Download or read book Icarus in the Boardroom written by David Skeel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans have always loved risktakers. Like the Icarus of ancient Greek lore, however, even the most talented entrepreneurs can overstep their bounds. All too often, the very qualities that make Icaran executives special-- self-confidence, visionary insight, and extreme competitiveness--spur them to take misguided and even illegal chances. The Icaran failure of an ordinary entrepreneur isn't headline news. But put Icarus in the corporate boardroom and, as David Skeel vividly demonstrates, the ripple effects can be profound. Ever since the first large-scale corporations emerged in the nineteenth century, their ability to tap huge amounts of capital and the sheer number of lives they affect has meant that their executives play for far greater stakes. Excessive and sometimes fraudulent risks, competition, and the increasing size and complexity of organizations: these three factors have been at the heart of every corporate breakdown from 1873, when financial genius Jay Cooke collapsed, to the corporate scandals of the early 21st century. Compounding the scandals is an ongoing cat-and-mouse game between regulators' efforts to police the three factors that lead to Icarus Effect failures and efforts by corporate America to evade this regulation in the name of efficiency and flexibility. These efforts to side-step oversight can rapidly spiral out of control, setting the stage for the devastating corporate failures that punctuate American business history. But there is also a silver lining to the stunning failures: the outrage they provoke galvanizes public opinion in favor of corporate reform. The most important American business regulation has always been enacted in response to a major breakdown in corporate America. Today's business environment poses unprecedented perils for the average American as for the first time ever, more than half of Americans now own stock. Identifying the problems of the past, Skeel offers a strikingly new diagnosis of the fundamental flaws in corporate America today, and of what can be done to fix them.
Download or read book Outsourcing the Board written by Stephen M. Bainbridge and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking work, Stephen M. Bainbridge and M. Todd Henderson change the conversation about corporate governance by examining the origins, roles, and performance of boards with a simple question in mind: why does the law require governance to be delivered through individual board members? While tracing the development of boards from quasi-political bodies through the current 'monitoring' role, the authors find the reasons for this requirement to be wanting. Instead, they propose that corporations be permitted to hire other business associations - known as 'Board Service Providers' or BSPs - to provide governance services. Just as corporations hire law firms, accounting firms, and consulting firms, so too should they be permitted to hire governance firms, a small change that will dramatically increase board accountability and enable governance to be delivered more efficiently. Outsourcing the Board should be read by academics, policymakers, and those within the corporations that will benefit from this change.
Download or read book Corporate Structure and Banking Resolution written by Marcelo J. Sheppard Gelsi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Corporation Nation written by Robert E. Wright and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on legal and economic history, Robert E. Wright traces the development of corporate institutions in America, connecting today's financial failures to weakened internal corporate regulation.
Download or read book The Intoxication of Power written by Graham Robinson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Intoxication of Power is a collection of contributions by thirteen authors from various academic disciplines sharing a concern for the development of understanding of the nature and origins of leadership hubris. The book originated at conferences held by the Daedalus Trust, which fosters research into challenges to organizational well-being.
Download or read book Building a World Class Compliance Program written by Martin T. Biegelman and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-06-20 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a long-standing practitioner in the field, this timely and critical work is your best source for understanding all the complex issues and requirements associated with corporate compliance. It provides clear guidance for those charged with protecting their companies from financial and reputational risk, litigation, and government intervention, who want a robust guide to establish an effective compliance program.
Download or read book The Icarus Factor written by Rod Mcqueen and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In June 2000, Edgar Bronfman Jr. sold Seagram Co. to French media giant Vivendi in a $34-billion deal. Young, handsome and fabulously rich, Edgar Jr. seemed finally to have silenced the detractors who for fifteen years had scorned him, calling him a naïve dilettante and “the star-struck whisky king.” As the third-generation president and CEO of a family dynasty in the booze business, Edgar Jr. had made controversial corporate decisions. In 1995 he sold Seagram’s holding in the secure but boring DuPont to buy Hollywood studio MCA. In 1998, he acquired PolyGram, thereby creating the world’s largest record company. In 2000, when convergence was the corporate mantra, he merged Seagram with Vivendi. At fifteen, Edgar Jr. had been designated by his grandfather, Sam Bronfman, Seagram’s legendary founder, to eventually head the business Mr. Sam had built as a bootlegger during Prohibition. For Edgar Jr., that choice turned into a curse as he agonized over Mr. Sam’s prescient 1966 warning: “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. I’m worried about the third generation. Empires have come and gone.” In 1994 when Edgar Jr. succeeded his father, he announced: “I’m not going down in history as the one Bronfman who pissed away the family fortune.” Despite all his efforts, Edgar Jr. could not avoid his destiny. The value of the Bronfman family holdings in Seagram – swapped for shares in Vivendi – fell by almost three-quarters from $8.2 billion to $2.2 billion between 2000 and 2002. Business Week featured Edgar Jr. on its “Worst Managers List,” calling him the “most desperate billionaire around.” In this unauthorized biography, acclaimed and award-winning business writer Rod McQueen tells the gripping story of an empire’s demise. Based on 150 revealing interviews with high school friends, associates from his Hollywood and Broadway days, as well as former colleagues, officers and directors at Seagram and Vivendi, The Icarus Factor tracks Edgar Jr. on his meteoric rise and spectacular fall. In addition to Edgar Jr. himself, McQueen interviewed many powerful media and entertainment leaders including Frank Biondi Jr., Jack Valenti, Barry Diller, Ron Meyer, Doug Morris, and Herbert Allen Jr. What emerges is a compelling and intimate portrait of a man who wrestled with his own fervent dreams and family responsibilities. This is a story about duty and destiny, passion and performance, family and failure. Above all, it is a cautionary tale about the complex relationship between a father and a son with catastrophic consequences.
Download or read book Directors Decisions and the Law written by Alice Belcher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-24 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Directors are key decision-makers in any organisation, whether it is in the public sector, a family business or a transnational company. The UK Companies Act 2006 codified directors’ duties for the first time and describes the director as the ‘most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members as a whole’. This book addresses key tensions and problems involved in the duties and responsibilities of the director in promoting success, including corporate culture and credibility, trust, risk and uncertainty, collective responsibility, and the degree of control. The book considers directors’ decision-making in both private and public sector organisations and explicitly examines aspects of decision-making during periods of financial distress. The book compares the legal contexts of director’s decisions in the UK to those of the USA, Germany and Australia, and takes an interdisciplinary approach in its combination of management theory, economic theory and behavioural studies. In doing so the book addresses issues key to the understanding of corporate governance in light of recent financial crises.
Download or read book For Love of the Imagination written by Michael Vannoy Adams and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I have entitled this book For Love of the Imagination. Long ago, I fell in love with the imagination. It was love at first sight. I have had a lifelong love affair with the imagination. I would love for others, through this book, to fall in love, as I once did, with the imagination." Michael Vannoy Adams, from the Preface. For Love of the Imagination is a book about the imagination – about what and how images mean. Jungian psychoanalysis is an imaginal psychology – or what Michael Vannoy Adams calls "imaginology," the study of the imagination. What is so distinctive – and so valuable – about Jungian psychoanalysis is that it emphasizes images. For Love of the Imagination is also a book about interdisciplinary applications of Jungian psychoanalysis. What enables these applications is that all disciplines include images of which they are more or less unconscious. Jungian psychoanalysis is in an enviable position to render these images conscious, to specify what and how they mean. On the contemporary scene, as a result of the digital revolution, there is no trendier word than "applications" – except, perhaps, the abbreviation "apps." In psychoanalysis, there is a "Freudian app" and a "Jungian app." The "Jungian app" is a technology of the imagination. This book applies Jungian psychoanalysis to images in a variety of disciplines. For Love of the Imagination also includes the 2011 Moscow lectures on Jungian psychoanalysis. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, students, and those with an interest in Jung.
Download or read book Corporations and Citizenship written by Greg Urban and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-05-26 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: President Theodore Roosevelt once proclaimed, "Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions, and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with those institutions." But while corporations are ostensibly regulated by citizens through their governments, the firms in turn regulate many aspects of social and political life for individuals beyond their own employees and the communities that support them. Corporations are endowed with many of the same rights as citizens, such as freedom of speech, but are not themselves typically constituted around ideals of national belonging and democracy. In the wake of the global financial collapse of 2008, the question of what relationship corporations should have to governing institutions has only increased in urgency. As a democratically sanctioned social institution, should a corporation operate primarily toward profit accumulation or should its proper goal be to provision society with needed goods and services? Corporations and Citizenship addresses the role of modern for-profit corporations as a distinctive kind of social formation within democratic national states. Scholars of legal studies, business ethics, politics, history, and anthropology bring their perspectives to bear on particular case studies, such as Enron and Wall Street, as well as broader issues of belonging, social responsibility, for-profit higher education, and regulation. Together, these essays establish a complex and detailed understanding of the ways corporations contribute positively to human well-being as well as the dangers that they pose. Contributors: Joel Bakan, Jean Comaroff, John Comaroff, Cynthia Estlund, Louis Galambos, Rosalie Genova, Peter Gourevitch, Karen Ho, Nien-hê Hsieh, Walter Licht, Jonathan R. Macey, Hirokazu Miyazaki, Lynn Sharp Paine, Katharina Pistor, Amy J. Sepinwall, Jeffery Smith, Jeffrey L. Sturchio, Greg Urban.
Download or read book The Public Company Transformed written by Brian Cheffins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-28 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, the public company has played a dominant role in the American economy. Since the middle of the 20th century, the nature of the public company has changed considerably. The transformation has been a fascinating one, marked by scandals, political controversy, wide swings in investor and public sentiment, mismanagement, entrepreneurial verve, noisy corporate "raiders" and various other larger-than-life personalities. Nevertheless, amidst a voluminous literature on corporations, a systematic historical analysis of the changes that have occurred is lacking. The Public Company Transformed correspondingly analyzes how the public company has been recast from the mid-20th century through to the present day, with particular emphasis on senior corporate executives and the constraints affecting the choices available to them. The chronological point of departure is the managerial capitalism era, which prevailed in large American corporations following World War II. The book explores managerial capitalism's rise, its 1950s and 1960s heyday, and its fall in the 1970s and 1980s. It describes the American public companies and executives that enjoyed prosperity during the 1990s, and the reversal of fortunes in the 2000s precipitated by corporate scandals and the financial crisis of 2008. The book also considers the regulation of public companies in detail, and discusses developments in shareholder activism, company boards, chief executives, and concerns about oligopoly. The volume concludes by offering conjectures on the future of the public corporation, and suggests that predictions of the demise of the public company have been exaggerated.
Download or read book The Profit Motive written by Stephen M. Bainbridge and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Profit Motive offers a legal and economic defense of shareholder capitalism against proponents of corporate social responsibility.
Download or read book Moral Leadership written by Deborah L. Rhode and published by Wiley + ORM. This book was released on 2015-06-10 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral Leadership brings together in one comprehensive volume essays from leading scholars in law, leadership, psychology, political science, and ethics to provide practical, theoretical policy guidance. The authors explore key questions about moral leadership such as: How do leaders form, sustain, and transmit moral commitments? Under what conditions are those processes most effective? What is the impact of ethics officers, codes, training programs, and similar initiatives? How do standards and practices vary across context and culture? What can we do at the individual, organizational, and societal level to foster moral leadership? Throughout the book, the contributors identify what people know, and only think they know, about the role of ethics in key decision-making positions. The essays focus on issues such as the definition and importance of moral leadership and the factors that influence its exercise, along with practical strategies for promoting ethical behavior. Moral Leadership addresses the dynamics of moral leadership, with particular emphasis on major obstacles that stand in its way: impaired judgment, self-interest, and power. Finally, the book explores moral leadership in a variety of contexts?business and the professions, nonprofit organizations, and the international arena.
Download or read book Christianity and Market Regulation written by Daniel A. Crane and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars from around the globe and across faith traditions consider the impact of Christianity on the regulation of markets and economic systems.
Download or read book The Academy of Management Annals written by James P. Walsh and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2007 with total page 750 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Academy of Management is proud to announce the inaugural volume of The Academy of Management Annals. This exciting new series follows one guiding principle: The advancement of knowledge is possible only by conducting a thorough examination of what is known and unknown in a given field. Such assessments can be accomplished through comprehensive, critical reviews of the literature--crafted by informed scholars who determine when a line of inquiry has gone astray, and how to steer the research back onto the proper path. The Academy of Management Annals provide just such essential reviews. Written by leading management scholars, the reviews are invaluable for ensuring the timeliness of advanced courses, for designing new investigative approaches, and for identifying faulty methodological or conceptual assumptions. The Annals strive each year to synthesize a vast array of primary research, recognizing past principal contributions while illuminating potential future avenues of inquiry. Volume 1 of the Annals explores a wide spectrum of research: corporate control; nonstandard employment; critical management; physical work environments; public administration team learning; emotions in organizations; leadership and health care; creativity at work; business and the environment; and bias in performance appraisals. Ultimately, academic scholars in management and allied fields (e.g., sociology of organizations and organizational psychology) will see The Academy of Management Annals as a valuable resource to turn to for comprehensive, up-to-date information--published in a single volume every year by the preeminent association for management research.
Download or read book International Corporate Governance written by Thomas Clarke and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-07-31 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive and up-to-date, this important textbook analyzes the escalating crisis in corporate governance and the growing interest in its reform across the globe. Written by a leading name in the field of corporate governance from a genuinely international perspective, this excellent textbook provides a balanced analysis of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Anglo-Saxon, European and Asian traditions of corporate governance; offering a prognosis of the future development, complexity and diversity of corporate governance forms and systems. It: investigates the reasons for the failure of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Parmalat and other major international corporations examines the role of international standards of corporate governance, with the intervention of the OECD, World Bank and IMF explores the continuing cultural diversity in corporate and institutional forms in the United States and UK, Europe and Asia Pacific. Illustrated with a wealth of up-to-the minute case studies and packed full of excellent illustrative material that guides student readers through this complex subject, International Corporate Governance is a must read for anyone studying corporate governance today.
Download or read book Across the Great Divide written by Martin Neil Baily and published by Hoover Institution Press. This book was released on 2014-11-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The financial crisis of 2008 devastated the American economy and caused U.S. policymakers to rethink their approaches to major financial crises. More than five years have passed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, but questions still persist about the best ways to avoid and respond to future financial crises. In Across the Great Divide, a co-publication with Brookings Institution, contributing economic and legal scholars from academia, industry, and government analyze the financial crisis of 2008, from its causes and effects on the U.S. economy to the way ahead. The expert contributors consider post-crisis regulatory policy reforms and emerging financial and economic trends, including the roles played by highly accommodative monetary policy, securitization run amok, government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), large asset bubbles, excessive leverage, and the Federal funds rate, among other potential causes. They discuss the role played by the Federal Reserve and examine the concept of "too big to fail." And they review and assess resolution frameworks, considering experiences with Lehman Bros. and other firms in the crisis, Title II of the Dodd-Frank Act, and the Chapter 14 bankruptcy code proposal.
