Skip to main content

Evolving Classifiers to Model the Relationship between Strategy and Corporate Performance Using Grammatical Evolution

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover Genetic Programming (EuroGP 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2278))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

This study examines the potential of grammatical evolution to construct a linear classifier to predict whether a firm’s corporate strategy will increase or decrease shareholder wealth. Shareholder wealth is measured using a relative fitness criterion, the change in a firm’s marketvalue- added ranking in the Stern-Stewart Performance 1000 list, over a four year period, 1992-1996. Model inputs and structure are selected by means of grammatical evolution. The best classifier correctly categorised the direction of performance ranking change in 66.38% of the firms in the training set and 65% in the out-of-sample validation set providing support for a hypothesis that changes in corporate strategy are linked to changes in corporate performance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Altman, Edward I. (1993). Corporate Financial Distress and Bankruptcy, New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bauer, R. (1994). GeneticA lgorithms and Investment Strategies, New York: John Wiley & Sons.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bowman, E. and Helfat, C. (2001). Does Corporate Strategy Matter?,Strategic Management Journal, 22:1–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Brabazon, T., Glintchak E., Matthews R. (2001). Modelling the relationship between strategy and corporate performance using a hybrid GA/NN model, in Proceedings of the SEAG Annual Conference, 10 September 2001, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Elfring, T. and Volberda, H. (1996). Schools of Thought in Strategic Management: Fragmentation, Integrating or Synthesis?, in Elfring, T. Jensen, H. and Money, A. (eds), Theory Building in the Business Sciences pp. 11–47, Copenhagen, Copenhagen Business School Press.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Hair, Joseph F., Anderson, Rolph E., Tatham, Ronald L. and Black, William C. (1998). Multivariate Data Analysis, Upper Saddle River, Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Klemz, B. (1999). Using genetic algorithms to assess the impact of pricing activity timing, Omega, 27:363–372.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Koza, J. (1992). GeneticProgramming. MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Levitt, B. and March J. (1988). Organizational Learning, Annual Review of Sociology, 14:319–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. McKelvey, B. (1999). Avoiding Complexity Catastrophe in Coevolutionary Pockets: Strategies for Rugged Landscapes, Organization Science, 10(3):294–321.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Mintzberg, H. (1990). Strategy Formation: Schools of Thought., in Frederickson, J. (ed.), Perspectives on Strategic Management, pp. 107–108, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Morris, R. (1997). Early Warning Indicators of Corporate Failure: A critical review of previous research and further empirical evidence, London: Ashgate Publishing Limited.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Nelson, R. and Winter, S. (1982). An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  14. O’Neill M. (2001) Automatic Programming in an Arbitrary language: Evolving Programs with Grammatical Evolution. Ph.D. thesis, University of Limerick, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  15. O’Neill M., Ryan C. (2001) Grammatical Evolution. IEEE Trans. Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 5 No. 4, August 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  16. O’Neill, M., Brabazon, T., Ryan, C. and Collins J.(2001). Evolving Market Index Trading Rules Using Grammatical Evolution, In LNCS 2037: Applications of Evolutionary Computing, pp. 343–35, Springer-Verlag.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. Pendharkar, P. (2001). An empirical study of design and testing of hybrid evolutionary-neural approach for classification, Omega, 29:361–374.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Porter, M. (1985). Competitive Advantage:Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, New York, The Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Porter, M. (1996). What is Strategy?, Harvard Business Review, Nov-Dec, 61-78.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Ryan C., Collins J.J., O’Neill M. (1998). Grammatical Evolution: Evolving Programs for an Arbitrary Language. LNCS 1391, Proc. of the First European Workshop on GeneticPr ogramming, pp. 83–95. Springer-Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  21. St. John, C., Balakrishnan, N. and Fiet, O. J. (2000). Modelling the relationship between corporate strategy and wealth creation using neural networks, Computers and operations research, 27:1077–1092.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Varetto, F. (1998). Genetic algorithms in the analysis of insolvency risk, Journal of Banking and Finance, 22(10):1421–1439.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Brabazon, A., O’Neill, M., Ryan, C., Matthews, R. (2002). Evolving Classifiers to Model the Relationship between Strategy and Corporate Performance Using Grammatical Evolution. In: Foster, J.A., Lutton, E., Miller, J., Ryan, C., Tettamanzi, A. (eds) Genetic Programming. EuroGP 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2278. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45984-7_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45984-7_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43378-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45984-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics