Conventional wisdom recommends the superiority of private ownership of enterprises. The reality confronts it with a rich diversity in ownership and governance structures. This volume examines five types of unorthodox ownership and governance form emerging in the industrial sector across major economies. It analyses two cases to demonstrate that there are alternative ways to harden budget constraints of state-owned enterprises. It investigates what forces have driven these new developments and what functioning mechanisms have underlain the adaptive dynamics. It also looks at relevant policy implications for developing and transition economies.

Thanks to the expanding role of these innovative ownership and governance forms in both the developed and developing economies, the perspectives and analyses presented in this book are of vital interest to various business people such as investment bankers, corporate lawyers, and business consultants, as wells as to regulators, policy-makers and scholars.

'This book, edited by Laixiang Sun, has evidently analyzed and compared emerging unorthodox ownership and governance structures in a knowledge intensive, informative and insightful format and has been designed in an elegant and accessible way towards both specialists and non-specialists. These works contain up-to-date case studies, development assessments, policy analyses, and literature reviews, and will be of interest to various business people, policy-consultants, regulators, policy-makers and scholars.' - Larry H.P. Lang, Chair Professor of Finance, Chinese University of Hong Kong and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing

'In the main the conventional wisdom predicts an economic landscape in which key institutional arrangements surrounding enterprises are expected to be fairly homogeneous and stable. The existence and evolution of diverse ownership configurations and varying forms of corporate governance in firms around the world presents enormous challenges to this view. This stimulating volume examines several interesting examples of 'real world heterogeneity' including the Mondragon Cooperative Consortium, U.S. ESOPs and Chinese TVEs. The volume provides rich institutional detail that meshes well with an eclectic theoretical framework. Students of the modern enterprise and policy makers in the fields of development and transition will find much thought-provoking material in this well-written and accessible volume.' - Derek C. Jones, Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY and Research Fellow, Davidson Institute, University of Michigan

List of Tables
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Notes on the Contributors
Adaptive Efficiency and the Evolving Diversity of Enterprise Ownership and Governance Forms: An Overview; L.Sun
Institutional Investors, Corporate Ownership and Corporate Governance: Global Perspectives; S.L.Gillan & L.T.Starks
New Institutional Arrangements for Product Innovation in Silicon Valley; H.Takizawa
Sharing Ownership via Employee Stock Ownership; J.C.Sesil, D.L.Kruse & J.R.Blasi
Hardening a Soft Budget Constraint through 'Upward Devolution' to a Supranational Institution: The Case of the European Union and Italian State-Owned Firms; E.Bertero & L.Rondi
Evolving and Functioning Mechanisms of Employee Stock Ownership in China's Township and Village Enterprises; L.Sun
Network Externalities and Cooperative Networks: Stylized Facts and Theory; S.C.Smith
Network Externalities and Cooperative Networks: A Comparative Case Study of Mondragón and La Lega with Implications for Developing and Transitional Countries; S.C.Smith
Index

LAIXIANG SUN is Professor-Chair of Chinese Business and Management at the Department of Financial and Management Studies, SOAS, University of London; Project Director at the United Nations University, WIDER, Helsinki, Finland; Economist at the International Institute for Applied System Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria; and Senior Research Fellow at the Guanhua School of Management, Peking University. He has written a number of articles which have been published in several international peer-reviewed journals.