Corporate Governance Failures

Corporate Governance Failures PDF Author: James P. Hawley
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204646
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Corporate governance, the internal policies and leadership that guide the actions of corporations, played a major part in the recent global financial crisis. While much blame has been targeted at compensation arrangements that rewarded extreme risk-taking but did not punish failure, the performance of large, supposedly sophisticated institutional investors in this crisis has gone for the most part unexamined. Shareholding organizations, such as pension funds and mutual funds, hold considerable sway over the financial industry from Wall Street to the City of London. Corporate Governance Failures: The Role of Institutional Investors in the Global Financial Crisis exposes the misdeeds and lapses of these institutional investors leading up to the recent economic meltdown. In this collection of original essays, edited by pioneers in the field of fiduciary capitalism, top legal and financial practitioners and researchers discuss detrimental actions and inaction of institutional investors. Corporate Governance Failures reveals how these organizations exposed themselves and their clientele to extremely complex financial instruments, such as credit default swaps, through investments in hedge and private equity funds as well as more traditional equity investments in large financial institutions. The book's contributors critique fund executives for tolerating the "pursuit of alpha" culture that led managers to pursue risky financial strategies in hopes of outperforming the market. The volume also points out how and why institutional investors failed to effectively monitor such volatile investments, ignoring relatively well-established corporate governance principles and best practices. Along with detailed investigations of institutional investor missteps, Corporate Governance Failures offers nuanced and realistic proposals to mitigate future financial pitfalls. This volume provides fresh perspectives on ways institutional investors can best act as gatekeepers and promote responsible investment.

Corporate Governance Failures

Corporate Governance Failures PDF Author: James P. Hawley
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812204646
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Get Book Here

Book Description
Corporate governance, the internal policies and leadership that guide the actions of corporations, played a major part in the recent global financial crisis. While much blame has been targeted at compensation arrangements that rewarded extreme risk-taking but did not punish failure, the performance of large, supposedly sophisticated institutional investors in this crisis has gone for the most part unexamined. Shareholding organizations, such as pension funds and mutual funds, hold considerable sway over the financial industry from Wall Street to the City of London. Corporate Governance Failures: The Role of Institutional Investors in the Global Financial Crisis exposes the misdeeds and lapses of these institutional investors leading up to the recent economic meltdown. In this collection of original essays, edited by pioneers in the field of fiduciary capitalism, top legal and financial practitioners and researchers discuss detrimental actions and inaction of institutional investors. Corporate Governance Failures reveals how these organizations exposed themselves and their clientele to extremely complex financial instruments, such as credit default swaps, through investments in hedge and private equity funds as well as more traditional equity investments in large financial institutions. The book's contributors critique fund executives for tolerating the "pursuit of alpha" culture that led managers to pursue risky financial strategies in hopes of outperforming the market. The volume also points out how and why institutional investors failed to effectively monitor such volatile investments, ignoring relatively well-established corporate governance principles and best practices. Along with detailed investigations of institutional investor missteps, Corporate Governance Failures offers nuanced and realistic proposals to mitigate future financial pitfalls. This volume provides fresh perspectives on ways institutional investors can best act as gatekeepers and promote responsible investment.

The Failure of Governance in Bell, California

The Failure of Governance in Bell, California PDF Author: Thom Reilly
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498512135
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
“How could this have happened?” The question still lingers among officials and residents of the small southern California town of Bell. Corruption is hardly an isolated challenge to the governance of America’s cities. But following decades of benign obscurity, Bell witnessed the emergence of a truly astonishing level of public wrongdoing—a level succinctly described by Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley as “corruption on steroids.” Even discounting the enormous sums involved—the top administrator paid himself nearly $800,000 a year in a town with a $35,000 average income—this was no ordinary failure of governance. The picture that emerges from years of federal, state, and local investigations, trials, depositions, and media accounts is of an elaborate culture of corruption and deceit created and sustained by top city administrators, councilmembers, police officers, numerous municipal employees, and consultants. The Failure of Governance in Bell California: Big-Time Corruption in a Small Town details how Bell was rendered vulnerable to such massive malfeasance by a disengaged public, lack of established ethical norms, absence of effective checks and balances, and minimal coverage by an overextended area news media. It is a grim and nearly unbelievable story. Yet even these factors fail to fully explain how such large-scale corruption could have arisen. More specifically, how did it occur within a structure—the council-manager form of government—that had been deliberately designed to promote good governance? Why were so many officials and employees prepared to participate in or overlook the ongoing corruption? To what degree can theories of governance, such as contagion theory or the “rover bandit” theme, explain the success of such blatant wrongdoing? The Failure of Governance, by Arizona State University Professor Thom Reilly—himself former county manager of Clark County, Nevada—pursues answers to these and related questions through an analysis of municipal operations that will afford the reader deeper insight into the inner workings of city governments—corrupt and otherwise. By considering factors arising from both theory and practice, Reilly makes clear, in other words, why the sad saga of Bell, California represents both a case study and a warning.

Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures

Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures PDF Author: Gilles Paquet
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
ISBN: 0776618105
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures, Gilles Paquet criticizes the prevailing practices of the social sciences on the basis of their inadequate concepts of knowledge, evidence and inquiry, concepts he claims have become methodological “mental prisons”. Paquet describes the prevailing policy development process in Canada in terms of its weak information infrastructure, poor accountability, and inflexible organization design. In contrast, he suggests that social science and public policy should promote forms of “serious play” that would allow organizations to experiment with new structures. Paquet engages with numerous foundationalist programs in the social sciences in order to show their inadequacy and suggests important and unexplored directions in policy areas as diverse as education, science, health, intergovernmental and foreign policy. He closes the work with a plea for experimentalism in academic research, policy development, and organization design.

Paradise Plundered

Paradise Plundered PDF Author: Steven P. Erie
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804782180
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
The early 21st century has not been kind to California's reputation for good government. But the Golden State's governance flaws reflect worrisome national trends with origins in the 1970s and 1980s. Growing voter distrust with government, a demand for services but not taxes to pay for them, a sharp decline in enlightened leadership and effective civic watchdogs, and dysfunctional political institutions have all contributed to the current governance malaise. Until recently, San Diego, California—America's 8th largest city—seemed immune to such systematic governance disorders. This sunny beach town entered the 1990s proclaiming to be "America's Finest City," but in a few short years its reputation went from "Futureville" to "Enron-by-the-Sea." In this eye-opening and telling narrative, Steven P. Erie, Vladimir Kogan, and Scott A. MacKenzie mix policy analysis, political theory, and history to explore and explain the unintended but largely predictable failures of governance in San Diego. Using untapped primary sources—interviews with key decision makers and public documents—and benchmarking San Diego with other leading California cities, Paradise Plundered examines critical dimensions of San Diego's governance failure: a multi-billion dollar pension deficit; a chronic budget deficit; inadequate city services and infrastructure; grandiose planning initiatives divorced from dire fiscal realities; an insulated downtown redevelopment program plagued by poorly-crafted public-private partnerships; and, for the metropolitan region, inadequate airport and port facilities, a severe underinvestment in firefighting capacity despite destructive wildfires, and heightened Mexican border security concerns. Far from a sunny story of paradise and prosperity, this account takes stock of an important but understudied city, its failed civic leadership, and poorly performing institutions, policymaking, and planning. Though the extent of these failures may place San Diego in a league of its own, other cities are experiencing similar challenges and political changes. As such, this tale of civic woe offers valuable lessons for urban scholars, practitioners, and general readers concerned about the future of their own cities.

Government Failure Versus Market Failure

Government Failure Versus Market Failure PDF Author: Clifford Winston
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press and AEI
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
When should government intervene in market activity? When is it best to let market forces simply take their natural course? How does existing empirical evidence about government performance inform those decisions? Brookings economist Clifford Winston uses these questions to frame a frank empirical assessment of government economic intervention in Government Failure vs.

Constitutionalism and Transnational Governance Failures

Constitutionalism and Transnational Governance Failures PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004693726
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
This book explores strategies for limiting transnational market failures, governance failures and constitutional failures impeding protection of the universally agreed sustainable development goals like climate change mitigation and access to justice and transnational rule-of-law. Can multilevel democratic and judicial protection of fundamental rights and public goods across frontiers be extended through plurilateral agreements? Can transnational economic and environmental constitutionalism be reconciled with ‘constitutional pluralism’ and with democratic constitutionalism depending on individual and democratic consent of free and equal citizens? Will judicial challenges (e.g. of EU carbon border adjustment measures) and countermeasures lead to further disruption of UN and WTO law? "This innovative book provides convincing analyses by leading practitioners and academics of multilevel governance of transnational public goods. It advocates the need for stronger involvement of civil society and democratic institutions. It shows why constitutionalism and constitutional economics offer appropriate methodologies for limiting market failures, government failures and constitutional failures. It thereby offers a glimpse of much needed optimism." Karl-Ernst Brauner, former Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO)

Success and Failure in Public Governance

Success and Failure in Public Governance PDF Author: M. A. P. Bovens
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1843762854
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 709

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Book Description
Why do some policies succeed so well while others, in the same sector or country, fail dramatically? The aim of this book is to answer this question and provide systematic research on the nature, sources and consequences of policy failure. The expert contributors analyse and evaluate the success and failure of four policy areas (Steel, Health Care, Finance, HIV and the Blood Supply) in six European countries, namely France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain and Sweden. The book is therefore able to compare success and failure across countries as well as policy areas, enabling a test of a variety of theoretical assumptions about policy making and government.

Correcting the Failures in Corporate Governance Reforms

Correcting the Failures in Corporate Governance Reforms PDF Author: Shann Turnbull
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 8

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Book Description
The paper identified ways in which corporate governance reforms are failing and how this situation can be corrected. A basic problem is that corporate governance is not described in outcomes that can be measured but in unmeasurable terms of principles, practices and processes. This means that there are no accepted criteria for identifying good or higher standards. A more fundamental problem is that law makers, regulators, and corporate governance experts lack knowledge of the natural science of governance identified only 59 years ago. The natural laws of regulation are outlined to identify why the current top down approach to governance is incompatible with the bottom up approach found in nature to regulate biota in the most efficient and effective manner to sustain their existence. A bottom up approach allows investors and stakeholders to become co-regulators. As the mission of regulators is to protect citizens, their involvement as co-regulators richly increases the ability of both firms and regulators to control business activities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of both. The paper concludes that constructive governance reform requires Regulators; advisors to law makers and company boards to acquire the knowledge of how to apply the science of governance to firms.

Gatekeepers

Gatekeepers PDF Author: John C. Coffee
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199288097
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
John Coffee traces the evolution of the four main gatekeeping professions: auditors, lawyers, securities analysts and credit-rating agencies, in the wake of corporate governance disasters, such as Enron and WorldCom.

Survival Migration

Survival Migration PDF Author: Alexander Betts
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801468957
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
International treaties, conventions, and organizations to protect refugees were established in the aftermath of World War II to protect people escaping targeted persecution by their own governments. However, the nature of cross-border displacement has transformed dramatically since then. Such threats as environmental change, food insecurity, and generalized violence force massive numbers of people to flee states that are unable or unwilling to ensure their basic rights, as do conditions in failed and fragile states that make possible human rights deprivations. Because these reasons do not meet the legal understanding of persecution, the victims of these circumstances are not usually recognized as "refugees," preventing current institutions from ensuring their protection.In this book, Alexander Betts develops the concept of "survival migration" to highlight the crisis in which these people find themselves. Examining flight from three of the most fragile states in Africa—Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia—Betts explains variation in institutional responses across the neighboring host states. There is massive inconsistency. Some survival migrants are offered asylum as refugees; others are rounded up, detained, and deported, often in brutal conditions. The inadequacies of the current refugee regime are a disaster for human rights and gravely threaten international security. In Survival Migration, Betts outlines these failings, illustrates the enormous human suffering that results, and argues strongly for an expansion of protected categories.