Book Description
The authoritative, practical guide to internal control after COSO (Committee on Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission)
Beyond COSO unravels the complexities of the COSO Report while providing clear-cut guidelines on how to implement the various internal controls it mandates. Just as important, it builds on the COSO framework to provide a more rigorous system that corporate executives and directors can use to transform the internal control function into a valuable strategic tool for leveraging corporate strengths and improving performance.
The first practical guide to complying with COSO Report mandates, Beyond COSO:
- Clearly explains the intricacies of the COSO Report
- Describes proven techniques for complying with COSO requirements
- Provides a detailed account of the internal control oversight process
- Offers expert recommendations on how to carry out internal control responsibilities more efficiently
- Supplies a wealth of ready-to-use internal control documentation
Beyond COSO is an invaluable working resource for internal and external auditors, CFOs, members of audit committees, and corporate directors.
www.wiley.com/accounting
Customer Reviews:
Understand the history and shortcomings of COSO.......2003-08-15
Great overview of its history, and other frameworks for internal control evaluations. Clearly the author has major misgivings with COSO, and describes why the shortcomings reflect the biases of the authors, which is the public accounting firms. Excellent overview of other frameworks, and why they might be superior. With the passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, this understanding might seem more important, but likely many organizations will struggle just to do COSO. An important addition to any research on COSO.
Beyond Coso : Internal Control to Enhance Corporate Governan.......2002-03-02
Anyone who read this book when it was first published in 1998 needs to re-read it in the context of the Enron revelations. It is amazing how Steven J. Root's examination and explanation of what internal control is, how it should be implemented and what it can and cannot accomplish is exactly on-point vis-à-vis the break downs in corporate governance at Enron, Global Crossing and others of their ilk. Anyone from business student to congressional overseer, who wants the proper framework for understanding and explaining these crises should carefully study this book.
One of best books on (internal) control.......2000-05-02
Beyond COSO is probably one of the best, complete and most recent books on (internal) control. What interested me a great deal was that Root behind the masks of the committee of sponsoring organisations looks, metaphorically speaking. It helped me a great deal on writing a graduation paper on this topic.
Very Good.......1999-10-12
Excellent coverage of the history of internal control issues. Good analysis of weaknesses/strengths of COSO and the strengths of other control related models. Good explanation of a broader management approach to internal control that the author advocates. Good suggestions for implementing the broader approach in a company and the roles of the Board, Senior Managment and Internal Audit. The author is obviously quite knowledgeable about these issues and the book is easy to read and is very interesting. People interested in developing their knowledge about this subject or concerned about good business and control practices and ways to enhance the likelihood of success for their company will find this book very valuable.
Book Description
Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases.
This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.
Customer Reviews:
Highly Innovative and Enlightening Comparison of Corporate Governance Systems.......2007-08-08
Comparative corporate governance has captured the interest of economists and legal scholars during the past two decades. With intensified economic globalization, it has become apparent that the public corporation, one of the keystones of the modern market economy, has produced very different systems of assigning authority in the firm around the world. In POLITICAL POWER AND CORPORATE CONTROL, Peter A. Gourevitch and James Shinn offer a powerful political explanation that challenges the assumptions of a literature dominated by economic theory.
According to the predominant account, corporate-governance systems can be classified in two groups, the diffuse shareholder model and the concentrated blockholder model. The former is characterized by dispersed ownership of publicly traded firms and developed capital markets, whereas the latter is characterized by companies that have one or several large, core shareholders and capital markets that are somewhat less developed. In a global perspective, diffusion of ownership is rare and essentially confined to the large economies of the United States and the United Kingdom, whereas the blockholder model persists in much of the rest of the world, including the large continental European economies and Japan. Diffusion of ownership is often seen as the endpoint of an evolutionary development because firms belonging to a purportedly superior system should be able to outcompete others in the global marketplace. This view has led Henry Hansmann and Reinier Kraakman to announce the impending "end of history for corporate law" ("The End of History for Corporate Law," GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL 89 [2001]: 439-67).
Political scientist Gourevitch and former CEO Shinn propose a more complex picture that incorporates political mechanisms and the interests of other groups besides managers and shareholders, most importantly employees. Much of the economic and legal analysis of comparative corporate governance takes U.S. corporate law as its baseline, which in the popular perception leaves nonshareholder constituencies on the sidelines....
Gourevitch and Shinn share Mark Roe's view that political factors mainly determine corporate governance, but they try to make the analysis more complex. The institutions of corporate governance in a particular country depend on the political coalitions that managers, owners, and employees form and on which coalition wins the political struggle. The authors therefore identify three possible intercoalition cleavages: class conflict (owners and managers versus workers), sectoral conflict (managers and workers versus owners), and property and voice conflicts (owners and workers versus managers)....
All in all, POLITICAL POWER AND CORPORATE CONTROL provides a refreshing view of comparative corporate governance that strongly contrasts with the economic accounts dominating the field. It is a highly innovative and enlightening book that may be recommended to anyone interested in the debate.
Unveiling the links........2005-10-11
The way corporates do governance is linked to the political makeup of their home countries, argues Peter Gourevitch and James Shinn in their important new book. Practices can't be imposed successfully from the outside or homogenized to some global standard; they bubble up from politics and pressures on the ground. Gourevitch, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego and Shinn, ex-CEO of Dialogic and now visiting professor at Georgetown University, uncover complex relationships between key market players. Are workers and investors natural allies, for instance? Well, in markets where job protection laws are widespread, safeguards for investors are weak. On the other hand, global capital moves like a magnet to companies and markets that feature the most minority shareowner protection-thus creating jobs. Read this to find the web of ties to political power that promises global diversity in governance practices for years to come.
Groundbreaking Guide on the Direction of Corporate Governance and Society.......2005-10-06
According to Gourevitch and Shinn, "corporate governance - the authority structure of a firm - lies at the heart of the most important issues of society"... such as "who has claim to the cash flow of the firm, who has a say in its strategy and its allocation of resources."
The corporate governance framework shapes corporate efficiency, employment stability, retirement security, and the endowments of orphanages, hospitals, and universities. "It creates the temptations for cheating and the rewards for honesty, inside the firm and more generally in the body politic." It "influences social mobility, stability and fluidity... It is no wonder then, that corporate governance provokes conflict. Anything so important will be fought over... like other decisions about authority, corporate governance structures are fundamentally the result of political decisions." If the authors haven't hooked you on the importance of corporate governance by these statements on page 3, you aren't breathing.
I have long argued that creating sustainable wealth and maintaining a free society both require that institutional investors act as mediating structures between the individual and the dominant institutions of our time, the modern corporation. Democratic corporate governance will reduce the corrupting influence of unaccountable power on government and society. At the same time, by transforming corporations into more democratic institutions, institutional investors will instill them with their own values and will unleash the wealth-generating capacity of "human capital."
The model Gourevitch and Shinn set forth in Political Power and Corporate Control: The New Global Politics of Corporate Governance uses corporate governance as the dependent variable. "The arrow of causation flows from preferences to political institutions to corporate governance outcomes."
Whose preferences? Key, are those of owners, managers, and workers. How? "To obtain their preferred corporate governance outcome, they have to win in politics" by mobilizing allies outside the firm in systems the authors categorize as largely majoritarian or consensus. A dynamic feedback loop is thus created: "institutions shape policies that influence preferences. At the same time preferences induce institutional arrangements that increase the chances of preserving the policies desired by the preferences."
Treating the categories of owners, managers, managers and workers as homogeneous blinds us to coalitions. Through an analysis of available datasets, the authors demonstrate that outside owners are more likely to ally with workers to support transparency. Workers seeking to preserve their jobs are more likely to ally with managers; whereas, concern for pension funds motivates transparency and ability to exercise shareholder voice. Firm-centered managers prefer blockholding owners; those seeking maximum pay tend to support minority shareholder protections and vigorous labor markets.
Variation in corporate governance is not necessarily a function of economic stages, technology, or legal framework. Instead, Gourevitch and Shinn provide substantial support for the argument that "corporate governance arises from incentives created by rules and regulations that emerge from a public policy process, reflecting the power of alternative coalitions."
Although most academic writers and the press emphasize minority shareholder protections, Gourevitch and Shinn emphasize the need to also account for "degrees of coordination," which shape incentives to concentrate shareholding or sell down to a more diffuse market. These include product-market competition, price and wage mechanisms, labor relations, and social welfare systems. Each coalition seeks to persuade society-at-large to provide public policies in corporate governance that favor their own interests.
Systems shift when economic conditions change in big way. One of their most interesting discussions concerns their assertion that pension funds, which they define to include all forms of deferred compensation plans, may be most important as the next phase unfolds. "To understand the future politics of corporate governance debates, we will have to track fights about pension reform." "Pension plan regulations may turn out to be the tail that wags the corporate governance dog."
Defined benefit plans held 27% of all U.S. equities in 1989-95 but fell to 21% more recently. Mutual fund ownership, on the other hand, has climbed from 8% in 1990 to 28%. As more defined benefit plans (often jointly administered with employee or union representatives) are dropped, the future of corporate governance reform may lie with mutual funds. That tail, using the above analogy, seems to wag whenever management speaks.
They are required by law, as fiduciaries, to represent the interests of the investors whose money they oversee, not their own business interests, which may including landing contracts to administer 401(k) plans. Recently, Vanguard, Putnam, and Fidelity voted against shareholder proposals that would require directors standing for election to stay on only if a majority of votes are ''yes.'' Clearly, these funds were not voting in the best interest of owners. Mutual funds used to turn over 17% of their portfolio each year (1950-1965) but averaged 91% per year in 1990-2005, prompting John Bogle to remark the "rent-a-stock industry has little reason to care" about good corporate governance.
Gourevitch and Shinn find that "as worker-citizens acquire assets, they develop preferences for shareholder protections, thus adding pressure to the potential for a transparency coalition" and "assets in the hands of institutions that are accountable to their owners are likely to pay more attention to governance than are assets in the hands of autonomous managers." Perhaps an actual power shift will follow as mutual fund investors demand a role in mutual fund governance and those funds begin to represent their true preferences with corporations. If that happens, we might see a book that looks in reverse, tracing the effects of corporate governance outcomes on political institutions. "Socially responsible investment" will then take on new meaning and dimension.
In the meantime, Gourevitch and Shinn, note enough interesting correlations and observations to make the book must reading for any corporate governance policy analyst, especially those with global concerns. Here is a small sample:
-Blockholding and minority shareholder protections are negatively correlated.
-Minority shareholder protections and share price are positively correlated.
-Blockholding dips after increased minority shareholder protections are likely the result of sales by "new money" entrepreneurs, rather than old money blockholders (who may fear the tax collector).
-Blockholding may be preferred when uncertainty is high.
-State-owned enterprises are the most aggressive users of ADRs.
-Money flows toward firms and countries that provide shareholder protections. "No other group can have quite this direct an effect on the economy...the economic vote of investors counts greatly against the mass of votes in elections."
-Where job security is strong, diffusion is weak, and minority shareholder protections are weak.
-Weak intermediate institutions of finance, investment, pensions and stockmarkets are correlated with little voice for shareholder rights.
-"The U.S. Securities regulation system assumes that institutional investors and reputational intermediaries are the agents of investors." "Yet it has become increasingly clear to many observers that these private actors have multiple, complex incentives..."
-"As much as 10 percent of the total ownership of U.S. public firms was transferred from the existing stockholders to senior managers through stock option grants between 1990 and 2000."
Their treatment of the definition of corporate governance from various perspectives is also an eye opener. Here's a flavor of that discussion:
-Where the political scene is capital versus labor, "the investor coalition defined corporate governance in terms of 'meeting the challenge of financial globalization,' adherence to the OECD Principles, fulfilling 'international standards of governance in the global competition for capital.'"
-From a labor power position, "blockholders and foreign portfolio investors were castigated as selfish oligarch in league with the heartless IMF and the faceless gnomes of Zurich."
-Those favoring the corporatist compromise made much of managers and workers "being in the 'same boat' together, of corporate governance choices that ensured that firms 'served the nation' in a 'stable' economy - with owners dismissed as oligarchs or 'speculators.'"
-Countries shifting transparency coalitions and managerism alignment "witnessed predictable invocations of corporate governance that protected 'the little guy, ' the individual investor,' the widow and orphans," such as speeches by U.S. SEC commissioners.
-"Meanwhile across the alignment divide, managers compete to hijack the notion of corporate governance for their own purpose...'building shareholder value."
Shareholder value is partly about efficiency. But Gourevitch and Shinn raise serious issues of distribution, job security, income inequality, social welfare. Will firms of the future be efficient at creating a healthy environment and general prosperity or efficient at putting money into the pockets of CEOs? Political Power and Corporate Control provides a groundbreaking guide, based on empirical evidence, for anyone concerned with the direction of corporate governance and society.
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International Joint Ventures in China: Ownership, Control and Performance (Studies on the Chinese Economy)
Yanni Yan
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0312223013 |
Book Description
Corporate governance, namely the relationship between the ownership and control of firms, takes on new dimensions in the case of international joint ventures operating in the special context of China. The present study contributes a new examination of this relationship firstly through its conceptual refinement, and secondly through original empirical research. It develops the concept of ownership as suited to joint venture, in which account is taken of non-capital resourcing by foreign and Chinese partners.
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- A serious approach to employee control
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Governing the Firm: Workers' Control in Theory and Practice
Gregory K. Dow
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0521522218 |
Book Description
Most large firms are controlled by shareholders, who choose the board of directors and can replace the firms management. In rare instances, however, control over the firm rests with the workforce. Many explanations for the rarity of workers' control have been offered, but there have been few attempts to assess these hypotheses in a systematic way. This book draws upon economic theory, statistical evidence, and case studies to frame an explanation. The fundamental idea is that labor is inalienable, while capital can be freely transferred from one person to another. This implies that worker controlled firms typically face financing problems, encounter collective choice dilemmas, and have difficulty creating markets for control positions within the firm. Together these factors can account for much of what is known about the incidence, behavior, and design of worker- controlled firms. A policy proposal to encourage employee buyouts is developed in the concluding chapter. Gregory L. Dow is Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada. He previously taught at the University of Alberta and Yale University, and has served as a visiting professor at the University of New South Wales, the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics, and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. Professor Dow is Associate Editor on the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization and has published numerous articles on labor-managed firms and other topics in economic theory in leading journals such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy.
Download Description
Most large firms are controlled by shareholders, who choose the board of directors and can replace the firm's management. In rare instances, however, control over the firm rests with the workforce. Many explanations for the rarity of workers' control have been offered, but there have been few attempts to assess these hypotheses in a systematic way. This book draws upon economic theory, statistical evidence, and case studies to frame an explanation. The fundamental idea is that labor is inalienable, while capital can be freely transferred from one person to another. This implies that worker-controlled firms typically face financing problems, encounter collective choice dilemmas, and have difficulty creating markets for control positions within the firm. Together these factors can account for much of what is known about the incidence, behavior, and design of worker-controlled firms. A policy proposal to encourage employee buyouts is developed in the concluding chapter.
Customer Reviews:
A serious approach to employee control.......2006-05-15
Dow makes a thorough survey of the literature and establishes a solid theoretical framework for workers' control. In the end of the book after nearly 200 pages, he finally presents a formula for transferring control (and ownership) away from capital suppliers and to labor suppliers. It is a thoughtful book though perhaps existing more in the realm of theory than actual practice. The case for capital controlling the firm while not theoretically exclusive, remains empiracally dominant and I don't think he provides a strong enough argument why worker control is better.
In any case, a very thoughtful book with some insightful ideas, highly recommended!
Book Description
A tale of ethical crisis and redemption, Standard of Care is one doctor's tumultuous journey as a senior executive in America's largest and most predatory hospital corporation. Weary of the tedium and diminishing returns of twenty-five years of private practice, Dr. Daniel Fazen becomes the new senior medical executive, the guardian of quality patient care, at Walnut Creek Memorial, his long-cherished community hospital. Without warning, eleven months later, Memorial is acquired by the Olympia Healthcare Corporation, the largest and, he knows, the most ruthless for-profit hospital conglomerate in America. At age fifty-five, with a taste for the good life and years of tuition ahead for his kids, Dan ponders a six figure incentive. With reservations-and rationalizations-he stays with Olympia. And so begins a downhill debacle...
Customer Reviews:
A fictional account with real-world feel.......2007-08-06
Full disclosure: I have the good fortune of knowing Dr. Kerns both personally and professionally. He is an amazing, talented and inspiring character --- and he has written a remarkable first novel.
I recently finished reading Jerome Groopman's excellent non-fiction "How Doctors Think". Groopman discusses medical errors often referencing the effects of the medical establishment. In "Standard of Care" Kerns personalizes that discussion through the conflicts of Dr. Dan Fazen. Faced with the very real-world challenge of being the physician he wants to be and the physician he is expected to be, Fazen reaches deep into himself and deep into his own past to find answers.
From the artfully crafted prologue to the powerful conclusion, this book will grip you. With characters you can care about, dialog that flows naturally, and some of the most important ethical questions of our times in the balance, you will not want to put this book down.
I thoroughly enjoyed it (twice) and highly recommend it.
Medical Mess!.......2007-06-11
Dr. Kerns does an excellent job of merging the lives of two good people and the medical crisis this country faces today. Dr. Fazen (main character) is faced with tough temptations and tough choices. It is refreshing to read a book that deals with more than fictional psychotics, mass murderers and terrorists. The issues this book deals with are real and more frightening than any murder novel. I hope Dr. Kerns decides to write more and soon!! Before you spend $20.00 on the next Patterson rehash read this book. I think Dr. Kerns should give some insights as to how he feels we can fix the mess.
Standard of Care and Raising Our Standards.......2007-06-08
Set on the stage of what seems to be a fairly typical large medical establishment, and against the backdrop of our country's deeply troubled and flawed healthcare system, David Kerns shares with us the story of Dan Fazen, a man who is caught between the world of corporate greed and doing what is right and honorable.
This is an inspiring story of one man's ethical crisis and ultimately his transformation.
It's about how one person, with ordinary concerns that many of us can relate to - navigates between what he believes in and the intense pressures he feels from a singled minded for-profit-over-all-else corporation.
It is my hope that people will buy and read this great book.
Whether real or fiction, stories about people having the courage to live lives of real integrity are always worthy of our attention.
I also hope that this book draws more attention to our country's broken system of healthcare. Clearly we need to raise our standards dramatically. The way our so-called healing institutions are run these days is as big a problem, as any threat of terrorism.
Standard of Care.......2007-04-17
I just finished Standard of Care and must recommend this well-written, engaging book that conveys in fictional terms, the avalanching health care crisis. The book is about Dr. Dan Fazen, an especially likable character who is well fleshed out with seemingly minor details, but those colorful details tie into events that move the plot along. Those details or calming periods between heavy 'sentinal events' or medical catastrophes, are necessary in this narrative to keep it from getting too heavy. Kerns deft touch makes it well balanced. The locale and familar places to San Franciscans are a bonus for relating to the book, but that is by no means necessary for appreciating the book and the effort it took to develop a believable plot and carry it out. The crux of the conflict involves Dr. Dan's ethics of humanity expressed through his practice of medicine that are challenged when he is promoted to a high ranking hospital administrator. The hospital is acquired then in an aggressive buy-out and the ensuing cost-cutting places patients at risk. The plot takes on a national relevance because the antagonists, CEO Thomas Frost and his for-profit parent, the Olympia Healthcare Corporation, convey the coldness of the man and his corporation. This reference may be a thinly veiled version of HCA, the biggest, baddest for-profit hospital corp. in America, founded by the father and brother of Senator Bill Frist. The surprising ending finds Dan reclaiming his own moral ground while American health care teeters on the brink of collapse. As Bill Clinton said recently, the health care crisis is one of the the three largest crises the USA faces today. And good for Kerns to find it as fertile ground for the salvation of one doctor at least.
Standard of Excellence!.......2007-04-13
David Kerns' novel rips the cover of respectability off of the medical-industrial complex and reveals its sordid underbelly in this cautionary tale. Standard of Care is disturbing and inspiring; horrifying and compelling; and ultimately a riviting and informative story. It will forever change your view of the American health care system and remind you that true heroes still exist.
Book Description
Nearly seventy years after the last great stock market bubble and crash, another bubble emerged and burst, despite a thick layer of regulation designed since the 1930s to prevent such things. This time the bubble was enormous, reflecting nearly twenty years of double-digit stock market growth, and its bursting had painful consequence. The search for culprits soon began, and many were discovered, including not only a number of overreaching corporations, but also their auditors, investment bankers, lawyers and indeed, their investors. In Governing the Modern Corporation, Smith and Walter analyze the structure of market capitalism to see what went wrong. They begin by examining the developments that have made modern financial markets--now capitalized globally at about $70 trillion--so enormous, so volatile and such a source of wealth (and temptation) for all players. Then they report on the evolving role and function of the business corporation, the duties of its officers and directors and the power of its Chief Executive Officer who seeks to manage the company to achieve as favorable a stock price as possible. They next turn to the investing market itself, which comprises mainly financial institutions that own about two-thirds of all American stocks and trade about 90% of these stocks. These investors are well informed, highly trained professionals capable of making intelligent investment decisions on behalf of their clients, yet the best and brightest ultimately succumbed to the bubble and failed to carry out an appropriate governance role. In what follows, the roles and business practices of the principal financial intermediaries--notably auditors and bankers--are examined in detail. All, corporations, investors and intermediaries, are found to have been infected by deep-seated conflicts of interest, which add significant agency costs to the free-market system. The imperfect, politicized role of the regulators is also explored, with disappointing results. The entire system is seen to have been compromised by a variety of bacteria that crept in, little by little, over the years and were virtually invisible during the bubble years. These issues are now being addressed, in part by new regulation, in part by prosecutions and class action lawsuits, and in part by market forces responding to revelations of misconduct. But the authors note that all of the market's professional players--executives, investors, experts and intermediaries themselves--carry fiduciary obligations to the shareholders, clients, and investors whom they represent. More has to be done to find ways for these fiduciaries to be held accountable for the correct discharge of their duties.
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Corporate Profit and Nuclear Safety: Strategy at Northeast Utilities in the 1990s
Paul W. MacAvoy , and
Jean W. Rosenthal
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0691119945 |
Book Description
Northeast Utilities Company adopted an ambitious new competitive strategy in the mid-1980s, seeking to become the low-cost supplier in New England electric power markets bracing for deregulation. Given its high-cost nuclear facilities, doing so required a corporate turnaround. For a decade Northeast faced increasing public and employee resistance to cost cutting at its nuclear plants. Though management achieved many of its goals, curtailing outlays on nuclear operations meant high risk that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would close the plants because of frequent, prolonged outages. This is just what happened in 1996. Did management's deliberate cost-containment strategy take nuclear operations to an inevitable regulatory shutdown, and if so, why? Was it the pursuit of executive compensation tied to cost containment that caused undue risk of regulatory shutdown?
Paul MacAvoy and Jean Rosenthal describe ten years of corporate performance preceding the shutdown, detailing aggressive executive decisions, mounting regulatory actions in response to increasingly severe operational failures, and--at the same time--overall improvement in corporate earnings, stock prices, and executive pay packages. They relate the complexities of managing declining nuclear plant operations under ever more pressing budgetary targets. Their discussion of the increasing risk of outages raises the issue of the tradeoff of profit and conservative management of hazard operations.
All the more timely in light of the massive 2003 East Coast blackout, Corporate Profit and Nuclear Safety represents a powerful and cautionary commentary on industrial practices that goes to the heart of effective corporate governance.
Book Description
This book points to the need for flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions and cogently summarizes and evaluates the principal proposals for changes in corporate governance.
Customer Reviews:
Good review.......2006-03-08
It offers a good introduction to corporate governance. Unfortunately, the book exhibits a clear political bias, making it less objective. I have used it in my course on corporate governance and my students have found this book to be a straightforward and informative read.
Thought-provoking and persuasive.......1998-06-28
Margaret Blair analyzes the two major theoretical approaches to corporate governance and then persuasively refutes the notion, central to both, that maximizing shareholder value is the only legitimate mission of a corporation. The key to her argument, that shareholders are not the only bearers of residual risk, is intuitively obvious in light of the changing nature of work in many sectors of American industry; however, I have never seen the point made with such analytical rigor.
Ground breaking!.......1996-06-18
Blair reviews how the governance of
public corporations in the U.S. is supposed to work, in theory and by law. She
compares the traditional economic rationale for corporate governance structures,
which stress shareholder and/or management models of control. Then, she posits a
more broadly based stakeholder model, based on a reexamination of the basic wealth
creating purpose of the corporate form. Building on trends which note the declining
cost of capital, relative to total production costs, and the increasing significance
of investments in firm-specific human capital, Blair makes several recommendations
concerning how corporate governance systems might evolve to enhance long-term wealth
creation for all parties. Her critical analysis contains many insights which deserve
wide circulation and debate.
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Governance and the Market for Corporate Control (Routledge Contemporary Corporate Governance)
Teall
Manufacturer: Routledge
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0415397871 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Foundations and Trends in Finance, published by Thomson Gale on September 1, 2005. The length of the article is 449 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: 12020250 Corporate control.(5: Citations)(Recommended readings)
Author: Terence Lim
Publication:
Foundations and Trends in Finance (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 1
Issue: 5-6
Page: 506
Article Type: Recommended readings
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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Recommended Books
- The Oregon Trail
- Hot Blooded
- Ancient DNA Typing
- Biology Webct
- Flotsam
- Organizational Behavior with Student CD and OLC/PowerWeb card
- In the Miso Soup
- Vacation & Second Homes: 430 House Plans for Retreats and Getaways
- Buildings across Time : An Introduction to World Architectural
- Catalogue of the plants of Ohio, including flowering plants, ferns, mosses and liverworts. By H.C. B