Independent Directors and Corporate Governance

The paper examines the reliance placed in the United Kingdom and Australia on the concept of ‘independent directors’ as a mechanism to ensure better (less crisis prone) corporate governance. The article suggests that there is an over emphasis placed on some rather limited psychological evidence that independence in the boardroom produces more critical thinking and informed discussion thus leading to higher quality decision-making. The article offers others evidence, drawn from the material on the psychology of group formation and group discussion, which suggests that this confidence in ‘independence’ is misplaced. The article exposes a misunderstanding between independence as a character trait and independence as a structural concern which goes to the heart of the corporate governance discourse around the benefits of independence.

Beyond Sex, Bond and Star Wars : Exhibition Data from the Southampton Odeon 1972-1980

This article uses the personal ledgers of a cinema manager to explore programming and film exhibition at the Southampton Odeon in the 1970s. The detailed accounts provide a rare insight into cinema exhibition and challenge the notion that 1970s cinema was all about sex, violence, horror and exploitation, suggesting instead that audiences at this cinema, favoured very different fare.

Density Functional Theory Study on the Cleavage Mechanism of the Carbonyl Bond in Amides on Flat and Stepped Ru Surfaces: Hydrogen-Induced or Direct C-O Bond Breaking?

We have performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations to investigate the reaction mechanism of the cleavage of the carbonyl bond in amides on both flat and stepped Ru surfaces. The simplest amide molecule, N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMA), was used as the exemplar model molecule. Through the calculations, the most stable transition states (TSs) in all the pathways on both flat and stepped Ru surfaces are identified. Comparing the energy profiles of different reaction pathways, we find that a direct cleavage mechanism is always energetically favored as compared with an alternative hydrogen-induced mechanism on either the flat or stepped Ru surface. It is easier for the dissociation process to occur on the stepped surface than on the flat surface. However, as compared with the terrace, the superiority of step sites boosting the C-O bond dissociation is not as evident as that on CO dissociation.

Responsible Leadership: Business Myth or Corporate Reality?

The financial crisis has highlighted some of the limitations of the global system. Enterprises previously thought to be too big to fail have learned the harsh realities of capitalism (Merill Lynch, Lehman Bros, Northern Rock), countries have been shaken considerably from the bankruptcy of Iceland to the near-collapse of the markets in Greece, Ireland and Italy. The current age of austerity has largely dominated supra-national and indeed global politics in the last few years. The extent of the crisis has illustrated that relationships between business, governments and society needs to be re-evaluated in light of shifts in the global market thereby recognizing that some countries have a more limited power of persuasion than some corporations.

Corporate Governance as a School of Social Reform

In this paper, I present a vision of the corporation as a moral person. I point to “the separation of ownership and control” as a moment when the corporation broke away from the moral lives of ownermanagers. I then draw out the manner in which we can speak of the company as a moral person. Finally, through a discussion of social reporting in two British banks, I point to a shift in how this moral personhood is articulated, with the rise of corporate governance—or doing business well—as its own foundation of corporate responsibility. I propose a view of corporate responsibility as a “transmission mechanism” for the company’s role in moral life, situated in the broader social conception of “moral economy.” This viewpoint sets out landscapes of legitimation and justification through which the ties that underpin economic life are founded