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AbstractStorytelling has recently been discovered as an important tool for gaining the support of those external constituencies the organisation critically depends upon. This paper explores the narrative approach to public affairs by reporting an in‐depth case study of the storytelling practices of representatives of the global foods industry and environmental activist groups during the recent introduction of genetically modified food crops. The analysis reveals that these parties use competing versions of what are essentially the same narratives to gain the support of regulators and the public at large in the various market and non‐market arenas in which these groups compete. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications.

AbstractA giant wave of corporate restructuring has rolled through the global corporate landscape ever since the early 1980s, and to date there are still no signs of it slowing down. Much of the restructuring took place under the banner of increasing corporate financial performance, but a significant by‐product of the deep‐rooted organisational change it involves is additional strain on the organisation's relationships with employees, communities, taxpayers, governments and other stakeholders. This commentary paper first assesses four qualitatively different types of corporate restructuring and the corresponding techno‐rational explanations and justifications for their occurrence. Next, it demonstrates how these restructuring transactions can frustrate a firm's relationships with market and non‐market parties. It then goes beyond the techno‐rational perspective by discussing four types of public affairs instruments, and framing them as facilitating measures which companies can take to appease actors that have the potential to inhibit organisational restructuring efforts. The authors thus rethink corporate restructuring by focusing on the crucial role that public affairs activities can play in the management of the market and non‐market pressures associated with the redesign of organisational structures and portfolios. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications

Through an in-depth, historically embedded study of the craft revolution in Dutch beer brewing that began in the 1970s, we illuminate how organizational fields may experience regenerative change through the reemergence of traditional arrangements. The remarkable resurgence of craft in this context, following the rapid industrialization of the twentieth century that left only industrially produced pilsner in its wake, serves as the basis of our process theory of regenerative institutional change through logic reemergence. The results of our qualitative analysis show that institutional logics that appear dead or decomposed may never truly die, as they leave remnants behind that field actors can rediscover, repurpose, and reuse at later stages. We show how, in the Netherlands, networks of individuals that had access to the remnants of craft brewing were regenerated, in part fueled by increasing exposure to British, Belgian, and German craft brewing, and how these networks ultimately succeeded in reviving traditional prescriptions for beer and brewing, as well as restoring previously abandoned brewery forms and technologies and beer styles. These activities led not only to a sudden proliferation of alternatives to the dominant industrial pilsner but also to fundamental changes in the meaning and organization of beer brewing, as they were associated with the reinvigoration of institutional orders that preceded those of the corporation and the market. Yet we also observe how, on the ground, remnants of traditional craft often needed to be blended with contemporaneous elements from modern industrialism, as well as foreign representations of craft, to facilitate reemergence. We thus argue that regenerative institutional change likely resembles a dualistic process of restoration and transformation.

The dichotomous worlds hypothesis holds that corporate governance systems worldwide are either based on the Anglo‐American shareholder model or the Eurasian stakeholder model. We suggest a more fine‐grained classification, based on five corporate governance logics – socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which all parties involved in economic productive activities structure their material interdependencies and provide meaning to the social reality of corporate life. These logics are discovered through a content analysis of the corporate governance reform codes of 38 countries.

AbstractTo date, the field of non‐market strategy has little to offer in the way of an integrated perspective on the simultaneous management of strategic issues and corporate stakeholders. This paper employs social network analysis to make a number of theoretically grounded conjectures about the delicate relationships between stakeholder behaviour and issue evolution. It is found that social network analysis has the potential to enrich and integrate theoretical perspectives in the field of non‐market strategy, offering solutions to a set of previously unresolved puzzles. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications

We provide an analysis of the costs and benefits of blockholding in Europe, where it is a dominant, but certainly not universal, corporate governance strategy for shareholders of publicly listed firms. We find that the effectiveness of blockholding is conditioned by the specific labor institutions that distinguish European countries from the rest of the world, and that these institutional effects involve both competition and cooperation between blockholders and collective labor interests. We also find that relational blockholders are better able to cope with, or benefit from, these institutional effects than arm's-length blockholders. Empirically, we use advanced meta-analytic methods on a total sample of 748,569 firm-year observations, derived from 162 studies covering 23 European countries.

AbstractManuscript TypeEmpiricalResearch Question/IssueA contentious and prominent research question in the management literature is whether publicly listed family firms (FFs) outperform other types of corporations. Through a research synthesis of all available studies on the performance of US FFs, we address this question directly. We also extend the debate by raising three salient follow‐up questions. First, is the performance differential between FFs and non‐FFs attributable to a unique set of strategic choices? Second, do FF performance effects persist across generational transitions in FF control? Third, are performance differentials across generations attributable to intergenerational shifts in corporate governance and strategy?Research Findings/InsightsWith respect to our primary research question, we find that the balance of evidence indicates that (US) FFs outperform other types of public corporations. We also evaluate competing narratives regarding which strategies are characteristic of FFs, and demonstrate that their diversification, internationalization, and financing strategies mediate the FF‐performance relationship in manners consistent with the narratives advanced by certain leading FF scholars, but not others. Further, we find that the performance of (US) FFs drops dramatically after the first generation and show that this negative performance differential is due to the much more conservative patterns of strategic decision making enacted by successor generations.Theoretical/Academic ImplicationsIn addition to providing the most comprehensive evidence to date regarding the performance attributes of FFs, we nuance several theoretical debates concerning the propensity of FFs to diversify, internationalize, and leverage their equity capital.Practitioner/Policy ImplicationsWe identify value‐creating strategic choices of FFs related to internationalization, diversification, and capital structure. We also identify strategic choices often made in successor‐led FFs which reduce value. Both sets of findings are relevant to FF executives and consultants. The policy implications of the study are that in advanced liberal market economies high‐quality capital market institutions are likely to contribute to FF outperformance vis‐à‐vis other types of publicly listed firms, but these findings may not hold in other types of national governance systems or in emerging markets.