Gloria Cuevas-Rodríguez

This study examines the influence of board interlocks and former politicians on decisions regarding acquisitions in Spain. Our research suggests that board interlocks to other firms can positively influence operations in terms of acquisition scale. Our findings also show that this relationship is positively moderated by the presence of former politicians. That is, the effects of interlocks on acquisitions are amplified further when there are former politicians on boards, which confirms their role as community influentials. In the case of Spain, and under-regulated industries, this complementary effect is maintained. However, the role played by interlocks seems to be more important than former politicians, which means that board interlocks can replace other formal methods of acquiring information (through former politicians) while attempting acquisitions.

The aim of this paper is compare corporate governance and firm strategy before and after privatization. The design of control and performance evaluation systems in the pre and post-privatization periods is compared so that it can be understood in relation to the changes observed at a high corporate level (corporate governance and firm strategy). We carry out various case studies on five privatized Spanish companies. The results support several conclusions. First, the variables that are traditionally related to greater board independence in monitoring do not undergo variation after privatization. Second, the interests of the firms’ new ownership have an impact on firm strategy after privatization. Finally, control and performance evaluation system designs clearly align with firm strategy after privatization.

We examine the role of internal and external relational social capital (SC) as determinants of radical product innovation (RPI). By analysing both sides of SC, we provide interesting insights on their relative influence and their interaction effect on this type of innovation. Besides, traditional assumptions on SC and innovation are questioned. In our empirical study using a sample of 142 manufacturing and service companies we found that, of the two types of SC analysed, internal SC is the most relevant predictor of RPI in relation to either technological or market dimensions. The influence of external SC is not as strong as the internal one. Regarding their interaction effect, external SC reduces the positive effect of internal SC on the market dimension of RPI. Interesting implications arise for practitioners, who should pay special attention to the higher impact of internal SC on RPI and the need to carefully manage the difficulties that emerge when it is combined with external SC.

This paper explains, through a field study and from an agency perspective, how monitoring and incentive alignment mechanisms change to support the interests of a privatized firm's new ownership. In this case, privatization led to important changes in the board of directors and to more formal performance evaluation and compensation systems for top managers, as profitability and financial control gained relevancy with the firm ownership change. Our results show that differences in incentives management before and after privatization are due to different agency relations in the two periods. We also argue that in a privatization framework the relation between monitoring and incentive alignment mechanisms is complex, not simply substitutive as agency theory would predict, and this finding allows us to refine and extend agency theory for this specific context.