Decision making and company performance - During a turbulent time period

Sammanfattning: This thesis examines short- and long-term decision making, CEO-remuneration and its effects on company performance measured as return on assets during a time-period containing market up- and downturns with regards to company resilience. We examined this in a Swedish context by looking at listed companies on the Stockholm stock exchange during the period 2004 to 2014. The research was conducted using a multiple regression analysis to capture relationships between the dependent variable, the independent- and control variables over the observed time-period. We measure short-term action as decreases in R&D-spending, CapEx and number of employees, that can create short-term profits, whilst long-term actions is the opposite which are expected to generate a high level of company performance in the long run. In our observed population we find that companies who balance short- and long-term actions have a higher company performance, thus deviating from previous research. We also find that an increase in CEO-remuneration will not yield higher company performance when regarding firm size. The results of the study indicate that the companies in our sample have a goal alignment between the CEO and owners, although it shows tendencies of risk adversity in decision making. We find there is a more complex relationship between decision making, the CEO, and company performance than first expected.