The Corporate Governance of Benedictine Abbeys: What can Stock Corporations Learn from Monasteries?

Katja Rost, Emil Inauen, Margit Osterloh and Bruno Frey

No 374, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: The corporate governance structure of monasteries is analyzed to derive new insights into solving agency problems of modern corporations. In the long history of monasteries, some abbots and monks lined their own pockets and monasteries were undisciplined. Monasteries developed special systems to check these excesses and therefore were able to survive for centuries. These features are studied from an economic perspective. Benedictine monasteries in Baden-W�rttemberg, Bavaria and German speaking Switzerland have an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them broke up as a result of agency problems. We argue that this is due to an appropriate governance structure, relying strongly on the intrinsic motivation of the members and on internal control mechanisms.

Keywords: Corporate Governance; Principal-Agency-Theory; Psychological Economics; Monasteries; Benedictine Order (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D73 G3 L14 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta, nep-his and nep-hpe
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:iewwpx:374

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