AbstractsLaw & Legal Studies

An Institution-Based View of Ownership

by M. van Essen (Marc)




Institution: Erasmus University
Department:
Year: 2011
Keywords: IPO underpricing; business group; comparative corporate governance; family firms; hierarchical linear modeling; institution-based view; institutional complementarity; institutional voids; labor institutions; meta-analysis; ownership concentration; ownership identity
Record ID: 1241898
Full text PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/1765/22643


Abstract

abstractThe past two decades have witnessed an exponential growth of research on corporate governance around the world and on the role of the ownership concentration more specifically. In line with a longer tradition of ownership studies in U.S. context, most corporate governance researchers have commonly taken a classical agency theoretical view of ownership concentration. The research presented in this dissertation show that classical view of ownership seems overly crude. I provide a more fine-grained understanding about the role of ownership in different contexts; one that takes into account the subtly different formal and informal institutional that can be found around the world on the one hand, and that distinguish between the identity of concentrated owners on the other. I show, first, that a crucial factor with respect to the ownership concentration – firm strategy and performance relationships involve owner identity: i.e. who owns a firm matters significantly for that firm’s objectives, strategies, and performance. Second, I contribute to emerging institution-based view of corporate governance by expanding its empirical domain and testing empirically the interaction between formal and informal institutions.text