Corporate Governance of Business Groups

The goal of this article is to offer an integrative framework for studying the governance of business groups. It begins with a brief summary of the studies focused on the governance of business groups. Next, it reviews key theoretical perspectives, including agency, resource dependence, institutional theory, and the rubber-stamp model. This article also examines how board roles may vary across groups in different nations. Next, it examines factors that affect how groups are organized, using the framework of horizontal and vertical connections proposed by Yiu and colleagues. Finally, it integrates these sections to lay out an agenda for future studies. It also develops a series of promising research questions across levels of analysis including the governance of business group types as well as member firms within the business group and institution differences and associated governance requirements.