Rede

23/05/2008

Bruno Frey

The Corporate Governance of Benedictine Abbeys: What Can Stock Corporations Learn from Monasteries? - abstract and paper

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 friars lined their own pockets and convents 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-Württemberg, 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.

Links:

http://papers.isnie.org/toronto.html

http://www.iew.uzh.ch/chairs/frey/team/frey/publications.html

http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Revolution-Economics-Munich-Lectures/dp/0262062771/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211537667&sr=8-1

Escrito por Mateus Tavares da Silva Cozer às 07h15

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Corporate governance

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