Control Oriented Theories, Managerialism And Agency

There are three internal and one external governance mechanisms used for owners to govern managers to ensure they comply with their responsibility to satisfy stakeholders and shareholder’s needs. First, ownership concentration is stated as the number of large-block shareholders and the total percentage of the shares they own (Hitt, Ireland, Hoskisson, 2017, p. 317). Second, the board of directors which are elected by the shareholders. Their primary duty is to act in the owner’s best interest and to monitor and control the businesses top-level managers (Hitt, Ireland, Hoskisson, 2017, p. 319). Third, is the

Managers and shareholders are the utmost contributors of these conflicts, hence affecting the entire structural organization of a company, its managerial system and eventually to the company's societal responsibility. A corporation is well organized with stipulated division of responsibilities among the arms of the organizational structure, shareholders, directors, managers and corporate officers. However, conflicts between managers in most firms and shareholders have brought about agency problems. Shares and their trade have seen many companies rise to big investments. Shareholders keep the companies running

In this essay I plan to show what consequences there are from a separation of ownership from control and what effects could occur as a result. I will be arguing whether managers are worth the cost of hiring, to the business as a whole, giving examples of problems that may arise in these types of situations and what impact they can cause. The separation of ownership in large firms is when the owners appoint paid managers to run their businesses, causing ownership to be divorced from control. Diseconomies of scale are the forces that cause larger firms to produce goods and services at increased per-unit costs.

The idea of shareholder primacy dominates the business world today. An article from Harvard's school of business stated that shareholder primacy is so prevalent in the business to the mistaken fact that many individuals feel as though shareholders run the company from behind the scenes.This belief drives higher ups to run public firms with the great focus on raising the stock price. In the hope of maximizing shareholder value, this executive will sell key assets, fire loyal employees, and pressure the workforce that remains. Many individual directors and executives, Such as Lynn Stout, feel uneasy about these kinds of methods, stating that "a single-minded focus on share price may not serve the interests of society, the company, or shareholders themselves." The goal of this essay shows how and why Lynn Stout among other executives of corporate entities disagree with the idea of shareholder primacy.

The concept of principal-agent can explore in greater detail the barriers imposed for each party involved. Recited from Worthington, Britton and Rees (Pg 41, 2001), "firstly there is an imbalance in power between the principal and the agent; secondly there is likely to be a divergence of interests between the principal and the agent and the possibility of opportunism exists." One problem in assuming that businesses set price and output to maximize profits is the decision-taking; where the divorce between ownership and control, can be difficult to monitor. The shareholders may not always be aware that managers making the key day-to-day decisions are operating to maximize shareholder value. Hornby et al. indicates that different problems also associated with the P – A theory include ‘moral hazards ' and ‘adverse selections '. Both factors coincide with information deficiencies for both the shareholders and the managers. Another proposition by Hornby et al. signifies

There is a Chinese proverb that a fish rots from the head. This statement underlies the importance of leadership in any organized activity. In understanding the dichotomy between shareholders and management it is critical to define exactly what the role of the shareholder encompasses. According to Fama (1980), a shareholder is an individual that owns a part of a public or private corporation. To fulfill their role, shareholders must have certain skill sets to allow them to make good decisions for the firm. First, they must be comfortable in an authority position while being able to provide constructive

Agency relationships in a business organization exist between the principal, who are the owners or capital providers of the firm and the management, who form the agents. To avert conflict between the agents, the management should seek to fulfill the duties and responsibilities vested upon them by the principal. However, management actions may lead to agency costs, which may be excessive or unnecessary emanating from the agency conflict. The agency costs may entail excessive remunerations to self, neglect of duty, empire building by the management, pursuit of sales growth at the expense of shareholder wealth or profits, inadequate investment of corporate resources in potentially profitable ventures at the expense of the shareholders, assigning excessive perks to self, manipulation of dividend policy rather than wealth creation, and employee welfare objectives.

(This research has been grounded in agency theory, which seeks to solve what is known as the agency problem: that company owners and agents who work for them (management), don’t have the same economic interests, so the solution is to use incentives to align management’s interests with those of shareholders)

Another agency issue involves the stockholder-manager relationship. Because managers tend to be the primary decision makers of an organization, they may choose to make decisions in their best interest rather than in the best interest of the stockholders. With this, the principle of self-interested behavior comes in (Emery, et. al., 2007). Stockholders want to maximize their stockholder wealth while the goals of managers tend to be salary, power, status, and growth of the organization (Emery, et. al., 2007). This agency issue was apparent in the case study, “Level of Executive Pay.” In this case study, there was an investigation by the SEC into the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) because of its excessive payments to the NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso (Eldenburg, 2005). The NYSE is a private organization with

American Economists, Milton Friedman stated in his famous 1970 New York Times Magazine article, “the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation”, he continues with writing about how the manager’s primary “responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with [the owner’s] desires”. While at this time, this assumption was greatly appreciated considered, many economists have to come to the realization that there are a lot of flaws associated with this view. It has since then been developed and critiqued. In this essay, it is my intention to discuss the implications and problems that came along with Friedman’s opinion. Touching upon theories such as the principal-agent theory to solidify the limitations of this view in practice. I will also discuss the relationship between a shareholder-centered perspective and value-transfer and value-creation.

As the existence of productivity development and large-scale production, principal-agent relationship is widespread in various areas. However, when management and ownership in a company are separate, this action leads to the rising agency problems. The manager who makes the decisions prefers to develop the company in order to maximize their self-interest while those shareholders’ best interests may differ from the manager’s wish. Without efficient measures, the actions of agents are more likely to harm principal’s interests eventually.

Economic science teaches us that due to their subjective needs, individuals have subjective preferences, and hence different interest. Occasionally different subjective interests give rise to conflicts of interest between contracting partners. These conflicts of interest may result in turn, in one or both parties undertaking actions that may be against the interest of the other contracting partner. The primary reason for the divergence of objectives between managers and shareholders has been attributed to separation of ownership (shareholders) and control (management) in corporations. As a consequence, agency problems

As explained by Schelker (2013), the agency problem between the owners and the management of a firm is at the heart of the corporate governance literature. Hence, there is a need for a

The modern corporations can be characterized as a nexus of contracts (Jensen and Meckling, 1976). Among all the contracts in the firm, the agency contract entered, when a firm hired a chief executive officer (CEO), is of the most importance as CEO is the agent who acts on behalf of the shareholders to manage the firm. This contract tends to align the interest of shareholders and managers by basing managerial compensation on performance. Although the firm try to fulfil every aspect of terms in the employment agreements to guide the appropriate actions of managers, these contracts are incomplete as it is either impossible or prohibitively costly to fully observe manager actions. The imperfect characteristic of contract thus creates opportunities for the agent to “game the system” (Prendergast 1999). Groen-Xu (2013) indicates that the role of contract is precisely a formalization of the evaluation period, especially the final year of contract, where more weights are put on evaluating the performance. Thus, managers have strong incentives to engage in strategic behavior to influence the evaluation process during the contract expiration, when their performance is being assessed and their contracts are being renegotiated. The better performance result can impress and influence board of directors and shareholders, thus help CEO with their tenure renew and get improved contract terms in the new employment agreement. However, little is known about how CEOs respond to impending

There has been a lot of research done dealing with the issue of ownership and firm performance since Berle and Means (1932, with critical discussions on how to align the manager’s interests to that of the shareholders. Berle and Means (1932) hypothesised that firms that are controlled by the management should be less profitable than owner controlled firms. This is known as the “incentive alignment theory” which states that the more equity a manager owns the more inclined he or she is to increase performance because it means better alignment of the monetary incentives between the manager and other equity owners according to Jensen and Meckling (1976). The “Takeover premium theory” also states that that more equity ownership by the manager should improve performance as managers that own a large portion of the stock are more capable to fight takeover bids, therefore increasing the chances that a higher takeover premium will have to be paid, Stulz (1988).