What determines entrepreneurial founders as leaders and why do they step down – Evidence from the English-speaking Caribbean Seminar
- Time:
- 18:00 - 20:00
- Date:
- 26 February 2020
- Venue:
- Building 2, Foyer and room 3043, University of Southampton Highfield Campus, Southampton SO17 1BJ
Event details
Entrepreneurial founders are unique leaders in their core motivation being the entrepreneurial process itself, where this is fundamentally different from professionalized managerial leadership. Central to their success is their ability to attract capital and resources to the fledgling firm – but these come at a cost, namely that of the necessity for investors to exercise control over the venture vis-à-vis the charismatic dominance of the founder.
We focus on two major incubatory investors, namely private equity (including business angels and venture capital) and large conglomerate "business groups". The numbers of their representative directors serving on the board are found to systematically vary when the wider national institutional environment varies in quality and when the firm varies in its adoption governance statutes focussing on shareholder rights and optimal disclosure. The Caribbean provides a unique and interesting setting owing to it having the highest concentration of the world's largest tax havens amounting to the movement of trillions of dollars of investment within the world economy, often through islands of no more than 60,000 people. The region is also extremely vulnerable to multiple annual hurricanes and devastating seismic events. This has spawned recent initiatives by the likes of Richard Branson, IMF and World Bank to promote sustainable economic development and resilience through entrepreneurship.
AGENDA
18:00: Registration, refreshments and networking (opposite reception, in Building 2)
18:45: Keynote seminar (in room 3043)
19:30: Q&A
20:00: Event Close
Speaker information
Dr Bruce Hearn, Associate Professor in Accounting, Southampton Business School. Bruce currently works for the University of Southampton and has extensive experience in emerging economies, where he is currently focussing on the Caribbean. He has over 50 research publications and has worked for 12 years in major blue chip investment banks such as BNP Paribas capital markets, Gulf International Bank, Credit Agricole capital markets and elite hedge fund Marshall Wace LLC. He has extensive international teaching experience in a range of locations including across the Caribbean, West Africa, Middle East & Afghanistan, Armenia, Finland, Switzerland and France.