Reaffirming the importance of managerial discretion in corporate governance: a comment on Andersen (2017)

Abstract

Purpose: A recent study by Jon Aarun Andersen argued that corporate governance research will improve if it abandons the concept of managerial discretion due to the lack of an empirical definition and measurement of the concept. In this paper, we comment on Andersen (2017) by suggesting that the theoretical reasoning employed in his work is not adequate and that the concept of managerial discretion is one of the core dimensions that should be studied when researching corporate governance.Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses theoretical frameworks from recent literature, definitions and empirical studies on the concept of managerial discretion and corporate governance.Findings: Several studies have empirical tested and measured the concept of managerial discretion and that other attempts have provided validity and reliability of the concept, other have showed the direct impact of discretion on firm performance. Practical implications:Research on managerial discretion provides owners and board of directors a clear advice on how much discretion can be granted to top executives by taking into consideration the different dimensions of the external and internal environment.Originality/value: This paper concludes that corporate governance research will not improve if it abandons the concept of managerial discretion.

Bibliometric analysis on corporate governance topics published in the journal ofCorporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in Society

“…The third group focuses on the adjustment of corporate governance systems, such as the development of a new code (Shehata, 2015), corporate governance compliance (Albu and Gîrbină, 2015), financial crisis consequences (Orazalin and Mahmood, 2019), e-corporate governance effectiveness (Abdennadher and Cheffi, 2020), COVID-19 pandemic (Tan, 2021), blockchain technology (Singh et al , 2020) and optimal corporate governance (ElKelish and Zervopoulos, 2022). In the fourth group, studies have analyzed the associations between corporate governance and different agency relationships, such as agency conflicts (Tompkins and Hendershott, 2012), shareholder activism (Ghahramani, 2013), relationships with stakeholders (Wanyama et al , 2013), separation between control and management (Carlo, 2014), executive compensation (Pereira, 2015), agency costs (Garanina and Kaikova, 2016), blockholders’ voting power (Wang, 2016), managerial discretion (Haj Youssef and Teng, 2019), institutional power (El-Diftar et al , 2017) and workplace happiness (Ravina-Ripoll et al , 2021). In the fifth group, studies focused on the corporate social responsibility perspective in corporate governance, such as an overview of CSR in corporate governance literature (Lund-Thomsen and Pillay, 2012), inequality within the company (Renouard and Lado, 2012) and the impact of CSR disclosure on financial analysts’ information (Cormier and Magnan, 2014).…”

Management Decision and Dual Innovation

“…According to the stewardship theory, when managers have high managerial discretion, they will feel trust and respect and pay more attention to the cooperative relationship, so the agency problem will be weakened, and corporate governance will be more efficient. The essence of corporate governance is to balance authorization and decentralization to enable enterprises to make scientific decisions and achieve the purpose of effective operation( [5]). When an enterprise endows senior managers with greater managerial discretion, it will make efforts to improve the corporate governance level in order to supervise their rights.…”

Assessment of Investment Attractiveness in European Countries by Artificial Neural Networks: What Competences are Needed to Make a Decision on Collective Well-Being?

“…Investor decisions on which the country chooses for investment depend on a number of different factors ranging from the price of the labour force, availability of the requisite competences, the country's geopolitical location, the tax system, intensity of market competition, and political stability in the country [59][60][61] to lobbying [62,63], managerial discretion [64], clusters, and networking [65]. All these factors are in line with the investment attractiveness concept.…”

“…Bakici et al [82] justify that the smartness approach is achieved through cooperation and networks among companies, institutions, and the citizens. Such soft factors as entrepreneurship [72,83], learning [71], managerial discretion [64], clusters, and networking [84] are distinguished as the determinants of the smartness approach. From the mid-2000s, the smartness approach started to be applied in the spatial context (i.e., urban planning, smart cities, and regions [78][79][80]85,86]), which is the methodological base to use this approach on the country level.…”