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.
ZusammenfassungVon 2006 bis 2019 wurde an der Universität Leipzig das sog. Erwägungsseminar angeboten. Das Konzept des Seminares fußt auf der Erwägungsdidaktik der „Forschungsgruppe Erwägungskultur Paderborn“ und wurde Ende der 1980er Jahre entwickelt. Die Grundidee umreißt einen spezifischen erwägungsorientierten Umgang mit Alternativen. Demnach soll das Wissen von Expertinnen und Experten nicht als gesetzt, gesichert, und unumstößlich gelten. Vielmehr geht es darum, Theorien zu hinterfragen, zu vergleichen und einen integrierten und bewahrenden Umgang mit unterschiedlichen Erklärungsansätzen zu praktizieren. Die zentralen Forderungen des Netzwerk Plurale Ökonomik – Selbstkritik, Reflexion und Offenheit in der VWL zu fördern – werden aufgegriffen und stellen meines Erachtens das vorrangige Ziel der Lehrveranstaltung dar.
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