The People/Performance Balance in IPO Firms: The Effect of the Chief Executive Officer's Financial Orientation

Abstract

Welbourne and Andrews (1996) studied IPO firms and found that Tobin's Q, at the time of the IPO, was lower for firms that they coded as having higher levels of human resource value (HR Value). However, those same firms were more likely to survive five years after the IPO. Given that finding, this study examines one factor that may influence the firm's choice between maximizing short-term financial performance (doing well at the IPO) or long-term performance (maximizing HR value). Using the theory of upper echelons (Hambrick & Mason, 1984), we show that the decision on how to balance these forces is shaped in part by the chief executive officer's (CEO) functional background. We focus on CEOs with primary training in finance because they will most closely identify with investment community pressures to perform well at the time of the IPO. In two different samples of IPO firms, we find that the CEO's financial background is associated with lower levels of human resource value, but, contrary to what we expected, having a finance-oriented CEO does not maximize short-term gains in the IPO.