Purpose– Shareholders and managers can work in a hierarchy in which principals attempt to control the actions of agents to achieve the wealth objective. Alternatively, shareholders and managers can work together as a cooperative team in which shareholders provide financial capital and managers provide human capital. The authors aim to examine the different implications for value creation provided by the two approaches. Design/methodology/approach– By comparing the literature on the value implications of the incomplete contracting framework and control arrangements in principal-agent hierarchies, the authors identify deviations from optimal outcomes and suggest solutions. Findings– The review indicates that a cooperative framework has some advantages over the hierarchical model. The stability of human capital and the relationship between managers and shareholders can be enhanced when shareholders provide capital in increments which vest over time and latitude for renegotiation of agreements is built into contracts. Practical implications– By surrendering control using stock options programmes, managers are free to invest in relationship-specific assets. Shareholders can control the provision of capital by withdrawing investment if insufficient returns are realized, i.e. if stock options do not meet vesting requirements. The market can then be left to do its work. Originality/value– This paper provides an original review of literature on cooperation and hierarchies in the shareholder–manager relationship and proposes solutions to identified deviations from optimal outcomes. Keywords- Agency theory, Corporate governance, M&A, Executive compensation, Contracting theory, Share options policy

Watch out, there are two different types of company managers! This is not how a text book on Corporate Governance should begin. Modern corporations become independent from the influence of their shareholders. Dissatisfied shareholders sell rather than intervene. Stock exchanges allow disgruntled owners to tender their stock. On them, companies as wholes sell at premiums. The first known stock exchanges formed in Carthage (Tunisia), Sardinia and Sicily as early as in 600 BC. Phoenician seafarers’ wealth resulted from the markets that spread around the circular harbours. While ancient Roman neighbours benefitted from the Phoenician trade partners, their law diverged. In modern times, we witness an odd amalgamation of governance in Germany: Germany’s corporations have two legally separate governance boards. On the one hand, the functionality resulted from free markets: The most powerful directors must be separate to, and independent from, a company’s top management. Ancient Roman law disciplines German boards into obedience: The distinct types of leaders legally must divorce. Despite a larger population, Germany’s stock exchange today is less than half the volume of Britain’s. German banks not only fund their corporations. While western economies circle around stock exchanges, Germany’s small companies are subsidised and governed by the state banks. During recessions, Germany’s savers naturally insist on interest income, and force the country into austerity.

In this collection of provocative essays, Joseph Heath provides a compelling new framework for thinking about the moral obligations that private actors in a market economy have toward each other and to society. In a sharp break with traditional approaches to business ethics, Heath argues that the basic principles of corporate social responsibility are already implicit in the institutional norms that structure both marketplace competition and the modern business corporation. In four new and nine previously published essays, Heath articulates the foundations of a "market failures" approach to business ethics. Rather than bringing moral concerns to bear upon economic activity as a set of foreign or externally imposed constraints, this approach seeks to articulate a robust conception of business ethics derived solely from the basic normative justification for capitalism. The result is a unified theory of business ethics, corporate law, economic regulation, and the welfare state, which offers a reconstruction of the central normative preoccupations in each area that is consistent across all four domains. Beyond the core theory, Heath offers new insights on a wide range of topics in economics and philosophy, from agency theory and risk management to social cooperation and the transaction cost theory of the firm.

Although workplace design and management are gaining more and more attention from modern organizations, workplace research is still very fragmented and spread across multiple disciplines in academia. There are several books on the market related to workplaces, facility management (FM), and corporate real estate management (CREM) disciplines, but few open up a theoretical and practical discussion across multiple theories from different disciplines. Therefore, workplace researchers are not aware of all the angles from which workplace management and effects of workplace design on employees has been or could be studied. A lot of knowledge is lost between disciplines, and sadly, many insights do not reach workplace managers in practice. Therefore, this new book series is started by associate professor Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands) and postdoc researcher Vitalija Danivska (Aalto University, Finland) as editors, published by Routledge. It is titled ‘Transdisciplinary Workplace Research and Management’ because it bundles important research insights from different disciplinary fields and shows its relevance for both academic workplace research and workplace management in practice. The books will address the complexity of the transdisciplinary angle necessary to solve ongoing workplace-related issues in practice, such as knowledge worker productivity, office use, and more strategic management. In addition, the editors work towards further collaboration and integration of the necessary disciplines for further development of the workplace field in research and in practice. This book series is relevant for workplace experts both in academia and industry. This second book in the series focuses on the role of workplace management in the organization and the tasks that workplace management needs to consider. The 18 theories that are presented in this book and applied to workplace research discuss management aspects from the organization’s perspective or dive deeper into issues related to people and/or building management. They all emphasize that workplace management is a complex matter that requires more strategic attention in order to add value for various stakeholders. The final chapter of the book describes a first step towards integrating the presented theories into an interdisciplinary framework for developing a grand workplace management theory.

This work analyzes the role of private equity firms (SCIs) in forming strategic alliances in the French private equity market. The subject is important because the formation of alliances and, more generally, the networking of SMEs, could be an alternative to the lack of medium-sized companies in France. For French SCIs, which are increasingly in a competitive situation, assistance in forming alliances for their holdings may represent a new activity and be a source of competitive advantage. The work is positioned transversally, touching the areas of corporate governance, entrepreneurial finance and strategy.

The field of business ethics continues to expand intellectually and geographically. During the past five decades, scholars have developed and deepened their inquiries into the ethics of commercial and corporate conduct. This Companion provides a novel overview of the discipline of business ethics, covering the major areas of the field as well as new and emerging topics. The eight thematic units range over an extraordinary set of subjects and include chapters on the history and pedagogy of business ethics, moral philosophy, the nature of business, responsibilities within the firm, economic institutions, the 2008 financial crisis, globalization, and business ethics in different regions of the world. Led by a well-respected editorial team, this unique volume gathers an international array of experts whose various critical approaches yield insights from areas such as public policy, economics, law, and history, in addition to business and philosophy. With its fresh analyses, wide scope, and clarity of approach, this volume will be an essential addition to library collections in business, management, and applied ethics.

The study of corporate governance is a relatively modern development, with significant attention devoted to the subject only during the last fifty years. The topics covered in this volume include the purpose of the corporation, the board of directors, the role of shareholders, and more contemporary developments like hedge fund activism, the role of sovereign wealth funds, and the development of corporate governance law in what perhaps will become the dominant world economy over the next century, China. The editor has written an introductory essay which briefly describes the intellectual history of the field and analyses the material selected for the volume. The papers which have been selected present what the editor believes to be some of the best and most representative studies of the subjects covered. As a result the volume offers a rounded view of the contemporary state of the some of the dominant issues in corporate governance.

A perspective on the public sector that presents a concise and comprehensive analysis of exactly what it is and how it operates. Governments in any society deliver a large number of services and goods to their populations. To get the job done, they need public management in order to steer resources – employees, money and laws – into policy outputs and outcomes. In well-ordered societies the teams who work for the state work under a rule-of-law framework, known as public administration. This book covers the key issues of: the principal-agent framework and the public sector public principals and their agents the economic reasons of government public organization, incentives and rationality in government the essence of public administration: legality and the rule of law public policy criteria: the Cambridge and Chicago positions public teams and private teams public firms public insurance public management policy Public Administration & Public Management is essential reading for those with professional and research interests in public administration and public management.

This volume contains papers in the broadly defined area of microeconomic theory presented to the International Economic Association Tenth World Congress in Moscow. A wide range of topics is represented - from the foundations of economic choice through strategic behaviour, multiple market interactions, and asymmetric information to applications in such diverse areas as the internal organization of firms, patent policy, product markets, and labour supply, finishing with a piece on the history of oligopoly theory. The collection strongly suggests that microeconomic theory is indeed thriving as a fascinating and useful central part of economic science.

Guided by the overarching question “how and why does the emerging economy context matter for business?”, this collection brings together key contributions of Klaus Meyer on multinational enterprises (MNEs) competing in, and originating from, emerging economies. The book also explores how outward investment strategies contribute to building internationally competitive MNEs.