Mature and Large Firm Performance

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Abstract

As global competition for jobs intensifies, policy makers historically look to large, mature manufacturing firms for increased employment. Thus, large firm performance is frequently the focus of attention, as better performance could potentially yield increasingly scarce jobs and economic development. Accordingly, a more comprehensive understanding of large firm performance would seem germane. This article investigates the performance (defined as “firm profit margin”) of the world’s largest manufacturing firms, not only based on the usual financial indicators of the firm (i.e., revenue, assets, equity, debt, and revenue growth), but also based on alternative criteria such as the firm’s industry type, the firm’s region of origin, the academic training of the firm’s senior executive, and the gender diversity of the firm’s board of directors (i.e., whether mixed-gender or all-male). The analyses indicated a statistically significant interaction between region and industry, with the final model including revenue, equity, and revenue growth, as well as the interaction terms. The results indicated that revenue was negatively related to profit margin, while equity and revenue growth were both positively related to profit margin. The final model explained 54.3 percent of the variability in firm profitability.