The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on director interlocks by illustrating and analysing the interlocking directorships among the Italian, French, German, UK and US listed Blue Chips. The comparison of the five countries considered shows that two national models stand...

This paper shows how strategic matching generates reputation-building behavior in an evolutionary chain-store game. Strategic matching means the possibility for an entrant to choose in a strategic way the local market into which it will move. Players are boundedly rational and follow behavioral...

There is consensus that executive compensation is strongly tied to firm size and much less so to financial performance. Observed strategic change in corporations can affect these results. Based on multi-task theoretical considerations, the evidence for German industrial firms shows that...

Agency theory emphasizes that separating ownership and control can lead to inefficiencies in corporations, but the literature on strategic delegation points out that the owner will profit from this separation due to advantages from self-commitment. In this paper, both literatures are combined....

The basic framework of the discussion revolves around two samples of Scottish small firms for the periods 1985-88 and 1994-97. It is shown that both samples were drawn during similar (prosperous) phases of the macroeconomic cycle. Further evidence is advanced which indicates that grant and...

This paper aims to establish the basis for a new approach to the performance of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The proposed approach emphasises the potential of the SME'S information system (IS) for enhancing performance, through its deployment for superior monitoring and control....

This paper reports on the behaviour of young (less than three years old) micro-firms (less than ten employees) in Scotland, with an emphasis on life-cycle effects. Two main tests were carried out. The first took Gibrat's Law (that growth is independent of size) as the null hypothesis, and a...

This paper provides a critical survey of theory and evidence on information system (IS) development within the SME. It proceeds under five headings. First, the information needs of the SME are identified. Second, the use of information to guide decisions is considered. Third, the management...

In this paper, we combine the strategic delegation approach of Fershtman-Judd-Sklivas with contets. The results show that besides a symmetric equilibrium there also exist asymmetric equilibria in which one owner induces pure sales maximization to his manager so that all the other firms drop out...