Corporate Governance Systems Diversity: A Coasian Perspective on Stakeholder Rights

Dorothee Feils (), Manzur Rahman and Florin Şabac
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Dorothee Feils: University of Alberta
Manzur Rahman: University of San Diego
Florin Şabac: University of Alberta

Journal of Business Ethics, 2018, vol. 150, issue 2, No 8, 466 pages

Abstract: Abstract We examine corporate governance diversity within a Coasian framework of stakeholder rights, where the central role of governance is to ensure that necessary firm-specific investments are made. This Coasian perspective on stakeholder theory offers a unifying framework towards a global theory of comparative corporate governance, bridging the gap between economic theories of the firm and stakeholder theory, also offering an economics-based alternative to agency theory that explicitly accounts for stakeholder rights. The Coasian perspective encompasses a diversity of corporate governance systems, but does not imply a unique global corporate governance benchmark. We posit that governance is firm dependent and endogenous conditional on the constraints imposed by a national governance system; consequently, there should be no systematic relationship between governance and firm performance once the national constraints are controlled for. However, the same national corporate governance system constraints confer comparative advantages to firms whose efficient levels of firm-specific investments are favored.

Keywords: Theory of the firm; Stakeholder rights; Firm-specific investments; Corporate governance systems; Comparative advantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3188-5

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