On Friday 26 June 2020, R.R. Blagoeva will defend her PhD dissertation, entitled: ‘The Hard Power of Soft Power: A Behavioral Strategy Perspective on How Power, Reputation, and Status Affect Firms’.
Public firms increasingly face pressures from the financial markets to deliver on short-term targets and maintain positive relationships with analysts and investors. Prioritizing the interests of the financial markets, though, often leads firms to engage in suboptimal strategic behavior such as passing up economically valuable opportunities or hiding information. Little is known about which firms address pressures from financial markets in ways that do not jeopardize the wellbeing of the firm in the long run. This dissertation provides a behavioral strategy perspective on how to prevent the mutual influence of firms and financial markets from having potentially counterproductive outcomes. Specifically, the dissertation contains three empirical studies that seeks to shed light on how evaluations by financial markets affect firm decision making and how strategic decisions are evaluated by those markets in various contexts.
The PhD defences will not take place publicly in the Senate Hall or Professor Andries Queridoroom due to the coronavirus. The candidates will defend their thesis online.