Implementation of EU initiatives on gender diversity and executive directors’ pay in municipally-owned enterprises in Germany and The Netherlands

Abstract

A popular topic in the assessment of the functioning of municipally-owned enterprises is the corporate governance (CG) of such organizations. The results of the comparative study presented in this paper indicate that European Union initiatives on gender diversity and executive directors’ pay are often not implemented in public CG codes and in practice in municipally-owned enterprises in Germany and The Netherlands. The paper proposes that EU initiatives should specifically target municipally-owned enterprises and shows concrete hard and soft regulation options for national and international policy-makers and future research perspectives.

Keywords:

• Boards
• corporate governance
• corporate governance codes
• disclosure of remuneration
• diversity
• municipally-owned enterprises

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants in the Regional and Local Government permanent study group at the Toulouse EGPA Conference for their very helpful comments. In addition, we are grateful to Lucas Booltink, Thilo Krieg and Wijnand Roëling for their assistance with data collection.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ulf Papenfuß

Ulf Papenfuß is Professor of Public Management & Public Policy at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, Germany.

Marieke van Genugten

Marieke van Genugten is Assistant Professor of Public Administration, Radboud University, The Netherlands.

Johan de Kruijf

Johan de Kruijf is Assistant Professor of Public Administration, Radboud University.

Sandra van Thiel

Sandra van Thiel is Professor of Public Management, Radboud University.