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The fledgling literature concerning institutional investors' impact on U.S. corporations has been plagued by mixed results. We argue that an improved understanding of an intervening variable--investor activism--may help to clarify future studies. In this article we synthesize the financial, legal, and management literature to arrive at an integrated model of twelve key variables that may lead to variations in these investors' levels of activism and, hence, their impact on firm behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines overseas investing by U.S.-domiciled pension plans. The authors explore whether U.S. pension plans invest based on corporate social performance (CSP) in a core overseas market, the United Kingdom. As a guide to social investing opportunities available to U.S. pension funds in the United Kingdom, their investments are compared to U.K.-domiciled pension plan domestic investments. U.S. labor union plan portfolios have a positive relationship with workplace practices, and U.S. private plan portfolios, with CSP's community dimension. U.S. state and foundation plan portfolios have no relationship with CSP. Other than union plans, U.S. pension plans stress corporate financial performance in their U.K. investments. U.K. union plan portfolios have a positive relationship with workplace practices, and U.K. state, foundation, and private plan portfolios with environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the innovation adoption characteristics of public organizations in the U.S. It assesses the role of managers in the adoption of innovations. It accordance with the surveyed data, characteristics for both innovation and managers greatly influence the adoption of innovation. Furthermore, it also states that innovation cost and sophisticatedness both do not impede the adoption of innovation.

This study examines whether particular attributes of innovative administrative practices associated with the new public management/reinventing government reform movement affect their adoption. The study uses three commonly cited attributes of innovation—cost, complexity, and relative advantage—and introduces a new one: ideological alignment. Using expert-panel and International City/County Management Association survey data, the role of the four attributes for 25 administrative innovations is analyzed across 725 U.S. local governments. Regression analysis suggests that ideological alignment (i.e., the innovation's embodiment of the new public management/reinventing government movement's ideals) and relative advantage (i.e., the innovation's beneficial impact on local government) are positively associated with the adoption of administrative innovations. The implications of findings are discussed for the process of innovation adoption and the roles of public administrators in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multidimensional empirical examinations of the adoption of innovations in organizations, and the influence of factors within each dimension on the phases of adoption, are scarce. This study examines the effects of environmental, organizational and top managers' characteristics on the initiation, adoption decision and implementation of innovation. Using a sample of approximately 1200 public organizations in the United States, we found that while each dimension accounts for unique variance in the adoption of innovation, organizational characteristics and top managers' attitudes toward innovation have a stronger influence than environmental and top managers' demographic characteristics. We also found no difference in the direction of effects of any antecedent, but did find differences in the significance of effects of several antecedents, on the phases of innovation adoption. We discuss the implications of these findings and suggest ideas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pension plans of U. S. state, county, and municipal employees play a large role in capital markets and corporate governance debates. Recent studies have investigated the governance, management and performance of these plans, as well as their role in corporate governance. Informed by the findings of its integrative literature review, the article outlines several key considerations regarding the plans, including ones regarding the bearing of investment risk, public and private plan differentials, the presence and responsibilities of boards of trustees, and investment policy. The outlined considerations favor an appropriate balance between political and economic controls of the plans and recognize that the activism of public pension plans as institutional investors might improve the corporate governance system for all investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public choice theory (PCT) assumes that elected officials and public administrators act in their self-interest, not in the public interest. This article tests the theory regarding the effects of public governance on U.S. public pension plans, which are increasingly important socioeconomic institutions. The authors develop several PCT-based hypotheses regarding the dependent variable of plan funding, a measure of plan performance. Data sources include biennial PENDAT survey data for 1992-1996. The results indicate limited support for PCT. A positive relationship between the presence of boards of trustees and plan funding is found, but no relationship between citizen voting and plan funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, the equity investments of individual investors are being channeled through financial institutions. This article posits that the role of institutional owners as financial intermediaries, and the resulting complexity that institutions bring to ownership, distinguish institutional ownership from individual ownership. I develop a model of institutional ownership, referred to asthe nexus agency model (NAM), which reflects this complexity. The model provides a framework for identifying the potential additional agency costs to beneficial owners that are associated with owning via financial institutions. The degree to which owning via institutions benefits individual owners depends on the adequacy of the legal and regulatory environment and governance mechanisms in protecting individual owners' interests. The applicability of the nexus model to different institutional owner types is then demonstrated in a discussion of U.S. public and private pension plans and mutual funds, leading to the generation of a NAM-based research agenda for each type and across the types. The article ends with discussion of the model's applicability to non-U.S. institutional environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]