Remembering the Dead: Agency, Authority, and Mortuary Practices in Interreligious Families in the United States

This chapter asks how cultural rules for treatment of the body and spirit of the deceased and for memorialization are adapted in mortuary ritual in a pluralistic society. Social and technological changes in the United States have challenged customary religious practices in which the nature of the dead and the authority of the clergy were established. New ideologies give increased agency to the deceased to express individual preferences. That agency extends to the expectation that as moral obligation to the deceased, family and friends will represent after death who the person was in life. The expression of ethics to honor the dead may be accomplished through modifications of ritual practice and the use of new technologies that democratize the sociocultural process of creating the meaning and memory of the deceased person

The Influence of Institutionally Embedded Ownership on Anglo-American Corporate Governance Migration into Emerging Economy IPO Firms

We argue that the corporate governance of emerging economy IPO firms is influenced by firm-specific institutionally embedded block ownership groups. Applying an extended institutional logic perspective and using a mixed-effects ordered probit model, our findings from 190 IPO-firms from 22 African countries 2000-2016, support the notion that five major block owner categories (corporate, private equity, non-executive, business group, state) exerts very different influence on African firms' degree of adoption of Anglo-American corporate governance measures. We find that the influence from the various block owner groups is significantly moderated by institutional quality and tribalism, but to different degrees and directions across block owner groups. Our contextually embedded firm-specific results support the criticism of a one-hat-fits-all global and uniform corporate governance model

The Role of Institutions in the Migration of Corporate Governance Practice into Emerging Economies The Case of Africa

This study examines the role of the institutional environment in influencing the migration of corporate governance best practice into 22 emerging African economies. Using a unique and comprehensive sample hand-collected sample of 202 IPO firms from across the continent, we adopt a novel institutional logics perspective in studying the diffusion of CEO salary disclosure - a central element of corporate transparency. Our findings reveal that the adoption of CEO salary disclosure by firms is more likely in more homogenous informal institutional contexts. Complementarities arising from disclosure originating from an Anglo-American shareholder value governance framework and indigenous formal institutions adhering to English common law infer disclosure is more likely than in contrasting civil code law contexts. Finally, firms with higher proportions of their boards of directors being drawn from indigenous social elites are less likely to disclose CEO salary - where this is reversed in the context of elevated institutional quality. Our findings are important for regulatory authorities, investors and policy makers alike who are involved in institutional improvements in emerging economies