Governance and charities: An exploration of key themes and the development of a research agenda

The concept of governance has been widely discussed in both the business and non-business sectors. The debate has also been entered into within the charity sector, which comprises over 169,000 organizations in the UK. The UK-based Charity Commission, which describes itself as existing to ‘promote sound governance and accountability’, has taken a lead in this debate by promoting greater regulation and producing numerous recommendations with regard to the proper governance of charitable organizations. However, the concept of what is meant by governance is unclear and a myriad of ideas are placed under the umbrella of ‘good governance’. This paper explores the major themes that form the basis of much of this discussion, examining both the theoretical underpinnings and empirical investigations relating to this area (looking from the perspective of the key stakeholders in the charity sector). Based on an analysis of the extant literature, this paper presents a broad definition of governance with respect to charities and outlines a future research agenda for those interested in adding to knowledge in this area.

Understanding Corporate Governance Reform in South Africa: Anglo-American Divergence, the King Reports and Hybridization

This article investigates corporate governance reform in South Africa in the context of the country’s international links with Anglo-American corporate governance and domestic pursuit of socioeconomic development. Two key questions are evaluated. (a) How has divergence within the Anglo-American model influenced corporate governance reform in South Africa? (b) Can South Africa’s historical closeness to the Anglo-American model be combined with increasing attention to stakeholder issues to produce a hybrid “African model” of corporate governance? Evaluating these questions, the following issues are explored in turn: the contrast between shareholder and stakeholder models, divergence between U.S. and U.K. approaches to corporate governance as exemplified by Sarbanes-Oxley, locating a South African approach in context of the Anglo-American model, the King reports and an emerging “African” model of corporate governance, and the role of international and domestic factors in shaping South Africa’s ongoing reform process.

Trust considerations on attitudes towards online purchasing: The moderating effect of privacy and security concerns

The research examines the relationships between three common trust considerations (vendor, Internet and third parties) and attitudes towards online purchasing. The study incorporates privacy and security concerns as a moderating variable and finds that these relationships vary depending on the level of concerns a consumer has when purchasing online. The study suggests that "fears" surrounding the Internet as a place to do business still hinder the use of it for e-commerce purposes, but that the presence of a reputable agent might in some manner mitigate this risk. In the context of business to consumer relationships trust in the vendor is important for the consumer to accept any risk associated with a transaction. Theoretical implications for online customer behavior theory are also discussed. © 2009 Elsevier Inc.

Does governance matter for aggregate health capital?

The point of departure of our analysis is the seminal work of Rodgers (1979) on the absolute and relative income hypotheses. We find that substituting the governance index for the Gini index is statistically the preferred regression model. Our findings lend support to the argument that governance matters. Further investigation provides evidence for two types of threshold effects: in terms of both absolute income and governance. For those countries below a threshold, absolute income is the most significant determinant of health, while for those above it, governance matters the most. The regression analyses are conducted on a sample of 112 states, which is representative of a wide range of absolute income and governance levels.