We develop a contingency approach to explain how firm ownership influences the monitoring function of the board—measured as the magnitude of external audit fees contracted by the board—by extending agency theory to incorporate the resource dependence notion that boards have distinct incentives and abilities to monitor management. Analyses of data on Continental European companies reveal that while board independence and audit services are complementary when ownership is dispersed, this is not the case when ownership is concentrated—suggesting that ownership concentration and board composition become substitutes in terms of monitoring management. Additional analysis shows that the relationship between board composition and external audit fees is also contingent upon the type of the controlling shareholder. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Spanish savings banks (SBs) are financial institutions with a wide mission that includes different stakeholders' goals. Profit maximization is only one among several goals, and the widespread use of cost or profit efficiency as the only comparative performance measure may prove to be insufficient in this context. To overcome this problem, we build an aggregate performance index for organizations with multiple goals. Furthermore, we show how the ownership structure of SBs influences their economic behavior in two basic ways: (1) the performance level and (2) their goal priorities. In particular, we distinguish two types of ownership structures in our application, namely, organizations controlled by Public Administrations and those controlled by insiders (i.e. managers and workers). Our results indicate that each type has different priorities and differ in their performance indexes. More specifically, the empirical analysis shows that insider-controlled SBs favor goals related to profit maximization and the universal access to financial services and, furthermore, they perform better. In contrast, contributing to regional development becomes the most favored goal when Public Administrations have a majority in the bank.

ISO certification has become a pervasive mechanism adopted by firms to improve their operational performance. In this paper, we examine the operational and organizational factors that increase the likelihood of adopting ISO certification and the impact that ISO certification and ownership structure have upon firm performance. Using a sample of 163 Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1996-2000 we perform a rare events logit model and a regression analysis. Our findings show that firms producing intermediate goods that have implemented just-in-time practices are more likely to adopt ISO certification. Furthermore, we report a strong influence of the ownership structure upon ISO adoption policy, especially when a multinational firm is the largest shareholder. Empirical evidence supports that ISO certification and ownership structure positively impact firm performance. However, our results indicate that the positive impact of ISO certification on performance diminishes in firms where ownership is highly concentrated.