Japanese corporate governance reform is implemented by an introduction of corporate governance code and stewardship code, in which stewardship activities by institutional investors play an important role in terms of reduction of agency cost. In this report, stewardship activities are focused...

Research on the nature and value of firms’ dynamic capabilities has produced contradictory propositions and findings. Scholars have argued that contingency theorizing has the potential to improve our understanding, as the context in which dynamic capabilities are deployed may affect their...

Agency problems in economics virtually always entail self-interested agency exhibiting “insufficient” loyalty to principal. Social psychology also has a literature, mainly derived from work by Stanley Milgram, on issues of agency, but this emphasizes excessive loyalty – people undergoing a...

This study uses the 2008 mortgage crisis to demonstrate how the relationship between vertical integration and performance crucially depends on corporate governance. Prior research has argued that the vertical integration of mortgage origination and securitization aligned divisional incentives...

A perennial problem with the management of a business has been concerned with the relationship between the managers of a business and its owners and investors, which is of course known as the agency problem. It is generally accepted that the information asymmetry which inevitably exists in this...

This paper considers the twofold problem of compensation contracting and the design of a human capital investment scheme. Before contracting the principal and the agent can engage in a joint stochastic production process of exerting effort to raise the agent's productivity in the firm. The...

This paper considers a firm's optimal investment in training and motivation measures in a hidden action agency problem. We study how these measures interact with each other and the contract in order to create value for the firm. Productivity enhancing training can be firm specific or non-firm...

Offshore outsourcing of administrative and technical services has become a mainstream business practice. Increasing commoditization of business services and growing client experience with outsourcing have created a range of competitive service delivery options for client firms. Yet, data from...

This paper presents an application of the relational contracts theory and specifically of the theory of norms to a paradigm relation, i.e. a management contract. In this analysis we use MacNeil's norms model and we test in relation to twelve unilateral and bilateral obligations of a standard...

General (or family) practice and its role within primary care is increasingly regarded as the key to achieving efficiency and equity in many health care systems. This is particularly relevant where general practitioners (GPs) act as gatekeepers to specialist care. This chapter outlines the main...