Decoupling Policy from Practice: The Case of Stock Repurchase Programs

By James D. Westphal, Edward J. Zajac. 2001

760 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Accounting, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5f0f4a1cee75d9695a25314ba38fe80256880a42

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Citations in the corpus

How firms respond to financial restatement : CEO successors and external reactions (2014, background): “…of CEO succession events and the public nature of the information is also particularly relevant to signal efforts to restore reputation, given that theory suggests that restoration efforts need to show consistency between external and internal actions (Pfarrer et al., 2008; Westphal & Zajac, 2001).”
Standing out from the crowd: the visibility-enhancing effects of IPO-related signals on alliance formation by entrepreneurial firms (2007, background): “…and announcements of 339 corporate actions – including adopting long-term incentive plans (Westphal and Zajac, 1994, 1998), stock repurchase plans (Westphal and Zajac, 2001; Zajac and Westphal, 2004) and corporate name changes (Lee, 2001) – can enhance organizational legitimacy and reduce…”
Using Organization Structure to Buffer Political Ties in Emerging Markets: A Case Study (2012, neutral): “In fact, research by Westphal and Zajac (2001) showed that large US firms created formal structures to address external pressures while not making any substantive changes in their organizational practices.”
Signaling Theory: A Review and Assessment (2011, background): “For instance, Westphal and Zajac (2001) describe how some firms that signal future stock repurchases do not actually purchase the stock; the authors refer to this discrepancy between formal plans and subsequent actions as decoupling.”
A decoupling perspective on circular business model implementation: Illustrations from Swedish apparel (2018, background): “Thus institutional theory argues that firms can, through decoupling, appear appropriate but still buffer their core processes from the many new trends and ideas regarding proper organizational conduct that circulate within their environments (Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2008; Bromley and Powell, 2012; Me”
Throwing Good Money after Bad? Political and Institutional Influences on Sequential Decision Making in the Venture Capital Industry (2007, methodology): “…498) argued that organizations “do not necessarily conform to [institutional pressures] because they are taken-for-granted, but often because they are rewarded for doing so” (see also Oliver, 1991; Palmer, Jennings, and Zhou, 1993; Westphal and Zajac, 2001; Guler, Guillén, and MacPherson, 2002).”
State Capacity, Minority Shareholder Protections, and Stock Market Development (2016, background): “For instance, the adoption of the shareholder view of the firm in certain countries was ceremonial or ritual in character (Westphal and Zajac, 2001), or it unfolded irrespective of other local realities that rendered it less effective (Tilcsik, 2010).”
Cognitive Underpinnings of Institutional Persistence and Change: A Framing Perspective (2006, background): “In one study, Westphal and Zajac (2001) found that the CEO’s power over the board was positively related to the firm’s decoupling of its stock buyback program from actual practice.”
The Harm of Symbolic Actions and Green-Washing: Corporate Actions and Communications on Environmental Performance and Their Financial Implications (2012, background): “Research has found that under pressures from the external environment, some companies respond symbolically with little to no substance (Westphal and Zajac 1998; Westphal and Zajac 2001), while others take substantive actions to address their environmental performance (Weaver et al. 1999).”
Pluralistic Ignorance in Corporate Boards and Firms' Strategic Persistence in Response to Low Firm Performance (2005, background): “Although there is evidence that the board’s independence affects certain policy outcomes, including executive compensation and CEO succession (Westphal and Zajac, 1994, 2001), there is little evidence that it has a significant effect on corporate strategy, and recent survey research does not…”
How Firms Respond to Mandatory Information Disclosure (2012, neutral): “…Edelman, 1992; Tolbert and Zucker, 1983) or on the degree to which organizational compliance with institutional demands is merely symbolic, involving no substantive changes to operations (Goodrick and Salancik, 1996; Okhmatovskiy and David, 2011; Toffel and Short, 2011; Westphal and Zajac, 2001).”
College Rankings as an Interorganizational Dependency: Establishing the Foundation for Strategic and Institutional Accounts (2011, background): “One of the foundational principles of neo-institutional theory is the idea of decoupling, or the process by which organizations seek to disconnect themselves from attempts by environmental actors to inspect core organizational activities (Meyer and Rowan 1977; see also Coburn 2004; Westphal and Zaja”