Corporate Governance In A Changing Economic And Political Environment

This collection provides exceptional descriptive and analytical insights into changes in corporate governance settings in ten Eastern and Western European countries. It demonstrates that there exist different varieties of capitalisms and paths to transformation of economic institutions. In addition, it offers detailed discussions about national cases as well as the overall European Union effects. This book should be of great interest to scholars and students of comparative national systems, corporate governance and European studies.

In a painstaking analysis, Roe (law, Harvard Law School) examines the impact of a nation's strong social policies on the corporate governance, suggesting that stronger social policies can cause an American style of diffuse ownership among shareholders to fail. The link between social policies and corporate governance is examined statistically for a large number of countries, and in case studies for seven: Italy, Germany, Sweden, the UK, France, Japan, and the US. Product markets, securities markets, and the ability of corporate and economic structures to induce a political backlash are discussed. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.

Bringing together a number of leading scholars and pioneering research, this volume explores the links between corporate governance and international business, and demonstrates how corporate governance influences the attractiveness of host countries to inward investors, as well as the internationalization strategies of MNEs themselves.

The Challenge of Sustainability: Corporate Governance in a Complicated World reviews the evolution of five types of corporate governance and their different sustainability objectives. It discusses the challenges for boards in achieving sustainability from an environmental, economic, employment, and social perspective and introduces the concept of a political tragedy of the commons if boards do what is in the best interests of their profitability only, without considering their responsibilities and unintended consequences for their stakeholders. It explains how volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity complicate making sustainable decisions. This book explores ways of helping prevent such negative outcomes. John Zinkin asserts the director’s need to reconcile volatility with vision, uncertainty with understanding, complexity with courage and commitment, and ambiguity with adaptability. To prevent a potential political tragedy of the commons, the book suggests new decision-making processes; treating employees differently; and makes the case for reforming capitalism. It is aimed at managers, board members and all those who influence them, including shareholder activists, corporate legal personnel, politicians, activists and general readers interested in applying some of these suggestions in their roles as stakeholders, managers and directors.

The corporate governance systems of continental Europe have traditionally been quite different to those of the liberal market economies (e.g. the US and the UK). Company ownership has been dominated by incumbent blockholders, with a relatively minor role for minority shareholders and institutional investors. Business strategy has focused on the achievement of social stability - taking into account the interests of a broad group stakeholders - rather than the maximisation of shareholder value. However, since the mid-1990s, European corporations have adopted many of the characteristics of the Anglo-American shareholder model. Furthermore, such an increased shareholder-orientation has coincided with a significant role for the Left in European government. This presents a puzzle, as conventional wisdom does not usually conceive of the Left as an enthusiastic proponent of pro-shareholder capitalism. This book provides an analysis of this paradox by examining how economic factors have interacted with the policy preferences of political parties to cause a significant change in the European system of corporate governance. This book argues that the post-war support of the European Left for the prevailing blockholder-dominated corporate system depended on the willingness of blockholders to share economic rents with employees, both through higher wages and greater employment stability. However, during the 1990s, product markets became more competitive in many European countries. The sharing of rents between social actors became increasingly difficult to sustain. In such an environment, the Left relinquished its traditional social partnership with blockholders and embraced many aspects of the shareholder model. This explanation is supported through a panel data econometric analysis of 15 non-liberal market economies. Subsequent case study chapters examine the political economy of recent corporate governance change in Germany and Italy.

Corporate law and governance are at the forefront of regulatory activities worldwide, and subject to increasing public attention in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. Comprehensively referencing the key debates, the Handbook provides a much-needed framework for understanding the aims and methods of legal research in the field.

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