EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Executives’ Behaviour and Innovation in Corporate Governance: The Case of Internet Voting at Shareholders’ General Meetings in French Listed Companies

Walid Cheffi

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The paper analyses the behaviour of French corporate executives towards the adoption of Internet voting at shareholders' general meetings. The research extends the studies of legitimation strategies and institutional theory to a new topic and a new instrument of corporate governance. Taking a qualitative approach, the paper examines the particular case of a technology that is adopted by a company for the benefit of its shareholders. It contributes theoretically by showing how executives respond to institutional pressures when responding could affect their own interests. The findings illustrate the nature and extent of six legitimation strategies used by executives when confronted by Internet shareholder voting. Interestingly, the results highlight the prevalence of manipulation and coalition-building strategies. A typology of adoption behaviours is also proposed. Interestingly, the results show how executives worry about the risk that Internet voting may lead to a loss of control. Overall, the paper argues that the relationship between shareholders and executives with regard to corporate governance is partially reversed by the adoption of Internet voting. Some theoretical and managerial implications of the paper for the literature on corporate governance and business ethics are discussed.

Keywords: Internet voting; Shareholders’ general meetings; Executives’ behaviours; Institutional pressures; Corporate governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-05-17
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, 156 (3), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-017-3586-3. ⟨10.1007/s10551-017-3586-3⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03242268

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3586-3

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03242268