英语论文网

Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility: a comparative analysis of the UK and the US*
Ruth V. Aguilera**, Cynthia A. Williams,
John M. Conley and Deborah E. Rupp This paper argues that key differences between the UK and the US in the importance ascribed to a company’s social responsibilities (CSR) reflect differences in the corporate governance arrangements in these two countries. Specifically, we analyse the role of a salient type of owner in the UK and the US, institutional investors, in emphasising firm-level CSR actions. We explore differences between institutional investors in the UK and the US concerning CSR, and draw on a model of instrumental, relational and moral motives to explore why institutional investors in the UK are becoming concerned with firms’ social and environmental actions. We conclude with some suggestions for future research in this area.
Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, institutional investors, Anglo-American corporate governance system
Introduction cholars of corporate governance understand the world to be divided into two systems, the Anglo-American shareholder system and the Continental European/Japanese stakeholder system. They have used these contrasting models to explain differences in finance, ownership, labour relations and the role of the market for corporate control among the varieties of capitalism, as well as to explore the possibilities of convergence or continued divergence in corporate governance practices.
In such highly stylised portraits, primary attention is given to the ways in which each system differs from the other, often using an under-socialised view of the institutional and socio-political context in which firms operate (Aguilera and Jackson, 2003). Less attention has been paid to differences in corporate governance本Essay由代写Essay网www.51lunwen.org提供 within the “Anglo-American” system, though a number of recent studies have begun to explore those differences (Miller, 2000; Toms and Wright, 2005; Williams and Conley, 2005), or to country-by-country differences within the Continental European system, although S work has recently begun there as well (Federowicz and Aguilera, 2003; Aguilera, 2005; Clark and Wojcik, 2005; Gospel and Pendleton, 2005).
As stated by Toms and Wright, “it is a pity” that US/UK comparative work has been neglected, since “although there are important similarities [between the US and the UK corporate governance systems], there are also differences that have not been fully investigated” (2005, 267). Our paper undertakes one such investigation. We examine some salient differences between the corporate governance arrangements in the US and the UK by evaluating differing institutional investor composition and modes of action in the two markets, and by exploring the implications of such differences for the varying importance of “corporate responsibility” issues within the two countries. In so doing, we rely upon our prior comparative corporate governance work (Aguilera and Jackson, 2003; Williams and Conley, 2005), as well as our multi-level theoretical model of why different actors press companies to consider social responsibility issues, here applied to institutional investors
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE (Aguilera, Rupp, Williams, and Ganapathi, forthcoming).
The paper is organised as follows. In the next section we briefly describe the commonly- appreciated similarities between the UK and US corporate governance systems, and then discu本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。