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This study investigated the impact of corporate ownership structure on agency costs in the insurance industry.

The study sample included 23 insurance companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) from 2010 to 2019. Panel regression was used to account for the firm- and time-specific unobservable variables and system-GMM estimation was used to address endogeneity concerns.

The results show that managerial ownership positively (negatively) affects selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses (assets turnover), implying that unmonitored managers engage in activities that serve their own interests rather than those of shareholders. The largest shareholder's ownership has no impact on agency costs, implying that the ownership of the largest shareholder is irrelevant. However, as the wedge between the percentage of capital owned by the largest shareholders and managers increases, SG&A expenses (efficiency ratio) decrease (increases), indicating that the existence of large non-management shareholders reduces agency costs. After accounting for the endogeneity problem, the impact of ownership structure on agency costs measured by asset turnover remains robust.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to provide unique evidence and useful insights into the determinants of agency costs from a frontier market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), with a focus on the insurance sector. Additionally, this study uses a new measure of separation between ownership and control by calculating the wedge between managers' and large shareholders' ownership.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how fairness evaluations are constructed in a B2B context.

This paper conducts a field study of Air Greenland and its internal and external customers based on strong structuration theory (Stones, 2005). The authors employ context and conduct analysis to analyze how fairness evaluations emerge across four levels of structuration.

The paper finds that fairness evaluations emerge as a result of the interaction between external institutional pressures, agents' internal structures, and situated reflection and outcomes. The construction of fairness evaluations was embedded in contradictory institutional structures, where groups of actors constructed different evaluations of fair profits, procedures and prices. Actors furthermore worked on changing position-practice relations which shifted relations, external structures and affected outcomes and fairness evaluations.

This paper offers a conceptualization of embedded agency as emerging across the four levels of structuration. This contributes to debates in strong structuration theory through conceptualizing and analyzing how actors may be both be constrained and oriented by structures while reflexively adapting structures across the four levels of structuration. The paper extends extant pricing fairness research by illustrating how actors' construction of fairness flexibly develop fairness evaluations while responding to legitimacy and societal demands, including the needs of particular customer groups.

Based on the agency theory, the purpose of this paper is to theoretically argue and empirically investigate how ownership structure impacts the capital structure of the listed mid‐cap companies in India and whether the capital structure as exogenous variable has a role in determining ownership structure as well.

Simultaneity between capital structure and ownership structure is checked through Hausman specification test on endogeneity. Fixed effect panel regression model is used to analyze five years of data (2005‐2009) on the sample units, to find the relation between leverage and ownership structure after controlling for profitability, risk, tangibility, growth and size.

Empirical results on Indian firms suggest that the ownership structure does impact capital structure but not the vice versa. Consistent with theoretical prediction empirical results reveal that the leverage is positively related to concentrated shareholding and has a negative relation with diffuseness of shareholding after controlling for profitability, risk, tangibility, growth and size. The findings are consistent with “managerial entrenchment hypothesis” and “pecking order theory” of capital structure.

The findings of the paper will enable the practitioners and analysts to understand as to why, in the bank and financial institution‐dominated debt financing system in India, leverage is closely associated with concentrated ownership pattern and why retained earning is a preferred vehicle of financing for the firms with diffused shareholding.

The results of the study enrich the literature on capital structure, agency cost and corporate governance issues in several ways.

Challenging the static view of family business governance, we propose a model of owner–manager relationships derived from the configurational analysis of managerial behavior and change in governance structure.

Stemming from social exchange theory and building on the 4C model proposed by Miller and Le Breton-Miller (2005), we consider the evolving owner–manager relationship in four main configurations. On the one hand, we account for family businesses shifting from a generalized to a restricted exchange system, and vice versa, according to whether a family manager misbehaves in a stewardship-oriented governance structure or a nonfamily manager succeeds in building a trusting relationship in an agency-oriented governance structure. On the other hand, we consider that family firms will strengthen a generalized exchange system, rather than a restricted one, according to whether a family manager contributes to the stewardship-oriented culture in the business or a nonfamily manager proves to be driven by extrinsic rewards. Four scenarios are analyzed in terms of the managerial behavior and governance structure that characterize the phases of the relationship between owners and managers.

Various factors trigger managerial behavior, making the firm deviate from or further build on what is assumed by stewardship and agency theories (i.e. proorganizational versus opportunistic behavior, respectively), which determine the governance structure over time. Workplace deviance, asymmetric altruism and patriarchy on the one hand, and proorganizational behavior, relationship building and long-term commitment on the other, are found to determine how the manager behaves and thus characterize the owner's reactions in terms of governance mechanisms. This enables us to present a dynamic view of governance structures, which adapt to the actual attitudes and behaviors of employed managers.

As time is a relevant dimension affecting individual behavior and triggering change in an organization, one must consider family business governance as being dynamic in nature. Moreover, it is not family membership that determines the most appropriate governance structure but the owner–manager relationship that evolves over time, thus contributing to the 4C model.

The proposed model integrates social exchange theory and the 4C model to predict changes in governance structure, as summarized in the final framework we propose.

The purpose of this article is to explore how agency is distributed between human actors and nonhuman elements in entrepreneurship.

It is based on an inductive longitudinal case study of a garden in a rural community in northern Sweden. The methodology includes an ethnography of the garden, spanning the course of 16 years, and a careful investigation of the entrepreneurial processes contained within it.

This article identifies and describes different practices to explain how agency is distributed between human actors and nonhuman elements in the garden's context. Three different practices were identified and discussed, namely “calling”, “resisting”, and “provoking”.

Agency/structure constitutes a longstanding conundrum in entrepreneurship and context. This study contributes to the on-going debate on context in entrepreneurship, and introduces a posthumanist perspective—particularly that of distributed agency—to theorising in entrepreneurship. Rather than focussing on a human (hero)-driven change process, induced through the exploitation of material objects, this novel perspective views entrepreneurship as both a human and a nonhuman venture, occurring through interactions located in particular places and times. Coming from the agency/structure dichotomy, this article reaches out for elements traditionally established on the structure side, distributing them to the agency side of the dichotomy. As such, it contributes to an understanding of the agency of nonhuman elements, and how they direct entrepreneurship in context. This theoretical development prepares entrepreneurship theories to be better able to engage with nonhuman elements and provides example solutions for the ongoing climate crisis.

This article develops an innovative multidisciplinary conceptual framework in the field of refugee entrepreneurship by combining the theory of mixed embeddedness with the concepts of intersectionality and agency. Focusing on the phenomenon of refugee entrepreneurship, this conceptual framework addresses the following questions: how is entrepreneurship informed by the various intersectional positions of refugees? And how do refugees exert their agency based on these intersecting identities?

By revising the mixed embeddedness approach and combining it with an intersectional approach, this study aims to develop a multidimensional conceptual framework.

This research illustrates how the intersectional positions of refugees impact their entrepreneurial motivations, resources and strategies. The authors' findings show that refugee entrepreneurship not only contributes to the economic independence of refugees in new societies but also creates opportunities for refugees to exert their agency.

This conceptual framework can be applied in empirical research and accordingly contributes to refugee entrepreneurship studies and intersectionality theory.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of corporate governance practised by co-operatives and mutual societies in New Zealand and whether there is any relationship between co-operatives’ ownership structure, capital structure and agency costs. The study also explores whether the capital structure and the ownership structure changed during the period 2005-2011.

Panel data for the period 2005-2011 are analysed using ordinary least squares regression and the Tobit model regression. The authors have used operating expense to sales, asset utilisation and ROA as the dependent variables.

The findings indicate that an increase in independent directors, board member experience and size (measured by total annual sales) reduces agency costs in co-operatives and mutuals in New Zealand. Also, borrowing from members rather than banks reduces agency cost and increases profitability in co-operatives and mutuals.

Caution should be exercised when generalising the findings of the study as it is restricted to New Zealand environment and the sample size used is relatively small.

This study offers insights for policy makers internationally who are interested in adopting similar corporate governance practices in their own countries. Within New Zealand, the corporate governance debate associated with co-operatives and mutual societies will be better informed as a direct consequence of this research.

This is the first study that extends the research undertaken by Ang et al. (2000) and Singh and Davidson (2003) to the cooperative and mutual business model in New Zealand.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which community policing within campus law enforcement agencies is influenced by the organizational structure, agency characteristics and campus characteristics.

This study utilizes ordinary least squares regression modeling to examine community policing implementation. Data were drawn from a sample of 242 US colleges and universities included in the 2011–2012 Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Survey of Campus Law Enforcement Agencies (SCLEA).

Findings show that within-campus law enforcement agencies, greater levels of community policing are associated with more formalization, larger numbers of employees, a higher task scope and higher rates of on-campus property crime.

Use of secondary data and reported crime rate limits the study. Future research should implement specialized surveys and qualitative methods to identify the specific needs and implementations of community policing.

This paper adds to the limited body of literature on the community policing in campus law enforcement through more recent data and the inclusion of campus community variables.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the argument that scholars' imputations of agency serve modern professional/institutional purposes other than the refinement of testable theories.

Data include articles from twenty‐first century issues of four gerontological journals. Content analysis involved coding articles for imputations of agency, constructivist analysis thereof, and the parties to whom authors directed their imputations.

Most authors rehearse theories of “structuration” and call for more imputations of agency to old people. They do this without imputing agency to privileged groups or to policy makers; and without settling theoretical question of how much agency people have or how scientists could demonstrate that. One article in ten provides constructivist critique.

Patterns in imputations of agency in other scholarly realms (such as books) may support another interpretation.

Scholars should treat their imputations of agency as political activities and not refinements of testable theories. They position professional scholars as advocates for an oppressed group.

This paper provides a sociological context for interpreting routine imputations of agency in social scientific and humanist scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of agency on basis of a pragmatist philosophy framework of analysis. Agency is a key analytical concept in management studies, debated in terms of its theoretical elements and its degree of empirical substantiation. Agency is commonly either assumed to be the case, understood as some generic human capacity to act with integrity, or, alternatively, agency is considered to be derived from social structures, say professional norms or occupational identities acquired through socialization. In contrast, in an attempt to escape the agency/structure model, agency may be considered as what is generated in and through meso-level interactions, constituted as recurrent practices wherein accomplishments in the past serve as the template for new activities that further reinforce agential capacities.

Drawing on the work of pragmatist philosopher Donald Davidson and what he calls the principle of charity, this paper presents an analytical model wherein agency is generated on basis of a shared everyday language wherein beliefs and preferences are constituted and thereafter serve as the basis of agential action.

Davidson’s externalist theory of action is supportive of the theory and study of meso-level interactions and helps to overcome the question whether agency is exogenously given or the effect of social structure.

This paper reviews recent social science literature on agency and introduces pragmatist philosophy concepts to better examine under what conditions social actors can reasonably have faith in an interaction being premised on beliefs that are held on basis of rational and reasonable grounds. This adds to an integrated theory of agency, being of importance for social theory and organizational analysis more specifically.