The paper introduces first the legal framework as it has been developed by French jurisprudence which distinguishes the social interest of the firm from the interest of all stakeholders. Then, it presents the monitoring of executives in several fields, commodity markets, the financial market,...

A fundamental issue in governance research is how boards can be chosen through a process partially controlled by the CEO but yet can still be somewhat effective in monitoring the CEO. We offer an answer based on a model in which board effectiveness is a function of the board's independence....

Motivated by theories of the firm, which we classify as "technological" or "organizational," we analyze the determinants of firm size across industries and across countries in a sample of 15 European countries. We find that, on average, firms facing larger markets are larger. At the industry...

This paper examines the relationship between organization contextual variables and human resource management (HRM) practices in small firms. The proposed model is based on an integration of theoretical perspectives, including the resource-based approach, institutional theory, transaction cost...

The thinking style profile is the basis of two important organizational processes (problem-solving and decision-making) and as such impacts significantly on company performance. The paper explores the thinking styles of Chinese and Australian managers and their reported preferences. Quantitative...

Corporate scandals, reflected in excessive management compensation and fraudulent accounts, cause considerable damage. Agency theory?s insistence on linking the compensation of managers and directors as closely as possible to firm performance is a major reason for these scandals. They cannot be...

This paper shows that pyramidal ownership - a prevalent organizational structure among French corporations - has sizeable agency costs. These agency costs arise because ownership pyramids tend to agnify the degree of separation between ownership and control: a group leader may have effective...

This paper uses new firm-level data to examine the effects of breakups of the Czech firms and their subsequent privatization on corporate performance. Unlike the existing literature, which analyzes breakups almost exclusively in advanced economies, we control for accompanying ownership changes...

In this paper we analyze the conditions under which a foreign direct investment (FDI) involves a net capital flow across countries. Frequently, foreign direct investment is financed in the host country without an international capital movement. We develop a model in which the optimal choice of...

The paper examines the implications of an important aspect of the ongoing reorganization of work - the move from occupational specialization toward multi-tasking - for centralized wage bargaining. The analysis shows how, on account of this reorganization, centralized bargaining becomes...