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The objective of this chapter is to introduce the new concept of outside-in-content, which facilitates a new perspective in the decoupling discourse. Based on the requirements for the contents of strategic communication, the concept of outside-in- and inside-out-content is introduced. The mechanisms of outside-in-content are explained using examples of practices from strategic communication management, such as sponsorship, corporate giving, celebrities and brand worlds. Next, the effects of outside-in-content are described. Lastly, in the context of the discourse on decoupling, the question of whether – or how – outside-in-content encourages talk–action inconsistency is answered. In inside-out-content, strategic communication looks within the organization for events, characteristics, services, persons and topics capable of attaining strategic communication targets. In the case of outside-in-content, the path is reversed: here, the selection process for strategic communication begins outside the organization and asks which existing or new events, persons or topics outside the organization are capable of attaining strategic communication goals and raising interest among the target group. Outside-in-content tends to be more reliable in attaining profile-raising and image goals. Outside-in-content encourages decoupling for three reasons: (1) like a lighthouse, it draws attention away from negative issues. (2) As neither-true-nor-false-content, it encourages noncommittal and arbitrary strategic communication. (3) If organizations no longer talk about themselves, or do so less frequently, talk and action can also no longer be examined using the standards of tight or loose coupling.

The funding of defined-benefit plans has garnered the attention of academicians, practitioners, and policymakers. Drawing upon agency and organizational control theories, this study investigates the implications of board independence on changes in defined-benefit funding. Using a panel dataset of S&P 500 companies sponsoring defined-benefit plans, the author finds that corporate boards matter. Specifically, CEO duality and outside director representation are associated with year-to-year decreases in defined-benefit funding. Conversely, outside director ownership is related to year-to-year increases in defined-benefit funding. Furthermore, outside director ownership moderated the relationship between outside director representation and defined-benefit funding such that outside director representation is associated with year-to-year increases in defined-benefit plan funding when the percentage of outside director ownership is high.

This study investigates the relationship between outside directors, managerial compensation, and firm performance in the Korean insurance industry.

The authors employ a simultaneous equation framework by using three-stage least squares (3SLS) to address the endogeneity problems that could result from the joint determination of outside directors, firm performance, and executive compensation in Korean insurance companies.

The authors find that the ratio of outside directors on the board is negatively associated with insurance firm's value and financial profitability. In addition, this study's evidence shows that greater representation on the board by outside directors leads to a higher level of executive pay. In particular, the authors provide evidence that variable compensation scheme and outside directors who have backgrounds in the legal profession and former high-ranking government officials drive this study's main results.

This study adds to the literature by first demonstrating the interaction effects between outside directors, firm performance, and executive compensation in the Korean insurance industry. Unlike previous studies that typically focus on US companies, the authors study the Korean insurance sector that is an emerging power in the global insurance market, ranking seventh in terms of total premium volume, and show that the Korean insurance firm's outside directors system does not work in the manner that it is intended to function.

Online ride-hailing platforms match drivers with passengers by receiving ride requests from passengers and forwarding them to the nearest driver. In this context, the low acceptance rate of offers by drivers leads to friction in the process of driver and passenger matching. What policies by the platform may increase the acceptance rate and by how much? What factors influence drivers' decisions to accept or reject offers and how much? Are drivers more likely to turn down a ride offer because they know that by rejecting it, they can quickly receive another offer, or do they reject offers due to the availability of outside options? This paper aims to answer such questions using a novel dataset from Tapsi, a ride-hailing platform located in Iran.

The authors specify a structural discrete dynamic programming model to evaluate how drivers decide whether to accept or reject a ride offer. Using this model, the authors quantitatively measure the effect of different policies that increase the acceptance rate. In this model, drivers compare the value of each ride offer with the value of outside options and the value of waiting for better offers before making a decision. The authors use the simulated method of moments (SMM) method to match the dynamic model with the data from Tapsi and estimate the model's parameters.

The authors find that the low driver acceptance rate is mainly due to the availability of a variety of outside options. Therefore, even hiding information from or imposing fines on drivers who reject ride offers cannot motivate drivers to accept more offers and does not affect drivers' welfare by a large amount. The results show that by hiding the information, the average acceptance rate increases by about 1.81 percentage point; while, it is 4.5 percentage points if there were no outside options. Moreover, results show that the imposition of a 10-min delay penalty increases acceptance rate by only 0.07 percentage points.

To answer the questions of the paper, the authors use a novel and new dataset from a ride-hailing company, Tapsi, located in a Middle East country, Iran and specify a structural discrete dynamic programming model to evaluate how drivers decide whether to accept or reject a ride offer. Using this model, the authors quantitatively measure the effect of different policies that could potentially increase the acceptance rate.

Agency theory suggests that if managers are not monitored, takeover negotiations may be contaminated by agency conflicts, which may weaken a firm's bargaining position. This paper argues that some blockholders are more effective monitors than others, and tests whether the negotiating power of a target or bidder is influenced by their respective blockholder composition. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper classifies target and bidder outside blockholders as either aggressive monitors or moderate monitors, and tests whether the degrees of monitoring effectiveness influence a firm's share of the total wealth created by the takeover (a proxy for bargaining power).

This paper finds that firms that have the types of outside blockholders with a greater tendency to monitor managers elicit higher takeover gains. This suggests that negotiating power in takeovers is conditioned on the types of blockholders that monitor the target and bidder. The results support the premise that better monitoring leads to higher gains for shareholders in a takeover. In particular, the findings suggest that the greater the tendency of outside blockholders to monitor managers, the lower the level of takeover-related agency conflicts and the stronger a firm's relative bargaining power.

These findings imply that agency conflicts on either side of a takeover bid may be reduced by better monitoring, but especially among bidders.

This study examines the relationship between board composition and firm value, and the extent to which this relationship may be affected by a company’s investment opportunity set. There is little research that examines this issue, particularly for the New Zealand market. Of the research that exists, and generally for the research that examines how board composition affects firm performance, the findings have been mixed. Using a randomly chosen sample, which improves the external validity of results from prior studies, we find that board composition of high growth option firms is positively related to firm value, and this relationship is maintained when more refined measures that proxy the characteristics of outside directors (such as tenure of outside directors, the level of outside director equity ownership, the number of other board positions held by outside directors, and the total proportion of non‐executive directors, including grey directors) are recognised.

This study aims to explore the changing nature of the inside sales role and the individual capabilities required for success. Additionally, it examines the influence of organizational structure on inside sales force capabilities. Although business-to-business firms are investing heavily in inside sales forces, academic research lags behind this evolution.

Using a two-study qualitative approach, the authors examine contemporary inside sales forces’ responsibilities and operational configurations. Study 1 uses a cross-industry sample of sales leaders and professionals to examine roles and responsibilities. Study 2 used the second sample of sales leaders and professionals to explore the impact of various organizational configurations.

The study identifies important differences between inside and outside salespeople in terms of job demands and resources; inside salespeople’s greater reliance on sales technology and analytics than outside counterparts; and existing control systems’ failure to provide resources and incentives to match with inside salespeople’s increasing strategic benefits and job demands. The study also explores four distinct inside–outside configurations. The differences among these configurations help to explain the distinct benefits and costs of each configuration regarding the company, customer and intra sales force processes, which, in turn, determine inside salespeople’s strategic benefits and job demands.

The authors discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for research on the evolving roles and capabilities of the inside sales force; antecedents and consequences of firms’ choice of inside–outside sales force configurations; and the impact of technology and the inside sales force. They propose a research agenda that includes a series of specific future research questions.

This study informs managers of the unique role of the inside sales force and how it differs from their outside counterpart. The results inform managers of the issues inherent to various inside sales configurations, helping them determine, which configuration best addresses their customers’ needs.

This research provides a detailed, updated account of the differences between inside and outside sales forces and the benefits/costs of major inside–outside sales force configurations. Drawing from job demands-resources, organizational structure and strategy-context fit theories, the authors develop research propositions about the underlying structural differences of inside-outside sales force configurations; how these differences drive the inside sales force’s increasing strategic benefits and job demands; and organizational choice of inside sales force configurations. A research agenda is then presented.

The purpose of this paper is to complement existing research of the relationship between concentrated ownership and firm performance by theoretically exploring the impact of outside blockholders on the firm, primarily from the perspective of voting power.

This paper proposes theoretical propositions based on analyses and logical extension of results of the existing theoretical and empirical studies.

This paper proposes three theoretical predictions: First, voting power provides outside blockholders a necessary condition to pursue shared and private benefits of control, and it is positively correlated with blockholders’ capability of influencing firm value. Second, everything else being equal, an outside blockholder is more (less) likely to pursue private benefits than shared benefits when the equity market is efficient and when the blockholder’s voting power is less (more) than 50 per cent. Third, controlling outside blockholders can capitalize on their voting power to appoint managerial delegates and board representatives to the invested firms for the purpose of pursuing private benefits of control.

This paper tries to make two contributions to the corporate governance literature. First, this research relies on a new perspective to explore the relationship between ownership structure and firm value. Second, this paper presents the first theoretical argument which states that controlling outside blockholders rely on their managerial delegates and board representatives to pursue their private benefits of control.

The purpose of this study is to examine the character of any market response to the appointment of outside directors. The main propositions tested are: whether the stock market responds unconditionally to these appointments or whether the market response is conditional on the degree of the agency problem faced by the firm and the affiliation of the appointees.

The authors use a New Zealand sample of the appointments of outside directors during the period from July 1999 to June 2004. The unconditional market response is examined analysing the abnormal returns generated by the appointing companies during the three‐day announcement period. The influences of the agency problem and the affiliation of directors are tested by employing multiple regressions.

The findings provide strong support for the second proposition; the market considers the degree of the agency problem faced by the firm and the affiliation of outside directors in responding to these appointments. The percentage of outside directors in the board emerged as the strongest governance mechanism which, together with firm size, posed a significant inverse influence on announcement period abnormal returns. A strong interaction effect between appointee status and the agency problem was not present.

The mere appointment of outside directors may not please the firm's investors. Such appointments are more useful for companies with severe agency conflicts; even if such a conflict is present, the affiliations that these outside directors have with the executives and the operations of the appointing companies may need to be considered in determining the value of such appointments.

This study draws on resource dependence theory (RDT) to explain a board's governance function in the United States (US) nonprofit healthcare industry. Specifically, while various nonprofit research studies have appealed to agency theory (AT) to explain the monitoring role of an outside board, RDT offers an alternative explanation that emphasizes an outside board's resource gathering role.

In drawing on the nonprofit GuideStar database, a fixed effect (FE) panel estimation was conducted on a sample of 230 US Non Profit Healthcare Organizations (NPHCOs). This panel estimation examines the relationship between the composition of an outside board and an NPHCO’s revenue and public support performance.

A key finding of this study is that the composition of an outside board involving its' number, compensation and gender impacts an NPHCO’s revenue and public support.

This study shows that the composition of an outside board impacts an NPHCO’s ability to gain access to external resources. As NPHCOs face increasing pressure to seek external forms of revenue support, this study suggests that boards should favor a larger number, compensation and female representation of outside members.

The composition of an outsider board can offer external sources of revenue support that lower the poor's requirements for financial assistance and thus affirm an NPHCO’s identity as a charitable organization.

As an NPHCO’s identity as a charitable organization is dependent on serving the medical needs of the poor, an outside board not only introduces a resource gathering function that is absent in the monitoring explanations of AT, but that this resource gathering function is important to affirming this identity.