No abstract

Ideally, corporations are directed by boards whose directors provide valuable human capital that match the firms' strategy. We investigate how directors' human capital (international experience, industrial know-how, CEO experience, and financial know-how) affects firm performance including the firm's strategy (diversification and internationalization) and how human capital is related to acquisition strategies (non-diversifying and international acquisitions). Our sample consists of 560 firm-year observations in Switzerland. We find empirical evidence that directors' human capital affects firm performance and that this relationship depends on the firm's strategy. Furthermore, human capital is also correlated with acquisition strategy. The study shows that focusing on board independence and compliance issues may be unrewarding in board research and practice.

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We investigate the effect of individualism-a dimension of culture that is strongly associated with entrepreneurship-on venture-capital investments using a large crosscountry sample. Our sample consists of 1496 country-year observations and includes 88 countries from 1998 to 2014. Controlling for economic conditions, the legal environment, and different aspects of culture, we find that individualism is positively and significantly related to venture-capital investments and explains 30% of crosscountry variation. This result is stable across different subsamples, several measures of venture-capital investments, and even holds when using the political system 200 years ago as an instrument for individualism. The quality of formal institutions (rule of law) and entrepreneurial attitudes (uncertainty avoidance) partially mediate the effect of individualism on venture-capital investments, while economic conditions (GDP per capita) moderate this effect.