The Nature of Corporate Governance


Book Description

This title presents a thoughtful inquiry into the nature and rationale of corporate governance. The authors address fundamental questions including: what is the balance between ownership and control? For whose interests should the company be run? What is the institutional balance between shareholders, directors and other potential stakeholders, including the economy? The authors consider how these issues are dealt with by the jurisprudence of three major and greatly influential jurisdictions; the USA, the UK, and Germany.




Speaking Out on Governance


Book Description

Winner of the GOLD Nonfiction Book Award presented by the Nonfiction Authors Association! Speaking Out on Governance presents a range of viewpoints concerning the role of today’s corporation and its board of directors. The author engages in candid discussion with subject matter experts including boardmembers, corporate attorneys, academics, institutional investors, regulators, and activists. These interviews of leading authorities in the corporate governance arena provide the reader with unique insight into the vitally important but often misunderstood role played by the board. Deborah Hicks Midanek discusses perspectives regarding what directors of businesses actually do and should do; the true motivations and concerns of the various parties seeking to influence corporate behavior; legal issues surrounding the board; and the key similarities and differences of opinion that may help improve effectiveness of all parties and increase board and director effectiveness. This book is essential reading for corporate directors and would-be directors, senior managers, attorneys, consultants and anyone interested in what drives organizational behavior.




OECD Principles of Corporate Governance


Book Description

Over the past decade, the world has witnessed a significant transformation in the role of the private sector in economic development and job creation. As more and more countries have adopted market-based approaches to economic policy, there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of private corporations for the welfare of individuals. A good corporate governance regime is central to the efficient use of corporate capital. Good corporate governance also helps to ensure that corporations take into account the interests of a wide rage of constituencies, as well as of the communities within which they operate, and that their boards are accountable to the company and the shareholders. This, in turn, helps to assure that corporations operate for the benefit of society as a whole. It helps to maintain the confidence of investors - both foreign and domestic - and to attract more long-term capital. The OECD Principles of Corporate Governance were endorsed by ministers at the OECD Council meeting at ministerial level on 26-27 May 1999. They were developed in response to a mandate given to the Organisation by the OECD Council meeting at ministerial level in 1998 to develop a set of standards and guidelines on good corporate governance.




Corporate Finance and Governance in Stakeholder Society


Book Description

This book develops a new framework - the stakeholder model - that helps to understand corporate finance and governance in modern society, where the sources of people’s happiness have shifted from monetary to non-monetary factors. The book takes a more comprehensive approach than is typically found in the standard economics and finance literature, by explicitly incorporating both the monetary and non-monetary interests of stakeholders and by examining the value creation of corporations from a much broader perspective. Specifically, the book addresses contemporary issues concerning corporate finance and governance worldwide, including: How should we define corporate value in stakeholder society? What is the role of modern corporations? What are the principles underlying corporate financing decisions? To what extent should shareholder rights be enhanced? What determines the effectiveness of a company’s board of directors? What missions do firms set out and what is the role of mission statements? How can we understand the diversity of financial and governance systems among different countries? What legal and institutional reforms enhance or diminish corporate value in stakeholder society? The book will answer these questions theoretically and empirically.




Comparative Corporate Governance


Book Description

This research handbook provides a state-of-the-art perspective on how corporate governance differs between countries around the world. It covers highly topical issues including corporate purpose, corporate social responsibility and shareholder activism.




Corporate Governance


Book Description

The decade since the publication of the Cadbury Report in1992 has seen growing interest in corporate governance. This growth has recently become an explosion with major corporate scandals such as WorldCom and Enron in the US, the international diffusion of corporate governance codes and wider interest in researching corporate governance in different institutional contexts and through different subject lenses. In view of these developments, this book will be a rigorous update and development of the editor’s earlier work, Corporate Governance: Economic, Management and Financial Issues. Each chapter, written by an expert in the subject offers a high level review of the topic, embracing material from financial accounting, strategy and economic perspectives.




Stakeholder Capitalism


Book Description

Reimagining our global economy so it becomes more sustainable and prosperous for all Our global economic system is broken. But we can replace the current picture of global upheaval, unsustainability, and uncertainty with one of an economy that works for all people, and the planet. First, we must eliminate rising income inequality within societies where productivity and wage growth has slowed. Second, we must reduce the dampening effect of monopoly market power wielded by large corporations on innovation and productivity gains. And finally, the short-sighted exploitation of natural resources that is corroding the environment and affecting the lives of many for the worse must end. The debate over the causes of the broken economy—laissez-faire government, poorly managed globalization, the rise of technology in favor of the few, or yet another reason—is wide open. Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet argues convincingly that if we don't start with recognizing the true shape of our problems, our current system will continue to fail us. To help us see our challenges more clearly, Schwab—the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum—looks for the real causes of our system's shortcomings, and for solutions in best practices from around the world in places as diverse as China, Denmark, Ethiopia, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Singapore. And in doing so, Schwab finds emerging examples of new ways of doing things that provide grounds for hope, including: Individual agency: how countries and policies can make a difference against large external forces A clearly defined social contract: agreement on shared values and goals allows government, business, and individuals to produce the most optimal outcomes Planning for future generations: short-sighted presentism harms our shared future, and that of those yet to be born Better measures of economic success: move beyond a myopic focus on GDP to more complete, human-scaled measures of societal flourishing By accurately describing our real situation, Stakeholder Capitalism is able to pinpoint achievable ways to deal with our problems. Chapter by chapter, Professor Schwab shows us that there are ways for everyone at all levels of society to reshape the broken pieces of the global economy and—country by country, company by company, and citizen by citizen—glue them back together in a way that benefits us all.




Rethinking Corporate Governance


Book Description

Now that the economic orthodoxy of 'light-touch' regulation has been widely discredited by recent events in the financial markets, and shareholder-oriented management has come under intense scrutiny, it is time to seriously consider the merits of stakeholder-oriented economies. In this far-reaching symposium on this aspect of comparative labour relations, 35 scholars examine case studies and evolving scenarios in a wide variety of countries, from leading economic powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany to post-socialist states such as Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria to the formidable global economic presences of Brazil, Russia, and India. With contributions from leading experts from all around the world in the fields of labour law, industrial relations, labour economics, labour statistics, human resources management, organization theory and other related subjects, the papers focus on the impact of the global economic crisis and its implications for the future of employment. Specific contexts covered include: ; adversarial versus strategic collective bargaining; transnational collective bargaining; long-term employees as the most valuable corporate stakeholders; workers' voice and participation in the restructuring of undertakings; privatization of state-owned companies; executive pay; investment in vocational training in times of economic crisis; the impact of the EU's Cross-Border Merger Directive; inherent dangers in the EMU one-size-fits-all monetary policy; and cases of large-scale corporate fraud. Of particular interest is the treatment of important developments in Singapore and Nigeria, as well as lessons to be learned from pitfalls encountered in South Africa and other countries. With its theoretical arguments and empirical data, this volume is certainly a major contribution to the debate over whether shareholder or stakeholder approaches to management yield the best results in terms of employment outcomes. As the world economic crisis continues to take its toll on employment, pension funds, public services, and living standards, the book is sure to find a wide audience among policymakers and lawyers worldwide concerned with the future of employment relations and their effect on both productivity and social stability. This volume includes a selection of papers from the Eighth International Conference in commemoration of Marco Biagi held at the Marco Biagi Foundation in Modena, Italy in March 2010.




Corporate Governance and Business Ethics


Book Description

This volume explores corporate governance from three perspectives: a traditional economic, a philosophical, and an integrated business ethics perspective. Corporate governance has enjoyed a long tradition in the English-speaking world of management sciences. Following its traditional understanding it is defined as leadership and control of a firm with the aim of securing the long-term survival and viability of that firm. But recent business scandals and financial crises continue to provide ample cause for concern and have all fuelled interest in the ethical aspects. As a result, corporate governance has been criticized by many social groups. Economic sciences have failed to provide a clear definition of the corporate governance concept. Complexity increases if we embed the economic approach of corporate governance in a philosophical context. This book seeks to define the concept by examining its economic, philosophical and business ethics foundations.




Corporate Governance Theory


Book Description

What is the reason for the existence of a firm? Why can some firms generate competitive advantages based on social capital, and others cannot? What are the underlying reasons for the opportunistic behaviors that drive firms to bankruptcy as in the case of Lehman Brothers? These kinds of questions have a common answer: corporate governance. These kinds of questions are the starting point in my research about corporate governance phenomenon. In order to find the answers to these kinds of questions, I have read many articles and books related to corporate governance. The more I have read about this phenomenon the more I have realized that I have been dealing with a complex conundrum (i.e. corporate governance). In other words, I have realized that scholars approach corporate governance phenomenon from different perspectives. Thus, all of these scholars define different aspects of this conundrum. At that point, I have realized that I have to find the common points of these theories in order to constitute a coherent model on corporate governance theory. In order to find answers to these important questions, the book should be read very carefully from the beginning to the end in order to see the whole picture about corporate governance conundrum. The book is expected to shed some light about the reasons of company failures in the recent global financial crisis. Suleyman Gokhan Gunay, PhD