Employee Orientation and Financial Performance of Foundation Owned Firms

Shleifer and Vishny (1997) argue that corporate governance should be weak in the absence of powerful residual claimants. We compare foundation owned firms (FoFs) and family firms, with and without codetermination. As foundations have no owners, residual claimants of FoFs are weak. This might strengthen FoF-managers and employees. Codetermination law also strengthens employees. We derive hypotheses about business policy of FoFs and test them. Our findings show that German FoFs are more labor intensive relative to family firms. But their wages and their hiring and firing policy are about the same. Their financing policy is more conservative, their financial performance is slightly weaker. Apart from financing policy, codetermination has similar effects. These findings indicate a stronger impact on corporate governance of employees in firms with weak residual claimants and in codetermined firms, combined with long-term orientation. But, in contrast to Shleifer and Vishny (1997), we do not find evidence of weak corporate governance.