Social network impact on corporate performance and governance

• Main Author: KHOO, Jonathan Chew Hoe
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Social Network; Ownership Centrality; Corporate Ownership; Board Centrality; Interlocking Directorates; Corporate Governance; Singapore Corporate Governance Index; SGX; Singapore; Business and Corporate Communications; Corporate Finance; Social Media
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll_all/30; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1024&context=etd_coll_all
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Motivated by the centrality measures constructed in Larcker, So and Wang (2013), I affirm that board connectedness positively affect firm performance in Singapore, and even if we were to measure firm performance by Tobin's Q. The impact on firm performance persists over at least four years. Controlling for Corporate Governance using a proprietary database, the Singapore Corporate Governance Index, only the Eigenvector centrality under simple-weighted and hyperbolic-weighted projections survives the robustness test, suggesting that firstly, the local proxy of Corporate Governance based on OECD principles possibly controls for what is proxied by the Betweenness, Closeness and Degree centrality measures, and secondly, there is a strong case not to ignore multiple ties when projecting interlocking boards. The jury is hung on which weighting method is superior – the hyperbolic weighted projection has stronger results for return-onassets while the simple weighted method has stronger results for Tobin's Q. These results collectively provide additional support that some Corporate Governance indices may already impute the effects of connected boards to a certain extent. Using the methods for measuring social networks in interlocking boards as a basis, I extend the methodology to the space of ownership networks, a new endeavor since it considers the network distribution and connectedness of firm ownership, rather than focusing solely on the ultimate owners as has been the norm in the existing literature. Contrary to initial expectations, I find that simple methods, disregarding the directedness of the ownership linkages, are sufficient to yield strong results. This paper is the first to document that ownership centrality has a direct impact on corporate performance. Controlling for Corporate Governance using the Singapore Corporate Governance Index, I find that the results for Tobin's Q are fully explained away. However, the results for return-on-assets remain mostly undiluted, with Degree and Eigenvector more significant for the unity-weighted network, and Betweenness and Closeness more significant for the stake-weighted network, making the N-score composite centrality measure a suitable compromise. Composite centrality shows significant influence on firm return-on-assets in the short to medium term.