FAMILY OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL IN LARGE FIRMS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE IRRELEVANT -- AND WHY

There is a major debate regarding the role of concentrated family ownership and control in large firms, with three positions suggesting that such concentration is (1) good, (2) bad, or (3) irrelevant for firm performance. This article reports two studies to shed further light on this debate. Study 1 uses 744 publicly listed large firms in eight Asian countries to test competing hypotheses on the impact of the combination of family ownership and control on firm performance. On a country-by-country basis, our findings support all three positions. On an aggregate, pooled sample basis, the results support the “irrelevant” position. Study 2, based on a sample of 688 firms from the same eight Asian countries, endeavors to answer why Study 1 obtains different results for different countries. We theorize and document that Study 1 findings may be systematically associated with the level of shareholder protection embodied in legal and regulatory institutions. Study 2 thus sketches the contours of a cross-country, institution-based theory of corporate governance. Overall, our two studies lead to a finer-grained and more cumulative understanding of the crucial debate on family ownership and control in large firms.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57220/1/wp840 .pd

FAMILY OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL IN LARGE FIRMS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE IRRELEVANT – AND WHY

There is a major debate regarding the role of concentrated family ownership and control in large firms, with three positions suggesting that such concentration is (1) good, (2) bad, or (3) irrelevant for firm performance. This article reports two studies to shed further light on this debate. Study 1 uses 744 publicly listed large firms in eight Asian countries to test competing hypotheses on the impact of the combination of family ownership and control on firm performance. On a country-by-country basis, our findings support all three positions. On an aggregate, pooled sample basis, the results support the “irrelevant” position. Study 2, based on a sample of 688 firms from the same eight Asian countries, endeavors to answer why Study 1 obtains different results for different countries. We theorize and document that Study 1 findings may be systematically associated with the level of shareholder protection embodied in legal and regulatory institutions. Study 2 thus sketches the contours of a cross-country, institution-based theory of corporate governance. Overall, our two studies lead to a finer-grained and more cumulative understanding of the crucial debate on family ownership and control in large firms.corporate governance, family firm, ownership, Asia Pacific

Resilient hemp shiv aggregates with engineered hygroscopic properties for the building industry

This study focuses on the surface treatment of an extremely hydrophilic natural plant material, hemp shiv, using a functionalised silica based coating to provide hydrophobicity while retaining its moisture buffering ability. The chemical composition and physical structure of bio-based materials results in their extremely hydrophilic behaviour. In this work, a simple one step coating process was used to enhance the water-repellence of hemp shiv without compromising its ability to adsorb and release moisture. The coating modified the morphology and surface roughness of hemp shiv providing a hydrophobic surface having a water contact angle of 118° and reduced the bulk water absorption by 250% over 24 h. Mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) showed that the treatment refined the pore size distribution of hemp shiv, reducing the size of larger pores but not completely blocking the smaller pores thereby allowing hemp shiv to buffer moisture. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) revealed the chemical composition was modified by the coating, reducing the hydroxyl groups. Hemp shiv aggregates treated with functionalised silica based coating show potential for the development of robust lightweight building materials with enhanced hydrophobicity

Modification of hemp shiv properties using water-repellent sol–gel coatings

For the first time, the hydrophilicity of hemp shiv was modified without the compromise of its hygroscopic properties. This research focused on the use of sol–gel method in preparation of coatings on the natural plant material, hemp shiv, that has growing potential in the construction industry as a thermal insulator. The sol–gel coatings were produced by cohydrolysis and polycondensation of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) using an acidic catalyst. Methyltriethoxysilane (MTES) was added as the hydrophobic precursor to provide water resistance to the bio-based material. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and focused ion beam (FIB) have been used to determine the morphological changes on the surface as well as within the hemp shiv. It was found that the sol–gel coatings caused a reduction in water uptake but did not strongly influence the moisture sorption behaviour of hemp shiv. Fourier transformed infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy shows that the coating layer on hemp shiv acts a shield, thereby lowering peak intensity in the wavelength range 1200–1800 cm−1. The sol–gel coating affected pore size distribution and cumulative pore volume of the shiv resulting in tailored porosity. The overall porosity of shiv decreased with a refinement in diameter of the larger pores. Thermal analysis was performed using TGA and stability of coated and uncoated hemp shiv have been evaluated. Hemp shiv modified with sol–gel coating can potentially develop sustainable heat insulating composites with better hygrothermal properties

Superconducting traction transformer

An ongoing project to develop HTS traction transformers for the Chinese Fuxing high-speed train is demonstrating that the high-power density can be reached using high-temperature superconductors (HTS). The findings are spectacular: the existing 6.5 MVA traction transformers can be replaced with drop-in superconducting transformers, achieving targets of less than 3 tons transformer system weight and 99.5 % efficiency compared to 6 tons and 95 % in the existing devices. The key to achieving these impressive figures is minimizing the AC loss of the HTS windings. New high-performance wire, high current HTS Roebel conductor, high aspect-ratio windings, and flux diverters placed at the winding ends all contribute to reducing the electrical loss to less than 2 kW

Failure Analysis of a High-Pressure Natural Gas Heat Exchanger and its Modified Design

The beauty of numerical simulations is its ability to reveal the physics or nature of practical engineering problems in detail, and then, to identify adequate solutions. In this chapter, an excellent example is demonstrated. The rupture of a heavy-duty, high-pressure natural gas heat exchanger is numerically investigated, and the importance of gravity effect is identified, which is often considered as a trivial factor. For the original design, the natural convection in the flow field of the heat exchanger is comparable with the forced convection at the designed operating conditions. These two convections are perpendicular and compete with each other, the flow field is highly unsteady, and high-temperature natural gas is trapped in the upper portion of the vessel, which causes the damage of the exchanger. By vertically mounting the exchanger assembly and locating the outlet pipe on top of the exchanger, the flow parameters become rather uniform at each vertical cross section and the wall temperature of the heat exchanger remains more or less the same as the heated natural gas. The proposed design has been successfully used up to now

A New Compressive Video Sensing Framework for Mobile Broadcast

A new video coding method based on compressive sampling is proposed. In this method, a video is coded using compressive measurements on video cubes. Video reconstruction is performed by minimization of total variation (TV) of the pixelwise discrete cosine transform coefficients along the temporal direction. A new reconstruction algorithm is developed from TVAL3, an efficient TV minimization algorithm based on the alternating minimization and augmented Lagrangian methods. Video coding with this method is inherently scalable, and has applications in mobile broadcast

Hydrophobicity of hemp shiv treated with sol-gel coatings

This is the first time sol-gel technology is used in the treatment of hemp shiv to develop sustainable thermal insulation building materials. The impact on the hydrophobicity of hemp shiv by depositing functionalised sol-gel coatings using hexadecyltrimethoxysilane (HDTMS) has been investigated. Bio-based materials have tendency to absorb large amounts of water due to their hydrophilic nature and highly porous structure. In this work, the influence of catalysts, solvent dilution and HDTMS loading in the silica sols on the hydrophobicity of hemp shiv surface has been reported. The hydrophobicity of sol-gel coated hemp shiv increased significantly when using acid catalysed sols which provided water contact angles of up to 118° at 1% HDTMS loading. Ethanol diluted sol-gel coatings enhanced the surface roughness of the hemp shiv by 36% as observed under 3D optical profilometer. The XPS results revealed that the surface chemical composition of the hemp shiv was altered by the sol-gel coating, blocking the hydroxyl sites responsible for hydrophilicity