Major Scandals Research Articles

Corporate Governance Practices in Banking Sector: A Study of Selected Private Sector Banks and Public Sector Banks in India

Corporate Governance (CG) is the key of corporate excellence. It extends beyond good corporate performance and financial propriety. After experiencing a crucial phase of corporate crises during 1970-1990, including financil scam in developed countries (U.S.A. and U.K., etc.) and as a wake up response to major scandals and corporate failures, need to tighten surveillance over corporate framework and behaviour was realised. CG has also been under constant scrutiny as an issue that has gained widespread importance in Indian scenario. Its significance was realised after experiencing the Harshad Mehta stock scam in 1992, which led to various initiatives in the form of guidelines, in order to strengthen CG by ensuring transparency and responsible board structure. 'Desirable Code on Corporate Governance' initiated by CII in 1998 was one of the first initiative in this direction. Subsequently, scam in Satyam Software Services Ltd. during 2009 made a dent on prevailing statutory provisions of Companies Act, 1956 and led to fill gaps by strengthening existing Companies Act 1956. The Companies Act, 2013, has been introduced to ensure effective governance and respond promptly to the corporate misgovernance and scandals in Indian corporate sector. In the light of new Company Act 2013, prime focus of present study is to analyse and compare the CG framework being practiced by selected banks. The present study is carried out on leading 8 Indian banks (4 public sector banks [PuSB] and 4 private sector banks [PvSB]), which are selected based on judgemental sampling, where the market capitalization and year of their inception is referred. Data is collected from the secondary sources of bank's latest annual report for 2015-16. Key parameters including composition, mandate and frequency of meetings of the Board, Risk Management Committee, Audit Committee, Stakeholder Grievance Committee, Remuneration Committee and CSR Committee, etc., is analysed. Research findings have shown that among the private sector banks (PvSB), ICICI Bank Ltd. (ICICI) has maintained higher amount of independence and transparency. On the other hand in case of public sector banks (PuSB), the State Bank of India (SBI) was found most proactive bank, while maintaining the highest amount of independence in terms of more active participation of Non-Executive Independent Directors in various committees of the Board.

Em busca de um herói: a construção discursiva de Joaquim Barbosa no julgamento do Mensalão por Veja e Época

This paper analyzes the discursive strategies of the two largest magazines in Brazil, Veja and Epoca , to build the image of Joaquim Barbosa during the trial of Mensalao , one of the major corruption scandals of the recent Brazilian history. We reflect on the notion of the journalistic discourse, focusing special attention on how journalism constructs the image of social actors. The corpus is scrutinized by categories of Critical Discourse Analysis: the meaning of words, use of metaphors, transitivity, interspeech and political and ideological effects of discourse. Resulting from the crossing linguistic techniques and critical social theory, these sociological categories help to understand how the media create specific semantic constellations that, when associated with people with ontological existence, turn them into paper beings, as Roland Barthes would say. The analysis shows that both magazines have resorted to strategies of heroization of Joaquim Barbosa, stressing the overcoming of the “poor boy who changed Brazil” as highlights one of the publications. As at other times in Brazilian history, the media have given to Joaquim Barbosa, although for a specific time, the national hero epithet, a post always put in the process of being occupied in a country historically lacking of heroic references. Keywords: discourse, journalistic discourse, Joaquim Barbosa, Veja, Epoca.

The good, the bad, and the forgiven: The media spectacle of South Korean male celebrities’ compulsory military service

For almost 70 years, South Korea has upheld the principle of universal male conscription, and the military has been a potent force in post-war South Korean political, economic, and social development. The role and significance of male conscription and the military establishment in South Korean society have been explored from the perspective of political, social, and gender/post-colonial studies. However, there is a considerable lack of academic research assessing the social meanings behind the highly publicized conduct of male celebrities’ negotiating the issue of their compulsory military service, which has turned increasingly into media spectacles since the mid-1990s. This study attempts to provide an insight into the political and social ramifications of such media events by tracing the military service and male celebrity discourse through several major conscription scandals in the South Korean mass media. By simultaneously policing and exploiting the ‘sacred’ duty to serve, these media scandals reinforce what it means to be a true ‘Korean man’.

THE INFLUENCE OF PROFITABILITY ON RELATED PARTY REVENUES

In recent decades, related party transactions (RPTs) have played a prime role in major corporate scandals, obliging regulators to strengthen the rules with new bans and costly requirements on companies. The aim of the regulatory process is to guarantee the proper use of RPTs, avoiding their incorrect use and abuse. This study contributes to the literature on RPTs, refining previous studies on this topic and providing evidence to justify the attention of lawmakers, leading to increasingly costly and mandatory regulation. Focusing on the revenues made with RPs, we investigate the relationship between variations in profitability and the intensity variations of RPRs in income statements. Results show that the intensity of RPRs increases with a decrease in company profitability. This inverse relation underlines the potential risk of these transactions.

Improving Moral Behaviour in the Business Use of ICT

The 21st century has seen a much-increased focus on the importance of ethical behaviour in business, driven by major scandals, calls for stricter regulation and increased demands for improved governance and reporting. In parallel, there are calls for the incorporation of moral and ethical elements in business education and university accreditation bodies and schools are responding. In particular, the explosion of technology change, particularly Internet, social media and beyond have raised many challenges for individuals, organizations and legislators. However, educational responses are varied and little has been done to determine the effectiveness of what has been done. Most responses to this need to provide ethical education follow a cognitive, rule-based approach, often using case-based techniques. This can improve knowledge and understanding of ethical issues, but it may have limited influence on actual behaviour. A relatively new field – Positive Psychology -- provides an alternate perspective, focusing on what is good rather than what is poor behaviour. One Positive Psychology approach, that of Appreciative Inquiry, which has not previously been used in ICT ethics education, offers a promising technique to develop improved moral attitudes and behaviour. This paper reports on a large-scale pedagogical research project that: (1) examines ethical perspectives from philosophy, psychology and pedagogy in the context of ICT professional education; (2) describes the development and multistage implementation of an ethics course in an undergraduate business ICT program delivered to more than 1,200 students; (3) discusses the formal evaluation of changes in moral attitude following a Positive Psychology intervention in the education of some 300 Business ICT students using the Defining Issues Test, Version 2 (DIT2) and the IMIS Survey developed at the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility. The project results demonstrate that a well-designed applied ICT ethics course produces measureable positive changes in the ethical stances of participants and that the use of Appreciative Inquiry increases the impact of these changes. In addition to the relevance of the findings for educators they can provide guidance to those in organisations responsible for the ethical behaviour of their ICT employees.

Negotiating “Historical Truth”

In 1925, when Soviet composer Iurii Shaporin began writing his first opera, Polina Gebl’, about the Decembrist Ivan Annenkov and the French emigrée shopgirl who followed him into exile, he had no idea how tumultuous its journey would be. It took twenty-eight years and countless revisions for the opera to gain official approval. When it finally premiered at the Bolshoi Theater in 1953, with the title The Decembrists, the love story had been backgrounded and the historical plot line vastly expanded; scenes, characters, and arias had been added, dropped, or altered; and Polina herself had been written out entirely. The negotiated process by which Polina became The Decembrists reveals much about the evolving relationship between music and power in the Soviet Union, especially in the high-stakes realm of Socialist Realist opera, in which a suitable exemplar had yet to be produced. Amidst the pressures of the late-Stalinist state’s assault on the creative intelligentsia, and in the wake of major opera scandals in the 1930s and 1940s, the Bolshoi Theater saw in Shaporin’s work an ideal candidate to fill this void: a historical opera with an unimpeachable subject, the Decembrist Revolution, understood as the foundation point of the revolutionary legacy to which the Bolsheviks laid claim. This article analyzes the intense negotiations among Shaporin, the Bolshoi and its consultants, and official censors to ensure The Decembrists’ historical accuracy, which they believed would guarantee its acceptance. Yet, as the article demonstrates, while Soviet musical authorities upheld “historical truth” as their standard, in the end the Socialist Realist ideal of “artistic truth” was far more important for The Decembrists’ success.

The Independent European Sport Review: Half Full or Half Empty?

This contribution reviews the ongoing debates on the role of European public authorities in the governance of sport, focusing on the recently published Independent European Sport Review, an initiative of British sports minister Richard Caborn during the 2005 UK Presidency of the EU. Former Portuguese Presidency minister, José Luis Arnaut, was charged with the task of carrying a review of the current state of European football in the aftermath of major corruption scandals in Germany, Belgium and Italy. With the support of UEFA, FIFA and the European sports ministers, Arnaut delivered his report last May, claiming that, despite being focused on football, it presents a template to improve the governance standards of sport in Europe, define the role the EU has to play and to preserve the so-called European Sports Model. The Independent European Sports Review is now featuring heavily in the consultation process conducting to the forthcoming European Commission White Paper on Sport.

The Impact of Corporate Accountability & Transparency on the Performance of Manufacturing Firms Listed on KSE

Economic success of a country, if described in few words, is the success of big corporations of that country and vice versa. Corporate governance is thus economic governance in general. Some of the major corporate scandals that stunned global economies and businesses followed by falling down of corporate giants like Enron, BCCI, Coloroll, Polly Pech, Barings, HIH Insurance and Parmalat resulted in tight regulations, codes, and principles of corporate governance. These scandals erupted due to nonexistent of accountability and transparency principles of corporate governance within these companies as the management concealed important facts from the shareholders and that they were also not accountable for their actions.This empirical research study intends to examine different characteristics of Corporate Governance and their impact on firm performance. These characteristics include Transparency and Accountability. Analyses were based on primary data which will be collected through questionnaire from 200 respondents. Correlation and Regression analysis were used to get results of the study. Results of the study revealed positive relationship between accountability and transparency with firm performance. The results showed that accountability and transperancy has positive significant impact on the firm performance.

When Whistle-blowers Become the Story: The Problem of the 'Third Victim': Comment on "Cultures of Silence and Cultures of Voice: The Role of Whistleblowing in Healthcare Organisations".

In the healthcare context, whistleblowing has come to the fore of political, professional and public attention in the wake of major service scandals and mounting evidence of the routine threats to safety that patients face in their care. This paper offers a commentary and wider contextualisation of Mannion and Davies, 'Cultures of silence and cultures of voice: the role of whistleblowing in healthcare organisations.' It argues that closer attention is needed to the way in which whistle-blowers can become the focus and victim of raising concerns and speaking up.

A woman in a man’s world: La Banquière, money, transgression and the world of high finance

Money and finance, although central in our everyday life and crucial to the making of a film, are seldom the central topic of films. French cinema of the 1970s and early 1980s offers some significant mainstream films centring on the world of money and high finance, at a time when the value of money, since the severance of the gold-exchange standard in 1971, is no longer aligned to that of gold. This article focuses on La Banquière and the way money, finance and their representation inform the story and the film’s aesthetic choices. An historical drama inspired by the life of Marthe Hanau, a bisexual and pioneering Parisian banker of the 1920s, who became the source of one of the major financial and political scandals of the Third Republic, La Banquière features Romy Schneider in the lead role. A box-office success, the film is unique in showing a woman in a position of economic and political power. Just as in other films about the invisibility of large-scale transactions, money, when visible on screen, usually as banknotes or cheques, is bad money, the sign of a transgression of some kind, leading, paradoxically, to terrible consequences. This article offers an understanding of money represented on screen through the theoretical work of Jean-Joseph Goux.

The Homosexual Scare and the Masculinization of German Politics before World War I

It may seem strange today to study aspects of the political sphere—from foreign policy to diplomacy and the military—in the context of sexuality. But the Belle Epoque (1871–1914) was an era of prestige politics, also with respect to the politics of sexuality. This article reveals how the Eulenburg Scandal of 1906 to 1909 used sexual morality as a way to explain and interpret the tensions that pervaded Germany's domestic affairs and international relations. The reliance on sexual mores as an explanation for large-scale political events was the result of an ever-intensifying chain of national and international complications—complications that later undermined Germany's sense of national honor. The Eulenburg Scandal is remembered today mainly as the first major homosexual scandal of the twentieth century, but contemporaries experienced it in a wider sense: it became Germany's counterpart to the Dreyfus Affair in France—two examples of political, social, and cultural conflict that threatened the foundations of their respective countries.

Costa Ricaas Anti-Corruption Trajectory: Strengths and Limitations

In spite of the economic and social policy successes of Latin America’s longest surviving democracy, corruption has become a major problem shaking Costa Ricans’ confidence in appointed and elected public officials. In response to the apparent rise in corruption since the start of the new millennium, governments have introduced new laws and created new agencies to combat corruption at all levels of society, with an emphasis on combating particularism by elected and appointed public officials. This report evaluates the apparent increase in corruption, the efforts to limit, expose, and prosecute corrupt acts, and the factors that have facilitated the rise in corrupt actions on the part of state officials and private citizens. In short, acts of corruption that may have previously gone unnoticed (at least unproven) are now exposed by a more aggressive media and prosecuted by new and/or stronger state anti-corruption agencies and laws in response to multiple major political corruption scandals of the early 2000s. State prosecutors show no deference in their investigations of corruption and/or illicit enrichment by public officials and private figures, no matter how powerful. The only limitation is the level of resources available to these agencies. The contemporary increase in the scope of corruption is not in the quotidian actions of low-level officials directly affecting the lives of ordinary citizens, but in influence trading and manipulation of formal processes. A separate, more recent and growing corruption problem comes from international drug cartels that have amplified their activities and money laundering in Costa Rica that some fear might outstrip the state’s capacity to keep corruption under control.

A tale of two Kaisers: Ballack and Beckenbauer, and the battle for legacy

While there are a number of ways a player can be remembered after his career ends, much attention is paid to two different areas: the player’s successes and failures and any scandals by which the player may have been tainted. Which of these ultimately matters more? Does scandal outweigh what happens on the pitch? Or does failure speak louder than scandal? When considering the legacy of Michael Ballack, we find ourselves asking: will he be remembered for never winning the biggest trophies or for the scandals that dogged his last few years as a player? By looking at the legacy of Franz Beckenbauer, another world-class German player and former captain of the (West) German National Team whose career was repeatedly touched by scandals but whose legacy is largely positive, due to the fact that he experienced tremendous success on the pitch, we will perhaps be able to imagine how Ballack will be remembered. After considering two major scandals, and a few minor ones, that came at the end of Ballack’s career and looking towards the future of his legacy, the career and legacy of Franz Beckenbauer, the only player to have won four German Player of the Year awards, will be examined to see what clues it can offer us in regards to Ballack’s legacy. Given that Ballack’s nickname of ‘der kleine Kaiser’ links him directly to Beckenbauer, ‘der Kaiser’, there are many connections that enable us to ask questions about Ballack’s legacy.

Corporate governance in the public sector: Dimensions; guidelines and practice In India and New Zealand

Corporate governance is obviously a matter of global concern and has gained tremendous importance in recent years in the context of globalisation of economies and financial markets. The financial crisis of 2008 and the 2012 European crisis involving Greece, Italy and Spain revealed corporate governance failures in financial institutions and corporations, leading to systemic consequences (Classens and Yurtoglu, 2013). Earlier, two major scandals: Enron and WorldCom in the USA resulted in the enactment of Sarbanes Oxley Act, 2002 as a measure to ensure and restore investors’ confidence in business in particular and the interest of society at large. This lead to corporate governance reforms worldwide impacting corporate board composition, conduct, and responsibility at the legal and regulatory levels.

Public risk perception in the total meat supply chain

Due to past major food scares, food-safety perceptions have become a widely investigated topic. The aim of the present study was to examine food-safety perceptions separately for every step of the total meat supply chain, as such a detailed approach yields more promising strategies to ensure food safety in the future. Using a large-scale survey, we examined people’s risk perceptions of 18 steps describing the total meat supply chain. The results revealed a clear distinction between risk perception at the production stage and risk perception at home in the total meat supply chain, in that people perceived significantly less risk at home. However, people’s risk perceptions of the single stages in the total meat supply chain were overall slightly above average. Additionally, there were individual differences, as risk perception at the production stage was highly correlated with risk perception at home, meaning that some people perceived more risk than others overall. Using a multiple regression analysis, we found food-safety perceptions to be barely significant next to other important variables affecting people’s meat-consumption decisions. For those analyses, we asked participants to assess several constructs previously found to be associated with meat consumption. The goal was to determine how food-safety perceptions influence people’s meat consumption next to other important constructs in situations in which no major food scandal is present. The present paper concludes by discussing possible marketing and policy strategies to overcome people’s inaccurate safety perceptions of the stages of the total food chain.

Auditors and Corporate Governance: A Qualitative Study in Polish Public Companies

In the aftermath of major accounting scandals at the beginning of the century, significant reforms of the responsibilities of management, external auditing and corporate governance have been undertaken. A number of studies have examined the experiences of various actors (management, audit committee members, auditors and internal controllers) with corporate governance. This study is a direct response to the call for studies outside the Anglo-American model. It examines auditor’s experiences with CG in the setting of a two-tier board system and a capital market characterized by high ownership concentration. Fifteen auditors from international and local audit firms providing audit services for companies listed on Warsaw Stock Exchange participated in the study. The auditors indicate that the corporate governance environment has changed to some degree in the recent years. Corporate Governance mechanisms, effective audit committees and internal controls are often implemented in the best and biggest companies, mainly those with foreign investors. At the same time, auditors report only some reliance on corporate governance information in the planning phase and no reliance in the field-testing or review phases. The findings differ from those of prior studies (e.g., Cohen et al., 2010), in which auditors reported far greater reliance on corporate governance in all phases of the audit process. The two possible reasons for this difference in findings could be the different stages of the development of the respective capital markets and/or the different corporate governance systems.

Redemption, Forgiveness, and Resilience: Timeless Leadership Lessons From the Biblical Story of Judah

A number of leaders have been able to bounce back from major scandals. These include such political personalities as Barney Frank, Bill Clinton, David Vitter, and Mark Sanford. Clearly, a big scandal does not have to result in the end of one’s career. Currently, two well-known disgraced New York politicians – Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner – are telling the electorate that their public humiliation has changed them and made them better people. This paper examines the story of Judah in the Book of Genesis to derive important lessons relating to leadership. Many leaders make huge blunders in their careers; some leaders manage to make a comeback after a huge setback, while others disappear. Judah made severe mistakes in his life yet managed to emerge as an important leader. A key lesson derived from the noteworthy life of Judah is the importance of being resilient, learning to be remorseful, and having the ability to change as circumstances change.

The Movement for Rule of Law in China

Though not much noticed in the West, a great debate is raging across China today, from the law faculties of its major universities to the Central Party School to the dissident community, over “constitutionalism” and the establishment of rule of law.In the wake of major corruption scandals, there are great expectations that the new leadership under Xi Jinping will respond to social pressure and pursue political reforms that have stalled over the last decade.A leading China scholar, Cheng Li, and the now famous blind civil rights advocate Chen Guangcheng, who dramatically escaped house arrest and fled to the US Embassy in Beijing last year, comment on where this debate is headed and what it might—or might not—produce.

Malaysia in 2012

During 2012, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak undertook a number of political and economic reforms. At the same time, his rival, former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, was found not guilty of sexual misconduct charges. However, major corruption scandals continued to break. And a large scale protest over electoral cheating turned violent. Meanwhile, the economy remained on an even keel, while the government negotiated with the U.S. over entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Jevreji i antisemitizam u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji: 1918–1941 by Milan Koljanin

Reviewed by: Jevreji i antisemitizam u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji: 1918–1941 by Milan Koljanin Petar Čolić Milan Koljanin. Jevreji i antisemitizam u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji: 1918–1941 [The Jews and Anti-Semitism in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918–1941]. Belgrade: Institut savremenu istoriju, 2008. 550 pp. ISBN 9788674031254. Well acquainted with the history of the Jews in former Yugoslavia, Milan Koljanin devoted decades of research to the status of Jews and the question of anti-Semitism in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Jews and Anti-Semitism in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia is a product of this work. Published by the Institute for Contemporary History in 2008, it presents an expanded version of the author’s doctoral dissertation. In addition to this study, numerous related works by Koljanin include: German concentration camp in the Belgrade fairground 1941–1944 (Master’s thesis), The Holocaust in Yugoslavia 1941–1944, Anti-Semitic stereotypes and propaganda in Serbia 1941–1942, and Picture of the enemy/ally in Serbia 1941–1944. Traditions, ideologies, stereotypes. The book is divided into four parts. In the first chapter, “Yugoslav Jews and the Social Environment”1 the author deals with the definition of the term anti-Semitism, citing interpretations ranging from old encyclopedias to those of modern historians. The author states that “Anti-Semitism has been intensified and radicalized by secular religion in a nation dominated by racism.”2 A large part is dedicated to the methods the Nazi’s used to eliminate the Jews (gas chambers, crematoriums) as well as Hitler’s commitment to “the final solution.” The author brings up the fact that in the camps, which were “the embodiment of the Nazi idealized universe,”3 around 3.5 million Jews were killed throughout Europe. Koljanin addresses the issue of the immigration of the Jews into the Balkans as well as their position in the Serbian rebellions of 1804 and 1815. He points out that Serbian-Jewish relations were harmonious, but that an exception to this was the passage of anti-Semitic laws of 1861. In proportion to the general population, the number of Jews on the side of Serbia in the Balkan wars [End Page 173] (1912–13) and World War I (1914–18) was significant. Citing many arguments, the author observes that the Jews had a significant impact on the modernization of Balkan societies, including Serbian. Given the great economic power they had in relation to the population in general, Jews were often accused of involvement in a number of financial scandals. “The principal position of anti-Semitic propaganda in Yugoslavia was that the Jews were behind almost all major scandals, which has been an important part of the stereotyping of Jews as parasites and crooks who unfairly gain wealth and live at the expense of the people—the host.”4 According to Koljanin, the fact is that after the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Jews played a prominent role in strengthening the commercial, financial, and industrial capital, and the former political elite allowed a high degree of assimilation of Jews. The second part of the book is entitled “Anti-Semitism.”5 Anti-Semitism as a phenomenon occurred and continuously existed in Europe for several hundred years. In the territory of Yugoslavia the problem of the “final solution” of the Jewish question was first formulated in the 1930s by Dimitrije Ljotić, the leader of the joint combat organization known as the Yugoslav National Movement “Zbor.” It should be noted that the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a very heterogeneous state in terms of religious and ethnic views. In the total collapse of Parliamentary life and among growing ethnic tensions, the Jewish community loyally supported the Yugoslav state, confirmed by the election of prominent Jews as councilors in Belgrade by King Alexandar Karadjordjević’s 1932 decree. The author states the fact that the global economic crisis and an overall poor financial situation of the country have often been the catalyst for the emergence of negativism towards Jews, i.e., it was not part of some abstract doctrine. In the third chapter, “In the Shadow of the Upcoming Disaster,”6 Koljanin argues that the position of Jews during the Second World War in Yugoslavia (1941–45) was...