Search results

This paper aims to analyse the governance structure of monasteries to gain new insights and apply them to solve agency problems of modern corporations. In an historic analysis of crises and closures it asks, if Benedictine monasteries were and are capable of solving agency problems. The analysis shows that monasteries established basic governance instruments very early and therefore were able to survive for centuries.

The paper uses a dataset of all Benedictine abbeys that ever existed in Bavaria, Baden‐Württemberg, and German‐speaking Switzerland to determine their lifespan and the reasons for closures. The governance mechanisms are analyzed in detail. Finally, it draws conclusions relevant to the modern corporation. The theoretical foundations are based upon principal agency theory, psychological economics, as well as embeddedness theory.

The monasteries that are examined show an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them dissolved as a result of agency problems. This paper argues that this success is due to an appropriate governance structure that relies strongly on internal control mechanisms.

Benedictine monasteries and stock corporations differ fundamentally regarding their goals. Additional limitations of the monastic approach are the tendency to promote groupthink, the danger of dictatorship and the life long commitment.

The paper adds new insights into the corporate governance debate designed to solve current agency problems and facilitate better control.

By analyzing monasteries, a new approach is offered to understand the efficiency of internal behavioral incentives and their combination with external control mechanisms in corporate governance.

The aim of this study is to apply the concept of social norm dynamics to explain how corporate governance soft law is enforced.

Using data of German listed stock companies and of economic media coverage between 2001 and 2010, the authors observe the complex relationship between sanctions and behavior in the social context of corporate governance soft law.

The authors find the public discussion of normative demands related to corporate governance issues increases if firms do not comply with the German Corporate Governance Code. The authors show that groups of actors, such as DAX companies, represent the addressees of normative demands, i.e. targets of expectations about what is appropriate and what is not. The authors also find that normative demands tend to be personalized, as public discussion is greater when initiated by a specific individual or firm. Finally, the authors demonstrate that social control in terms of public sanctioning positively influences a firm’s compliance with the soft law whereby negative statements (disapproval) outweigh the effects of positive statements (approval).

We corroborate the social character of normative demands in the context of corporate governance soft law, and contribute to a better understanding of why soft law can work, despite it having no legally binding force. The results of our study suggest that sanction mechanisms in the context of social norms underpin the strength of soft law as an alternative to, or extension of, hard law.

The aim of this study is to outline principles for the writing of management history. First, it is argued that if management history is to advance, pessimism of both purpose and intellect must be dispelled. Authors must bring with them a sense of how their research leads to better organisations, institutions, workplaces, economies and social relationships. Second, it holds that the utilisation of the scientific method, based around the testing of research theses, drawn from our existing knowledge and contributing to that knowledge, is management history’s methodological bedrock.

Much opposition to scientific methods in historical research, most notably from postmodernists and poststructuralists, is based on false premises. Drawing on Poincare’s La Science et L’Hypothese (1902), this paper notes that there are no fundamental differences between research in the natural and historical sciences. All studies are conditional.

This editorial recommends five steps in writing management history. First, know how your sources were put together, by whom, for what purposes, what they sought to record and what they did not. Second, use multiple sources. Third, keep your research questions in mind, modifying them as evidence demands. As E.H. Carr observed, research theses are “the indispensable tools of thought”. Fourth, understand the social, intellectual and economic contexts of the study. Context is the key to understanding change. The more severe the restraint on change, the more significant is any change that breaks these bonds. Finally, use numbers as numbers count in history. While statistics must be subordinate to the theses, they allow more complex stories, be they of a society or micro-events within a firm.

The growth of postmodernist and poststructuralist research paradigms has created uncertainty with regards to both methods and purpose among management and business historians. This editorial includes a defence of the values of empirically based scientific research.

This paper reviews the recent “Women at the Top” Conference held in London by the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology and offers some suggestions for future research on women at the top.

The report is generated from attendee observations, notes, other reviews and podcast recordings following the conference.

Conference proceedings highlighted key areas of interest and current work for psychologists tackling the dearth of women leaders. A majority of presentations examined the role of stereotyping and prejudice in understanding leadership and gender, while a few others discussed contextual factors shaping women's leadership journeys such as life experiences and external parties such as head‐hunters. The limited focus on other diversity dimensions such as racio‐ethnicity is noted.

In light of the conference proceedings, the authors discuss how psychological research could further contribute to addressing the lack of women at the top of organisations. The authors suggest that models of stereotyping and prejudice in leadership need further contextualization and call for more research on multiple stakeholders accountable for women's leadership experiences, particularly those in positions of power and privilege such as current male leaders and Chairmen. Also stressed is the need for an intersectional approach which takes into account the multiple identities of women at the top.

The purpose of the present study is to tentatively contribute to paving the way for interdisciplinary research on the history of governance practices in ancient religious orders and on the significance of such governance for the orders’ performance and long-term survival.

The principal challenges of and proposed directions for such research on the comparative governance of old religious orders are illustrated through selected historic examples from Benedictine abbeys and Dominican monasteries, as they can be found in the yet scarce literature devoted to religious governance in the management field.

The authors’ review of research specifically devoted to the corporate governance of Benedictines and Dominicans illustrates the relevance of a hermeneutic grid derived from contemporary management research to better understand the historical dynamics of monastic governance and its relation to sustainability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to establish a hermeneutic grid for the systematic and comparative study of the dynamics of governance systems in old religions organisations and their impact on organisational performance and sustainability.

In Germany up until now, there has been very little research on staff development in schools. The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively assess school-based staff development and to describe the interplay between different instruments of staff development (e.g. classroom observations, development discussions) at the school level.

Considering that different constellations of organizational management tools may be differentially effective in different contexts (see Mintzberg, 1983/1992), an approach that takes a combination of different staff development instruments into account was chosen. Data were gathered from principals of primary and secondary schools in two federal states of Germany. Using regression, cluster analysis, and analysis of variance, the authors examined different instruments and patterns of staff development used in everyday school practice and determined how these affected the professional development of teachers.

Five staff development patterns could be identified. With regard to the extent of professional development activities of teachers, these patterns have been proven to have a different impact. Furthermore, the use of the different staff development patterns seems to be heavily dependent on the type of school.

Further research would be needed that examines if the three most relevant staff development patterns identified in this study can also be proven to be effective with regard to somewhat “harder” criteria than the extent of professional development activities of teachers. Such criteria could be teachers’ teaching skills or even student achievement.

The current study is the first to examine staff development in German schools systematically. The results provide some good leads for further studies in this area.