NEW DIRECTIONS IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

■ Abstract Corporate governance describes the structures, processes, and institutions within and around organizations that allocate power and resource control among participants. Law and economics scholars have developed a view of the public corporation as a nexus-of-contracts whose structure is driven by the requirements of financial markets, and thus features of the corporation and its surrounding institutions are theorized in terms of their function in directing corporations toward share price as a criterion of value. Working from this base, more recent research has studied historical and crossnational variation in governance institutions, producing highly varied interpretations of their sources and function. Sociological work, particularly within organization theory, has critiqued this functionalist view and provided alternative interpretations based on networks, power, and culture. The most promising contemporary work seeks to analyze governance in terms of the dynamics of institutions—where they originate, how they operate, how they change, and how they spread beyond their original purposes.

[1]  Edward J. Zajac,et al.  Decoupling Policy from Practice: The Case of Stock Repurchase Programs , 2001 .

[2]  M. Mizruchi.  What Do Interlocks Do? An Analysis, Critique, and Assessment of Research on Interlocking Directorates , 1996 .

[3]  Edward J. Zajac,et al.  The symbolic management of stockholders: Corporate governance reforms and shareholder reactions , 1998 .

[4]  B. Malkiel.  A Random Walk Down Wall Street , 1973 .

[5]  P. W. Macavoy,et al.  The Recurrent Crisis in Corporate Governance , 2003 .

[6]  Brad M. Barber,et al.  Challengers, Elites, and Owning Families: A Social Class Theory of Corporate Acquisitions in the 1960s , 2001 .

[7]  L. Zacharias,et al.  The Economic Structure of Corporate Law , 1993 .

[8]  A. Shleifer,et al.  The Politics of Corporate Governance Regulation , 2003 .

[9]  Gerald F. Davis,et al.  The Decline and Fall of the Conglomerate Firm in the 1980s: The Deinstitutionalization of an Organizational Form , 1994 .

[10]  Coffee,et al.  The Rise of Dispersed Ownership: The Roles of Law and the State in the Separation of Ownership and Control , 2001 .

[11]  Jeffrey N. Gordon.  The Shaping Force of Corporate Law in the New Economic Order , 1999 .

[12]  Gerald F. Davis,et al.  Top Management, Company Directors and Corporate Control , 2001 .

[13]  Mark S. Mizruchi,et al.  A Longitudinal Study of Borrowing by Large American Corporations , 1994 .

[14]  Ezra W. Zuckerman,et al.  The Categorical Imperative: Securities Analysts and the Illegitimacy Discount , 1999, American Journal of Sociology.

[15]  W. Ocasio,et al.  Institutionalized Action and Corporate Governance: The Reliance on Rules of CEO Succession , 1999 .

[16]  F. Modigliani,et al.  Security Markets versus Bank Finance: Legal Enforcement and Investors' Protection , 2000 .

[17]  M. Callon.  Introduction: The Embeddedness of Economic Markets in Economics , 1998 .

[18]  Christopher Marquis,et al.  The Pressure of the Past: Network Imprinting in Intercorporate Communities , 2003 .

[19]  Toby E. Stuart,et al.  Interorganizational Endorsements and the Performance of Entrepreneurial Ventures , 1999 .

[20]  James D. Westphal,et al.  Keeping Directors in Line: Social Distancing as a Control Mechanism in the Corporate Elite , 2003 .

[21]  Mark S. Granovetter.  Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness , 1985, American Journal of Sociology.

[22]  Andrew Ward,et al.  Embeddedness, Social Identity and Mobility: Why Firms Leave the NASDAQ and Join the New York Stock Exchange , 2000 .

[23]  Florencio López‐de‐Silanes,et al.  Law and Finance , 1996, Journal of Political Economy.

[24]  Timothy J. Vogus,et al.  Social Movements and Organization Theory: ELITE MOBILIZATIONS FOR ANTITAKEOVER LEGISLATION, 1982–1990 , 2004 .

[25]  E. Fama,et al.  Separation of Ownership and Control , 1983, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[26]  Pamela R. Haunschild,et al.  When Do Interlocks Matter?: Alternate Sources of Information and Interlock Influence , 1998 .

[27]  Edward J. Zajac,et al.  Substance and Symbolism in CEOs' Long-Term Incentive Plans , 1994 .

[28]  M. C. Jensen.  Takeovers: Their Causes and Consequences , 1988 .

[29]  R. Marris,et al.  The Economic Theory of ‘Managerial’ Capitalism , 1964 .

[30]  Brad M. Barber,et al.  The Friendly and Predatory Acquisition of Large U.S. Corporations in the 1960s: The Other Contested Terrain , 1995 .

[31]  A. Shleifer,et al.  A Survey of Corporate Governance , 1996 .

[32]  Bruce G. Carruthers,et al.  City of Capital: Politics and Markets in the English Financial Revolution , 1998 .

[33]  Ezra W. Zuckerman,et al.  Focusing the Corporate Product: Securities Analysts and De-diversification , 2000 .

[34]  J. Wolfers,et al.  Prediction Markets , 2003 .

[35]  Luigi Zingales,et al.  The great reversals: the politics of financial development in the twentieth century , 2003 .

[36]  Patricia H. Thornton,et al.  Institutional Logics and the Historical Contingency of Power in Organizations: Executive Succession in the Higher Education Publishing Industry, 1958– 19901 , 1999, American Journal of Sociology.

[37]  James D. Westphal,et al.  Accounting for the Explanations of CEO Compensation: Substance and Symbolism , 1995 .

[38]  Edward J. Zajac,et al.  Director reputation, CEO-board power, and the dynamics of board interlocks , 1996 .

[39]  G. Davis,et al.  Corporate Elite Networks and Governance Changes in the 1980s , 1997, American Journal of Sociology.

[40]  P. Tetlock,et al.  Social functionalist frameworks for judgment and choice: intuitive politicians, theologians, and prosecutors. , 2002, Psychological review.

[41]  M. Mizruchi,et al.  The Money Center Cannot Hold: Commercial Banks in the U.S. System of Corporate Governance , 1999 .