The literature aimed at exploring labor regulation and cross-country comparisons has left partly unexplored two major points: the first is the influence of employees within managerial processes, through the channel of employee representation at firm level. The second point concerns potential...

The paper is divided in two coordinate parts. The first considers in general the issue of stockholders vs. stakeholders oriented governance systems and their relative merits and demerits. The second part deals specifically with the issue of the principal-agent problem in a stakeholder context.

Comparisons by countries and by sectors of mergers and acquisitions have usually been performed in separate fields of research. A first group of studies, focusing on international comparisons, has explored the role of corporate governance systems, investor protection laws and other countries’...