Bringing Talent Off the Bench and into the Game: The Underrepresentation of Women in the Boardroom

While women have expanded their footprint in corporate America in recent years, they are still underrepresented in the upper echelons of corporate governance, specifically in boardrooms, which dictate the direction of a company. At the current rate, it will take more than four decades before women’s representation on corporate boards reaches parity with that of men. Women face obstacles that make it difficult to rise in the ranks of corporate America. This can be attributed to numerous factors that collectively burden women with expectations that are at odds with success. These factors include low representation of women in traditional pipelines to board seats, lack of flexibility in the workplace, male-driven work cultures, and disproportionate mentorship and sponsorship opportunities. Why should companies care about diversity? The importance of diversity can be reinforced by both business and moral arguments. The business case highlights the value-maximizing effect of diverse boards while the moral arguments emphasize that gender diversity is the “right thing to do.” However, despite these arguments in favor of gender diversity, the efforts to improve diversity on boards have been lacking. This Note highlights the current landscape and suggests ways to break down barriers to increase women’s representation in the boardroom. A balanced boardroom with more women’s perspectives will lead to an improved understanding of a company’s stakeholders and its customers’ needs. Increased diversity can also enhance a board’s ability to meet its fiduciary duties

Eco-management accounting in Germany: Concepts and practical implementation. Final report for the project Management accounting and environmental management: Towards the sustainable enterprise. A study of operational and material flow analysis, particulary as it is practised in Germany and how it might be used as a part of management accounting. A study sponsored by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek NWO

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Adding rotation to translation: percepts and illusions

This study investigated how the perception of a translating object is affected by rotation. Observers were asked to judge the motion and trajectory of objects that rotated around their centroid while linearly translating. The expected percept, consistent with the actual dynamics used to generate the movie sequences, is that of a translating and rotating object, akin to a tumbling rugby ball. Observers, however, do not always report this and, under certain circumstances, perceive the object to translate on an illusory curved trajectory, similar to a car driving on a curved road. The prevalence of veridical versus nonveridical percepts depends on a number of factors. First, if the object's orientation remains within a limited range relative to the axis of translation, the illusory, curved percept dominates. If the orientation, at any point of the movie sequence, differs sufficiently from the axis of translation, the percept switches to linear translation with rotation. The angle at which the switch occurs is dependent upon a number of factors that relate to an object's elongation and, with it, the prominence of its orientation. For an ellipse with an aspect ratio of 3, the switch occurs at approximately 45°. Higher aspect ratios increase the range; lower ratios decrease it. This applies similarly to rectangular shapes. A line is more likely to be perceived on a curved trajectory than an elongated rectangle, which, in turn, is more likely seen on a curved path than a square. This is largely independent of rotational and translational speeds. Measuring perceived directions of motion at different instants in time allows the shape of the perceived illusory curved path to be extrapolated. This results in a trajectory that is independent of object size and corresponds closely to the actual object orientation at different points during the movie sequence. The results provide evidence for a perceptual transition from an illusory curved trajectory to a veridical linear trajectory (with rotation) for the same object. Both are consistent with special real-world cases such as objects rotating around a centre outside of the object so that their orientation remains tangent to the trajectory (cheetahs running along a curve, sailboats) or objects tumbling along simple trajectories (a monkey spinning in air, spinning cars on ice). In certain cases, the former is an illusion. </jats:p

D&O LIABILITY FOR ANTITRUST VIOLATIONS

D&O LIABILITY FOR ANTITRUST VIOLATION

Simple theory for spin-lattice relaxation in metallic rare earth ferromagnets

The spin-lattice relaxation time $\tau_{SL}$ is a key quantity both for the dynamical response of ferromagnets excited by laser pulses and as the speed limit of magneto-optical recording. Extending the theory for the electron paramagnetic resonance of magnetic impurities to spin-lattice relaxation in ferromagnetic rare earths we calculate $\tau_{SL}$ for Gd and find a value of 48 ps in very good agreement with time-resolved spin-polarized photoemission experiments. We argue that the time scale for $\tau_{SL}$ in metals is essentially given by the spin-orbit induced magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy.Comment: 18 pages revtex, 5 uuencoded figure

A primary word list: a revision of the 1935 Gates primary word list,

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit