Breaches in the Boardroom: Organizational Identity and Conflicts of Commitment in a Nonprofit Organization

Abstract

Abstract Since the publication of Berle and Means’s (1932) classic thesis on the separation of ownership from management in large organizations, students of corporate governance have grappled with the problem of how to reduce potential conflicts of interest between shareholders and managers (Fligstein and Freeland 1995; Useem 1996). Agency theory, the dominant approach to research on corporate governance, holds that the separation of ownership from management constitutes an efficient division of labor. 14