Chapter 2 offers a detailed analysis of the characteristics of the scapegoat in organizations. In such contexts, it would not be credible for the scapegoats to be extraneous to the event that they are blamed for. It is therefore an individual, or a group of individuals, in some way involved in the event, who are blamed. They are an instrument of organizational rationality, strategically deployed by the organization to avoid any legal consequences and economic damage. Nevertheless, scapegoating also benefits the managers of the organization because their personal reputation can be damaged by their association with a tainted organization. The chapter presents some situations that can favor the creation of scapegoats: accidents, business scandals, organizational failures, crises, and policy fiascos. These events, particularly if amplified by the media, tend to generate scapegoats with the greatest frequency.

This chapter studies the ownership transformation of the Slovenian economy after 1991. Although the Slovenian ownership structure was not formally dominated by the state initially (due to so-called social ownership), it became so due to the distribution formula applied in the course of privatization. Until 2008, Slovenia was perceived as the new EU member state with the largest state holdings and the lowest share of foreign ownership. However, due to numerous management buyouts and ownership consolidations within and across industries before 2009, the landscape of Slovenian corporate ownership changed dramatically in the decade following the financial crisis. The main reason was that companies involved in management buyouts, mergers and acquisitions became insolvent after refinancing conditions tightened with the onset of the financial crisis. This led to radical changes in ownership through a series of foreign takeovers of troubled companies, the privatization of fifteen state-owned enterprises and all the banks receiving the state aid in the course of bank restructuring. This explains the radical increase in ownership concentration in the 100 largest Slovenian companies over the three decades and the rise of holding companies and foreign strategic investors as the main owners of the largest Slovenian companies in the late 2010s.

The introductory chapter presents an overview of the book. It starts with the basic research questions and the objectives of the book. One of the main objectives is to make available systematic and comparable accounts of ownership structure change (respectively, persistence) in large firms in eight European countries over the last few decades. The second main objective is to examine the likely determinants of ownership structure change in each country. The third objective is to apply an international comparative approach to ownership structure changes to shed some light on the questions of whether similar forces impact ownership change or persistence in each country, whether particular institutional factors influence ownership change/persistence, and whether the eventual decline of corporate insiders and the state and the rise of foreign and institutional investors are influenced by similar forces in each country. The chapter provides an overview of the global corporate governance revolution in the 1990s as well as its countervailing forces. It discusses the theoretical assumptions about the determinants of corporate ownership, the data used in the country chapters, and gives an overview over chapter contents. The chapter concludes with cross-country summary, implications for the theory of the firm and policy implications.

The United Kingdom was the first country to develop a code of best practice of corporate governance. This chapter gives a brief overview of UK corporate governance regulation, including recent reforms, followed by a discussion of the listing and disclosure rules. It then performs an empirical study of the control and ownership of the top 20, top 100 and the listed UK companies for two distinct points in time, i.e. the 1990s and 2018–2019. The following patterns emerge. Over the period ranging from the late 1990s to 2018–2019, the percentage of listed companies in the top 20 and top 100 suffered a substantial decrease. In contrast, the percentage of fully owned subsidiaries among the top UK companies shot up from virtually nil to more than half of such companies. Still, the average listed UK company remains widely held in 2018–2019 (Goergen and Renneboog, 2001). The chapter then proceeds by identifying potential determinants explaining the observed ownership changes. The chapter concludes with a number of reflections on how UK corporate ownership and control may change during the post-Brexit period.

This chapter analyses the ownership of Swiss corporations in the last decades. A main finding is that in listed companies, there has been a substantial decrease of the fraction of ownership by the top three shareholders. For example, for the listed companies ranked 21 to 100, the median stake of the three largest shareholders dropped from 42.5% in 2008 to 36.6% in 2018. More generally, the concentration of the disclosed shareholders has decreased. Non-domestic investors hold large stakes in companies listed in Switzerland and have become more important in the largest, most mature companies – not only have their share ownership significantly increased, but they are also more active in exercising their voting rights and in engaging with companies. We also provide some evidence, drawing on a series of surveys of market participants, that these developments, especially the presence and increasing activity of non-domestic investors, have direct implications on the governance practice of companies listed in Switzerland.

This chapter presents evidence on ownership and control in Germany. Ownership concentration dropped in the large German companies in the past few decades. Yet it remained relatively higher than in their counterparts in the Anglo-American world. There was a remarkable increase in the number of companies with dispersed ownership. Yet the widely held companies accounted for only 20% of the top 20 firms, 17% of the top 100 and about 21% of listed companies in 2018–2019. A few other patterns of ownership change have been documented: a decline in the share of other German companies (non-financial and holding companies), domestic banks and insurance companies, and the state as largest shareholders, and the rise of foreign investors. The role of families as key largest shareholders has varied by company size. The chapter also discusses the determinants of corporate ownership persistence and why the forces of path dependence stemming from the German national system of ‘coordinated market economy’ appear to be more powerful than the pressure coming from global markets and legal reforms in the 1990s.

Chapter 5 explores the same pathways but draws on different scholarship, as non-judicial remedy mechanisms represent a much broader set of administrative or mediation-based activities that can be initiated by state or non-state actors. The Institutional Strength pathway explores how rule of law influences access to non-judicial remedy. To inform the mechanisms that drive the Corporate Characteristics and Elevating Voices pathways, this chapter employs slack resource theory to explain why profitable firms might be more likely to engage in socially responsible practices, such as non-judicial remedy. This approach suggests that when firms have the slack, or extra resources to do good deeds, they will do so. Other scholars explore how firm size can also shape firm involvement in such activities; larger firms are more vulnerable to civil society pressure and, thus, may be more likely to engage in non-judicial remedy mechanisms. Detailed vignettes provide concrete illustrations of victims’ efforts to access to non-judicial remedy mechanisms.

Chapter 1 introduces the three different forms and types of use of the scapegoat concept: the archetypal figure/sacrificial victim, the innocent scapegoat, and the organizational scapegoat.