Law Commons^™

The Milieu Of The Boardroom And The Precinct Of Employment, Deborah A. Demott

Faculty Scholarship

This Commentary explores differences between employer-employee relationships and service on a board of directors. Against this backdrop, this Commentary argues that the research findings surveyed by Brooke and Tyler (Jennifer K. Brooke & Tom R. Tyler, Diversity and Corporate Performance: A Review of the Psychological Literature, 89 N.C. L. REV. 715 (2011)), although specific to the employment context, may be salient in assessing the impact of diversity among members of a board of directors.

Dangerous Categories: Narratives Of Corporate Board Diversity, Lissa Lamkin Broome, John M. Conley, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we report the results of a series of interviews with corporate directors about racial, ethnic, and gender diversity on corporate boards. On the one hand, our respondents were clear and nearly uniform in their statements that board diversity was an important goal worth pursuing. Yet when asked to provide examples or anecdotes illustrating why board diversity matters, many subjects acknowledged difficulty in illustrating theory with reference to practice.

This expressed reluctance to come to specific terms with general claims about the value of director diversity inspired our title phrase: dangerous categories. That is, while "diversity" evokes universal …

Introduction: For Love Or Money? Defining Relationships In Law And Life, Kimberly D. Krawiec, Marion Crain

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Does Critical Mass Matter? Views From The Board Room, Lissa Lamkin Broome, John M. Conley, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, we report and analyze the results of forty-six wide-ranging interviews with corporate directors and other relevant insiders on the general topic of whether and how the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of corporate boards matters. In particular, we explore their views on the concept of “critical mass” — that is, the theory that women and racial or ethnic minorities are unlikely to have an impact in the boardroom until they grow from a few tokens into a considerable minority of the board.

In contrast to other recent qualitative research on corporate boards, we find more limited support …

Potentially Perverse Effects Of Corporate Civil Liability, Samuel W. Buell

Faculty Scholarship

Inadequate civil regulatory liability can be an incentive for public enforcers to pursue criminal cases against firms. This incentive is undesirable in a scheme with overlapping forms of liability that is meant to treat most cases of wrongdoing civilly and to reserve the criminal remedy for the few most serious institutional delicts. This effect appears to exist in the current scheme of liability for securities law violations, and may be present in other regulatory structures as well. In this chapter for a volume on "Prosecutors in the Boardroom," the author argues that enhancements of the SEC's enforcement processes likely would …