Wealthy individuals - business angels who invest a share of their net worth in entrepreneurial ventures - form an essential part of an informal venture capital market that can secure funding for entrepreneurial ventures. In Finland, business angels represent an untapped pool of capital that can contribute to fostering entrepreneurial development. In addition, business angels can bridge knowledge gaps in new business ventures by means of making their human capital available. This study has two objectives. The first is to gain an understanding of the characteristics and investment behaviour of Finnish business angels. The strongest focus here is on the due diligence procedures and their involvement post investment. The second objective is to assess whether agency theory and the incomplete contacting theory are useful theoretical lenses in the arena of business angels. To achieve the second objective, this study investigates i) how risk is mitigated in the investment process, ii) how uncertainty influences the comprehensiveness of due diligence as well as iii) how control is allocated post investment. Research hypotheses are derived from assumptions underlying agency theory and the incomplete contacting theory. The data for this study comprise interviews with 53 business angels. In terms of sample size this is the largest on Finnish business angels. The research hypotheses in this study are tested using regression analysis. This study suggests that the Finnish informal venture capital market appears to be comprised of a limited number of business angels whose style of investing much resembles their formal counterparts’. Much focus is placed on managing risks prior to making the investment by strong selectiveness and by a relatively comprehensive due diligence. The involvement is rarely on a day-to-day basis and many business angels seem to see board membership as a more suitable alternative than involvement in the operations of an entrepreneurial venture. The uncertainty involved does not seem to drive an increase in due diligence. On the contrary, it would appear that due diligence is more rigorous in safer later stage investments and when the business angels have considerable previous experience as investors. Finnish business angels’ involvement post investment is best explained by their degree of ownership in the entrepreneurial venture. It seems that when investors feel they are sufficiently rewarded, in terms of an adequate equity stake, they are willing to involve themselves actively in their investments. The lack of support for a relationship between increased uncertainty and the comprehensiveness of due diligence may partly be explained by an increasing trend towards portfolio diversification. This is triggered by a taxation system that favours investments through investment companies rather than direct investments. Many business angels appear to have substituted a specialization strategy that builds on reducing uncertainty for a diversification strategy that builds on reducing firm specific (idiosyncratic) risk by holding shares in ventures whose returns are not expected to exhibit a strong positive correlation.

This study adopts a case study research strategy to a public bureaucracy with a military organization structure. This study investigates the logics of action of strategy process from a governance perspective. Strategy process refers to the process dimension of strategic issues management (sensing, deciding, executing). The governance models used in the study are agency theory and stewardship theory. The primary objective of the study is to explore the relationship between the forms of governance and the logics of action of strategic issues management. In this study the literature review was complemented with a pilot study. The material obtained in the pilot study (N 114, n 72) was then analyzed by means of discourse analysis. The objective of the pilot study was to complement the literature review and thus immediately from the beginning incorporate qualitative organization-based empiria. However, in order to explore the study's main concern, a quantitative approach was deployed. The statistical technique used was correlation analysis. The material for the statistical analysis was gathered by means of survey (N 136, n 72). The questionnaire was sent to the key executives and managers, and experts of the public agency in question (the Border Guard of Finland). For measurement purposes, the Spearman rank correlation coefficient was computed. The study focused on a statistically significant (p<0,01) and very significant (p<0,001) correlation. The study shows that stewardship theory is a more efficient governance form than agency theory from a strategic issues management perspective. The stewardship theory based governance behaves clearly more advantageous in the analysis and constituted a significantly positive correlation to the logic of action, which actively identifies strategic issues in the organization's external environment. Agency theory did not show a corresponding correlation. Stewardship theory showed a statistically very significant correlation to each of the decision-making logics of action, and the correlation was the strongest to the decision-making logic of action, which suits most appropriately the demands of strategic issues management. Agency theory did not show a correlation with equivalent strength. With respect to implementation, stewardship theory constituted a statistically very significant correlation to the executing logics of action required by holistically natured strategic issues, whereas agency theory based governance constituted a statistically very significant correlation merely to the formal modes of implementation.