Exploring Why Organisations Differ in Board Configuration: Do Organisations’ Age, Size and their Years Being Public Matter? Findings from Greek Listed Manufacturing Organisations

In this paper building upon several theories (agency theory, stakeholder theory and resource dependence theory) and by utilising data from 161 Greek manufacturing companies that were listed in the Athens Stock Exchange on the 31st December 2008, we explore the relationships between the organisational characteristics of the firms (organisational age, organisational size and years listed in the stock market) and the Board configuration (board size, board leadership structure and directors’ dependence/independence). Both descriptive and inferential statistics (ANOVA tests) were utilised to answer the research questions. Interestingly and in alignment with the literature, the findings showed that larger organizations tend to have larger boards and greater proportions of external and independent directors. However, no more strong relationships have been identified between the organisational characteristics and the board configuration. Finally, it is worth mentioning that this study examines the listed Greek manufacturing companies during very turbulent times, the start of the financial crisis in Greece, which may have an impact on the configuration of the boards at that time

Balance rather than critical mass or tokenism: gender diversity, leadership and performance in financial firms

Purpose: This study analyzes how board’s gender diversity, and more specifically a gender-balanced configuration—i.e., a proportion of women in the boardroom ranging between 40% and 60%—affects economic and risk oriented performance in financial firms. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical application uses a rich dataset that includes detailed accounting and organizational information for all financial firms in the Costa Rican industry during the period 2000-2012. The proposed hypotheses are tested using panel data (fixed-effects) regression models that emphasize that bank performance is affected by various dimensions of the banks’ gender diversity. Findings: The longitudinal analysis of the Costa Rican banking industry reveals that, unlike a proportion indicating a particular critical mass of women on the board, a balanced gender configuration yields superior economic performance (ROA and net intermediation margin). Additionally, the findings show that the performance benefits of gender diversity only exists in the presence of a gender balanced board configuration, and that this positive effect is not conditioned by the presence of women leadership in the corporate hierarchy (Chair or CEO). Originality/value: The paper further explores the influence of board gender diversity on organizational performance by adopting an approach to the gender diversity-performance relationship that goes beyond the mere representation of women within the corporate hierarchy.Peer ReviewedPreprin

The ARIEL Instrument Control Unit design for the M4 Mission Selection Review of the ESA's Cosmic Vision Program

The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey mission (ARIEL) is one of the three present candidates for the ESA M4 (the fourth medium mission) launch opportunity. The proposed Payload will perform a large unbiased spectroscopic survey from space concerning the nature of exoplanets atmospheres and their interiors to determine the key factors affecting the formation and evolution of planetary systems. ARIEL will observe a large number (>500) of warm and hot transiting gas giants, Neptunes and super-Earths around a wide range of host star types, targeting planets hotter than 600 K to take advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres. It will exploit primary and secondary transits spectroscopy in the 1.2-8 um spectral range and broad-band photometry in the optical and Near IR (NIR). The main instrument of the ARIEL Payload is the IR Spectrometer (AIRS) providing low-resolution spectroscopy in two IR channels: Channel 0 (CH0) for the 1.95-3.90 um band and Channel 1 (CH1) for the 3.90-7.80 um range. It is located at the intermediate focal plane of the telescope and common optical system and it hosts two IR sensors and two cold front-end electronics (CFEE) for detectors readout, a well defined process calibrated for the selected target brightness and driven by the Payload's Instrument Control Unit (ICU).Comment: Experimental Astronomy, Special Issue on ARIEL, (2017

Meat in the sandwich: The impact of changing policy contexts and local management of schools on principals’ work in New Zealand 1989-2009

The impact of principal leadership on school outcomes, particularly student achievement, is assuming unprecedented attention internationally. Official discourses often assume that principals can be trained to achieve prescribed outcomes through the employment of learned strategies. Such claims are challenged by critical leadership scholars who insist on the significance of context. This paper explores the impact of policy contexts on the work of a small group of experienced principals in New Zealand over a period of 20 years. During that time, they often struggled to reconcile their own espoused educational principles with policy imperatives in a small country where Local Management of Schools (LMS) has been extreme. It argues that national policy discourse around competition, curriculum and achievement, together with formal accountability to local lay Boards of Trustees (BOTs), are sources of tension and moral ambiguity, which tempt principals to comply and play the game for the sake of their schools. Principals are also caught between local and national accountabilities. In spite of this, principals in the study maintained an educational vision encompassing the wider social context of New Zealand education and retained a sense of personal agency

Construction and commissioning of a technological prototype of a high-granularity semi-digital hadronic calorimeter

A large prototype of 1.3m3 was designed and built as a demonstrator of the semi-digital hadronic calorimeter (SDHCAL) concept proposed for the future ILC experiments. The prototype is a sampling hadronic calorimeter of 48 units. Each unit is built of an active layer made of 1m2 Glass Resistive Plate Chamber(GRPC) detector placed inside a cassette whose walls are made of stainless steel. The cassette contains also the electronics used to read out the GRPC detector. The lateral granularity of the active layer is provided by the electronics pick-up pads of 1cm2 each. The cassettes are inserted into a self-supporting mechanical structure built also of stainless steel plates which, with the cassettes walls, play the role of the absorber. The prototype was designed to be very compact and important efforts were made to minimize the number of services cables to optimize the efficiency of the Particle Flow Algorithm techniques to be used in the future ILC experiments. The different components of the SDHCAL prototype were studied individually and strict criteria were applied for the final selection of these components. Basic calibration procedures were performed after the prototype assembling. The prototype is the first of a series of new-generation detectors equipped with a power-pulsing mode intended to reduce the power consumption of this highly granular detector. A dedicated acquisition system was developed to deal with the output of more than 440000 electronics channels in both trigger and triggerless modes. After its completion in 2011, the prototype was commissioned using cosmic rays and particles beams at CERN.Comment: 49 pages, 41 figure

Khemah mangsa banjir patuh syariah

Kebelakangan ini semakin kerap bencana banjir yang melanda negara Malaysia. Bencana banjir yang berlaku ini, sama ada daripada tindakan manusia yang tidak bertanggungjawab mahupun faktor iklim, kedua-duanya membawa kepada akibat yang besar kepada sesebuah masyarakat. Keadaan semakin buruk dengan fenomena La Nina yang menyebabkan hujan lebat selain musim tengkujuh yang sering berlaku di bahagian pantai timur negara [1]. Penduduk yang berada di negeri-negeri yang mengalami banjir mengalami masalah yang sama. Tinggal di dalam khemah mangsa banjir sudah menjadi lumrah bagi mereka di sesetangah kawasan yang mengalami banjir yang teruk. Projek ini bertujuan membina sebuah khemah khususnya bagi penempatan mangsa banjir yang melanda negara. Projek yang dijalankan ini merujuk kepada segala permasalahan yang wujud di kalangan mangsa–manga banjir sendiri. Kumpulan sasaran adalah mangsa banjir yang berada di negeri yang sering mengalami banjir seperti di Kelantan, Terengganu, Johor dan Pahang. Objektif projek Khemah patuh Syariah ini adalah untuk membantu para mangsa dalam memberi satu keselesaan khususnya bagi mereka yang berkeluarga dan para wanita. Keselesaan yang dimaksudkan adalah fleksibiliti untuk menunaikan solat, mengambil wudhuk dan menukar pakaian. Projek ini diinovasi daripada khemah IM4U (1Malaysia For Youth) milik kerajaan yang telah digunakan bagi penempatan sementara mangsa banjir di Malaysia. Data-data dianalisis dan dipersembahkan dalam bentuk jadual. Melalui borang kajian yang diedarkan serta selepas dikaji secara teliti didapati bahawa masih ada kekurangan yang perlu dititikberatkan demi memberi keselesaan yang sepatutnya kepada mangsa banjir ini

Governance of the governing

Developments in the governance practices in UK public organizations show how ideas from the governance of listed companies have translated into public sectors bodies, government departments and the governance of parliament itself. The use of independent, non-executives directors in public bodies encapsulates the tension in the private sector between the service role of directors and how they control the executives who manage the business. This paper gives a preliminary examination of three public bodies, comparing how reform of their governance mechanisms has affected tensions in accountability and director motivation. What is evident is that the changes involve greater emphasis on extrinsic goals, potentially at the cost of the intrinsic ones that characterize public service motivation. These tensions seem inevitable, and the challenge for board is to maintain a balance

Platform for Testing and Evaluation of PUF and TRNG Implementations in FPGAs

Implementation of cryptographic primitives like Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) and True Random Number Generators (TRNGs) depends significantly on the underlying hardware. Common evaluation boards offered by FPGA vendors are not suitable for a fair benchmarking, since they have different vendor dependent configuration and contain noisy switching power supplies. The proposed hardware platform is primary aimed at testing and evaluation of cryptographic primitives across different FPGA and ASIC families. The modular platform consists of a motherboard and exchangeable daughter board modules. These are designed to be as simple as possible to allow cheap and independent evaluation of cryptographic blocks and namely PUFs. The motherboard is based on the Microsemi SmartFusion 2 SoC FPGA. It features a low-noise power supply, which simplifies evaluation of vulnerability to the side channel attacks. It provides also means of communication between the PC and the daughter module. Available software tools can be easily customized, for example to collect data from the random number generator located in the daughter module and to read it via USB interface. The daughter module can be plugged into the motherboard or connected using an HDMI cable to be placed inside a Faraday cage or a temperature control chamber. The whole platform was designed and optimized to fullfil the European HECTOR project (H2020) requirements

Interlocking directorates and different power forms: An explorative analysis in the Italian context

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. The first is to update the contribution by Drago et al. (2011) about cross-shareholdings and interlocking directorates in Italian listed companies (FTSE MIB) to 31 December 2016 and to reinforce theory of enlarged collusion. The second is to find how interlocking directorates can contribute to understanding the power structure. By using the social network analysis, we map the network structure of interlocking boards and employ centrality measures like degree, eigenvector and betweenness centrality along with the network density and average degree. We interpret eigenvector centrality as a measure of “effective power” of the connections because it can be seen as a weighted sum of not only direct connections but indirect connections, while betweenness centrality as a measure of “potential power” because it is a proxy of the volume of information that passes through the nodes. In this way, we provide a framework for selecting Italian firms with effective and potential power – around whom interactions and processes can be traced and analysed. In addition, we find that the position assumed by the controlling group of the Mediobanca Galaxy is definitely downsized