Ownership and performance in European big business: the longitudinal perspective

This chapter assesses the relationship between the prevalent ownership structures of the largest European companies and their performance from a long-term perspective. It explicitly refers to the main analytical frameworks dealing with the subject: (a) The ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach, which emphasizes the persistence over time of different typologies of capitalist systems and thus of ownership structures generated from different institutional frameworks. (b) The corporate governance approach, dealing with the models of governance proper of the large corporations—basically the shareholder-value theory and the stakeholder models. (c) The corporate finance approach, which focuses on the causal relation between ownership structure and performances—an approach going back to Berle and Means’ seminal research. (d) The ‘strategy–structure–ownership’ approach, which emphasizes the relevance of strategic and structural/organizational variables in determining the outcome in terms of performance—whatever its measure.