Board Look Research Articles

The Boundary Conditions of Optimal Contracting and Managerial Entrenchment: A Simultaneous Two-Equation Vector Autoregression with Exogenous Variables Approach for Chief Executive Officer Compensation and Firm Performance

We apply the vector autoregression with exogenous variables (VARX) approach to integrate the optimal contracting theory, the managerial entrenchment theory, the principal-agent theory, the contextual criteria theory, and the upper echelon theory. Based on this new approach, we discover two middle ground conditions between the boundary of managerial entrenchment and optimal contracting, where CEO non-entrenchment or entrenchment cannot be explained by the managerial entrenchment theory or optimal contracting theory alone. For example, some CEOs are not entrenched when the agency problem is not mitigated, while others are entrenched when the agency problem is mitigated. The results imply that merely mitigating the agency problem cannot prevent managerial entrenchment. However, not mitigating the agency problem at all leads to managerial entrenchment. We recommend the boards look at other non-financial means and social approaches (e.g., value- and culture-based trainings, performance recognition, goodwill and friendship building events, pay transparency increase, smooth flow of information among stakeholders, value-adding managerial investments, oversight committee) to minimize the impact of managerial entrenchment on both firm performance and CEO compensation. In addition, we recommend the boards take on the approaches unique to their own firms and their CEOs to address managerial entrenchment.

Looking back at 2023

The Nanoscale Horizons Editorial Board and Editorial Office look back at 2023 and give an overview of the exciting events, activities and news for the journal from the last year.

APA Board Looks to Future of Psychiatry, Importance of Measurement-Based Care

APA Board Looks to Future of Psychiatry, Importance of Measurement-Based Care

Proper preparation, venue help lay ground for successful board retreat

Many nonprofit executives and their boards look forward to an annual retreat as a way to refresh their perspectives, grow closer as a team and renew their commitment to their organization and mission. Others, however, are leery of these events, viewing them as a waste of time and money that yield little benefits.

E&P Notes (March 2020)

E&P Notes (March 2020)

NRC celebrates 20 years of service to the care home sector

This month sees the 20thanniversary of Nursing and Residential Care. Mark Allen, the Chairman of the Mark Allen Group and members of the NRC editorial board look back at how the care home sector and the journal have evolved over the years.

Editorial – The Torture Journal: A home for all

Editorial.

Bridging the Charter School Accountability Divide: Defining a Role for Nonprofit Charter School Boards

In this article, we use originally collected survey data to determine how nonprofit charter school board members in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota define accountability. We find that charter board members generally define accountability downward toward student achievement and staff performance, inward toward board performance, or upward toward authorizer compliance. We use the results of the survey to make a series of public policy recommendations to help charter school boards look outward in their accountability orientation as a means of addressing the calls for increased public accountability for the charter school sector. The results add practical value to policy discussions regarding charter school accountability and theoretical value to scholars studying public and nonprofit governance reforms.

Stronger together: working to cure hepatitis C in Wales

Delyth Tomkinson of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board looks at what has been done and what is still to do to eliminate hepatitis C in Wales by 2030

Normative Legitimacy of Domestic Soft Law

Although the concept of soft law usually is associated with norms in an international context, the concept has always been an important element of domestic Swedish law. My research field - insurance law and financial markets law - is and has always been regulated a considerable extent by various models of soft law. As a lawyer practising law within these fields, it is not enough consider traditional hard law; one must also pay attention recommendations, guidelines, complaint board decisions, statements on good conduct, and codes of conduct issued by authorities and agencies, industry organizations, alternative dispute boards or professional associations. Soft law norms are not binding in traditional terms. Nevertheless, the various branches and industries pay attention the norms, respect them, follow them, use them solve legal problems, refer them in legal disputes, teach them their employees and adjust their operations according the norms. The guidelines, recommendations, codes of conduct, etc., are indeed law beyond the state. The fact that domestic soft law often has a normative impact on everyday legal affairs is unarguable. Although soft law rules are not binding like hard law, the soft-law makers often use the symbolism of hard law. Recommendations by alternative dispute resolution boards look like judgements from the courts. Guidelines or codes of conduct look like pieces of legislation. However, that does not mean that the guidelines or the recommendations by alternative dispute resolution boards look like judgements from the courts. Guidelines or codes of conduct look like pieces of legislation. However, that does not mean that the guidelines or the recommendations are automatically complied with by the industry (for instance the insurance industry). For a lawyer who is an expert within a certain industry it is possible assess, based on experience, whether or not a guideline ought to be complied with, and the lawyer knows the risks associated with non-compliance. However, if one is a stranger an industry, it is difficult evaluate the normative legitimacy of a guideline or a recommendation. In one legal field (for instance the insurance law field) there might be a great variation of soft law, issued by different actors. Technically, the guidelines or recommendations might look the same. In practice, however, they differ in normative impact; some can be safely ignored, while non-compliance with others involves certain risks. In this article I sketch, in somewhat general terms, a model of the infrastructure of domestic soft law - a model that can be used evaluate whether a specific guideline, code of conduct, recommendation, etc. typically has normative legitimacy, i.e. is likely be respected by the actors within the industry, complied with by the actors, referred in legal disputes, taught new employees of the industry, are expected be followed by other actors within the industry, etc. In the next section I discuss the institutional framework that needs be in place in order produce soft law. I then describe the constituent components of normative legitimacy of soft law. Finally, I discuss which infrastructures that are within and which are outside the control sphere of soft-law-making actors.

Transitive Avoidance Games

Positional games are a well-studied class of combinatorial games. In their usual form, two players take turns to play moves in a set ('the board'), and certain subsets are designated as 'winning': the first person to occupy such a set wins the game. For these games, it is well known that (with correct play) the game cannot be a second-player win.In the avoidance (or misère) form, the first person to occupy such a set loses the game. Here it would be natural to expect that the game cannot be a first-player win, at least if the game is transitive, meaning that all points of the board look the same. Our main result is that, contrary to this expectation, there are transitive games that are first-player wins, for all board sizes which are not prime or a power of 2.Further, we show that such games can have additional properties such as stronger transitivity conditions, fast winning times, and 'small' winning sets.

Five Case Studies of Governance in Tertiary Education

Most studies of governance in tertiary education take as their points of reference colleges and universities, with few examining governance in organizations that deliver various other forms of tertiary education. These organizations often have governing boards, but the boards are not necessarily downsized versions of their college and university counterparts. Although some studies classify governing boards into different types, few offer a clear definition of such boards or explain how they actually function in institutional contexts other than colleges and universities. This study examines governance in five small, public, not-for-profit tertiary institutions, each with a board, to determine what the boards look like, how they perform, what is expected of them, and how they are similar to or different from other types of boards in colleges and universities.

How Job-Related Diversity Affects Board Strategic Participation

Today, one concern for corporate leaders is to have different skills, knowledge, and experience in the boardroom. Using information-processing theory, our study examines a fairly neglected link between job-related diversity and board strategic involvement and looks into board processes to explain this relationship. Our findings suggest that job-related diversity is positively associated with boards’ strategic involvement, i.e. making proposals on long-term strategies, making decisions on long-term strategies, and putting those decisions into action. This relationship is fully mediated by board members' use of knowledge and skills. Other than hypothesized, no mediation effect could be found for cognitive conflict. We extend and contribute to the literature that uses information-processing theory in board context by explaining whether and how board diversity may influence boards' involvement in strategic decisions. This study offers insights to corporate leaders on how to create boards as active players in ...

Editor's Message for 2016.

The coming years are anticipated to be instrumental years for a fast evolution of genome and systems modelling science and its impact in the field of evolution, development, aging and disease. The section editors, editorial board, publisher and myself look forward to working with the scientific community to publish high quality papers that address contemporary questions. In addition to reviews, we will keep to committ ourselves to publish sound research articles and opinion letters that come from recognized experts in the field and that are of interest to a large readership. We will also seek to expand on the editorial board of the journal and number of section editors in order to accelerate the peer review procedure while covering a larger variety of topics.

Tips to boost executive and board ‘strategic awareness’

Consultant Steven Bowman (Malvern, Victoria, Australia; steven@conscious-governance.com) offers these tips to improve the way you and your board look at your strategic challenges.

RusNet on the Offensive

RusNet on the Offensive

An analysis of state telehealth laws and regulations for occupational therapy and physical therapy.

This study conducted a scan of telehealth occupational therapy and physical therapy state laws and regulations. The laws and regulations were analyzed to determine the potential effect they could have on occupational therapists’ and physical therapists’ utilization of telehealth. The results indicate that the majority of occupational therapy and physical therapy boards are silent on telehealth. A handful of physical therapy laws and regulations address “consultation by means of telecommunication,” but do not provide any guidance for practitioners seeking to provide direct telehealth-delivered services to patients. Of the few states that do provide guidance, policy had the potential to provide clarity or inhibit adoption. The findings suggest that as state boards consider crafting telehealth regulations, they should do so in a manner that facilitates, rather than hampers adoption, while upholding their providers to a high standard of care.

Editorial

Editorial

Who Sits on Texas Corporate Boards? Texas Corporate Directors: Who They are & What They Do

Corporate directors play an important role in governing American business, in the capital formation process, and are key to the stewardship of economic growth. Texas businesses play a disproportionately important role among the states in aggregate U.S. job creation, responsible for 37% of all net new American jobs since the post 2008-2009 recovery began. It is the job of the board of directors to govern the corporation. The duties and responsibilities of a corporate director include: the duty of care; duty of loyalty; and duty of good faith. This paper results from the author’s previously assembled biographical data for most of the approximately 20,000 for-profit corporate directors serving on the boards of Texas companies. Corporate directors are among the most influential and affluent individuals in our society. Many present or former chief executive officers are sought to serve on corporate boards due to their expertise and experience overseeing corporations. The average age of Texas directors of for-profit entities is fifty-seven years old; and only about six percent of corporate directors in Texas are women. Texas corporate directors are highly educated: over ninety-nine percent are college graduates: eighty percent hold advanced college degrees; twenty-eight percent have law degrees; and twenty percent of Texas corporate directors hold an MBA degree. Most Texas corporate directors serve the banking and finance sector (thirty-nine percent), next largest is the energy sector (at eighteen percent), and technology companies account for nine percent. Most boards look to recruit someone who understands their business and former CEOs are preferable. Every public company board of directors must now have an audit committee comprised of entirely independent directors, and each publicly-traded company is required to have at least one qualified “financial expert” on its audit committee. Therefore, public company auditing experience, along with a growing recognition that every board needs expertise to govern the enterprises’ information technology - have become “must have” skills represented on every board.

The Great Migration: Journey to the North (review)

Reviewed by: The Great Migration: Journey to the North Deborah Stevenson, Editor Eloise Greenfield ; The Great Migration: Journey to the North illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist . Amistad/HarperCollins, 2011. [32p]. ISBN 978-0-06-125921-0 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 2-4. “Between 1915 and 1930, more than a million African Americans left their homes in the South, the southern part of the United States, and moved to the North. This movement was named ‘The Great Migration.’” That’s Eloise Greenfield’s factual description of this famous historical transition; she then moves quickly from the impersonal to the personal in a sequence of free-verse poems, and in the process she turns a huge demographic event into a keenly evoked, deeply individual experience for all those who underwent it. Greenfield’s in a particularly good position to achieve this feat: not only is she an esteemed poet, but she herself was, at the ripe age of three months, one of the migrants, a piece of personalizing information that’s a quietly effective bridge to the voices in the poetry. In the poetic main text, conversational verse paragraphs follow a numbered sequence, beginning with the decision to leave (“The News”) and the farewells from many different perspectives (“Goodbyes”), moving on to the journey itself (“The Trip”), the uncertainty about the new life (“Question”), and the arrivals in the North (“Up North”), and concluding with a poem about Greenfield’s family experience (“My Family”). The voices of participants, identified only by general terms such as “Young Woman,” display an acrobatic balance between the individual view and the experience of the many. “I never want to see this town/ again,” says a woman who can’t wait to leave her bitter existence behind; “I’m a little scared./ I’m a lot scared,” says a young woman being sent North on her own by her loving mother. Other poems provide third-person views that sound like the observations of invisible spectators, who note “crowds of people, waiting,/ resting their old suitcases,/ cuddling their babies” and “carrying,/ in bags and shoe boxes,/ food they’ve packed for the trip”; Greenfield’s own journey is just that of “one family/ among the many thousands.” The style is plainspoken and accessible, with definite echoes of oral narrative, yet there are also touches of inventively phrased observation (“A baby tries/ to cry, but sleep catches him/ in the middle of his complaint”). The result is a thoughtful portrait of an experience both collective and personal, a historic event made human, accessible, and poetic. It’s Gilchrist’s masterful and evocative mixed-media illustrations, however, that really lift this petite poetic tale into the monumental. Images deftly combine collage, mostly elements of historical photographs enhanced and adapted, with colorful painterly brushstrokes that wash the monochromatic figures with varying hues. The group shots in particular have a mute documentary feel that suggests newsreel footage paused at an indelibly memorable frame, as rows of travelers in the train car lead the eye back to a perspective point that’s merely a door to another car, or baggage-toting passengers waiting to board look out at the viewer with expressions [End Page 267] of cautious optimism. Aside from the people themselves, locomotives, tracks, and stations are the predominant element, casting their literal imprint over the experience (one spread expands on the old cinematic device of using the map as symbolic train background by making it into the space between the rails) and providing the stage for the human drama. The result is haunting personalized portraiture that adds both emotional immediacy and the stature of historical significance. A brief bibliography of adult materials is appended, but there are also plenty of materials for young people that could make eloquent counterparts to this account: Harrington’s autobiographical picture book Going North (BCCB 11/04), for instance, or Myers’ poetic accompaniment to Jacob Lawrence’s paintings in The Great Migration (BCCB 11/93). Its accessibility allows young people to read it on their own, yet it would also make for a compelling readaloud to kids old enough to have some historical context. However you use the work, it offers a vivid...