Financial Assurance Rules and Natural Resource Damage Liability: A Working Marriage?

The study explores challenges associated with, and the feasibility of, financial assurance requirements for liabilities arising under U.S. environmental statutes, with a particular emphasis on liabilities associated with natural resource damages (NRDs). The overlap between federal NRD liability and financial assurance arises in the context of two financial assurance rules: one for waterborne vessels that carry oil or hazardous substances, and one for offshore facilities used for oil exploration, drilling, production, or transport. The report addresses the rules’ history, their role as a complement to other forms of environmental regulation, and their impact on the regulated community and providers of coverage. Despite numerous difficulties and over objections from the regulated community, the rules have been implemented with success and without significant shortfalls in coverage availability.financial assurance, financial responsibility, natural resource damages, liability

The neuroscience of leadership

This doctorate summarizes 13 years of thinking, experimentation and research into the issue of improving human performance. Specifically, the issue of how to drive change in human performance, through conversation. This focused on non-clinical populations, and generally with very high functioning people. My work initially focused on the act of ‘coaching’. At its simplest, coaching is the ability of one person to enable another to improve their performance. Through intensive observation, I built a coaching model that enabled a significant improvement in people’s ability to facilitate behavior change in others. The model was based on the realization that people needed the ‘aha’ moment for change to occur. An effort was made to understand how to best bring others to their own insights. An approach was developed into a set of codified techniques and taught to thousands of professionals worldwide, including inside large organizations. Through a desire to understand the deeper mechanisms occurring in moments of insight, I became fascinated with brain research. Initially focused on the neuroscience of insight, I soon became interested in the neuroscience behind other mental experiences central to effective workplace functioning, such as selfawareness, social skills, decision-making, and emotional regulation. Because no formal body of knowledge existed that explained the neuroscience underneath everyday work situations, I reached out to and was mentored by specific neuroscientists. I soon saw value in creating a field of study that brought neuroscience research into the field of coaching, leadership development and organizational change. A new field of knowledge was created, called the Neuroscience of Leadership, which is now being driven by an institute, an annual summit, a journal and academic education. This thesis explores my 13-year learning journey, the key research that was undertaken, the mentors who supported my learning and the publications I produced. It finishes with a discussion about the development of the Neuroscience of Leadership field, and the future of that field

Liability and Organizational Choice

Scholars have long maintained that increases in liability encourage firms to contract out risky activities in order to take advantage of so-called judgment-proof strategies. These strategies allow entities to limit their liability through contractual arrangements with nearly insolvent firms. However, the use of judgment-proof firms triggers countervailing effects: it provides opportunities to externalize liability through judgment-proof firms, but the insolvency of these firms introduces distortion in care levels that can generate more liability costs. These costs may outweigh the benefits of externalizing liability, making contracting out suboptimal. A simple model of organizational decision making with judgment-proof firms is developed and applied to the oil industry, where contracting out decreased in response to heightened liability following the Exxon Valdez oil spill

The Tiger Vol. 84 Issue 1 1990-08-31

https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/tiger_newspaper/3155/thumbnail.jp

Top Management Group Pay Disparities and Subsequent Firm Performance: The Effect of Powerful CEOs

The issue of pay equity within publicly-traded companies has been a question of growing interest in recent years. Academics, policy-makers, and members of the popular press and general public have become increasingly focused on the extent to which pay at the highest levels of American business exceeds that received by other workers. In fact, according to a recent study by Anderson, Cavanagh, Collins, & Benjamin (2006) the ratio of CEO pay to that of the average worker grew 380% from 107:1 in 1990 to 411:1 in 2005. While growing attention has been paid to the distribution of pay across the hierarchy of corporations, the question of the distribution in pay within top management groups has gone little-studied. Yet, a growing cadre of researchers across multiple disciplines has yielded interesting insights into the antecedents and consequences of pay disparities in top management teams. With this dissertation I seek to spur further investigation into this strategically relevant phenomenon and to move the current debate beyond tournament theoretic explanations by showing that pay disparities within top management groups arise as a function of the distribution of power within them. This study is based on a sample of 604 publicly-traded firms drawn from the S&P 1500 that served as the context in which a theoretical model linking sociopolitical factors in the top management group, top management group pay disparities, and subsequent financial performance was tested using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and structured equation modeling (SEM) techniques. Results indicate that CEO power plays an important role in the distribution of compensation within top management groups and the extent to which pay is disparate. Further, results show that top management group pay disparities have an economically relevant effect on subsequent financial performance. The dissertation and its findings make some important contributions to the top manager compensation, managerial power, and corporate governance literatures by providing new insights into both the antecedents and consequences of top management disparities

Judgment-Proofing Voluntary Sector Organisations from Liability in Tort

Voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) may use ordinary principles of law to protect themselves from tort liabilities by rendering themselves judgment-proof. There are two viable judgment-proofing systems available to VSOs: (1) charitable purpose trusts, and (2) group structures. Whilst these systems are not fool-proof, they offer significant protection from tort liabilities. However, judgment-proofing may come at a high price to the voluntary sector

Clemson Newsletter, 1989-1991

Information for the faculty and staff of Clemson Universityhttps://tigerprints.clemson.edu/clemson_newsletter/1021/thumbnail.jp