MANAGERS’ENTRENCHMENT AND POWER

Abstract

Strategies that top managers implement to make them indispensables to the organizations, are known as entrenchment. This concept is little studied in corporate governance. These strategies seem to be a reaction of top managers to the different mechanisms of control, internal or external, and a necessary and compulsory path for those who wish to amplify their discretionary capacity. The entrenchment of top managers isn't a formal statute or official recognizance; it happens in a net of informal relationships that manager's control. It allows top managers to increase their own power near the stakeholders. Therefore, such power tends to be perceived as having an illegal power source. However, entrenchment of top managers isn't necessarily inefficient, it can be of benefit as long as it contributes value creation and to the development of the organization as a whole. Thus, it was tried to trace the path taken by this line of research in the recent past and to contribute to the promotion of empirical studies to strengthen this theme with results emanating from the organizations' practices.