The Recurrent Crisis in Corporate Governance

书籍介绍(英文)

In the last thirty years, there has been a gradual erosion in the abilities and responsibilities of corporate boards. In addition to the ethics scandals that have plagued companies both new and established over the last three years, a number of over-diversified, over-staffed companies experienced failures that might have been avoided had there been proper oversight on the part of the board. While reform of the governance system has received considerable attention from the press, business leaders, and politicians, there have been few analyses of what is really happening on a systemic level, and even fewer workable suggestions for reform.

"The Recurrent Crisis in Corporate Governance" provides an expert assessment of what went wrong on corporate boards and how to fix them. The book begins with both a legal and economic examination of corporate governance during the last three decades, including the broad issue of boards taking on responsibilities without being able to fulfill their obligations because of the lack of access to information and people within the corporation. The authors then go on to show the correlation between strong board performance and strong company performance, make the case for se0fisherparating the CEO and Chair positions, comment on the collapse of nine major corporations, including Global Crossing, K-Mart, Lucent, and Qwest, and provide suggestions on how boards can be more effective stewards of the shareholders’ and public’s trust.
Book Description
In the late 1990s the American corporation forged ahead in gains in efficiency and earnings performance with strong reflections in stock price appreciation. However, the events of Enron and the bursting of the bubble of unlimited increases in the price of Internet, telecom and energy company shares have caused the authors of this book to take another look at American corporate governance. The authors use a scholar-practitioner approach to show what is missing in today’s corporate governance and to support a case for activating the board of directors, with leadership from an independent chair, to put new controls on management and take responsibility for the result.