Corporate governance

About: Corporate governance is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 118591 publications have been published within this topic receiving 2793582 citations.

The Dynamics of Multi‐organizational Partnerships: an Analysis of Changing Modes of Governance

Abstract: Multi-organizational partnerships are now an important means of governing and managing public programmes. They typically involve business, community and not-for-profit agencies alongside government bodies. Partnerships are frequently contrasted with competitive markets and bureaucratic hierarchies. A more complex reality is revealed once partnerships as an organizational form are distinguished from networks as a mode of social co-ordination or governance. Data from studies of UK urban regeneration partnerships are used to develop a four-stage partnership life cycle: pre-partnership collaboration; partnership creation; partnership programme delivery; and partnership termination. A different mode of governance - network, market or hierarchy - predominates at each stage. Separating organizational form from mode of governance enables a richer understanding of multi-organizational activity and provides the basis from which theory and practice can be developed. The key challenge for partnerships lies in managing the interaction of different modes of governance, which at some points will generate competition and at other points collaboration.

Environmental governance: participatory, multi-level - and effective?

Abstract: Current political trends and scholarly research increasingly promote collaborative and participatory governance in multi-level systems as a way to more sustainable and effective environmental policy. Yet empirical findings as well as conceptual works from different academic fields remain ambiguous about this claim. This paper explores whether and to what extent the existence of multiple levels of governance affects the ability of participatory decision-making to deliver high quality environmental policy output and to improve implementation and compliance. To this end, findings from the literature on multi-level governance, public participation and policy implementation as well as on complex systems are integrated in five sets of hypotheses. In order to put these to a ‘plausibility probe’, a meta-analysis of 47 case studies from Northern America and Western Europe is conducted. These cases provide qualitative insights and allow for some generalization in the form of correlation analysis. The study finds that, predominantly, environmental preferences of the involved actors determine the environmental outputs (and outcomes) of decision-making. Further, face-to-face, but not mere two-way, communication appears to positively influence the ecological standard of decisions. The analysis also suggests that a highly polycentric governance system comprising many agencies and levels of governance yields higher environmental outputs than rather monocentric governance. However, correlations between governance effectiveness and decision-making scale, as well as policy delivery and institutional fit to ecosystem, could not be identified. The paper concludes by outlining pathways for more systematic comparative research on these pressing research questions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

The Influence of Institutions on Corporate Governance through Private Negotiations: Evidence from TIAA‐CREF

Abstract: This paper analyzes the process of private negotiations between financial institutions and the companies they attempt to inf luence. It relies on a private database consisting of the correspondence between TIAA-CREF and 45 firms it contacted about governance issues between 1992 and 1996. This correspondence indicates that TIAA-CREF is able to reach agreements with targeted companies more than 95 percent of the time. In more than 70 percent of the cases, this agreement is reached without shareholders voting on the proposal. We verify independently that at least 87 percent of the targets subsequently took actions to comply with these agreements.

The Fragmentation of Global Governance Architectures: A Framework for Analysis

Abstract: Most research on global governance has focused either on theoretical accounts of the overall phenomenon or on empirical studies of distinct institutions that serve to solve particular governance challenges. In this article we analyze instead “governance architectures,” defined as the overarching system of public and private institutions, principles, norms, regulations, decision-making procedures and organizations that are valid or active in a given issue area of world politics. We focus on one aspect that is turning into a major source of concern for scholars and policy-makers alike: the “fragmentation” of governance architectures in important policy domains. The article offers a typology of different degrees of fragmentation, which we describe as synergistic, cooperative, and conflictive fragmentation. We then systematically assess alternative hypotheses over the relative advantages and disadvantages of different degrees of fragmentation. We argue that moderate degrees of fragmentation may entail both significant costs and benefits, while higher degrees of fragmentation are likely to decrease the overall performance of a governance architecture. The article concludes with policy options on how high degrees of fragmentation could be reduced. Fragmentation is prevalent in particular in the current governance of climate change, which we have hence chosen as illustration for our discussion.