Suchergebnisse

Board evaluations can contribute to effective boards and improved corporate financial performance. The increasing interest in the practice of board evaluations, however, calls for a more systematic and careful approach than has been employed in the past. While most attention has primarily been focused on the content of board evaluations, this article outlines the features of various possible board evaluation systems. Based on state‐of‐the‐art research on boards and governance, we contend that a comprehensive board evaluation system needs to include decisions about: (a) the agent who evaluates the board; (b) the content, or what the evaluation should deal with; (c) the addressee and other stakeholders for whom the board is evaluated; and (d) how the board is evaluated. These key decisions should not be seen as independent of each other as they have consequences for the kind of system that will be adopted. Following this argument, we present four different board evaluation systems: (i) board‐to‐board, (ii) board‐to‐market, (iii) market‐to‐board and (iv) market‐to‐market. The key message we communicate in this article is that there must be a fit between the purpose and the system of board evaluations. There is no universal or "one best way" to evaluate boards of directors. Board evaluations will not meet their purpose unless there is a fit between the agents, the addressees, the content and the modalities of the evaluation. It is important to know who is doing what for whom and how.

AbstractIn this paper we explore internationalization and export growth over time in a sample of 135 small manufacturing firms. By using concepts and arguments from literature on international business and small firms, the paper identifies six situational, or contingency, factors that are expected to influence the international activities of small firms. Our results show that a dynamic and fast‐changing environment may push small firms to go abroad, while it seems to be the experiences built up in the organization and a younger generation of CEOs that can explain why some small firms continue to expand their international activities. The findings suggest that the factors influencing small firms to go abroad and become international differ from the factors that influence them to continue and grow once they are on the international marketplace. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings, together with suggestions for further research.RésuméDans cet article, nous analysons, à partir d'un échantillon de 135 petites firmes manufacturières, l'impact, au fil du temps, de l'internationalisation et de la croissance de l'exportation. Grâce à l'utilisation des concepts et d'arguments tirés de la littérature sur le commerce international et sur les petites entreprises, nous dégageons six facteurs situationnels et conjoncturels qui sont censés avoir un impact sur les activités internationales des petites entreprises. Nos résultats indiquent qu'un environnement dynamique et en mutation rapide peut être à l'origine de l'internationalisation des petites entreprises. Bien plus, les expériences acquises dans l'organisation et le rajeunissement des cadres expliqueraient pourquoi certaines petites entreprises continuent à étendre leurs activités internationales. Les résultats montrent aussi que les facteurs qui poussent les petites entreprises à s'exporter et à s'internationaliser sont différents de ceux qui les poussent à continuer à croître une fois qu'elles sont sur le marché international. Nous bouclons notre étude par une analyse des résultats et une proposition des pistes de recherche futures.

ABSTRACTManuscript Type: ReviewResearch Question/Issue: A coherent alternative to an economic approach of corporate governance is missing. In this paper we take steps towards developing a behavioral theory of boards and corporate governance.Research Findings/Results: Building upon concepts such as political bargaining, routinization of decision making, satisficing, and problemistic search, a behavioral theory of boards and corporate governance will focus more on (1) interactions and processes inside and outside the boardroom; (2) the fact that decision making is made by coalitions of actors and objectives are results of political bargaining; and (3) the notion that not only conflicting, but also cooperating, interests are parts of the boards' decision making and control over firm resources.Theoretical Implications: The consequences are a new research agenda for boards and corporate governance. The agenda will focus on actual instead of stylized descriptions of board behavior. In a behavioral perspective the emphasis on problems of coordination, exploration, and knowledge creation may dominate over problems of conflict of interest, exploitation, and the distribution of value. A future research agenda based on a behavioral framework calls for novel and adventurous research designs.Practical Implications: A behavioral theory of boards and corporate governance will be closer to actual board behavior than the traditional economic approach and research about boards and corporate governance may thus become more actionable for practitioners.

Prior cross-country governance studies mainly built on agency theory's governance model. Recently, the use of this theoretical perspective has been criticized from both institutional theory as well as the behavioural perspective. Institutional theory would predict that a significant part of the variation in board behaviour could be attributed to the institutional context of a country. In contrast, the behavioural perspective follows the reasoning that board behaviour is expected to be determined by firm-specific challenges and needs rather than the broader institutional context and hence, predicts that the institutional context of a country does not explain variation in actual board behaviour. The aim of this study is to examine the empirical validity of these opposing predictions about board behaviour. Using a database of SMEs of three countries with a different governance system (Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway), our statistical analyses mainly support the predictions of the behavioural perspective.

Prior evidence suggests that board independence may enhance financial performance, but this relationship has been tested almost exclusively for Anglo-American countries. To explore the boundary conditions of this prominent governance mechanism, we examine the impact of the formal and information institutions of 18 national business systems on the board independence-financial performance relationship. Our results show that while the direct effect of independence is weak, national-level institutions significantly moderate the independence-performance relationship. Our findings suggest that the efficacy of board structures is likely to be contingent on the specific national context, but the type of legal system is insignificant.