Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Report - Essay Example These cases involved unethical practices at the top management level and unacceptable risk-taking by companies’ CEOs in order to attain high level of financial gains. The underlying aim of the current quantitative research is to investigate the effects of risk attitude on company performance indicators and whether or not this has led to a change in attitudes of companies’ CEOs. Thus, the quantitative research performed in this report focus on two relationships as indicated below: 1. Whether or not there has been a change in attitudes to risk before and after the UBS bank scandal; 2. Whether or not there is a correlation between the risk attitude of companies and their volatility, and if so to measure this effect. Data Collection The present study uses data from both primary and secondary sources of information. Primary Data The research uses quantitative approach for data collection and analysis. The primary data involve collection of responses of selected companies CEO s regarding their risk attitudes after Barings crash. For this purpose, a sample of 100 CEOs of various large financial organizations presently operating in London, UK has been selected. In this study, a non-probability purposive sampling method has been used that involved acquiring a list of 100 largest companies on the basis of the size of their workforce from the Financial Times. These companies were then approached requesting CEOs to complete a short questionnaire in order to assess their attitude to risk. The attitude to risk is measured on the basis of a ranking from 1 to 30 with 1 being the most conservative and 30 being the most risky. This data make up values for one variable RISKATT_AFTER. The selection of a sample of largest financial organizations operating in London could be considered to have certain limitations such as similarities in their responses suggesting possible biasness as they may have a common approach to managing their businesses due to demographics and bu siness context. The selection of only large companies avoids inclusion of views of smaller organizations which may have different and prudent attitude towards risk-taking measures. Their input would have been beneficial to include their views related to risk before and after crash of Barings. Secondary Data The research also makes use of secondary data that are obtained from two published articles from years 2007 and 2009, which provided measures of the risk attitude of the selected 100 organizations. These data are included in the present study for another variable RISKATT_BEFORE using the same scale from 1 to 30. The limitation associated with the inability of the researcher to evaluate the accuracy of this information is included in the present study, which could have direct implications for its outcome. Furthermore, the secondary data pertaining to stock’s volatility have been obtained for the selected companies. This information includes minimum (SHARE_MIN) and maximum ( SHARE_MAX) share prices and their standard deviation (SD_SHARE) during period before and after Barings crash. Descriptive Analysis This section provides descriptives pertaining to two variables RISKATT_AFTER and RISKATT-BEFORE. This highlights the difference in the