More than fifty years before the debate about the contractibility of corporate law in the United States, English and then Australian lawmakers truncated what had been substantial scope for contracting around directors' duties. Legislation imposed mandatory rules concerning conflicts of interest...

This paper considers a number of potential justifications for regulatory intervention aimed at overcoming 'contractual failure' in stakeholder relations. Two distinct functions of stakeholding are identified, in terms of 'contract' and 'innovation' respectively. These conceptions are linked to...

In the United States, the past twenty years have been marked by significant restructuring of both financial and physical corporate assets designed to strengthen firms' relative market position either voluntarily or in response to the threat of take-over. Firms have also restructured work systems...

This paper argues that the gains from ICT at the individual business level depend upon the implementation of a range of complementary ÔinvestmentsÕ and organisational changes appropriate to the competitive and institutional context of particular sectors. To support our proposition we provide a...

There are some markets where the growth of firms are held to be subject to diminishing returns, or negative feedbacks; and there are other markets where firm growth is believed to be subject to increasing returns, or positive feedbacks. A long run tendency towards monopoly might be expected in...

We investigate the influences behind five major investigations into corporate governance in the UK since 1990: the Cadbury, Greenbury, Hampel and Turnbull Committees, and the Company Law Review. In each case we examine the roles of business, the authorities, public opinion and events in shaping...

We investigate the relation between long run takeover performance and board share ownership in the acquiring company for a sample of 142 UK takeovers completed between 1985-95. We find evidence of a non-linear relationship both between board ownership and takeover profitability, and between...

In the last few years law and finance scholars have 'discovered' the usefulness of comparative law. Their studies look at the quantifiable effect that legal rules and their enforcement have on financial development in different countries. Moreover, they link their results with the long- standing...

English corporate insolvency law has been reshaped by the Enterprise Act 2002. The Act was intended to ‘to facilitate company rescue and to produce better returns for creditors as a whole’. Administrative receivership, which placed control of insolvency proceedings in the hands of banks, is...

This paper is a case study of the implementation of an 'integrity' value at the Anglo-American healthcare firm, SmithKline Beecham (SB). SB was established as a result of a merger in 1989 following which the new company deliberately sought to design a new corporate culture based on a set of...