Mutual fund corporate culture and performance

Abstract

In this paper we test if a mutual fund's own corporate culture predicts fund performance. To do this we use Morningstar's corporate culture ratings for mutual funds and then examine the ability of these corporate culture ratings to predict risk‐adjusted performance of domestic equity funds over the period 2005–2010. Using methods that are robust to survivorship bias, we find there is little significant evidence that corporate culture predicts better fund performance. Indeed, we find that no individual component of the Morningstar stewardship rating including board quality, fees, manager incentives and regulatory issues is able to consistently predict fund performance.