Interactions of financial risk tolerance, internal fit, external fit and personality traits on corporate investment behaviour

Abstract

Explaining corporate investment behaviour (CIB) is crucial for companies, investors and policy makers. The relationship between financial risk taking and investment decision has been studied in detail on an individual level. However, an attempt to assess financial risk taking behaviour on an organizational level is not encountered in literature. This study fills the gap by attempting to measure corporate financial risk tolerance (CFRT) with data from 307 production companies and employs hypothesis testing as a confirmatory analysis in a theoretical framework from literature. The dynamics of Big 5 personality traits of owners/top management, such as openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, which is another area of interest in investment theory, is also included in the study. The models to test the hypotheses are proposed by using CFRT and Big 5 as independent variables to explain corporate investment behaviour (CIB). The results of this study indicate that Big 5 traits of top management are not significantly related with CIB, yet CFRT is. Subsequently items impacting CIB and financial risk tolerance identified from literature are classified as internal (IFFI) and external fit for investment (EFFI) and are incorporated as two composite moderating variables. As a result, the model fit improves with both IFFI and EFFI for CFRT, however for Big 5, only conscientiousness trait becomes significant in the moderation of EFFI.