Corporate governance (CG) needs to acknowledge the intentional part of governance, where an actor of governance uses the set of corporate governance mechanisms in order to influence the agent to create a performance that will satisfy the interest of the principal. This paper offers a conception of this activity through the concept of governance strategy. The concept is derived within the context of agency theory and applied to two empirical organisations seldom investigated in CG research: the organisation of a riding school in a democratic not-for-profit association and the organisation of multinational corporations in a business group.
The project is financed by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. An earlier version was presented at the Academy of Management Conference, Atlanta. Georgia, August 11-16, 2006. The paper has benefited from comments by Elin Smith, Kristianstad University.