Role of Culture and CEO Personality in Technological Firms

This paper investigates the impact of cultural values and chief executive personal characteristics (including education, experience, tenure, age, involvement in founding the company) on the sample of high-tech companies from the S&P BMI index in 1999-2018. High-tech companies best suit the research topic as they are often the most dependent on innovations ones. We have broadened the usual approach to culture inclusion into research distinguishing between three levels of culture – country-specific, founder or company-specific, and one of CEOs. We conclude that founder`s involvement, as well as his heirs` results in higher R&D expenditures, CEO`s tenure, produces negative impact supporting myopia theory, however, age and education – probably as estimates of knowledge and experience —— fosters risky money spending. In our research we show that most cultural values are insignificant on the country level, supporting the idea of inclusion of different CEO and founder culture into the analysis.