Are Corporate Governance Theories Relevant to Account for the History and Long- Term Survival of Old Catholic Orders?

Despite extensive research efforts, the causal link between various corporate governance practices and the long-term performance and survival of organizations is still largely unexplored. Various theoretical approaches aim at explaining a governance system's influence on organizational performance and sustainability over the long run, but few contemporaneous corporate organizations have experienced long enough lifespans to examine the underliyng assumtions consistently in a sound and consistent empirical setting. Catholic orders are among the oldest still existing organizations and hence present a unique opportunity to test theoretical assumptions about governance systems' capacity to influence long-term survival. This paper presents a structured inventory of the current state of research on the form and functions of the governance systems of three old Catholic orders (namely the Benedictines, Dominicans, and Jesuits) in historical perspective and confirms the relevance of this kind of approach.