Corporate Governance Adrift

Recent corporate governance scandals have brought to the fore the inherent contradictions of a capitalism dominated by financial markets. This challenging book by Michel Aglietta and Antoine Reberioux argues that capitalism's basic premise - that companies must be managed in the sole interest of their shareholders - is incongruent with the current environment of liquid markets, profit-hungry investors and chronic financial instability.

Taking a close look at American corporate governance, the authors show what is missing in today's corporate governance, and support a case for activating the board of directors to put new controls on management and take responsibility for the result.

This book 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? Professor Dine and Dr Koutsias consider how these issues are dealt with by the jurisprudence of three major and greatly influential jurisdictions; the USA, the UK, and Germany, and also reflect on why and how the current corporate governance context in some states is defined by social, political and historical developments. The authors argue that corporate governance is crucial for the identity of each country. What is revealed in the work is that when national corporate governance is thriving it allows space for democracy to flourish. Corporate governance scholars, policy makers, LLM and LLB students of company law and corporate governance, NGOs involving issues of inequality, poverty and democracy will find this important book an insightful resource.

Corporate governance has become a global phenomenon. This book highlights, through case studies, how it has evolved internationally. The contributors focus on different regions around the globe, reflecting various ownership structures, legal systems, and political and cultural aspirations.

For decades, Europe has sought to become more financially integrated with the United States and thus European legal institutions, regulatory, governance and accounting practices have faced pressures to adapt to international competitive markets. Against this backdrop, European corporate governance systems have been criticized as being less efficient than the Anglo-American market based systems. This textbook examines the unique dimensions and qualities of European corporate governance. Reforms of key institutions, the doctrine of shareholder value and the seemingly irresistible growth of CEO power and reward are critically analyzed. The book brings out the richness of European corporate governance systems, as well as highlighting historical weaknesses that will require further work for a sustainable corporate governance environment in the future. In light of the most severe financial crisis since the 1930s, this intelligent look at European corporate governance is a vital textbook for courses on corporate governance and a great supplementary textbook on a host of business, management and accounting classes.

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.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, important changes in external environments have affected the corporate governance practices of firms all around the world. The corporate governance structure in each country develops in response to country-specific factors and conditions. Firms are currently engaged in a variety of dynamic business relationships such as business networks, strategic alliances, and conglomerates especially in high technology sectors. Strategy, Structure and Corporate Governance by Nabyla Daidj, proposes to analyze the main trends and drivers of change in corporate governance of several kinds of organizations: - Large conglomerates. The development of large and complex conglomerate organizations have played an important role in the economy in Japan but also in other countries such as Korea with chaebols, which can be defined as closely intertwined industrial groupings. - Inter-firms networks (districts, clusters etc.); and, - 'Recent' forms of inter-firms networks (business ecosystems). The author examines several case studies and shows how shifts in markets and global competition are reconfiguring transactions within these organizations and are impacting corporate governance systems.

The urgent and sustained interest in corporate governance is unprecedented, with the connections between corporate governance and economic performance being emphasized by the World Bank, the IMF and others in the global economic community. In this timely and definitive intellectual analysis of a key discipline, The SAGE Handbook of Corporate Governance offers a critical overview of the key themes, theoretical controversies, current research and emerging concepts that frame the field. Consisting of original substantive chapters by leading international scholars, and examining corporate governance from an inter-disciplinary basis, the text highlights how governance issues are critical to the formation, growth, financing, structural development, and strategic direction of companies and how corporate governance institutions in turn influence the innovation and development of industrial and economic systems globally. Comprehensive, authoritative and presented in a highly-accessible framework, this Handbook is a significant resource to those with an interest in understanding this important emerging field.