The impact of activism on the performance of publicly-traded companies

Institutional investors hold the largest volume of financial resources in the world. The role of the institutional investor as a shareholder has evolved, and now institutional investors are engaged with increasing participation in companies. This active positioning, or activism, is defined as an increase of direct involvement by the investors in the management of companies and influence over corporate executives by vastly increased corporate governance. This paper proposes to analyze the impact of institutional investors' activism on the performance of publicly-traded companies in Brazil. The final sample composed of economic data from 351 companies. The financial and market performance was measured in the years from 2006 to 2015. For data analysis, a panel data effects model was chosen. Results suggest that the governance index moderates the effect of activism on performance, especially in companies where governance practices are not very developed.

The Contribution of Innovation to Startups for Market Creation

This article examined how the innovation in startups contributes to the creation of markets. The constructs “Strategies for the creation of markets” and “Innovation” were covered in the theoretical framework. The scope of the research was startups and the specific objectives sought to analyze how innovation occurs and verifying the creation of the market through their innovation. The method of research was the qualitative exploratory, and data collection was performed by means of a structured script. Ten startup founders were interviewed and it was used the content analysis technique for data analysis. This article has shown that startups, even using an existing business model, innovate in the segment or the way they deliver their products, thus generating a value innovation and this is often caused by the ability to feel the pain of consumer. Some limitations were found in the research, such as the limited data on Brazilian startups, which already indicates a path for future research, as well as seeking to understand the functioning of the organizational structure of these companies, which still need to be better studied.