Responsibility and the modern corporation

Corporate governance crises as well as human rights issues in global value chains have pushed notions of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Citizenship (CC), Triple P (People, Planet, Profit) and sustainable development onto the agenda of corporations and into the discussion of corporate governance. However, it has been argued that the CSR debate tends to rest on rather underspecified conceptions of the public corporation and corporate governance

Managing design variety, process variety and engineering change: a case study of two capital good firms

Many capital good firms deliver products that are not strictly one-off, but instead share a certain degree of similarity with other deliveries. In the delivery of the product, they aim to balance stability and variety in their product design and processes. The issue of engineering change plays an important in how they manage to do so. Our aim is to gain more understanding into how capital good firms manage engineering change, design variety and process variety, and into the role of the product delivery strategies they thereby use. Product delivery strategies are defined as the type of engineering work that is done independent of an order and the specification freedom the customer has in the remaining part of the design. Based on the within-case and cross-case analysis of two capital good firms several mechanisms for managing engineering change, design variety and process variety are distilled. It was found that there exist different ways of (1) managing generic design information, (2) isolating large engineering changes, (3) managing process variety, (4) designing and executing engineering change processes. Together with different product delivery strategies these mechanisms can be placed within an archetypes framework of engineering change management. On one side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to open product delivery strategies, have some practices in place to investigate design reuse potential, isolate discontinuous engineering changes into the first deliveries of the product, employ ‘probe and learn’ process management principles in order to allow evolving insights to be accurately executed and have informal engineering change processes. On the other side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to a closed product delivery strategy, focus on prevention of engineering changes based on design standards, need no isolation mechanisms for discontinuous engineering changes, have formal process management practices in place and make use of closed and formal engineering change procedures. The framework should help managers to (1) analyze existing configurations of product delivery strategies, product and process designs and engineering change management and (2) reconfigure any of these elements according to a ‘misfit’ derived from the framework. Since this is one of the few in-depth empirical studies into engineering change management in the capital good sector, our work adds to the understanding on the various ways in which engineering change can be dealt with

Cycles containing all vertices of maximum degree

For a graph G and an integer k, denote by Vk the set {v ε V(G) | d(v) ≥ k}. Veldman proved that if G is a 2-connected graph of order n with n ≤ 3k - 2 and |Vk| ≤ k, then G has a cycle containing all vertices of Vk. It is shown that the upper bound k on |Vk| is close to best possible in general. For the special case k = δ(G), it is conjectured that the condition |Vk| ≤ k can be omitted. Using a variation of Woodall's Hopping Lemma, the conjecture is proved under the additional condition that n ≤ 2δ(G) + δ(G) + 1. This result is an almost-generalization of Jackson's Theorem that every 2-connected k-regular graph of order n with n ≤ 3k is hamiltonian. An alternative proof of an extension of Jackson's Theorem is also presented

Self-regulation in international corporate governance codes

Soft law refers to a deviation from hard law that begins with the weakening of legal arrangements ‘along one or more of the dimensions of obligation, precision, and delegation’. Such a weakening of legal arrangements is considered potentially beneficial

Performativity and convergence in comparative corporate governance

We engage with the convergence/divergence debate in the comparative study of corporate governance by commending a nuanced formulation of the convergence thesis. Directing attention to the precarious constitution and adoption of knowledge claims about corporate status and architecture in the field of corporate governance we suggest that the study of comparative corporate governance might usefully incorporate consideration of claims about corporate governance as potentially performative statements that function to stabilize particular ideas of status and architecture of the modern corporation with substantive outcomes for political economy, thereby influencing the shape of the institutions comprising the field of corporate governance. We conclude that the predominantly epistemological preoccupations of participants in the convergence/divergence debate could be usefully refined and supplemented by giving closer attention, empirical as well as theoretical, to the relation between performativity, convergence/divergence, and political economy

Boards and Sustainable Value Creation: The Legal Entity, Co-Determination and Other Means

Boards of directors face growing pressures to engage with systemic risks and sustainable value creation. In this article I explore how an entity view in company law provides a consideration of the status, architecture and purpose of the modern corporation that theoretically offers the capacity to integrate such issues in corporate strategy. I also explore how specific models of corporate architecture such as co-determination relate to such an entity view. Exploring different perspectives on the VW case I show how a dominant view of corporate governance conflicts with the assumptions underlying co-determination. In relation to these issues I argue that the entity view and co-determination do not provide panacea for the reform of corporate governance theory and practice, but provide conceptual building blocks that may be used to engage in a creative way with notions of status, architecture and purpose in order to enhance the capacity for company directors to engage with systemic risks and sustainable value creation in corporate strategy