Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Storytellers As Philanthropic Champions: An Interview With Claire Chiang, Lien Centre For Social Innovation

Social Space

Singapore’s charity sector is undergoing significant changes to enhance management quality, accountability and transparency. But despite these positive changes, Ms Claire Chiang, entrepreneur and philanthropist, argues that Singapore also needs to cultivate a more visionary and global approach to philanthropy. She shares with Social Space her thoughts on storytelling and the need for mentors to champion the most urgent causes of the day.

Contextualising Csr: Multi-Stakeholder Approaches To Development Initiatives In Southeast Asia, Christine Davis, Stephanie Soderborg

Social Space

As the focus on CSR expands throughout Asia, discussion prevails about the form it needs to take to be germane to the needs of each respective country. The authors discuss Kenan Institute Asia’s efforts in developing a responsible management education (or CSR curriculum and training) for future managers and business leaders in Vietnam.

Discovering The Asian Form Of Corporate Social Responsibility, Bindu Sharma

Social Space

This article is part of an on-going research project that will look at the how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is being re-contextualised and re-defined in ten countries across Asia and how these perspectives contrast with the discourse of CSR in global (primarily Western) multinational corporations.

Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

Seattle University Law Review

Readers game enough to work through all three hundred pages of The Modern Corporation and Private Property looking for insights on corporate law today encounter two, apparently contradictory, lines of thought. One line, set out in Books II and III, resonates comfortably with today’s shareholder-centered corporate legal theory. Here the book teaches that even as ownership and control have separated, managers should function as trustees for the shareholders and so should exercise their wide-ranging powers for the shareholders’ benefit. The other line of thought emerges in Books I and IV, where The Modern Corporation encases this shareholder trust model in …

See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George

Seattle University Law Review

Much corporate legal scholarship considers such fact patterns as beyond the scope of the discipline’s core concerns. Yet, increasingly, questions are asked concerning the scale and scope of modern corporate power. This Article will challenge the conventional understanding of what the core discipline of corporate law should encompass and argues that the failure to focus on precisely these sorts of factual scenarios involving allegations of corporate complicity in human rights violations and environmental degradation is misguided and short-sighted.

Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill

Seattle University Law Review

Shareholders, and the relationship between shareholders and management, lay at the heart of Professor Berle’s scholarship. The goal of this Article is to compare the image of shareholders emerging from The Modern Corporation and Private Property and the Berle/Dodd debate with a range of contemporary visions of the shareholder that underpin some international regulatory responses to recent financial debacles, from Enron to the current global financial crisis. As the Article dis- cusses, these recent developments in the era of financial crises have prompted a reevaluation of the traditional image of the shareholder—and the role of the shareholder in the modern …

Corporate Power In The Public Eye: Reassessing The Implications Of Berle’S Public Consensus Theory, Marc T. Moore, Antoine Rebérioux

Seattle University Law Review

We analyze Berle’s overall corporate governance project in accordance with what we see as its four core sub-themes: (A) the limitations of external market forces as a constraint on managerial decision-making power; (B) the desirability of internal (corporate) over external (market) actors in allocating corporate capital; (C) civil society and the public consensus as a continuous informal check on managerial decision-making power; and (D) shareholder democracy (as opposed to shareholder primacy or shareholder wealth maximization) as a socially instrumental institution. We seek to debunk the popular misconception that Berle’s early work was a defense of the orthodox shareholder primacy paradigm …

Legal And Ethical Issues Associated With Employee Use Of Social Networks, Gundars Kaupins, Susan Park

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter can help employees enhance a company’s marketing, recruiting, security, and safety. However, employee’s use of social networking sites and employers’ access of those sites can result in illegal and unethical behavior, such as discrimination and privacy invasions. Companies must gauge whether and how to rely upon employees’ use of personal social networking sites and how much freedom employees should have in using networks inside and outside of the companies. This research summarizes the latest legal and ethical issues regarding employee use of social networks and provides recommended corporate policies.

Lyondell: A Note Of Approbation, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Heedless Globalism: The Sec's Roadmap To Accounting Convergence, William W. Bratton

All Faculty Scholarship

The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has introduced a "Roadmap" that describes a process leading to mandatory use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by domestic issuers by 2014. The SEC justifies this initiative on the grounds that global standardization yields cost savings and an ultimate gain in comparability, facilitating the search for global opportunities by u.s. investors and making u.s. capital markets more attractive to foreign issuers. This Article shows that the offered justification is inadequate. The SEC frames the matter as a choice between two institutional frameworks for standard setting, holding out high quality sets of standards, asking which …

Assuming The Risk: Tort Law, Policy, And Politics On The Slippery Slopes, Eric Feldman, Alison I. Stein

All Faculty Scholarship

Prominent jurists and legal scholars have long been critical of the doctrine of the assumption of risk, arguing that it is logically flawed and has sown confusion in the courts. This article takes a fresh look at the assumption of risk by focusing on legal conflicts over ski accidents in three ski-intensive states—Vermont, Colorado, and California. It argues that the tort doctrine of the assumption of risk remains vital, and highlights the way in which powerful political and economic actors with links to the ski industry have lobbied aggressively for state laws that codify the assumption of risk. The result …

Social Networking And The Perception Of Privacy Within The Millennial Generation, Andra Gumbus, Frances S. Grodzinsky, Stephen J. Lilley

WCBT Faculty Publications

Has technology caused a generational divide between current college age users (Millennial Generation) who have no problems posting intimate details of their personal life on the Web and more traditional older users who seem to value privacy? This paper presents the results of a survey of 251 university students and follow-up focus groups on the topic of the perceptions of social networking and privacy. We will use Facebook as an example of social networking, and review attitudes about privacy and control over personal information among traditional and non-traditional college age users and light and heavy users of social networking sites.

Should Individual Investors Use Technical Trading Rules To Attempt To Beat The Market?, Thomas S. Coe, Kittipong Laosethakul

WCBT Faculty Publications

Problem statement: Despite widespread academic acceptance of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, some stock traders still use technical trading rules in an attempt to beat the market. Approach: This study looked at four trading rules, namely, the arithmetic moving average, the relative strength index, a stochastic oscillator and its moving average. These trading rules compare the relationship of current prices to past price patterns to generate a signal when to buy and sell stocks. The trading rules were tested over the years 2000-2009, a period of time that exhibited bull and bear markets, to determine if traders could actively …

Cripping The Workspace: Performing Physically Disabled Professional Identity In Personal Narrative, Julie-Ann Scott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study is a performance of identity analysis of 26 physically disabled professionals‘ open-ended personal narratives. Through adapting Riessman‘s five steps to narrative analysis to a performance methodology and applying Bamberg‘s narrative positioning, this study crystallizes the ongoing formation and re-formation of physically disabled professional identity in time, space, and discourse and the possibilities to reiterate, dismantle, and transform these meanings in future interactions. From a performance perspective, a story not only reflects reality, but is its own reality, constituting meaning and understanding in time and space. Physical disability is at once a personal experience and a shared cultural creation …

Corporate Sustainability And The Recession: Firms' Strategy Response In A Financial Crisis, Carolyn M. Campbell

CMC Senior Theses

As the modern world deals with an increasing number of environmental and social crises, corporate sustainability is becoming ever more imperative for business. There is broad agreement that profit maximization can no longer be the exclusive goal of a company, with firms working to align environmental, social, and financial performance. Companies have demonstrated a wide variety of experiences in regards to the financial crisis and its effects on corporate sustainability. While some firms experienced serious setbacks in achieving environmental and social goals others firms claimed to have been ramping up sustainability efforts during the recession. However, most firms report that …

International Movement To Deter Corruption: Should China Join?, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

Global concerns over the corruption of weak governments by firms engaged in transnational business are the source of an international movement that emerged in 1997. Special concern is presently directed at the weakness of enforcement of laws enacted in recent times to deter corrupt business practices in international trade that were enacted in response to that movement. One cause of weakness in law enforcement is the failure of China to share actively in those concerns and the efforts to address them. This essay will briefly record steps taken in other nations to address the concerns and the limited effectiveness of …

The Overstated Promise Of Corporate Governance, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

Review of Jonathan Macey, Corporate Governance: Promises Kept, Promises Broken (Princeton, 2008)

Why Does Corporate Governance Matter? Evidence From Seasoned Bond Offerings, Fang Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

To examine the importance of corporate governance, I look at how management and investors behave in the event of seasoned bond offerings, controlling for the corporate governance structure of issuing firms. I find that companies with the weakest governance structure aggressively manipulate their earnings upwards during the two years prior to the debt issuances. And when the bond offerings are announced to the market, these same firms experienced positive abnormal returns over a three day event period, indicating that investors of poorly governed firms value a debt financing for the alleged decrease in agency cost.

The Impact Of Employees' Perception Of Corporate Social Responsibility On Job Attitudes And Behaviors: A Study In China, Dan Zheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is regarded as voluntary bahaviors that contribute to the soceity welfare. Based on the concept of sustainable development, corporations should not only stress on their economic and business outcomes, but also pay attention to their effect on the society and environment. Corporations are expected to engage in the improvement of their employees' quality of life, as well as the well-being of employees' families, local communities, and the overall society. With the acceleration of global integration, CSR has become a main concern by the public, and is considered as an essential part of the business strategy. It …

Country Natural Beef: A Maturing Co-Op At The Crossroads, Madeleine E. Pullman, Victoria Villa-Lobos, Zhaohui Wu

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

A Business Base Study of a Group of Northwest Cattle Ranchers that Formed a Co-op to Market Natural Beef Products, in the Face of economic uncertainty and the rise of corporate farms and ranches. Provides an overview of the cattle ranching industry, the history of the co-op, its economic outlook, and future challenges.

Development Of A Framework To Evaluate Human Risk Towards Sustainable Risk Management, Ra'ed M. Jaradat, Rani A. Kady, C. Ariel Pinto

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Risk managers are constantly faced with the challenge of making decisions at various levels of their organizations. One of the challenges, which often times is unavoidable, lies in assigning a monetary value to human risks. Such challenge necessitates engineering managers to make educated decisions on the level of risk that the organizations and businesses should accept when it comes to human. The purpose of this study is to suggest a suitable framework that captures this aspect of engineering Risk Management in order to make rational and sustainable decisions about such assessed risk. This will be accomplished by exploring the tools, …

Neo-Brandeisianism And The New Deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, And The Problem Of Corporate Finance In The 1930s, Jessica Wang

Seattle University Law Review

This essay revisits Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and The Modern Corporation and Private Property by focusing on the triangle of Berle, Louis D. Brandeis, and William O. Douglas in order to examine some of the underlying assumptions about law, economics, and the nature of modern society behind securities regulation and corporate finance in the 1930s. I explore Douglas and Berle’s academic and political relationship, the conceptual underpinnings of Brandeis, Berle, and Douglas’s critiques of modern finance, and the ways in which the two younger men—Berle and Douglas—ultimately departed from their role model, Brandeis.

Stakeholders, Robert Phillips

Robert Phillips

No abstract provided.

Crisis Opportunism: Bail Outs And E-Scads In The Gfc, Judy Johnston, Alexander Kouzmin, Kym Thorne, Stephen Kelly

Adjunct Professor Stephen J Kelly

As a response to the “junk-debt”- inspired, global, economic crisis, governments, with supra-national organizational approval, have appropriated billions of taxpayers’ dollars for bail-outs, have set-up special funds and under-written depositors’ savings in the desperate hope of alleviating the threat of rapid, economic decline and systemic destruction of value. Whether these governments have a democratic mandate for such unprecedented action is debatable. More importantly, though, is whether such decisions amount to good re-regulatory policy.

First, it is known that some of the bail-out money to large corporations has been squandered by oligarchic recipients and appropriated by them in their own interests. …

Legal Guide For Small Business, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

Overview of legal issues associated with starting, managing, and ending a small business.

The Scandal Beneath The Crisis: Getting A View From A Cultural-Moral Mental Model, Kevin Jackson

kjackson@fordham.edu

No abstract provided.

Juridische Kaders In De Sociale Economie: Een Rechtseconomische Doorlichting, Astrid Coates, Wim Van Opstal

Wim Van Opstal

De sociale economie hanteert in ons land hoofdzakelijk het vzw-statuut en bestaat traditioneel ook uit (erkende) coöperatieve vennootschappen. In 1995 werd hier ook de vennootschap met sociaal oogmerk aan toegevoegd. In dit artikel bespreken we enkele randvoorwaarden voor een geslaagd ontwerp en een succesvolle implementatie van juridische kaders voor de sociale economie. Vervolgens bespreken we bondig de essentiële kenmerken van deze drie juridische kaders. We besluiten met een vergelijkende analyse en belichten daarbij de belangrijkste relatieve troeven en zwaktes ten opzichte van elkaar.

Mental Models That Impede Business’ Role In Global Poverty Alleviation, Dennis Moberg, Laura Hartman, Patricia Werhane, Scott Kelley

Scott Kelley

Six defective mental models that obstruct multinational enterprises from efforts at global poverty alleviation are identified. These include mindsets that define poverty in terms of individual daily earnings, that contend that global poverty is unsolvable, and frame global poverty as a human rights issue. In addition, there are the biased mental models that contend that the poor are incapable, that making money from the poor is unseemly, and that partnerships between multinational enterprises and public organizations are unlikely. It is claimed that such mental models challenge business leaders to be morally imaginative, and specific examples are cited that dispute each …

Building Social Capital Through Corporate Social Investment, David Cooke

David Cooke

Corporate support for the not-for-profit sector has been underestimated by many companies as a highly effective strategy to develop brand awareness, attract and retain top staff and build social capital. Some top australian companies have understood this and have well developed partnerships with the not-for-profit sector leading to mutually beneficial outcomes and positive societal impacts. In-depth interviews and case studies support this.

Bringing Freud To Fraud: Understanding The State-Of-Mind Of The C-Level Suite/White Collar Offender Through “A-B-C” Analysis, Sridhar Ramamoorti, Daven Morrison, Joseph W. Koletar

Accounting Faculty Publications

In this paper we use a primarily “behavioral lens” (cf. Ramamoorti, 2008; Ramamoorti & Olsen, 2007) to try to understand the state-of-mind and motivations of the C-level suite/white collar offender before, during, and after the perpetration of management fraud. We offer a useful conceptual approach called “A-B-C Analysis” to understand the incidence of fraud from individual and group perspectives, as well as more macro-oriented, cultural/contextual levels. It is our hypothesis that fraud occurs either because of an individual criminal’s calculated/intentional betrayal of trust, a duo or team of “bad boys” who push ethical envelopes, and/or an organizational/social/national culture of passivity, …