Essays on Individual Judgment, Stakeholders and Firm Performance: Microfinance, Firm Reputation and Industry Competition

This dissertation is comprised of three essays centered around how individual factors such as stakeholders’ perception and decision making may have performance impact at the firm level. In the first essay, I explore how individual characteristics of microfinance recipients such as their personal strategy in managing work and family-related roles influences their investment decisions in their micro enterprises. In the second essay, I examine how stakeholders process information about the underlying quality at the product level to derive reputation judgments about the firm. In the third essay, the focus lies on the demand-side of industry competition by investigating how direct competition occurs between firms when consumers form a set of options to consider before making their purchase decision from the various incumbent firms in the industry. Through investigating the individual-level factors and their effects on firm-level outcomes, the current work of this dissertation aims to highlight and expand the microfoundations of strategic management literature.