Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

1. Introduction and Overview. 2. Detecting Influential Observations and Outliers. 3. Detecting and Assessing Collinearity. 4. Applications and Remedies. 5. Research Issues and Directions for Extensions. Bibliography. Author Index. Subject Index.

Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity

Men and Women of the Corporation

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The Theory of Industrial Organization

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Theoretically, the effect of international business activity on firm value depends on ownership and capital structure. Companies may over-invest in international business activity because of agency problems or under-invest, if they are capital-rationed. This paper examines how these competing hypotheses fit a sample of 237 very large European and US companies over the period 1991-1997. The results indicate that internationalization may sometimes destroy value from a shareholder viewpoint and that financial leverage may have a negative effect on value creation by internationalization whereas the effects of ownership concentration on value gains from internationalization were found to depend on system effects. However, the magnitude of the effects is small, and the results were found to be sensitive to estimation methods.

International business activity and firm value: the impact of ownership and capital structure

Since the publication of the Cadbury Code (1992), there has been a rapid international diffusion of corporate governance codes containing recommendations on boards, executive pay, disclosure and investor relations. But there has been little or no scientific evidence to support the recommendations, so it is questionable whether they can be explained by market failures. Instead, based on public choice theory, I propose the alternative hypothesis that the codes reflect rent seeking by institutional investors in a bargaining game with other stakeholders, including investment banks, auditing firms, incumbent owners, managers and employees. I argue that this hypothesis can explain a number of puzzling features about codes, including their remarkable similarity, the 'one size fits all' approach and their pattern of diffusion. A study of fifty-two corporate governance codes and a qualitative review of their core contents provide empirical support for the institutional investor hypothesis. The key focus is on empowering boards and making them accountable to minority investors, i.e., capturing the overall control of listed companies. Since it is not clear that these initiatives contribute to overall value creation, an evaluation of the costs of governance is called for.

The Hidden Meaning of Codes: Corporate Governance and Investor Rent Seeking

In this paper we study the internationalization of corporate supervisory boards. We use Poisson random effects and negative binominal random effect estimators to analyze the determinants of foreign board membership in listed firms from four Nordic countries in 2001-2007. We find that financial competencies required by firm internationalization positively affect board internationalization, whereas the impact of the internationalization of a firm’s commercial operations is positive but not significant across all model specifications. We find that the higher the number of national board members with international experience, the higher is the number of foreign supervisory board members. A significantly positive impact is also found for foreign ownership; the greater foreign ownership of a firm, the higher is the number of foreigners we can expect on the firm’s supervisory board. For Norway and Sweden, the amount of foreigners on the nomination committee also positively relates to the number of foreigners on the board. Rather than age, the median board tenure negatively impacts the prevalence of foreigners on the supervisory board. This barrier to board internationalization may reflect conservatism, fear of potential communication difficulties due to language problems and an “old boys’ network” effect.

Internationalization of the Firm and Its Board

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The Demography of Danish Foundation-Owned Companies 123

Firms that strive to innovate (i.e., firms that invest in research and development—R&D) have high potential for economic sustainability due to the possibility of generating new platforms of growth and future revenue. However, it is little understood whether financial markets incorporate (if at all) information on firms' potential for economic sustainability. After all, firms' information on R&D investments is very opaque. This poses a challenge to investors to incorporate into firm value any economic sustainability emanating from such information. We investigate whether blockholders, owners with at least a 5% shareholding in a firm, help reflect in firm value the firms' potential for economic sustainability. We find that active blockholders, rather than passive blockholders, help incorporate in firm value the potential for economic sustainability. Thus, active blockholders help mitigate agency problems in firms and help financial markets digest firms' potential for economic sustainability. 

Steen Thomsen

Papers

International business activity and firm value: the impact of ownership and capital structure

The Hidden Meaning of Codes: Corporate Governance and Investor Rent Seeking

Internationalization of the Firm and Its Board

The Demography of Danish Foundation-Owned Companies 123

Firms' potential for economic sustainability and firm value: The moderating role of blockholders