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Jean McGuire is Associate Professor of Management in the Faculty of Commerce at Concordia University, Montreal. She received her Pd.D. degree from Cornell University. Her research interests include organizational power, politics and conflict, executive compensation, and the measurement of firm performance.

The relationship between the clarity of proxy statement presentation of executive compensation, the level of compensation and firm performance was examined Consistent with the argument that firms attempt to avoid potential threats to legitimacy, clarity of presentation and the level of executive compensation were negatively related. There was no relation between firm performance and presentation clarity. Management stock ownership was not related to clarity of presentation.

This paper examines the evolution of debt and equity ties among keiretsu firms between the early 1990s and the later part of the decade. During this time frame, the stable shareholding relations characteristic of the Japanese inter-corporate network faced significant pressures from the opening of the Japanese equity market and globalization of financial markets. We investigate whether the traditional “stakeholder model” of the Japanese firm is threatened by North American “shareholder” models. Using multiple measures of keiretsu ties, our analysis suggests this is not the case. Overall, we provide evidence of strengthening ties, although in the case of equity, there has been an evolution away from institutional investors.

We analyze corporate governance mechanisms in Canadian and US firms. We show that despite similarities in governance practices in both countries, there are differences in the efficacy of these mechanisms. In particular, the performance of Canadian firms is less sensitive to ownership structure than that of US firms. Differences are also found in the performance implications of incentive pay. Our study suggests that country-specific governance trends persist among Canadian firms cross-listed in the United States. These findings may explain why Canadian firms which are cross-listed in the United States continue to trade at a discount compared to their US counterparts.

This study is an attempt to verify the mostly anecdotal or case‐based assertions regarding the imperviousness of Japanese management to the threats of large institutional stockholders. Using data drawn from 118 corporations in five industry sectors, and applying an econometric technique, we propose to verify the differences, if any, in the relationship of a set of eight firmlevel strategic attributes and corporate efficiency across two distinct institutional ownership settings: high versus low. The test results reveal a structural homogeneity across both settings, suggesting that Japanese managers are independent of pressures from institutional owners across high and low levels of ownership. The study’s academic and managerial implications are also given.

How family businesses (FBs) manage to survive in the long term is still not well understood in FB research. A promising concept to explain survivability, that is currently heavily discussed in the management literature is organizational ambidexterity (OA) – the ability to balance exploring and exploiting activities at the same time. However, FB research has not yet taken sufficient advantage of the potential of OA to contribute to explaining the ability of later-generation FBs to survive. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Using central tenets of agency theory, this conceptual paper draws together findings from the FB literature and the OA literature to create a framework for the relationship between family involvement and the ability to reach high levels of OA.

Seven propositions are developed which suggest that the level of family involvement in ownership and management affect the ability of later-generation FBs to reach high levels of OA. They further suggest that the number of family shareholders, the existence of majority family shareholders, and generational involvement of the controlling family in management moderate these relationships.

This is the first paper to theoretically analyze OA in later-generation FBs. The seven propositions and avenues for further research presented in this paper are intended to motivate FB research to take a closer look at OA. This may be crucial to better explaining and predicting one of business-owning families’ most important goals: the long-term survival of the FB.

Two models of organizational behavior are reviewed. The apolitical model describes a relatively stable and centralized monolith, while the political model describes a potentially unstable federation of self‐interested parties. It is argued that the apolitical model is largely predicated on social and generalized exchange and forces for stability, while the political model is largely predicated on economic and dyadic exchange and forces for instability. It is further argued that the contradictions inherent in these forces help fuel evolutionary change (where the apolitical model becomes most salient), punctuated by revolutionary change (where the political model becomes most salient). Thus, the two models apply simultaneously to organizational action, suggesting that the organization can be seen as both a stable monolith and an unstable coalition.