to determine what actual practice is and then relate it to the theories

so that we could determine which theories have more validity than others.

What the research found that I think was surprising in terms of how important this factor is

is that a lot of managerial decision making

is intended to reduce the incidents of disagreement.

That they are really making decisions that they believe will generate

less rather than more controversy where where the likelihood that a decision might not be endorsed

by a major stakeholder group

is relatively low and that does shape how they do acquisitions, how they decide on capital structure

how they decide on dividend policy and that's really not yet

a mainstream of uh research in finance.

What this finds is that

when you're thinking about capital structure, think not only about the tax benefits

of debt, but also think about how taking on more leverage

is going to impede your ability to make certain decisions

because of the potential for disagreement

with creditors that you may not have if you're less leverage.

So, it's those sorts of insights that you would not necessarily get

by looking at the existing body

of research and finance that I think are very useful for executives as they think about financial decisions.