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The Corporate Governance of Benedictine Abbeys: What can Stock Corporations Learn from Monasteries?
Katja Rost University of Zurich - Institute for Organization and Administrative Science Emil Inauen affiliation not provided to SSRN Margit Osterloh University of Zurich - Institute for Organization and Administrative Science Bruno S. Frey University of Zurich - Faculty of Business Administration - Institute for Empirical Research in Economics (IEW); CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute for Economic Research); Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich Abstract: The corporate governance structure of monasteries is analyzed to derive new insights into solving agency problems of modern corporations. In the long history of monasteries, some abbots and monks lined their own pockets and monasteries were undisciplined. Monasteries developed special systems to check these excesses and therefore were able to survive for centuries. These features are studied from an economic perspective. Benedictine monasteries in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and German speaking Switzerland have an average lifetime of almost 500 years and only a quarter of them broke up as a result of agency problems. We argue that this is due to an appropriate governance structure, relying strongly on the intrinsic motivation of the members and on internal control mechanisms.
Keywords: Corporate Governance, Principal-Agency-Theory, Psychological Economics, Monasteries, Benedictine Order JEL Classifications: D73, G3, L14, Z12 Working Paper SeriesDate posted: May 25, 2008 ; Last revised: February 12, 2009Suggested CitationContact Information
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