Role of educational, regional and religious attributes of CEOs in performance of Indian family firms

Abstract

Purpose– The authors investigate whether community-based CEO’s attributes, particularly educational attainment, regional and religious affiliation, are direct antecedents of performance in family-controlled Indian firms. The authors further examine whether CEO’s education moderates the linkage of firm performance with regional and religious affiliation. Design/methodology/approach—The authors employ pooled ordinary least squares with fixed effects and Fama-Macbeth regression techniques to test their hypotheses. Findings—The results reveal that firms with postgraduate CEOs in business and firms with doctorate CEOs, significantly outperform peer firms. The authors also find that CEOs from northern India outperform peer CEOs consistently, which emanates from the risk-taking differentials of CEOs across regions.Hindu CEOs also deliver superior return on assets. However, CEO’s educational attainment moderates the influence of regional and religious affiliations. Originality/value—This study is unique, as it contributes to the role of regional affiliation of top executives in determining performance which almost remains unexplored in existing literature.