweigh the costs of doing so. Accordingly, I posit that competitive dynamics introduce the costs associated with disclosing information (i.e., proprietary costs) and that agency theory highlights the benefits associated with disclosing information. Examining the context of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), I identify three ways managers can use information in SEO prospectuses. I hypothesize that competitive intensity increases proprietary costs that will reduce disclosure of inside information but will increase discussing the organization positively. I then hypothesize that capital market participants (e.g., security analysts and investors) may prefer managers to provide more, clearer, and positive information about the SEO and their firms. I find support for many of my hypotheses.

This dissertation integrates research on boards of directors with human and social capital perspectives to examine board appointments. A director's appointment to a board is in part due to the belief that the individual can contribute critical resources and monitoring to the organization. The ability of a director to provide these resources and monitoring depends on his or her level of human and social capital. This dissertation more fully integrates human and social capital perspectives into our understanding of board appointment events. From these theoretical underpinnings, a model is developed proposing that several human and social capital indicators, including educational level, expertise, director experience, and access to network structural holes, affect the likelihood of joining a new board, joining a prestigious board, and exiting a current board. I also consider a number of contextual- and individual-level variables that may potentially moderate the relationship between a director's human and social capital and director mobility. Through this dissertation, I make a number of contributions to the literatures on boards, board appointments, and human and social capital. First, I offer a more comprehensive perspective of the board appointment process by developing an individual-level perspective of board appointments. Second, I contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the market for corporate directors. Third, I focus on several salient dimensions of director mobility. Fourth, I contribute to the growing literature on human and social capital at the board and director levels. Finally, I add to the growing literature on director selection.