Board Composition: The Influence of Women on Alliance
Behavior of U.S. Firms
Robin Potze¹
F. (Florian) Noseleit²
¹s1907816; Masters student Msc BA Strategic Innovation Management ²First supervisor
ABSTRACT
There is a growing interest in the importance and influence of women corporate directors on strategic decision making, which has led European countries to impose quotas with a minimum of women directors. This study addresses the following question: does an increased number of women on the board result in a higher level of alliance behavior of the firm? The relation between gender and alliance activities is examined as well as the relation between gender and border alliances and cross-industry alliances. The hypotheses are tested with a sample that consists of more than 19,000 alliances from over 4,000 U.S. firms. The results suggest that more women directors will lead to a higher level of alliance behavior and a higher level of cross-industry alliances.
Keywords: alliances, cross-border alliances, cross-industry alliances, women directors, board composition, corporate governance, board diversity
INTRODUCTION
2 is some perspective a company has not had before – adding some modern- day reality to the deliberation process. Those perspectives are or great value, and often missing from an all-white male gathering. They can also be inspiration to the company’s diverse workforce (Carter, Simkins & Simpson, 2003). Even countries take measures to increase the amount of female directors, Norway for instance, imposed a quota to raise the female director percentage to 40%.
Over the past decades, the amount of strategic alliances has experiences a notable growth (A nand & Khanna 2000; Dyer, Kale & Singh, 2004; Grant & Baden-Fuller, 2004). Together with this increase of alliances, the number of related academic studies in management literature has increased considerably. There are various motives for firms to collaborate and build an alliance, for instance to gain market power, reduce and share costs and risks, increase the efficiency of firms and access and acquire external knowledge (Bleeke & Ernst 1991; Hennart, 1988; Powell 1987; Osland & Yaprak 1995). The alliances strengthen the competitive position of the firm, which is crucial in increasing performance. Alliances are here defined as voluntary arrangement between firms involving exchange, share , or co-development of products, technologies or services (Gulati, 1998). Alliances can be horizontal between competitors and vertical with customers, suppliers and other value adding partners, whereas most firms form a network of alliances (Sluyts, Matthyssens, Martens & Streukens, 2011).
Gender diverse boards may be valuable for multiple reasons. First, female board directors may positively enhance the creation of value at the organization they participate in, since they bring a broader, different and fresher voice to the board (Mathisen, Ogaard & Marnburg, 2013). Second, as seen from a resource dependence perspective, a variety of board directors causes more in-house expertise and it expands the network of individuals to which the board of the firm has access to (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003). So, organizations have a higher chance of survival when they increase their network to other organizations and important stakeholders. Last, diversity in gender can increase innovative behavior in boardrooms because a variety of perspectives may emerge when the directors differ in characteristics (Campbell & Minguez-Vera, 2008). Furthermore, we have a morality issue, with the basis assumption that everybody is equally important. This is for instance pointed out by Eyring and Stead (1998) who stated that ‘when women and minorities follow the same path of education and work experience to prepare themselves as qualified candidates for upward career mobility, it is simply unjust to stand in their way’. Thus, we know that women have different personal characteristics, next to a different style of leadership. They are described as affectionate, helpful, kind, sympathetic, interpersonally sensitive, nurturing and gentle (Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001). Women are also willing to share power and information rather than guard it, which is important in building alliances. Moreover, we know that there is evidence that individual managers bring their own styles to manage their firms (Bertrand & Shoar, 2003; Bloom & van Reenen, 2010; Malmendier, Tate & Yan, 2011). We also know that women as minorities provide different perspectives and cause the majority to rethink their current beliefs and be more creative in their problem solving strategies. However, we also know that there are other forces that play an important role when it comes to building alliances. Networks are important, since they provide valuable resources and information that can be useful in building alliances.
3 reasons to believe that there is a linkage. According to Gulati (1999), social factors resulting from the embeddedness of firms in a rich social context can be influential in altering the opportunity set by firms. In this context, the board of directors is a formal mechanism to link top manager of large corporations. It provides them an opportunity to exchange information, observe leadership practices and style of peers and witness the consequences that these practices have. Consequently, according to Gulati & Westphal (1999), board ties to other firms should influence strategic decisions and corporate strategy. Furthermore, it is possible that there is a difference between men and women regarding alliance behavior when we look at alliances that cross boundaries, for example cross-industry and cross-border. Since there are opposing forces and theories regarding the gender aspect and its influence on alliance activities, empirical evidence is needed to find out which effect women actually have on alliance behavior. In this paper, I will look at this link between women in the board of directors and their influence on alliance behavior of the firm. This will be done by looking at the amount of alliances of the firm they work at over multiple years and I will have a closer look at the amount of alliances that cross borders and alliances cross industries. This paper will be structured as follows. First, I will elaborate more on the theoretical background of board composition, networks and gender diversity as well as personal characteristics and female leadership styles. This will lead to the hypotheses that have to give an answer to the main research question. The methodology section presents the sample data, description of the variables and the methods that are used for the statistical analysis of the data. This will be followed by the empirical results and this study will end with a discussion, recommendations for future research and limitations.
THEORY Female characteristics and leadership
There is a continuing discussion about gender in management positions and it has been a sensitive topic in the past years. Studies involving the gender of board members and organizational performance direct towards boards with a bigger share of males to increase performance. In the early work of Babchuk et al (1960) it is argued that men were more likely to be presented on board of non-profit organizations. Zald (1967) continued with the suggestion that women rarely presented major bureaucratic organization and thus have less command of external resources. In a later study of Provan (1980) evidence showed that there is no direct relationship between the percentage of males of a board and organizational performance.
4 with company needs. Fondas argues that women may have a slight edge over men in terms of impacting strategic planning.
Effectiveness of the board is important as well and according to Campbell & Minguez-Vera (2008), the effectiveness of the board of directors as monitors depends upon various factors, among them the qualifications and experience of board members, their possible invol vement in multiple directorships, their level of share ownership and the type of remuneration scheme employed. An emerging strand of research, based largely on U.S. data, has investigated whether the gender of board members also plays a role in board effectiveness (Erhardt, Werbel & Shrader, 2003; Siciliano, 1996). The presence of women on company boards may enhance shareholder value if women bring an additional perspective to board decision making; alternatively, women may have a negative impact if the decision to appoint female board members is motivated by societal pressure for greater equality of the sexes. In the U.S., female boardroom appointments have increased in recent years, in contrast to the situation observed in many other countries (Campbell & Minguez-Vera, 2008). This view is supported by Nielsen and Huse (2010) who state that although prior research sometimes suggests that there is no overall difference in effectiveness between women and men, there are some gender related differences in behavior and skills that influences strategic decision making.
5 respondents in her study described themselves in terms that suits transformational leadership. They try, for example, to get subordinates to transform their own self-interest into the interest of the group through concern of the broader goal. Moreover, their power comes more from personal characteristics like charisma, interpersonal skills, hard work, or personal contact instead of organizational position. Furthermore, she found that women are willing to share power and information rather than guard it, which is important in building alliances. Many leaders see information as power and power as a limited commodity to be coveted, but women are less hesitant to let this information and power switch hands. Earlier work suggest that women are valued in particular as board members for their ability to provide strategic input and generate more productive discourse (Bilimoria, 2000). This producti ve discourse is about the presentation of different perspectives and points of view, which may result in more alternatives for strategy and practices as well as a higher quality in decision making in these strategic fields. Furthermore, the role of women on the board of directors is often reflected in their participative management style (Pearce & Zahra, 1991) but also in their higher sensitivity compared to male directors (Bradshaw & Wicks, 2000). These aforementioned abilities may lead to women’s active involvement in issues of strategic matter that concerns their organization and the stakeholders. Thus it can be expected that more women in the board of directors may lead to more strategic action like forming alliances. Concluding, there is reason to believe that a larger share of females in the board of directors will lead to more alliance behavior of the firm, since women in general possess personal characteristics and a style of leadership that will enhance the likelihood of good relations with other fi rms that can make the negotiation and formation of alliances more easy. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed.
Hypothesis 1a: More females in the board of directors will lead to more alliances The old boys’ network
Despite abovementioned female characteristics in collaboration, Watson (2011) notes that information is important to decision making and it is costly to obtain, hence networks provide a means by which this important information can be acquired. Network theories showed that there are se veral important forces in networks, first there is the weak tie theory by Granovetter (1973). He lays the focus on the strength of social ties and Granovetter argues that networks consisting of strong ties are more likely to be a source of redundant information than would be the case when networks consist of weak ties. Furthermore, the existence of structural holes is highlighted by Watson. Structural holes exist where two individual are not connected in any way. The focus lays in this theory not on the direct ties of directors, but on the relationship between various members in the network of a director. A director that has a network with many structural holes is likely to have more unique and timely access to information (Seibert et al, 2001). Third, social resource theory is of importance when we look at such networks. This theory focuses on the nature of the resources that are embedded in a network rather than looking at strong, weak ties and structural holes.
6 intentionally excluding women from interactions. That leads to excluding women from the club, or old boys' network. This is also found by Brass (1985), who interviewed with women in professions dominated by men and they reflected a feeling of exclusion from social interactions.
It has been argued that senior women in organizations haven’t used their roles in management to alter the structures of gender differences and the hierarchical relations between them. These authors imply that an increase in the number of women in management in itself failed to change the current structures Rindfleish and Sheridan (2003). Rindfleish and Sheridan also claim that the old boys’ network is still a strong structural barrier for women, even when it might not be that apparent to senior women because of the closed nature and the informal operation of the old boys’ network itself or they may not acknowledge its existence. One of the reasons of the existence of this network is that men are more likely to form homophilous ties across multiple networks and to have stronger ties. Whereas women have a differentiated network pattern in which they obtain social support and friendship from other women (Ibarra, 1992). Consistent with this argument, Watson (2011) argues that past research showed that women might not only have fewer networks than males have, but women are likely to be embedded in different types of networks. Similarly, it is argues by Munch (1997) that because of the childrearing responsibilities, females arrange their network to favour family and friends over other network linkages. In contrast, Orhan (2001) suggests that men go to professional experts as a first source of advice before they look at their family and friends.
7 Supporting abovementioned statements, the results of many studies on career development show that women receive less on their investments in their career than men do. This is pointed out by several academics who concluded that being in similar functional areas, pursuing external labour market strategies, similar levels of education and experience, and obtaining supportive relationships are more beneficial for the careers of men than women (Brett & Stroh, 1997; Dreher & Cox, 2000; Kirchmeyer, 1998; Landau, 1995; Schneer & Reitman, 1997; Stroh, Brett, & Reilly, 1992; Tharenou, Latimer, & Conroy, 1994). Research further indicated that a variety of forces help maintaining this existing structure of the old boys’ network. Theories about tokenism suggest that polarization occurs when there is a small and easily identifiable minority group like women (Forret & Dougherty, 2004). Polarization amplifies the difference between the minority and the majority group and this results i n an increase in stereotyping. Lyness and Thompson (2000) found for example that female directors were more likely than their male counterparts to report a lack of culture fit and being excluded from informal networks, which will barrier their network possibilities that the men with the old boys’ network do have.
In the previous section I discussed theory that argues the influence of women on corporate strategic behavior. Nevertheless, there is also evidence that plead that men have a larger influence i n strategic behavior and decision making regarding alliances. It is argued male directors have a larger and stronger professional network than women, what gives them more opportunities and resources to look for suitable partners for alliances and women often lack such a network. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:
Hypothesis 1b: More females in the board of directors will lead to less alliances Divergent thinking
8 example, individuals facing dissenting minorities recall more information (Nemeth, Mayseless, Sherman & Brown, 1990) and manifest more flexibility in thought (Peterson & Nemeth, 1996). But they also show more originality (Nemeth & Kwan, 1985; Smith, Tindale, & Dugoni, 1996), and detect solutions that would not have been noticed normally (Butera, Mugny, Legrenzi, & Perez, 1996; Nemeth & Wachtler, 1983). The findings of Peterson and Nemeth (1996) are an indication that female directors influence the decision of cross boarder alliances. Their research in the flexibility of thought by minorities showed that the divergent thought from minorities creates not only the ability to consider multiple perspectives, but also creates the ability to use these perspectives simultaneously. The findings also suggest that learning from exposure to minority dissent will be more adaptive whenever it is advantageous to consider multiple perspective, as is the case in problem solving situation like strategic decision making. The belief that minorities cause more creativity is also emphasized in the recent work of Nijstad, Berger-Selman & De Dreu (2012), who focused their research at innovation in top management teams in relation to minorities. The found evidence that minorities causes more divergent thinking which will lead to more creativity in the management teams. This creativity is not only needed for product innovations, but can also be used for a more innovative look at potential partners to alliance with.
However, the minorities are not just of importance because they are creative themselves. They also influence the other board members by making them more creative in the decision making process. Team decision-making processes that consider the opinion of minorities also result in increased team decision quality. Minorities encourage teams to consider multiple perspectives and alternatives, so that the other board member become aware of the task, in this case the alliance. As suggested by Nemeth and Chiles (1988) by confronting the board members with opinions of a minority, a prematurely consensus is prevented so other and better alternatives can be discovered. Their opinions give teams the opportunity to question current beliefs in the board and detect errors in their assumptions as well. Furthermore, it is argued that women are often concentrated in the lower half of the organizational pyramid and only few came high enough in their organization to quality as inside directors. Harrigan (1981) found that the ratio of women to total managers is positively related with the probability that the firm chooses at least one woman director for the board. Kesner (1988) examined this more in depth and found evidence that female directors are less likely to be insiders that their male counterparts. Furthermore, according to Harrigan (1981), women had earned relatively few executive positions within U.S. corporations and therefore, female directors typically came out of law, education of non-profit organizations rather than from within corporate ranks. This is supported by Kesner (1988) who noted that women’s careers are more diverse and less business-oriented. These findings indicates that women are more orientated to cross boundaries than men, which lead to the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis 2: More females in the board of directors will lead to a higher share of cross-border alliances.
9 METHODOLOGY
Sample
In this study I use quantitative data, which came from two sources, the board data comes from BoardEx which contains extensive biographical information on corporate directors and top executives including educational degree employment history and other professional and social activities from US firms. The alliance data comes from SDC-data and consists of both cross-border and cross-industry alliances as well as intra-industry and national alliances. These databases are matched to get an overview of US firms with characteristics of their board and their alliance behavior. The data is from alliances between 2003 and 2010 and consists of companies from several industries.
The alliance data of this research is panel data since the data set has a cross section and a time dimension, so the observed firms and their alliances can be followed over time. Furthermore, because it is count data the best models to use are the Poisson and negative binomial regression models. Count variables indicate how many times something has happened. Using regression models for count data is relatively recent, but the outcomes are very common and this class of models is therefore important. Examples of count data include the number of patients, international conflict, new companies and in this case alliances. Linear regression models have often been applied to count data, but this can lead to inefficient, inconsistent and biased estimates since the linear regression treat dependent variables as continuous and do not bound them to be non-negative. Although there are situations in which the linear regression model provides reasonable results, it is much better to use models that are specifically designed for count data such as the negative binomial regression and the Poisson model (Long & Freese, 2006). Count data are marked as non-negative integers (y=0, 1, 2, 3…) without an explicit upper limit, which is the case in the aforementioned examples as well. The Poisson and negative binomial model differ regarding their assumption of the conditional mean and variance of the dependent variable. The Poisson model assumes that the conditional mean and the variance of the distribution is equal . However, because of multiple zeros in the alliance data, there is overdispersion. Therefore, the negative binomial regression model is more suited because it does not assume an equal mean and variance and corrects for overdispersion in the data (Cameron & Trivedi, 2013) . Last I assume there the data is randomly distributed, the dispersion varies randomly from group to group in the random-effect model. Dependent variables
Table I
Correlation matrix
Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1. Male executive directors 1.0000 2. Male non-executive directors - 0.0565*
0.0000 1.0000 3. Total directors - 0.0109 0.1261 - 0.1983* 0.0000 1.0000 4. Average boards executive
directors are quoted on
0.0373* 0.0000 - 0.0880* 0.0000 0.2686* 0.0000 1.0000
5. Average boards non-executive directors are quoted on
0.0189* 0.0079 - 0.0704* 0.0000 0.2059* 0.0000 0.4605* 0.0000 1.0000
6. Average time as director for executive directors 0.0213* 0.0031 0.0244* 0.0007 - 0.0084 0.2380 0.0888* 0.0000 - 0.0244* 0.0006 1.0000
7. Average time as director for non- executive directors
11 Table II
Descriptive statistics
Variable Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
Alliances .4843872 1.756227 0 63 Cross-border alliance .0138723 .1544814 0 8 Cross-industry alliance .2992155 1.15835 0 26 Male executive directors .9538162 .1697425 0 1 Male non-executive directors .8762514 .1370551 0 1 Total directors 9.174313 2.728226 2 37 Average boards executive
directors are quoted on
1.162877 .9425657 0 27 Average boards non- executive
directors are quoted on
1.914049 .9955231 0 23 Average time as director for
executive directors
9.115893 6.68684 0 52 Average time as director for
non-executive directors
8.661786 4.611294 0 63
Independent variables
12 is involved in innovation brings more insiders onto the board in an attempt to integrate the functional activities of the firm around its strategy (Hill & Snell, 1988).
The gender variable is showed as a percentage of the board, so .83 means that 83% of the board is male and this is the case for both executive as non-executive directors. The proportion variable range from 0, for firms that have no males in their board at all, to 1 for firms that have all male boards.
Control variables
I control for several variables that may influence the alliance behavior, the descriptive statistics of these variables can be found in table II and their correlations can be found in table I. The total directors on the
board may influence performance, according to Dalton, Daily, Ellstrand & Johnson (1998). Furthermore, expanding the size of the board has shown to provide an increased pool of expertise and resources for the firm and in addition, it is argued by Goodstein, Gautam and Boeker (1994) that larger boards might enhance corporate governance. I control for average time as director since the expertise theories suggest that that directors with a long tenure is associated with greater experience, commitment and competence, since it provides a directors with important knowledge about the firm and its environment (Vafeas, 2003). Last, I controlled for the number of board that directors are currently quoted on, since network theories suggest that directors bring a network to the firm with valuable resources. Resource dependence theory sees the member of the board of directors as boundary spanners who extract resources from the environment. It is predicted that the firm’s performance and behavior will improve as soon as there are more resource-rich outside directors take a seat in the board of directors (Pfeffer, 1972; Dalton et al., 1998).
RESULTS
Table III summarizes the results from the hypotheses testing. Model 1 tested the effects of the
13 dependent variable industry alliance, what allows us to see what influences the amount of cross-industry alliances. As we can see, gender has a significant influence on the amo unt of cross-cross-industry alliances. Again, male have a negative relation with the amount of alliances, so the more male directors, the less alliances there are. The control variable that shows the average of boards that executive directors are quoted on shows a significant positive result. When we look at the third hypothesis, the results support for hypothesis 3, stating that more female directors in the boardroom will lead to more alliances across industries. Two control variables show a significant result, namely total directors on the board and the average boards currently quoted for non-executive directors.
Table III
Regression results
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Variables Alliances Cross- border alliances Cross-industry alliances
Male executive directors -0.318*** 0.195 -0.345*** (0.101) (0.537) (0.125) Male non-executive directors -0.607*** -0.837 -0.790***
(0.170) (0.581) (0.199) Total directors 0.0742*** 0.0871*** 0.0890***
(0.00862) (0.0253) (0.0101) Average boards executive
directors are quoted on
0.0641*** (0.0194) 0.0564 (0.0734) 0.0369 (0.0226) Average boards non- executive
directors are quoted on
0.109*** (0.0187) 0.204*** (0.0619) 0.0978*** (0.0239) Average time as director for executive
directors -0.00653* (0.00370) -0.0118 (0.0131) -0.00712 (0.00434) Average time as director for
non-executive directors -0.00492 (0.00507) -0.0301 (0.0199) 0.00150 (0.00607) Constant 0.738*** -1.241 0.458 (0.245) (0.892) (0.291) Observations 19,247 19,247 19,247 Number of firms Wald Chi² 4,109 1474.26 4,109 133.63 4,109 978.65 Note: Random effects negative binominal regression. Standard errors in parentheses
*** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1. All regressions include a full set of year fixed effects which are not repor ted for brevity.
DISCUSSION
14 women on corporate boards (Burke, 1997; Singh & Vinicombe, 2004) and what the pre dictions are for the representation of women on corporate boards (Hillman, Shropshire, & Cannella, 2007). Other academics investigated the experiences of women and their corresponding perceptions of their role as board member (Bilimoria & Huse, 1997; Huse & Solberg, 2006). Or they studied the effectiveness of women on corporate boards or on the firm performance (Lückerath-Rovers, 2013; Adams & Ferreira, 2009) and some studies explore the characteristics of women directors compared to their male counterparts (Hillman, Cannella, & Harris, 2002; Ruigrok, Peck, & Tacheva, 2007). I improved on this prior research by drawing on several theories from psychology and business literature and its application to the corporate board domain, our results suggest that these directors are related heterogeneity in strategic decision making regarding the level of alliance formation. The results further suggest that female directors have a significant contribution to the strategic directions firms take, by bringing a different perspective to the corporate board and this makes them a valuable resource. This contributes substantially to the growing belief that there should be a larger share of women in corporate boards than it is currently.
15 This study has implications for both governance as diversity theories. This study helps advance our understanding of how female directors can affect the strategic decision making process of boards. The results showed that women as minorities can indeed lead to more divergent thinking what caused firms to leave the paths they usually take and look for more creative solutions by looking beyond their industry boundaries. It also showed that there is still a ne ed for more research regarding the role of women in the boardroom and the difference they make in decision making and performance. Furthermore, this work underscores the need to understand the forces that support the formation of an alliance like the female characteristics that are discussed.
A main managerial implication is that managers should keep in mind that female directors lead to more collaborative strategies. There are several moments in the industry life where alliances are useful or even essential in creating a competitive advantage over their competitors. This could be for example in the pre-dominant design phase where there is not an industry standard yet. But alliances can also be needed for the firm to be innovative of to collaborate with a f irm for resources. These phases in the industry life cycle ask for more females to build collaborative relations. Furthermore, when a company decides to internationalize their alliance activities, no extra female directors are needed to improve or facilitate these activities. At last, once again it turned out that minorities, in this case women can cause divergent thinking in a group. They influence a group to consider other alternatives and question the strategies they are used to, thus increasing the creativity in the decision making process.
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
Despite these contributions, several limitations of this research should be kept in mind. First, as pointed out in the introduction, women are still underrepresented in the boardroom. That allowed me to view them as minorities with related theories about minorities in collaboration and boardrooms. Theories about their creativity and divergent thinking are the fundamental theories where the secon d and third hypothesis are based on. However, if the process of more equality in the boardroom continues and more and more countries impose laws that oblige firms to have at least 40 per cent women in the boardroom, the assumption that women are the minority is endangered. When men are underrepresented in the boardroom the outcome might alter, since they have other personal and leadership characteristics than their female counterparts have. Second, I used the random effect negative binomial regression and this random effect model will often have smaller standard errors but the limitation is that their coefficients are more likely to be biased. Third, the data comes from firms in the United States, where there is no law forcing companies to meet a quota regarding women on the board, in contrast to some European firms. The absence of a quota can create potential problems for the generalizability for firms in some European countries that have a quota, since there is an obliged number of women directors. This could reduce the creativity and divergent thinking of women directors, because it is possible that they don’t have the feeling that they are a minority anymore.
16 Netherlands and see if these results differ from a country where the amount of women on the board of directors is not enforced. Here, we could see if the results change as soon as the repre sentation of women rises and they might not feel as a minority anymore, which could lower their specific characteristics as a minority. Furthermore, future studies could examine if men are able to adopt to a role as a minority in the board despite of their different characteristics.
Second, the results show that more women on the board of directors lead to more alliances. However, this does not necessarily mean that these alliances turned out be of value, what makes them beneficial for the company. Future research could investigate whether or not female directors have a positive influence on the alliance performance.
Another direction for future research is to see if the results from this paper also hold for other strategic decision like mergers and acquisitions and other minority groups. Both have similar characteristics as the ones used in this paper but slightly differ. Academics for example argued that ethnic diversity in the boardroom is positively related to group creativity divergent thinking (McLeod, Lobel & Cox, 1996). Levi, Li and Zhang (2008) showed that female directors influence the pricing strategies regarding mergers and acquisitions, but not if the number of women on the board of directors influence merger and acquisitions behavior in general.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to thank my supervisor Florian Noseleit for all his support, feedback and helpful comments throughout my research, his help was very useful in improving my research. Furthermore, I would like to thank my second supervisor for grading this master’s thesis.
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