Fiduciary Relationship Research Articles

A Theory of Fiduciary Liability

The law of fiduciaries has been developed in an unprincipled manner. Consequently, the common law lacks a clear idea of the nature of the fiduciary relationship, the justification for fiduciary duties, and the purpose of fiduciary remedies. However, according to the author a principled theory of fiduciary liability may be derived from the common law. The focal point is the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Galambos v. Perez. The theory of liability suggested by Galambos and developed by the author is based on the conventional notion that fiduciary liability is premised upon the existence of a fiduciary relationship. The author argues that a clearer account of the nature and normative significance of the fiduciary relationship is critical to developing a sound understanding of the nature and scope of fiduciary duties. Under the theory developed by the author, the fiduciary relationship is treated as a distinctive kind of legal relationship. It is one in which one person (the fiduciary) wields discretionary power over the practical interests of another (the beneficiary). According to the author, fiduciary duties are explicable solely in terms of normatively salient qualities of the fiduciary relationship. The author explains these qualities and shows how they support and limit the incidence of fiduciary duties.

The Effect Of Auditor Independence On International Capital Markets For eCommerce Firms

<p class="MsoBlockText" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">According to the efficient market hypothesis, the market for securities can be described as efficient if the market reflects all available information and reacts quickly to new information (Schroeder and Clark 1998).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Investors depend on financial statements to help them judge opportunities, risks, and investment alternatives (Revsine, Collins and Johnson 1999).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>This information must be verified by independent sources such as auditors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The relationship between auditor and stockholder is based on agency theory (Schroeder and Clark 1998), where the agent (auditor) has a fiduciary relationship with the principle (stockholders).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Any loss of faith in auditor independence by investors will seriously affect the information value of financial statements.</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Auditor independence rules must be easy to understand and rigorously enforced or the public's confidence in financial statements will erode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>This paper will specifically assess the difficulties encountered by large accounting firms such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and Arthur Andersen<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>in their efforts to remain independent with respect to their e-commerce clients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Many e-commerce companies have innovative and untested business models as well as inexperienced and untraditional business managers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Some auditors fail to measure the risk associated with these intangible, knowledge-based attributes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In addition, auditor independence may be blurred by the promise of lucrative consulting contracts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>According to Arthur Levitt, the Chair of the SEC in 1999:</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">“The dynamic nature of today’s capital markets creates issues that increasingly move beyond the bright line of black and white.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>New industries, spurred by new services and new technologies, are creating new questions and challenges that must be addressed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Today, we are witnessing a broad shift from an industrial economy to a more service based one; a shift from bricks and mortar to technology and knowledge.” (Levitt 1999)</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The objective of this paper is to review current independence rules, assess the difficulty in maintaining independence in the current e-commerce environment, and to make suggestions for improving independence rules.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>In addition, investigations conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and new legislation such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act will be reviewed as possible solutions to the problem.</span></span></p>

From fiduciary duties to fiduciary relationships for socially responsible investing: responding to the will of beneficiaries

This article examines whether socially responsible investing (SRI) may be legally permissible if it fulfils the will of the beneficiaries in a fiduciary relationship, and considers potential legal reforms to give better effect to the interests of beneficiaries. It thus examines a relatively neglected aspect of fiduciary finance, which so far has focused on whether SRI is ‘financially material’ to investment performance. It argues that by reframing fiduciary finance as an active relationship rather than merely the mechanical application of legal duties, we may allow trustees to invest socially pursuant to the wishes of beneficiaries. However, this article also suggests that considerable legal and practical obstacles confront this path to SRI. They include the trustees' duty to treat different beneficiaries even-handedly and the traditionally passive role that trust law has cast beneficiaries. Reliance on widely held social customs and evaluation of third parties' interests as a proxy for the will of beneficiaries, and the role of statutory reforms mandating consultation with and representation of beneficiaries on the governing boards of trustees, are also considered in this article. It concludes by suggesting some potential legal reforms to strengthen reliance on the will of beneficiaries as a means of SRI.

Are Existing Stock Broker Standards Sufficient? Principles, Rules, and Fiduciary Duties

The recent catastrophic collapse of the financial industry, coupled with the shocking revelation of the Madoff scheme, led many to believe that the securities industry needed more regulation and supervision. Many fear that a stock broker does not have a fiduciary relationship with their clients based on their transaction, as they are merely vehicles through which the investor places his money in the market, which is exactly what Goldman Sachs contested throughout the recent prosecution against them. Although many hoped that this question would be answered via the outcome of the Goldman lawsuit, the subsequent settlement put those hopes to rest. Many observers of this result identified a perceived need for more explicit recognition of broker-dealer fiduciary duties. However, it would have been more accurate to describe this as enhancing fiduciary duties since it has long been the case that stock brokers owe fiduciary duties when acting in certain capacities, as the author describes in the Article in great detail. As the financial reform legislation developed, controversy arose as to whether to statutorily impose new fiduciary duties. Investor-protection advocates supported such a move; the industry and others opposed it. To the extent that these duties already exist, the suggestion may have been less meaningful than thought by its advocates. In any event, the final legislation eschewed a statutorily mandated fiduciary duty. Instead, Congress directed the SEC to conduct a study to identify any gaps, shortcomings, or overlapping regulation regarding standards of conduct and supervision requirements applicable to broker-dealers and investment advisers in what is now referred to as “Dodd-Frank.” The upshot of the new legislation is that broker-dealer standards of conduct will continue to develop piecemeal through rulemaking and case law developments. The Article concludes that although some additional rulemaking may be warranted as a conceptual matter, the current approach to broker-dealer obligations is appropriate and provides an adequate basis for vigorous enforcement of broker-dealer obligations notwithstanding some apparent enforcement lapses in a few celebrated cases. The law, regulations, and regulatory interpretations to date make clear that broker-dealers have fiduciary or fiduciary-like obligations when they provide services beyond executing customer orders. There are many examples of such obligations presently in existing law. In fact, any time a securities broker acts as something more than a mere order taker, heightened obligations attach. There is no doubt that expressly stating that broker-dealers are fiduciaries will provide further emphasis on their obligations. However, even in the absence of a legislative or regulatory declaration to that effect, heightened standards for broker-dealers are already well established.

Ethical and Moral Aspects of Informed Consent: General Considerations

It is fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that each partner understands and accepts the degree of autonomy the patient desires in the decision-making process. Medical informed consent is essential to the physician's ability to diagnose and treat patients as well as the patient's right to accept or reject clinical evaluation, treatment, or both. Medical informed consent should be an exchange of ideas that buttresses the patient-physician relationship. The consent process should be mthe foundation of the fiduciary relationship between a patient and a physician. Physicians must recognize that informed medical choice is an educational process and has the potential to affect the patient-physician alliance to their mutual benefit. Physicians must give patients equality in the covenant by educating them to make informed choices. Physicians need to understand informed medical consent from an ethical foundation, as codified by statutory law in many states, and from a generalized common law perspective requiring medical practice consistent with the standard of care. It is fundamental to the patient-physician relationship that each partner understands and accepts the degree of autonomy the patient desires in the decision-making process.

Ethics for the Pediatrician: Physician Interaction With the Pharmaceutical Industry

1. Mark X. Cicero, MD* 2. Michael B. Curi, MD† 3. Mark Mercurio, MD§ 1. *Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. 2. †Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, CT. 3. §Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. In the United States, more than 40 billion dollars are spent annually in drug research and development. (1) Wholesale pharmaceutical sales totalled $275 billion in 2008. Pharmaceuticals are both an indispensable tool and a staggering expense in health care. When caring for children, pediatricians consider a medication's efficacy, potential adverse effects, and often whether the child's health-care insurance covers the prescription. A complex relationship has evolved between pharmaceutical companies and pediatricians, with drug manufacturers historically providing gifts, sponsoring continuing medical education (CME), and delivering samples to medical offices. We explore this relationship in light of recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) and the ethical conflicts relevant to this relationship. For more than a decade, awareness of the influence that industry gifts have on physician prescribing habits has been increasing. (2) In an oft-cited work, Steinman and associates (3) found most residents (61%) felt they were immune to the influence of pharmaceutical representatives and their gifts, but only 16% believed their peers were similarly above the influence of the drug industry. In truth, industry gifts may influence behavior. Such gifts may cause a conflict of interest with a pediatrician's fiduciary relationship to the patient. By definition, a fiduciary relationship is one based on trust, in which the physician works for the benefit of the patient, holding his or her needs as the highest priority. Professional organizations and the industry have made attempts to address the potential conflicts of interest. In 2002, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America …

Borrower insolvency and Quistclose trusts; creditor claims following insolvency of settlor or corporate trustee; exploration of the limits of the elasticity of the private trust; beneficiary's rights to information; validity of non-charitable purpose trusts; and the jurisdictional reach of the US courts.

Dicta abound in the law reports to the effect that persons ‘engaged in business can be regarded as capable of looking after themselves’. But those dicta merely describe how things stand between parties looking out for their own interests. They are irrelevant to situations in which people, otherwise well capable of looking after themselves, engage commercially by placing trust and confidence in others. For example, the members of a law firm all might have PhDs, and years of hard-bitten commercial experience under their belts. Yet ‘a stronger case of fiduciary relationship cannot be conceived than that which exists between partners’. Another example is the Quistclose trust that arises where money is advanced for a particular purpose. In his Preface to Swadling, The Quistclose Trust: Critical Essays, Lord Millett described this as ‘the single most important application of equitable principles in commercial life’, and said that it is easily described from the commercial viewpoint as:

Self-Surveillance Privacy

It has become cliche to observe that new information technologies endanger privacy. Typically, the threat is viewed as coming from Big Brother (the government) or Company Man (the firm). But for a nascent data practice we call the threat may actually come from ourselves. Using various existing and emerging technologies, such as GPS-enabled smartphones, we are beginning to measure ourselves in granular detail - how long we sleep, where we drive, what we breathe, what we eat, how we spend our time. And we are storing these data casually, perhaps promiscuously, somewhere in the cloud, and giving third-parties broad access. This data practice of self-surveillance will decrease information privacy in troubling ways. To counter this trend, we recommend the creation of the Privacy Data Guardian, a new profession that manages Privacy Data Vaults, which are repositories for self-surveillance data. In Part I, we describe the emerging data practice of self-surveillance, which has been enabled by various new measurement and communication technologies. We explain how self-surveillance can produce substantial benefits to both the individual and society, in both intrinsic and instrumental terms. Unfortunately, such benefits may never be achieved without substantial privacy costs. Part II makes threshold clarifications about those privacy costs. It proffers two different metrics by which privacy might be measured and explains why the rise of self-surveillance will entail the net loss of privacy under either metric. We also point out that the problem of self-surveillance (our surveilling us) is, fortunately, more tractable than related privacy problems, such as third-party surveillance of us and our surveillance of third-parties. Having cleared this brush, we turn to our central proposal - the creation of the Personal Data Guardian, a professional whose job it is to maintain a client’s self-surveillance data in a Personal Data Vault. In addition to providing technical specifications of this approach, we outline the specific legal relations, which include a fiduciary relationship, between client and Guardian. In addition, we recommend the creation of an evidentiary privilege, similar to a trade secret privilege, that protects self-surveillance data held by a licensed Guardian. Finally, Part IV answers objections that our solution is implausible or useless. We conclude by pointing out that various legal, technological, and self-regulatory attempts at safeguarding privacy from new digital, interconnected technologies have not been particularly successful. Before self-surveillance becomes a widespread practice, some new innovation is needed. In our view, that innovation is a new species, the Personal Data Guardian, created through a fusion of law and technology and released into the current information ecosystem.

WAS BIOETHICS FOUNDED ON HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL MISTAKES ABOUT MEDICAL PATERNALISM?

Bioethics has a founding story in which medical paternalism, the interference with the autonomy of patients for their own clinical benefit, was an accepted ethical norm in the history of Western medical ethics and was widespread in clinical practice until bioethics changed the ethical norms and practice of medicine. In this paper I show that the founding story of bioethics misreads major texts in the history of Western medical ethics. I also show that a major source for empirical claims about the widespread practice of medical paternalism has been misread. I then show that that bioethics based on its founding story deprofessionalizes medical ethics. The result leaves the sick exposed to the predatory power of medical practitioners and healthcare organizations with only their autonomy-based rights to non-interference, expressed in contracts, to protect them. The sick are stripped of the protection afforded by a professional, fiduciary relationship of physicians to their patients. Bioethics based on its founding story reverts to the older model of a contractual relationship between the sick and medical practitioners not worthy of intellectual or moral trust (because such trust cannot be generated by what I call 'deprofessionalizing bioethics'). On closer examination, bioethics based on its founding story, ironically, eliminates paternalism as a moral category in bioethics, thus causing bioethics to collapse on itself because it denies one of the necessary conditions for medical paternalism. Bioethics based on its founding story should be abandoned.

Is Health Care a Right or a Commodity? Implementing Mental Health Reform in a Recession

Is Health Care a Right or a Commodity? Implementing Mental Health Reform in a Recession

Not All Advisors Are the Same: How Can You Tell the Difference?

Over the last dozen years in wealth management I have seen much change in the industry. In particular, I have seen a blurring of the lines that once existed between firms selling products and those advising. When the law separating banks and brokers was repealed in 1999, banks and brokers were allowed to merge—and they did. A “sales culture” swept through the industry and relationships with trusted wealth managers changed. Relationships became one between customers and salespeople rather than fiduciary relationships based on trust and loyalty to the client. Many clients are unaware of this change—and it costs them dearly.

From Fiduciary States to Joint Trusteeship of the Atmosphere: The Right to a Healthy Environment Through a Fiduciary Prism

This Article contends that a fiduciary theory of public authority yields a human right to a healthy environment. Under the fiduciary theory, states owe extra-territorial non-citizens a legal duty to protect the earth’s atmosphere, a duty that is correlative to every person’s human right to a healthy environment. An implication of the fiduciary model is that states stand in the position of joint fiduciaries vis-a-vis humanity at large. The subject matter of the joint fiduciary relationship is the earth’s atmosphere.

The Protection of Trade Secrets: A Conceptual Analysis Along with a Comparative Study on the Laws of Various Nations

A trade secret refers to data or information relating to the business which is not generally known to the public and which the owner reasonably attempts to keep secret and confidential. Trade secrets generally give the business a competitive edge over their rivals. Almost any type of data, processes or information can be referred to as trade secrets so long as it is intended to be and kept a secret, and involves an economic interest of the owner. For example, a business may have certain internal business processes that it follows for its day-to-day operations that give it an edge over its competitors. This could be regarded as a trade secret. The terms ‘trade secrets’ and ‘confidential information’ may be used interchangeably, but there is a thin line difference between the two. The former mostly refers to technical matters such as secret formulas or processes, whereas, the latter deals basically with non-technical matters such as business plans or pricing information. As an intellectual property, though trade secrets are of great utility, still they have remained neglected so far, and their protection is either done under common law or through the courts.The basis of the law of trade secrets are certain contractual obligations and the doctrines of fiduciary relationship and unjust enrichment, and the evolution of the trade secrets protection can be traced back to the year 1851, in England and in the year 1868, in the US. Even the TRIPs agreement has mandated the protection of ‘trade secrets’ and definite attempts have been made worldwide, like the Economic Espionage Act (1996), of the US, in addition to the earlier, Uniform Trade Secrets Act, the Japanese law of unfair competition, and the Personal Information protection and Electronic Documents Act of Canada, in India, unfortunately, there is no statutory break through in this regard, and the country is still lagging behind in the protection of trade secrets.This Paper is an attempt to conceptually analyze trade secrets and various issues involved with the protection of trade secrets, and to study comparatively, the laws practiced in various other developed countries, for their protection.

In Defense of Industry-Physician Relationships

The objective was to examine the economic, ethical, and legal foundations for conflict of interest restrictions between physicians and pharmaceutical and medical device industries ("industry"). Recently academic medical centers and professional organizations have adopted policies that restrict permissible interactions between industry and physicians. The motive is to avoid financial conflicts of interest that compromise core values of altruism and fiduciary relationships. Productive relationships between industry and physicians provide novel drugs and devices of immense benefit to society. The issues are opposing views of medical economics, profit motives, medical professionalism, and extent to which interactions should be lawfully restricted. Industry goals are congruent with those of physicians: patient welfare, safety, and running a profitable business. Profits are necessary to develop drugs and devices. Physician collaborators invent products, refine them, and provide feedback and so are appropriately paid. Marketing is necessary to bring approved products to patients. Economic realities limit the extent to which physicians treat their patients altruistically and as fiduciaries. Providing excellent service to patients may be a more realistic standard. Statements from industry and the American College of Surgeons appropriately guide professional behavior. Preservation of industry-physician relationships is vital to maintain medical innovation and progress.

Malpractice and medical litigation

Patient-doctor relationship has become complex and medical litigation appears to be a “modern” feature of such a relation. Indeed at the time of this editorial, a search in Google using the terms “medical litigation” generates 2,270,000 results! The cost of medical litigation has steadily increased at almost 12% annually since 1975 in the USA and most likely with similar rates in all Western countries. Malpractice has both direct and indirect costs which have been calculated in 2003 by the US Department of Health and Human Services to account for 2% (direct costs of medical malpractice) of the nation's health-care spending and for 5–9% of overall expenses when the costs of defensive medical practices are taken into consideration. The adverse impact of defensive medicine include not only unnecessary costs which, however, limit the access to care for certain patients or over and under treatment of the most severe illnesses but also delayed adoption of medical advancements. Actually, the threat of a law suit may discourage the physician and, in particular, the surgeon to use new pharmaceutical and medical devices to avoid the possible accusation of “learning” on the patient. Even though we might incline to consider medical litigation a relatively new phenomenon, supposedly unknown in the past when the doctor-patient relationship was essentially a fiduciary relation, the possibility for a physician to be charged with malpractice was not probably so rare. Competence and eventually experts' support in tribunal constituted, like today, the most effective defensive tools as it may be deduced when reading the comments and the suggestions made by Galen in his preferred book: АΝАΤΟΜΙΚΑΙ ΙΓΧEΙΡΗΣEΙΣ (Anatomicae administrationes) (Fig. 1):

The Contemporary Healthcare Crisis in China and the Role of Medical Professionalism

The healthcare crisis that has developed in the last two decades during China's economic reform has caused healthcare and hospital financing reforms to be largely experienced by patients as a crisis in the patient-healthcare professional relationship (PPR) at the bedside. The nature and magnitude of this crisis were epitomized by the "Harbin Scandal"-an incident that took place in August 2005 in a Harbin teaching hospital in which the family of an elderly patient hospitalized in the intensive care unit (ICU) for 66 days paid over RMB yen6 million. The news was publicized globally and ended in the firing of six top hospital administrators including the hospital president and the ICU director. This paper seeks to show that the Chinese healthcare crisis is ultimately linked to a conflict of interests between patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs), which is inherent in the reformed healthcare system of China. Hence the crisis is, at its core, a crisis of fidelity and confidence that must be restored to the PPR. At the "macro" level, it is simplistic to blame the crisis on the failure of the market system, and at the "micro" level, it is naïve to expect that a contractual understanding of the PPR will effectively restore the confidence of patients. This paper will show that the fiduciary relationship and medical professionalism share similar attributes, with fidelity being the core value of both. It concludes that the loss of medical fidelity implies the dissolution of the PPR and the demise of the medical profession and challenges Chinese HCPs to keep their fidelity as a means to both protect their patients' interests and to preserve their profession's survival.

Independent directors: time to introspect, suspect, respect – an Indian perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand the culpability of independent directors (IDs) in a public listed company under clause 49 of the listing agreement of the Securities Exchange Board of India, which, primarily, is the corporate governance mandate in India.Design/methodology/approachThis paper has been developed on the basis of intensive interviews conducted with 16 legal experts working with 50 top listed companies and seven advocates from the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India, literature survey from research papers, bare acts and policy guidelines on corporate governance by the Government of India.FindingsTwo contrary opinions are being rendered on the culpability of IDs. The first proposes a strict and absolute penalty on all directors which would deter them from colluding with promoters. The second proposes that IDs should not be tarred with the same brush unless conclusive evidence of collusion is produced. These contrary opinions are herein analyzed and recommendations put forward.Research limitations/implicationsThe research paper attempts to study only the culpability of IDs. It envisages the appointments of IDs onto boards without deliberation on the issue assuming that these appointments are made in good faith and trust.Originality/valueThe research paper attempts to study whether the IDs who are non‐executive directors and who do not have a pecuniary relationship with the company actually share a fiduciary relationship with the shareholders and observe the principle of conflict of interest. There are some compelling reasons for them to alienate liabilities given the dramatic effects of financial disarray as in the case of Satyam.

Fiduciary Obligations in the Supreme Court of Canada: A Retrospective

This paper is a contribution to the 50th anniversary issue of the Canadian Business Law Journal, which will be dedicated to developments in key areas of Canadian law over the past 20-40 years. The paper comprises a critical analysis of Supreme Court of Canada cases on fiduciary obligations decided over the past 20 years. The paper addresses three related questions: (1) what is the nature of the fiduciary relationship; (2) what is the relationship between contract and fiduciary law; and (3) what are the remedial goals of fiduciary law? The paper argues that the SCC cases on the first question are characterized by a high level of indeterminacy, that the type of inductive reasoning the court employed in these cases (top-down reasoning) runs counter to the common law tradition of argument by analogy (bottom-up reasoning) and that adherence to more conventional techniques would have avoided much of the criticism the cases have attracted. Cases on the second question are ambivalent about whether or not fiduciary obligations are consensual and they reveal a lack of commitment on the court's part to either the contractarian theory or the anti-contractarian theory of fiduciary law. Cases on the third question reveal an ambivalence about the function of gains-based remedies, such as the constructive trust and the account of profits, and on the legitimacy of using private law for deterrence purposes. The paper argues that the court's ambivalence on both the second and third questions adds layers of uncertainty to the law of fiduciary obligations in Canada which, for the most part, are not found in other Commonwealth jurisdictions.

Audiology: Remediating Boundary Issues: Triangulation and Self-Care

Abstract Audiologists fill multiple roles in the lives of their clients. The audiologist is the limited-time caretaker of the client's loved one, the knowledgeable expert about speech and hearing, and sometimes, the trusted confidant. The fiduciary relationship that exists between client and clinician, however, is inherently and intentionally one-sided. Unfortunately, professionals who struggle with self-care and who lack awareness of self may find themselves faced with crossing boundaries or entangled in the complex web of relationships in their clients' lives. In this article, the authors examine relationship triangles (triangulation) and knowledge of self and self care as they relate to the audiologist's role with client management.

Corporate governance in banking: A survey of the literature

The aim of this paper is to explain the particular characteristics of the corporate governance of banks and its role for good bank performance. In order to do that, it reviews the existing literature on this issue trying to answer three main questions: (i) Why are banks different? Existing research points at diverse features, such as, regulation, supervision, capital structure, risk, fiduciary relationships, ownership, and deposit insurance, that would make banks special and thereby influence their corporate governance. (ii) What is different about bank governance? According to past studies, banks’ boards of directors are larger, more independent, have a superior number of committees and meet more often, but seem to play a weaker disciplinary role. Executive compensation would be higher in banking, but pay-performance sensitivity appears lower. (iii) What works for banks? Larger boards, more concentrated ownership structures and certain levels of managerial shareholdings are the principal factors suggested by the empirical evidence to date that seem to lead banks to higher performance.