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This paper aims to explore organizational structure, efficiency and evolution, and its relationship to bureaucracy. A new mathematical model is utilized to generate theoretically consistent relationships between economic performance and organizational scale and structure, and to develop a taxonomy of organizational structure.

A systems approach is used to model structural evolution and generate consistent, testable hypotheses concerning organizational sustainability and financial performance. This theoretical treatment seeks to reconcile contradictory views of bureaucracy, modeling both positive and negative impacts on performance and behavior. A variant of agency theory is used as an organizing paradigm, based on three competing organizational needs: control, autonomy and ownership of consequences.

Simulations reveal that organizations evolve through five stages of development: from an entry (flat/parallel) stage, through a hybrid or mixed stage, to the massively serial (hierarchical) stage. As firms evolve, the risk/return ratio first falls as employment expands, but later rises as higher levels of hierarchy appear. Eventually, organizational complexity rises sufficiently to produce lower levels of managerial ownership of consequences and professional autonomy, as well as higher levels of control, leading to a collapse of organizational efficiency. A subtle variation of agency theory is revealed: upper-management may maximize organizational depth, increasing salary differences between levels.

This paper uses an internally consistent, deductive framework to elucidate relationships between task complexity, skill level, industry life-cycle and firm age – providing the first known attribute-based metric for organizational complexity. This approach is reminiscent of Perrow’s (1999) non-mathematical treatment of organizational systems complexity.

Investigates the differences in protocols between arbitral tribunals and courts, with particular emphasis on US, Greek and English law. Gives examples of each country and its way of using the law in specific circumstances, and shows the variations therein. Sums up that arbitration is much the better way to gok as it avoids delays and expenses, plus the vexation/frustration of normal litigation. Concludes that the US and Greek constitutions and common law tradition in England appear to allow involved parties to choose their own judge, who can thus be an arbitrator. Discusses e‐commerce and speculates on this for the future.

We conjecture that there are five stages to academic entrepreneurship: motivation, governance, selection, competition, and performance. The process of academic entrepreneurship originates with the motivation of faculty, universities, industry, and government to commercialize knowledge that originates within the university setting. The model conceptualizes that the governance and competitiveness of the commercialized knowledge moderate the mode selection and ultimately the performance of academic entrepreneurship. The conceptual and empirical support for the model are derived from a theory-driven synthesis of articles related to academic entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to study how corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviors can lead to corporate membership on Fortune Magazine’s Most Admired Companies list.

Regression analysis using environmental, social and governance (ESG) statistics published by MSCI-KLD as independent variables to predict the behaviors that lead to most admired status.

Not surprisingly, corporate financial performance (CFP) is the largest contributor to membership on the list. However, after controlling for CFP, the analysis finds that specific social responsibility behaviors contribute to membership on the Fortune list.

This paper finds that CSR behaviors are important to a firm’s reputation as measured by Fortune’s Most Admired Companies list. Therefore, companies should continue with social responsibility activities to improve their reputation with investors.

Many articles test the effect of ESG on financial performance and the role of financial performance on stock price. This paper is unique in that it measures the impact of CSR on corporate reputation using an important financial market benchmark – the Fortune Most Admired Companies list.

Strategy and entrepreneurship scholars have identified many benefits of signaling for new ventures to access resources in financial and other factor markets. However, scholars have not studied the extent to which new ventures can employ signals to hire new talent. This chapter investigates inventor mobility across biopharmaceutical new ventures and examines the effects of two signals, venture capitalist (VC) prominence and alliance network prominence. We suggest that VC prominence and alliance network prominence can provide assurances to prospective employees about a venture's resources and prospects, thereby facilitating inventor mobility owing to enhanced labor market efficiency. Empirical evidence from biopharmaceutical startups shows that new ventures can benefit from signals emanating from their ties to VCs and alliance partners and attract inventors to join them. We also find that these signaling effects attenuate as information asymmetry diminishes.

In M&A markets, acquirers face a hold-up problem of losing the value of investments they make in due diligence, negotiations, and post-acquisition planning if targets would pursue the options of waiting for better offers or selling to an alternative bidder. This chapter extends information economics to the literature on M&A contracting by arguing that such contracting problems are more likely to occur for targets with better outside options created by the information available on their resources and prospects. We also argue that acquirers address these contracting problems by using termination payment provisions to safeguard their investments. While previous research in corporate strategy and finance has suggested that certain factors can facilitate an acquisition by reducing a focal acquirer’s risk of adverse selection (e.g., signals, certifications), we note that these same factors can make the target attractive to other potential bidders and can exacerbate the risk of hold-up, thereby leading acquirers to use termination payment provisions as contractual safeguards.