Questions about ownership and control occupy a lot of my cognitive energy. They are also important questions within finance, law, management, and economics. Is separating ownership and control a good idea? Most of modern finance is premised on the idea that it is a bad idea and that the resultant agency problem needs addressed using all sorts of incentives. However, Colin Mayer in Firm Commitment suggests that separating ownership from control may have been a helpful innovation in the evolution of the corporation in that third parties are more likely to enter commitments and contracts with firms which don't have a dominant owner. Along with two co-authors I argue in this article that the ability to separate ownership from control is one of the rationales for the corporation.
Michael Aldous and I had our book The CEO: The Rise and Fall of Britain's Captains of Industry published a few weeks ago. You can find out more about it and buy it at Cambridge University Press's website . It is also available at Amazon , Waterstones , and Barnes & Noble . The CEO has already been reviewed in The Sunday Times , The Observer and Financial Times .