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Corporate governance,innovation and economic performance in the EU

Objective



The objective of this project is to make the analysis of the innovative enterprise central to current debates on corporate governance. Corporate governance is concerned with the institutions that influence the ways in which business corporations allocate resources and returns. Corporate governance is important for business enterprises because it both enables and proscribes strategic decisions concerning the types of investments they should make and to whom the returns on these investments should be distributed. Corporate governance is also important for national economies, and for the EU, because of the important role of corporations in the allocation of resources and returns on national and international levels. Within the EU many different national systems of corporate governance prevail, but both European integration and globalisation are creating pressures toward convergence to an "ideal" corporate governance system. An understanding of the relation between corporate governance and economic performance is therefore of profound importance to the evolution of the EU. The broad goal of this project is to enhance our understanding of the relation between systems of corporate governance and economic performance among the nations of the EU.

The specific objectives of this project are:
- to analyse how prevailing systems of corporate governance in EU nations influent the investment strategies and the distribution of corporate revenues of industrial corporations based in those nations;
- to compare the influence of corporate governance on corporate investment strategy and revenue distribution among EU nations and with the United States and Japan;
- to determine the extent to which increasing international competition and intergenerational dependence are creating pressures on national systems of corporate governance that will affect the incentives and abilities of corporation to invest in innovation and contribute to an equitable distribution of income;
- to elaborate the policy implications of the analysis of comparative corporate governance for economic growth, employment opportunities, and income distribution in the EU.

The work programme that derives from our perspective of the relation between corporate governance and innovative investment consists of four interconnected sections:
-International competition and European responses, consisting of cross-national industry studies in automobiles, aerospace, computers, machine tools, medical equipment, telecommunications equipment, and software, including (where relevant) the cases of Britain, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, and the Nordic countries as well as the United States and Japan;
-Intergenerational dependence in the EU nations, consisting of case studies for the European nations listed above of the extent to which the savings system are based on seeking higher returns from corporate securities as a primary means supporting retirement;
-National systems of corporate governance, consisting of case studies for the nations listed above of the institutions that influence how corporations allocate resources and returns and (drawing on the industry case studies) the implications for innovative investment strategies;
-Implications for corporate governance reform in the EU, consisting of a policy report containing proposals to encourage corporations to engage in innovative strategies that entail investments in broad and deep skill bases as well as a perspective on the institutions of corporate governance that would support superior performance in an integrated Europe.

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EUROPEAN INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
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