Investigating the Effect of Institutional Ownership and Ownership Concentration on Labor Investment Efficiency

Abstract

Objective: Efficient investment in human resources and the factors affecting it are among the topics receiving less attention in the academic literature. This study seeks to investigate the impact of institutional investors and ownership concentration; as the two regulatory elements of corporate governance, on labor investment efficiency. Methods: To test the research hypotheses, a panel data model was used, and to measure the labor investment inefficiency, Jung Lee and Weber (2014) model was applied. The research sample, after imposing the intended restrictions, included 179 companies enlisted on the Tehran Stock Exchange, in the period from 2010 to 2019. Results: The results indicated that institutional ownership has no impact on the labor investment efficiency, while ownership concentration reduces it. This effect existed in the case of overinvestment but it was not observed in the case of underinvestment. Conclusion: Conflict of interest and information asymmetry between managers and owners increase the risk of inefficient decisions, especially in the context of investing in human resources and the risk is likely to be reduced by strengthening regulatory mechanisms. Corporate governance mechanisms, such as ownership concentration, lead to more careful observation on management and reduce inefficiency in the made decisions.

Keywords

• institutional ownership
• labor investment efficiency
• ownership concentration
• overinvestment
• underinvestment