The adoption of internet voting in general meetings of shareholders of companies listed in France: an institutionalist perspective

Abstract

The emergence of internet proxy voting in shareholders‘ general meetings (IV in SGM) is
seen by several corporate governance and information systems experts as a major innovation.
However very scant studies have examined its adoption by listed companies, and even
to a lesser degree the forces influencing this adoption. This paper uses an institutional perspective
to examine how the IV is adopted in France and what are the forces/pressures that
are likely to impact on such an adoption. On the basis of a qualitative and longitudinal
study, the analysis of the institutionalization process shows that this practice is an inprogress
institution (proto-institution). The findings highlight the joint influence of three
types of isomorphism on the adoption process of IV as well as the domination of coercive
and normative pressures at the detriment of the mimetic ones. The findings also underline
the hurdles to the usability of IV and reveal the opportunistic behavior of firms’ executives
with regard to its adoption inspite of their engagement in a process of collective construction
of an “organizing vision”. At a theoretical level, the article (1) uses an institutional
perspective to examine a new information technology which is not dedicated to the internal
users of the adopting company; and (2) extends the researches on e-government towards
corporate governance of listed companies. At a managerial level, the study offers
the diverse players a comprehensive analysis of the phenomena as well as the forces in play.
The originality of the research stems from the operationalization of the framework to a new
topic, given that studies of the adoption of IV in SGM are rare in the Anglo-Saxon countries
and, to our knowledge, nonexistent in France.