Corporate Governance

Assessment Brief/ Task
The detailed requirements for this task are as follows:
For this assignment, you are asked to conduct an empirical analysis on the link between board structure & composition, and firm

performance, using a sample of UK listed companies.
You are asked to work in teams of 4-5. Each team must select a sample of 30 UK listed companies from Morningstar Company Intelligence

(available under Learning Centre, electronic databases). For each of the companies, you are asked to collate data for the following

variables (year 2014 or 2015 if available) and input these into SPSS:
1) Company size: Turnover, number of employees,
2) Company performance: ROCE, EPS, degree of internationalisation (% turnover derived from non-UK activities – from company facts

report)
3) Board data: size of board, proportion of non-executive directors, proportion of women directors, average age of board, number

of interlocking directorships
You are then asked to write a report on the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and firm performance which should

include:
a) An introduction to your report and your selected companies (including an explanation of your sampling procedures).
b) A summary of descriptive statistics for key variables in your sample (min & max values, mean, standard deviation), and

necessary variable transformations
c) The results from statistical tests about the relationship between board variables and firm performance, controlling for firm

size
d) A discussion of your results. Here, you should discuss which organisational theories best explain your empirical observations

and what other explanations there may be for your results.
e) A concluding summary in which you put forward recommendations on corporate governance that can influence companies’

performance, including internationalisation.

The following information is important when:
• Preparing for your assessment
• Checking your work before you submit it
• Interpreting feedback on your work after marking.
Assessment Criteria
The module Learning Outcomes tested by this assessment task are indicated on page 1. The precise criteria against which your work will

be marked are as follows:
• Completeness of dataset (all variables, measures and 30 companies)
• Accuracy of statistical analysis and quality of interpretation of results
• Comprehensiveness of discussion of results in light of organisational theories
• Quality of conclusions derived from the results and discussion
• Coherence of argument; accuracy of spelling, grammar and referencing; general lay-out