‘This book is the outcome of an Ideas Factory that was held by the ESRC, the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) Research. The authors were encouraged ''to think outside their traditional research areas, reassess the key issues which impact on the topic of corporate governance and interact with colleagues in distinct disciplines''. The results of the project captured in this book perfectly meet the brief and make fascinating reading.’
Marco Becht, Executive Director - European Corporate Governance Institute, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium ’Research on corporate governance typically assumes linear relationships and clear, one-way directions of causality. This book argues that these assumptions are inappropriate and proposes a way forward to deal with the limitations of the existing literature. This is a must read for all scholars of corporate governance and anybody else who is interested in how corporations are governed.’
Luc Renneboog, Tilburg University, the Netherlands ’For too long the study of corporate governance has been constrained by the straight-jacket of the agency paradigm. Accepting that a rethink of corporate governance frameworks is long overdue, this study takes a multidisciplinary approach. Complexity theory, like systems theory before it, studies systems holistically, identifying relevant components, searching for interactions and feedback. This is an important work offering different interpretations, novel insights, and a new perspective for the study of the subject. We are a long way from a general theory of corporate governance, but this study points us in a new direction.’
R.I. (Bob) Tricker, University of Hong Kong and Founder Editor, Corporate Governance - An International Review