Built to Last: Focusing Corporations on Long-Term Performance

This report addresses the increasingly short-term focus by many business leaders that is damaging the ability of public companies to sustain long-term performance. This trend is hampering growth in the American economy. The report offers recommendations for corporations to improve performance by focusing on long-term goals. "Short-termism" is defined as an undue focus on meeting quarterly forecasts and a lesser emphasis on long-term planning

Executive Compensation in America: Optimal Contracting or Extraction of Rents?

This paper develops an account of the role and significance of rent extraction in executive compensation. Under the optimal contracting view of executive compensation, which has dominated academic research on the subject, pay arrangements are set by a board of directors that aims to maximize shareholder value by designing an optimal principal-agent contract. Under the alternative rent extraction view that we examine, the board does not operate at arm's length; rather, executives have power to influence their own compensation, and they use their power to extract rents. As a result, executives are paid more than is optimal for shareholders and, to camouflage the extraction of rents, executive compensation might be structured sub-optimally. The presence of rent extraction, we argue, is consistent both with the processes that produce compensation schemes and with the market forces and constraints that companies face. Examining the large body of empirical work on executive compensation, we show that the picture emerging from it is largely compatible with the rent extraction view. Indeed, rent extraction, and the desire to camouflage it, can better explain many puzzling features of compensation patterns and practices. We conclude that extraction of rents might well play a significant role in U.S. executive compensation; and that the significant presence of rent extraction should be taken into account in any examination of the practice and regulation of corporate governance.

Private Enterprise, Public Trust: The State of Corporate America After Sarbanes-Oxley

The highly visible accounting scandals that surrounded the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and several other major companies -- together with the revelation of fraud and other acts of malfeasance by corporate executives -- aroused public outrage, called into question the values and ethics of business leaders, and undermined the public's confidence in public companies. CED is concerned about the reality, as well as the appearance, of corporate impropriety. This policy statement examines the state of corporate governance in the United States and offers practical recommendations for restoring public trust in business. Recommendations include:- Making Audit Committees Autonomous and Vigorous- Ensuring that users understand that financial information is based on judgments- Giving Sarbanes-Oxley a chance to work- Taming excessive executive compensation- Using independent nominating committees to select and appraise director

Chief Information Officer Influence: An Exploratory Study

Effective initiation and execution of IS/T projects and systems has become a critical core competence for many organizations. One key to this is the influence of the senior executive responsible for IS/T, often called the Chief Information Officer (CIO). This paper explores the notions of influence and influence behaviors, top executive influence behaviors, how CIOs influence peers in the top management team, and reports the findings from an exploratory study. Contrary to some of the extant literature, the findings suggest that CIO influence can vary both in terms of how it is utilized and its effectiveness. Furthermore, CIO influence is exercised for the initiation of information systems projects, the implementation of these projects, and on overall business strategy. The paper concludes with a series of observations that summarize the findings

National Evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme in English Local Government: Annex 4: Follow On Study of Progress in Seven Case Study Improvement Partnerships

This report is one of a series of outputs from the national evaluation of the Capacity Building Programme for local government in England (CBP), being undertaken by a team of researchers at the Policy Research Institute (PRI) at Leeds Metropolitan University and the Cities Research Unit at the University of West of England. This report summarises the findings from the second phase of fieldwork with regional and sub-regional Improvement Partnerships, established to facilitate capacity building and improvement activity in local authorities. The research underpinning this report was undertaken in seven case study Improvement Partnerships (see Section 2) in October and November 2006 and follows a similar – baseline – exercise undertaken during the same period during 2005. It thus both draws on the earlier research (see Section 3) and identifies evidence of progress and impact (see Section 10) since the baseline phase

Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard

David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 Harvard Business Review article (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). The article was based on a multi-company research project to study performance measurement in companies whose intangible assets played a central role in value creation (Nolan Norton Institute, 1991). Norton and I believed that if companies were to improve the management of their intangible assets, they had to integrate the measurement of intangible assets into their management systems. After publication of the 1992 HBR article, several companies quickly adopted the Balanced Scorecard giving us deeper and broader insights into its power and potential. During the next 15 years, as it was adopted by thousands of private, public, and nonprofit enterprises around the world, we extended and broadened the concept into a management tool for describing, communicating and implementing strategy. This paper describes the roots and motivation for the original Balanced Scorecard article as well as the subsequent innovations that connected it to a larger management literature.

Educating managers for business and government : a review of international experience

Managers, in both the private and public sectors, are increasingly recognized as critical in the use of scarce resources for national development. There is no unanimity of opinion, however, regarding the models or approaches to management education that are most appropriate in different environmental settings. This report encompasses management education for each of the following groups: the managers and future managers of large scale enterprises; entrepreneurs and small businessmen; and public administrators. It reviews worldwide trends and developments in management education for lessons in such areas as curriculum design, research and teaching methodology, and institutional policies and administration. Experience is drawn from recognized universities, educational organizations, civil service institutes, and corporations in several major countries and regions of the world.ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Teaching and Learning,Curriculum&Instruction,Primary Education

Information Systems Audit for University Governance in Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies

Today’s successful audit leaders never lose sight of the importance of continually assessing and improving the organizations’ university governance structure. Focusing on small and large mission, and using practical exercises and individual activities, the auditors will help gain the skills necessary to review and improve university governance structure, while developing techniques to assess risk management activities. Attendees will leave with an understanding of legal and regulatory guidelines as they pertain to university governance and discuss in-depth issues such as business ethics, transparency and disclosure, IT governance and university risks management. Identification, evaluation and management of university risks, is an important element of the university governance system. Today, the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies is in a complex process to realize a university governance integrate information system. In context of this paperwork there are presented the main aspects for developing and implementing in actual phase information systems audit, to recognize the risks and establish the necessary measures to eliminate them.University Governance, IT Governance, IS Audit, Risks Management, Performance

RETHINKING THE BUSINESS PROCESS THROUGH REENGINEERING

Rethinking business through reengineering is based on the assumption that to meet contemporary demands of quality, service, flexibility, and low cost, processes must be kept simple. Examples of simplifying processes are combining several jobs into one, letting workers make decisions, performing the steps in a process in a natural order, and performing work where it makes the most sense. The net result is that work may be shifted across functional boundaries several times to expedite its accomplishment. Traditional inspection and control procedures are often eliminated or deferred until the process is complete, providing further cost savings. The authors, focusing their research on enterprises from Oltenia Region, demonstrate how reengineering can be carried out in a variety of corporate settings. But although workers are the ones who need to be empowered to carry out reengineering, the authors are adamant that the process must start at the top. This is because it involves making major changes that are likely to cut across traditional organizational boundaries. Those empowered to make the changes at lower levels must know they have the support of top management, or change won�t occur.reengineering, rethinking business processes, regional economy, leadership, organization

Dialectic tensions in the financial markets: a longitudinal study of pre- and post-crisis regulatory technology

This article presents the findings from a longitudinal research study on regulatory technology in the UK financial services industry. The financial crisis with serious corporate and mutual fund scandals raised the profile of compliance as governmental bodies, institutional and private investors introduced a ‘tsunami’ of financial regulations. Adopting a multi-level analysis, this study examines how regulatory technology was used by financial firms to meet their compliance obligations, pre- and post-crisis. Empirical data collected over 12 years examine the deployment of an investment management system in eight financial firms. Interviews with public regulatory bodies, financial institutions and technology providers reveal a culture of compliance with increased transparency, surveillance and accountability. Findings show that dialectic tensions arise as the pursuit of transparency, surveillance and accountability in compliance mandates is simultaneously rationalized, facilitated and obscured by regulatory technology. Responding to these challenges, regulatory bodies continue to impose revised compliance mandates on financial firms to force them to adapt their financial technologies in an ever-changing multi-jurisdictional regulatory landscape