Purpose

The corporate finance literature has largely treated individual managers as uniform entities, leaving unexplained the large heterogeneity in corporate practices. The authors explore whether educational background attributes, such as a bachelor's degree from an elite institution and the field of study, influence CEO management style manifested in objectively measurable outcomes at the firm level.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors construct a unique data set from various sources. The management-style variables encompass investment, financial, organizational strategy policy choices, and performance outcomes. They standardize the style variables by industry sector and express deviations from industry means into three categories (low, medium, high). The ordered logit models suggest that educational background attributes influence management style across several dimensions.

Findings

The authors document numerous statistically and economically significant results. For instance, an elite education translates to superior market performance as measured by Tobin's Q. A background in science/technology manifests in more (less) spending on R&D (advertising) and less exposure to financial risk for the firm. The authors also find that gender plays almost no role, while CEO age has a nonlinear influence role in affecting management style.

Research limitations/implications

The study posits that educational background plays an important role along several dimensions such as skill and character development, signaling and network building. While these effects are difficult to disentangle, they all arguably influence an individual's ability to perform complex tasks such as running a company.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the growing literature on the drivers of CEO style and performance. Previous studies have examined the role of a CEO's elite educational background on firm performance outcomes and have reported either no or limited association. In contrast, the authors document that an elite education is strongly linked to superior market performance but not to accounting-based performance measures. They also find that CEOs who major in science/technology exhibit markedly different management styles compared to their counterparts with backgrounds in business/economics or the humanities.

中文翻译：

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CEO管理风格：学历有影响吗？

目的

公司财务文献在很大程度上将个体经理人视为统一的实体，从而无法解释公司实践中的巨大异质性。作者探讨了教育背景属性（例如精英​​机构的学士学位和研究领域）是否会影响 CEO 管理风格，体现在公司层面的客观可衡量结果中。

设计/方法/方法

作者从各种来源构建了一个独特的数据集。管理风格变量包括投资、财务、组织战略政策选择和绩效结果。他们按照行业部门对风格变量进行标准化，并将与行业平均值的偏差表示为三类（低、中、高）。有序 logit 模型表明，教育背景属性会影响多个维度的管理风格。

发现

作者记录了大量具有统计意义和经济意义的结果。例如，以托宾Q衡量，精英教育转化为卓越的市场表现。科学/技术背景体现在更多（更少）的研发（广告）支出和更少的公司财务风险。作者还发现性别几乎没有作用，而 CEO 年龄在影响管理风格方面具有非线性影响作用。

研究限制/影响

该研究假定，教育背景在技能和性格发展、信号传递和网络建设等多个方面发挥着重要作用。虽然这些影响难以解开，但可以说它们都会影响个人执行复杂任务（例如经营公司）的能力。

原创性/价值

这篇论文为越来越多的关于 CEO 风格和绩效驱动因素的文献做出了贡献。以前的研究已经研究了 CEO 的精英教育背景对公司绩效结果的作用，并报告了没有或有限的关联。相比之下，作者记录了精英教育与卓越的市场绩效密切相关，但与基于会计的绩效衡量标准无关。他们还发现，与具有商业/经济或人文背景的同行相比，主修科学/技术的 CEO 表现出明显不同的管理风格。