Explore the vast range of titles available.

We provide evidence that the presence of technical expertise in firm governance structure reduces reliance on contractual incentives to control the potential agency problem for executives whose responsibilities require specialized knowledge. Specifically, we find that firms with financial expertise in the form of a board finance committee, or a chief executive officer with a financial background, tend to use lower levels of incentive-based compensation for their chief financial officers. Our findings suggest financial experts provide stronger oversight and/or direction with regard to firm financial policies and strategies, thereby allowing firms to reduce reliance on incentive compensation. Our study provides insight into the role of technical expertise and board committees in firm governance, and into the benefits of common functional expertise within top management teams.

Washington's “revolving door”––the movement from government service into the lobbying industry––is regarded as a major concern for policy-making. We study how ex-government staffers benefit from the personal connections acquired during their public service. Lobbyists with experience in the office of a US Senator suffer a 24 percent drop in generated revenue when that Senator leaves office. The effect is immediate, discontinuous around the exit period, and long-lasting. Consistent with the notion that lobbyists sell access to powerful politicians, the drop in revenue is increasing in the seniority of and committee assignments power held by the exiting politician.

This paper employs a new empirical approach for identifying the impact of government spending on the private sector. Our key innovation is to use changes in congressional committee chairmanships as a source of exogenous variation in state-level federal expenditures. We show that fiscal spending shocks appear to significantly dampen corporate investment activity. This retrenchment occurs within large and small states and is most pronounced among geographically concentrated firms. The effects are economically meaningful, and the mechanism—entirely distinct from interest rate and tax channels—suggests new considerations in assessing the impact of government spending on private-sector economic activity.

The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of inside directors sitting on finance and investment committees on US Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) performance. The study is based on a sample of 60 US equity REITs of which 31 are the REITs listed on the S&P 500 and 29 are a random sample of non-S&P 500 REITs for the 2010–2019 period. I use panel random regression models, controlling for heteroscedasticity and group correlation, to explore this research question. For the S&P 500 REITs, I find a positive relationship between the percentage of inside directors on investment but not finance committees and performance as measured by return on assets. These results are consistent with Fama and Jensen’s (J Law Econ 26(2):301–326, 1983) claim that inside directors provide valuable information to boards about the firm’s long-term investment decisions. For non-S&P 500 REITs, I find a negative relationship between insiders sitting on finance committees and REIT performance as measured by both return on assets and return on equity. The discrepancy in results between S&P 500 REITs and non-S&P 500 REITs is most likely due to their differences in REITs’ sizes and phase in the life cycle which is consistent with findings from previous research (Zahra and Pearce in J Manag 15(2):291–334, 1989; Linck et al. in J Financ Econ 87(2):308–328, 2008) and with the hypothesis that the optimal board design varies depending on the nature and firm-level characteristics of firms.

This study examines the presence and roles of female directors of U.S. Fortune 500 firms, focusing on committee assignments and director background. Prior work from almost two decades ago concludes that there is a systematic bias against females in assignment to top board committees. Examining a recent data set with a logistic regression model that controls for director and firm characteristics, director resource-dependence roles and interaction between director gender and director characteristics, we find that female directors are less likely than male directors to sit on executive committees and more likely than male directors to sit on public affairs committees. There is little if any evidence of systematic gender bias in director assignment to other board committees. We find some evidence that boards evaluate resource dependence differently for women than men.

PurposeThis study investigates the effect of corporate governance (CG) characteristics on corporate sustainability performance (CSP) and whether the magnitude of CSR expenditure mediates such a relationship in the context of an emerging and developing economy-Bangladesh.Design/methodology/approachThis study collects data from the annual reports of 30 private commercial banks listed with the Dhaka Stock Exchange for the period starting from 2013 to 2022, giving 300 firm-year observations. To test the hypotheses formulated, this study uses Baron and Kenny’s (1986) four-step model. Data have been analyzed using AMOS 23 to examine the direct and indirect effect of CG on sustainability performance.FindingsThis study finds that several CG variables (board size, board independence, sustainable finance committee) significantly affect several facets of sustainability performance (environmental, social, and financial performance). However, the mediating role of the magnitude of CSR expenditure in the relationship between CG mechanisms and sustainability performance is found to be limited.Research limitations/implicationsThe list of CG and ownership structure variables studied is not exhaustive, and the presence of a wide variation in the measurement of sustainability performance makes its measurement subjective to some extent.Originality/valueThis study uses the magnitude of CSR expenditure as a mediator in the relationship between CG and sustainability performance, which is rarely addressed by the extant literature in this field.

In Gilligan and Krehbiel's models of procedural choice in legislatures, a committee exerts costly effort to acquire private information about an unknown state of the world. Subsequent work on expertise, delegation, and lobbying has largely followed this approach. In contrast, we develop a model of information as policy valence. We use our model to analyze a procedural choice game, focusing on the effect of transferability, i.e., the extent to which information acquired to implement one policy option can be used to implement a different policy option. We find that when information is transferable, as in Gilligan and Krehbiel's models, closed rules can induce committee specialization. However, when information is policy-specific, open rules are actually superior for inducing specialization. The reason for this surprising result is that a committee lacking formal agenda power has a greater incentive to exercise informal agenda power by exerting costly effort to generate high-valence legislation.

We study the relation between stability of the nonprofit organization's environment and its board structure and the impact of this relation on organizational performance from the perspectives of both Agency Theory and Resource Dependence (Boundary Spanning) Theory. The impact of board characteristics on organizational performance is contextual. Specifically, we predict and show for a sample of U.S. nonprofits that board mechanisms related to monitoring are more likely to be effective for stable organizations, whereas board mechanisms related to boundary spanning are more effective for less stable organizations. We find that the two theories are complementary and address different aspects of nonprofit performance, but the results are statistically stronger and more often consistent with resource dependence than with agency theory. Overall, this study supports Miller-Millesen's (Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 32: 521–547 2003) contention that, because the nonprofit environment is often more complex and heterogeneous than the for-profit world, no one theory describes all tasks of nonprofit boards. Nous étudions la relation entre la stabilité de l'environnement de l'organisation à but non lucratif et la structure de son administration et l'impact de cette relation sur la performance organisationnelle dans les perspectives à la fois de la théorie d'institution et de la théorie de la dépendance aux ressources (partage de l'information). L'impact des caractéristiques de l'administration sur la performance organisationnelle est contextuel. Spécifiquement nous prédisons et montrons pour un échantillon d'organisations à but non lucratif des Etats Unis que les mécanismes d'administration liés à la surveillance sont vraisemblablement plus efficaces pour des organisations stables, alors que les mécanismes d'administration liés au partage d'information sont plus efficaces pour les organisations moins stables. Nous pensons que les deux théories sont complémentaires et parlent de différents aspects de la performance non lucrative, mais les résultats sont statistiquement meilleurs et souvent plus cohérents avec la dépendance à la ressource qu'avec la théorie d'institution. En somme, cette étude supporte l'affirmation de Miller-Millesen (Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 32: 521–547 2003) que, l'environnement des organisations à but non lucratif est souvent plus complexe et hétérogène que le monde du lucratif, aucune théorie ne décrit toutes les tâches de l'administration des organisations à but non lucratif. Wir untersuchen die Beziehung zwischen Stabilität des Umfeldes einer gemeinnützigen Organisation und der Struktur ihres Vorstandes und den Einfluss, den diese Beziehung auf organisatorische Leistungen aus Sicht von Agency Theory und Resource Dependence (Boundary Spanning) Theory hat. Der Einfluss der Charakteristika des Vorstandes auf die organisatorische Leistung ist kontextabhänging. Speziell prognostizieren und zeigen wir für eine Beispielgruppe von US-amerikanischen gemeinnützigen Organisationen, dass Verfahren des Vorstandes bezüglich Monitoring eher für stabile Organisationen wirken, während Verfahren des Vorstandes bezüglich Boundary Spanning eher für weniger stabile Organisationen erfolgreich sind. Wir finden, dass die beiden Theorien sich ergänzen und verschiedene Aspekte der Leistung von Nonprofits ansprechen, aber die Ergebnisse sind statistisch stärker und stimmen öfter mit der Resource Dependence Theory als mit der Agency Theory überein. Generell unterstützt diese Studie Miller-Millesens (Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 32: 521–547 2003) Behauptung, dass eine Theorie allein nicht alle Aufgaben von Vorstánden gemeinnütziger Organisationen beschreiben kann, weil das Umfeld gemeinnütziger Organisationen oft komplexer und heterogener ist als das von gewinnorientierten Organisationen. Estudiamos la relación entre la estabilidad del entorno de las organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro y la estructura de sus juntas, así como el impacto de esta relación sobre el rendimiento organizativo desde la perspectiva de dos teorías: la de agencias y la de dependencia de recursos (expansión de fronteras). El impacto de las características de las juntas sobre el rendimiento organizativo es contextual. En concreto: predecimos y demostramos con una muestra de ONG estadounidenses que los mecanismos de juntas relacionados con la supervisión tienen más posibilidad de ser eficaces para organizaciones estables, mientras que los mecanismos de juntas relacionados con la expansión de fronteras son más eficaces para las organizaciones menos estables. Descubrimos que las dos teorías son complementarias y que abordan distintos aspectos de los resultados de las sin ánimo de lucro, si bien los resultados son estadísticamente más sólidos y a menudo más coherentes en la teoría de la dependencia de recursos que en la teoría de agencias. En general, este estudio respalda la afirmación de Miller-Millesen (Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 32: 521–547 2003) según la cual, dado que el entorno sin ánimo de lucro es a menudo más complejo y heterogéneo que el mundo con ánimo de lucro, no existe ninguna teoría que pueda describir el trabajo de las juntas de las sin ánimo de lucro.

We exploit a large new dataset in order to revisit the determinants of \"legislative success\" in Congress. Previous studies have focused on one or (rarely) two Congresses. Ours is the first study based on panel data, allowing us to better measure such causal effects as how a member's productivity increases when they become a committee chair or their party attains a majority. While corroborating several previous findings, we also differ on several important points—e.g., whereas the most sophisticated previous study finds greater seniority and committee leadership posts boosting productivity in neither party, we find them boosting productivity in both.

In recent years, agency theory has substantially influenced research on corporate governance. Organizational sociologists have critiqued the agency theory model of boards as limited and have studied how the functioning of boards is shaped by structural, political, and cognitive contexts. Building on their work, this paper empirically studies the cultural embeddedness of boards in a nonprofit organization called Medlay. It shows how organizational identity—the members' shared beliefs about the central, enduring, and distinctive characteristics of the organization—influences the construction and enactment of the director's role and shapes interactions among board members and managers. The findings demonstrate that the role of the director is shaped by Medlay's Janus-faced identity, as both a volunteer-driven organization and a family of friends; directors see themselves as vigilant monitors and as friendly, supportive colleagues. The findings also portray how some board members' scrutiny of the budget, including \"lavish\" travel expenditures, surfaces the contradictions in Medlay's identity, and creates conflicts for directors. Should board members take manager to task and thereby exercise vigilance and uphold the ideal of volunteer control, or should they safeguard the principle of friendship and avoid all conflict? An influential subset of directors and top managers resolved the budget issue and preserved Medlay's identity by using different \"face-saving\" strategies to make directors feel that they had been vigilant, and to affirm sentiments of cooperation. More generally, this study extends the literature on corporate governance by showing how organizational identity influences the construction and enactment of the director's role. It introduces the idea of \"conflicts of commitment,\" a form of intra-role conflict that arises when directors are besieged by conflicting aspects of the organization's identity. When actions occur that breach the expected role performance of board members, latent contradictions in the organizational identity emerge, and directors are faced with the conflict of upholding one dimension of identity while undermining the other. The study also contributes to research on organizational identity by proposing a model of how organizational and individual identities shape the board role through the processes of identification and action, and how a hybrid identity generates the potential for intra-role conflict.