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The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

The purpose of this study is to examine corporate governance practices in an emerging economy. It focusses on how ownership control and board control systems operate in corporate organisations in an emergent economy, assuming that these systems are essential for enhancing good corporate governance practices in emerging countries.

The paper builds on descriptive multiple-case study with multiple units of analysis to divulge how ownership control and board control systems function to ensuring effective corporate governance in publicly listed corporate organisations in Ghana. A criterion-based sampling technique is used to select the companies. Thereafter, three techniques of data collection are used to gather data from the companies: archival records, semi-structured interviews and observation.

By linking the gathered data to the paper’s theoretical propositions, the study highlights that all the companies are characterised by the presence of large shareholders, and, in consequence, they tend to exert extensive control over the activities of the companies through their involvement in the decision-making processes. However, whilst the presence of large shareholders has the tendency to solve the agency problem, it poses challenges in regards to minority shareholders’ interests in these corporate organisations. The study also reveals that boards of directors tend to exercise control over corporate organisations when majority shareholders stop interfering in their dealings. This implies that when major shareholders fully partake in corporate decision-making processes of companies, boards of directors seem to be sheer advisory bodies to management.

This is a paper to shed light on corporate governance practices in four large publicly listed corporate organisations on the Ghana Stock Exchange, so the observable facts do not apply to other emergent economies. In addition, the sample does not represent all corporate organisations in Ghana; thus, the empirical observations cannot be generalised to other organisations that have not been included in this study. However, the empirical results can be applied to other similar corporations in Ghana and other emergent economies in an analytical sense. With the application of inductive reasoning, the results can be applied to provide important appreciation in an effort to understand the structure of corporate governance practices in organisations in developing countries.

A comparative analysis of the empirical observations from this study and the recommended guidelines of corporate governance of Ghana has been carried out, and aspects in which organisations need to reform and improve to fully comply with the guidelines are highlighted: director independence, director evaluation, introduction of new directors and board education. This could possibly be the foundation upon which corporate governance structures in these organisations can be restructured and further enhanced.

The majority of the studies of corporate governance in emergent economies have used quantitative techniques to examine the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and firm performance. However, this study takes a different approach to examine corporate governance practice in an emergent economy by using a comprehensive and defensible qualitative analysis to examine relations between ownership structure and shareholder control, and board of directors and board control. In addition, it highlights how ownership and board control systems interact in corporate organisations in emergent economies.

Corporate controls are mechanisms that corporations use to ensure that the processes and/or outcomes of their business units meet corporate expectations. Challenges in measurement of corporate controls have led many researchers to operationalize them as part of the more ambiguous corporate effects construct, instead of addressing them separately. The purpose of this paper is to examine the significance of “fit” between corporate control mechanisms and business unit strategy in performance of business units.

The authors use ordinary least squares regression analysis on data collected between 2010 and 2012 from surveys from managers of 142 Iranian corporations and 1,822 of their subsidiaries. The authors also use financial and market data collected by an IDRO division and accessed through partnership in a joint project.

The authors found that while the fit between business unit strategy and corporate controls has a significant effect on business unit financial performance, it does not have a similar effect on market performance. The findings demonstrate that when business unit managers perceive that they are subject to a balance of strategic and financial controls with a slightly greater emphasis on strategic controls, then business units have higher financial and market performance, although the difference in financial performance is not significant.

The authors find that the misfit between corporate controls and business strategies in such cases could negatively affect the performance of the business unit. However, this research also contributes to a better understanding of the importance of strategic controls to the successful performance of business units. The findings show that while the fit between controls and strategy is most critical for achieving financial performance in business units that pursue product leadership, strategic controls play a more prominent role than financial controls in achieving higher financial or market share performance for all business units.

The findings of the propositions in this research would discourage corporations with tight financial control from engaging in acquisition of businesses considered to be product leaders in their relative product markets.

Past research focusing on the fit between corporate-level factors and business-level factors and their role on business performance are largely limited to conceptual work. The limited empirical studies completed in the past generally reduce control mechanisms to lack or absence of autonomy. This shortcoming has been mainly due to difficulties in measurement of control mechanisms. The empirical study overcomes these barriers and in doing so, reveals surprising findings related to the effectiveness of different control mechanisms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the type of ultimate controllers (i.e. private vs state) affects corporate disclosure quality and whether the relationship between the type of ultimate controllers and corporate disclosure quality is moderated by the separation of ownership and control.

This study employs the data of 405 Chinese listed firms in 2005. Annual reports were reviewed to collect the data including the type of ultimate owners, cash‐flow rights, and control rights; and the ratings of corporate disclosure quality were obtained from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange website. Ordered logistic regression tested the hypotheses.

It was found that corporate disclosure quality is lower for firms ultimately controlled by individuals than for firms ultimately controlled by the state. Also, the negative effect of private ultimate ownership on corporate disclosure quality is stronger for firms with high deviation of cash‐flow rights and control rights.

These findings suggest that privatizing state‐owned companies may increase the expropriation of minority shareholders by controlling shareholders if the privatization does not reduce the separation of cash‐flow rights from control rights. Thus, it may be necessary to strengthen the governance role of minority shareholders and constrain the divergence between cash‐flow rights and control rights of the ultimate owners when state‐owned companies are privatized.

This study contributes to the literature on the expropriation of minority shareholders by examining the main effect of the type of ultimate controllers and the interactive effect of ultimate ownership type and the divergence of ownership and control on corporate disclosure quality.

Drawing on the literature on corporate diversification, the purpose of this paper is to shed light onto the influence of geographic dispersion on the effectiveness of control mechanisms in related diversified corporations. This research contends that control mechanisms implemented by corporations and the extent of geographic diversification play a role in the synergies expected from related diversification being realized.

This study uses OLS regression to analyze data collected through surveys from managers of 193 Iranian corporations and their 2,704 subsidiaries to examine the relationship between relatedness, corporate performance, geographic dispersion, and emphasis of strategic controls.

The author finds that a triple interaction effect between corporate strategy (diversification approach), controls mechanisms, and the extent of geographic diversification influences the overall performance of corporations. Findings of this research suggest that the positive effects of strategic controls in related diversified corporations are most when there is less geographic dispersion and will attenuate as corporations become more geographically disperse.

The findings of this research, have contributed to the extant literature in several ways. First, the findings further establish the superiority of related diversification to unrelated diversification in achieving economic performance in corporations. The findings reveal that, ceteris paribus, the more relatedness between activities of subsidiaries in corporations exists, higher performance can be expected at the corporate level. Second, the findings show once more that to achieve the higher performance that results from synergies in related diversified corporations, emphasis of strategic controls play a crucial and important role. Third, the author find that although the emphasis of strategic controls in essential to realizing the potentials in related diversified corporations, greater geographic dispersion attenuates the positive effects expected from stricter enforcement of strategic control mechanisms.

An important consequence of findings of this research is that managers should be more aware of the implications of selecting the geographic location of the subsidiaries that they either acquire or establish. While the literature focusing on corporate diversification has mainly focused on the differences between related and unrelated diversification, this paper brings a new factor into light. Therefore, the findings of this research provide the author with a better understanding of the factors that define success or failure in achieving financial objectives of corporations.

There has been very little done to investigate the factors that influence effectiveness of strategic controls in related diversified corporation. Much of this shortcoming has resulted due to difficulties in measurement of strategic controls their operationalization in empirical studies. This study has taken a step to that direction and therefore, provides a more coherent and clear picture of the factors that influence the overall performance in corporations.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Within the context of recent post-localism developments in the English local government, this paper aims to show, first, how management controls have become more enabling in response to changes in rules of public sector corporate governance and, secondly, how changes in management control systems gave rise to new corporate governance practices.

Theoretically, the paper mobilises the concept of enabling control to reflect on contemporary changes in public sector corporate governance. It draws on the International Federation of Accountants’ (IFAC) and Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy’s (CIPFA) new public sector governance and management control system model and data gathered from a longitudinal qualitative field study of a local authority in North East England. The field study used interviews, observation and documentation review.

This paper suggests specific ways in which the decentralisation of policymaking and performance measurement in a local authority (present case) gave rise to enabling corporate governance and how corporate governance and management control practices went some way to aid in the pursuit of the public interest. In particular, it shows that the management control system can be designed at the operational level to be enabling. The significance of global transparency for supporting corporate governance practices around public interest is observed. This paper reaffirms that accountability is but one element of public sector corporate governance. Rather, public sector corporate governance also pursues integrity, openness, defining outcomes, determining interventions, leadership and capacity and risk and performance management.

Insights into uses of such enabling practices in public sector corporate governance are relevant for many countries in which public sector funding has been cut, especially since the 2007/2008 global financial crisis.

This paper introduces the concept of enabling control into the public sector corporate governance and control debate by fleshing out the categories of public sector corporate governance and management control suggested recently by IFAC and CIPFA drawing on observed practices of a local government entity.

This study aims to evaluate the moderating impact of corporate governance on the relationship between internal control mechanisms and financial performance.

The study employs a structured questionnaire to collect data from 250 top managers of rural banks in the capital of Ghana. Cronbach alpha value and Fornell-Larcker tests were performed to assess the reliability and validity of the data used. The study adopted a partial least square structural equation model (PLS-SEM).

The results show that internal control and corporate governance both have a direct positive and significant impact on financial performance. Furthermore, the interaction of internal control and corporate governance also has a positive and significant impact on financial performance, thus confirming the moderating role of corporate governance in the relationship between internal control mechanisms and financial performance.

This implies that organizations need to strengthen their corporate governance procedures to increase the efficiency of their internal control systems, which would ultimately lead to an improvement in their financial performance.

The present study innovates by assessing the moderating role of corporate governance in the nexus between internal control mechanisms and financial performance. This moderating effect assessment implies that corporate governance may not only affect the technical implementation of the internal control structures but will subsequently make an impact on the overall performance of the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of strategic control and operational control on new venture performance in the China context.

This study tests the hypotheses in a sample of 83 new ventures that have equity investment by established firms and are founded between 1993 and 2007 that issued initial public offerings while not more than eight years old.

The results of this study show that: strategic control has a significantly negative relationship with new venture performance; operational control has a significantly positive relationship with new venture performance; industry relatedness between the corporate investor and the new venture and the new venture’s political ties moderate the relationships between the two types of control and new venture performance. The results are robust to alternative measurements of new venture performance.

The management control that the corporate investor exercises over the new venture is a significant determinant of the new venture success. Managers have to distinguish between strategic control and operational control and understand their impacts on new ventures.

This study highlights the issue of management of corporate venturing capital relationships from the new venture’s perspective. In addition, this study separates strategic and operational control within management control and examines how they influence new venture performance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the rights of shareholders, particularly those of minority shareholders in the management of firms in Ghana.

As a result of the largely unexplored nature of this issue in Ghana, a qualitative analysis was conducted to offer a painstaking understanding needed. The case study design is in particular relevant for exploring such phenomenon, as it evolves through the experiences of several key players.

Data indicate that minority shareholders’ influence is, in most cases, nil in every aspect of their firms. Whilst majority shareholders have an absolute right to appoint or influence the appointment of top officials of the firms, minority shareholders’ role in the selection is limited. In addition, in regards to control of corporate decision-making processes, unlike the majority shareholders, the minority shareholders do not have any influence on them. Further, in terms of relevant information, whilst the majority shareholders have absolute access to them anytime they desire, the minority shareholders only rely on annual general meetings to get hold of them, thus limiting their access to corporate information. The revelations unambiguously grant the majority shareholders of the firms absolute control rights whilst undermining the rights of the minority shareholders. This paper was concluded by itemizing the implications of our findings for management, regulators and governments.

It is believed that this is among the handful of studies that have been conducted using developing or emergent economy data to empirically analyse how minority shareholders wield their rights in emergent economies and to add to the mounting pool of scattered cross-country evidence.