The influence of the state on firms in the global economy is alive and well. States have become dominant owners of companies in many countries around the world. Firms have also increasingly established political connections to access resources and improve their competitive positions. Nonetheless, our understanding of how state ownership and political connections affect firm performance remains limited and marked by conflicting findings. Using meta-analytical techniques on a sample of 210 studies spanning 139 countries, we examine two key research questions: (a) How do state ownership and political connections affect firm strategies and financial performance? and (b) How does firm-level strategic decision making mediate the relationships between state ownership, political connections, and firm financial performance? Our findings show that state ownership has a small negative effect on firm financial performance and that political connections have no direct consequences for performance. However, we find evidence that both state ownership and political connections have a profound effect on the strategies firms pursue, such as financial leverage, R&D intensity, and internationalization, and that these strategies play a mediating role in the state ownership–firm performance relationship. We conclude with some suggestions for fruitful future research in further connecting these two important and timely research fields.

Research question/issue This study examines whether there is decoupling between how firms communicate about corporate social responsibility (CSR) and what firms do in terms of CSR. We argue that this CSR decoupling is driven by the CEOs' cognitive biases. Specifically, we propose that overconfident CEOs increase CSR decoupling. Research findings/insights We tested our arguments in a sample of S&P 500 firms for the period of 2006–2014. We find that CEO overconfidence is positively related to the decoupling between the optimistic tone of CSR reporting and the firm's actual corporate social performance. However, the board of directors mitigates the effect of CEO overconfidence on CSR decoupling when outside directors have CSR expertise and ownership incentives. Theoretical/academic implications Previous studies have suggested that CSR decoupling is a function of opportunistic management that can be constrained by external monitoring. We examine CSR decoupling as a function of cognitive biases (such as overconfidence) that can be constrained by internal monitoring. Practitioner/policy implications This study provides insights into the conditions when CSR information released by the firm is symbolic. Practitioners may prevent such symbolic CSR reporting by imposing effective oversight by the board of directors.

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Excess CEO returns refer to CEO financial returns in excess of shareholder returns. How do boards rein in excess CEO returns? Introducing a social capital view of board monitoring, we suggest that boards face two competing normative pressures-corporate elite norms and monitoring norms. How boards conform to such normative pressures for controlling excess CEO returns is affected by their external and internal social capital. Further, we substantiate our arguments by showing that powerful CEOs and institutional investors may facilitate or constrain the normative pressures existing in the social network and alter the effects of board social capital on excess CEO returns. Data from a sample of U.S. corporations listed on the Standard and Poor's 1,500 index from 1999 to 2010 largely support our framework. 2 For example, over a decade (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010), the average annual CEO returns from firm-related wealth for John H. Hammergren, CEO of McKesson, amounted to 114 percent, but average annual shareholder returns were only 17 percent. In this case, the average annual excess CEO returns would be 97 percent. 6 CEO pay is the ex ante granted CEO pay, which includes salary, bonus, total value of restricted stock granted, total value of stock options granted (using Black-Scholes), long-term incentive payouts, and all other compensation prospectively granted. CEO pay suggests that normative pressures exist at several stages in the CEO compensation process.