An examination of the relationship of governance structure and performance: Evidence from banking companies in Bangladesh

Corporate governance has become increasingly important in developed and developing countries just after a series of corporate scandals and failures in a number of countries. Corporate governance structure is often viewed as a means of corporate success despite prior studies reveal mixed, somewhere conflicting and ambiguous, and somewhere no relationship between governance structure and performance. This study empirically investigates the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and financial performance of listed banking companies in Bangladesh by using two multiple regression models. The study reveals that a good number of companies do not comply with the regulatory requirements indicating remarkable shortfall in corporate governance practice. The companies are run by the professional managers having no duality and no ownership interest for which they are compensated by high remuneration to curb agency conflict. Apart from some inconsistent relationship between some corporate variables, the corporate governance mechanisms do not appear to have significant relationship with financial performances. The findings reveal an insignificant negative impact or somewhere no impact of independent directors and non-independent non-executive directors on the level of performance that strongly support the concept that the managers are essentially worthy of trust and earn returns for the owners as claimed by stewardship theory. The study provides support for the view that while much emphasis on corporate governance mechanisms is necessary to safeguard the interest of stakeholders; corporate governance on its own, as a set of codes or standards for corporate conformance, cannot make a company successful. Companies need to balance corporate governance mechanisms with performance by adopting strategic decision and risk management with the efficient utilization of the organization’s resources.

Determinants of pharmaceutical innovation diffusion: social contagion and prescribing characteristics

This article studies the determinants of pharmaceutical innovation diffusion among specialists. To this end, it investigates the influences of six categories of factors—social embeddedness, socio-demography, scientific orientation, prescribing patterns, practice characteristics, and patient panel composition—on the use of new drugs for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus in Hungary. Here, in line with international trends, 11 brands were introduced between April 2008 and April 2010, outperforming all other therapeutic classes. The Cox proportional hazards model identifies three determinants—social contagion (in the social embeddedness category) and prescribing portfolio and insulin prescribing ratio (in the prescribing pattern category). First, social contagion has a positive effect among geographically close colleagues—the higher the adoption ratio, the higher the likelihood of early adoption—but no influence among former classmates and scientific collaborators. Second, the wider the prescribing portfolio, the earlier the new drug uptake. Third, the lower the insulin prescribing ratio, the earlier the new drug uptake—physicians’ therapeutic convictions and patients’ socioeconomic statuses act as underlying influencers. However, this finding does not extend to opinion-leading physicians such as scientific leaders and hospital department and outpatient center managers. This article concludes by arguing that healthcare policy strategists and pharmaceutical companies may rely exclusively on practice location and prescription data to perfect interventions and optimize budgets.

Az élelmiszer-fogyasztás szerkezete és környezeti hatása Magyarországon (Analysing the structure and environmental impact of food consumption in hungary)

Egyre többen ismerik fel, hogy az élelmiszer-fogyasztás egészségügyi és környezeti hatása is jelentős. A különböző életstílusú társadalmi csoportok fogyasztási szerkezete eltérő lehet. Jelen tanulmány ezerfős, országos reprezentatív minta alapján vizsgálja az élelmiszer-fogyasztási szerkezet eltéréseit a nemek és különböző iskolázottságú fogyasztók körében. Jellemző fogyasztási klasztereket tár fel a fogyasztás szerkezete alapján. A fogyasztás szerkezeti és mennyiségi értékein túlmenően az ökológiai lábnyom indikátorával a fogyasztás környezetterhelését is számszerűsíti. _____ Concern about both health and environmental impacts of food consumption is increasing. Social groups with various lifestyles can have different food consumption structure. The present study analyses the differences in the food consumption structure among genders and educational groups based on a national, representative survey of 1000 adults. Food consumption clusters are identified based on food consumption structure. Beyond the analysis of food consumption and its structure, its environmental impact is quantified by the ecological footprint indicator.