Home  About us  Contact
 

Corporate Practices (corporate + practice)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting57%
Humanities and Social Sciences28%

Selected Abstracts

Principles of Corporate Governance in Greece

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2001
Harilaos Mertzanis
This article presents the reasons which led the business community in Greece to reconsider existing corporate governance practices of listed corporations in the Athens Stock Exchange, outlines the general rationale for the creation and adoption of specific recommendations for best corporate practice, presents the recommendations in full detail and finally provides suggestions for the required corporate legal reform. [source]

Approaches to corporate sustainability among German companies

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2006
Tobias Hahn
Abstract In this article we present the results of an online survey on the state of corporate sustainability in German companies. The survey focused on the meaning and relevance of sustainability to German companies, the motivations behind their commitment to sustainability and the use of different management tools to implement sustainability in corporate practice. Although the majority of the companies declared that sustainability plays an important role, our analysis reveals considerable differences between these companies' approaches to corporate sustainability. A cluster analysis enables us to distinguish between three significantly distinct types of approach to corporate sustainability among the respondents: sustainability leaders, environmentalists and traditionalists. These three types are characterized and discussed against previous research. The results suggest that there are substantial differences with regard to the motivation for and the implementation of corporate sustainability that are covered behind the corporate rhetoric of a high commitment to sustainability. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]

Managing corporate governance risks in a nonprofit health care organization

JOURNAL OF HEALTHCARE RISK MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2005
Glenn T. Troyer Esq. Partner
Triggered by corporate scandals, there is increased oversight by governmental bodies and in part by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Corporations are developing corporate governance compliance initiatives to respond to the scrutiny of regulators, legislators, the general public and constituency groups such as investors. Due to state attorney general initiatives, new legislation and heightened oversight from the Internal Revenue Service, nonprofit entities are starting to share the media spotlight with their for-profit counterparts. These developments are changing nonprofit health care organizations as well as the traditional role of the risk manager. No longer is the risk manager focused solely on patients' welfare and safe passage through a complex delivery system. The risk manager must be aware of corporate practices within the organization that could allow the personal objectives of a few individuals to override the greater good of the community in which the nonprofit organization serves. [source]

Corporate Creep: An Institutional View Of Consultancies in a Non-Profit Organisation

AUSTRALIAN ACCOUNTING REVIEW, Issue 41 2007
HELEN IRVINE
Professional consultants play a role in mobilising the "creep" of corporate practices from the for-profit sector, through the public sector and into the non-profit sector. As well as legitimising these practices, consultancies illustrate the power of professional groups to institute change across sectors. In spite of this, the proliferation of consultancies is under-researched, particularly in the increasingly sophisticated non-profit sector. In one year, one religious/ charitable organisation (RCO) commissioned no fewer than five consultancies. This study provides insights about the process by which the consultancies were commissioned, conducted and adopted as RCO grappled with the applicability of corporate practices and its ability to implement them. [source]

Now let's really reform governance

BOARD LEADERSHIP: POLICY GOVERNANCE IN ACTION, Issue 77 2005
John Carver
Corporate governance reform has become a growth industry around the world. In most countries, new expectations about transparency, conflicts of interest, and composition have taken the voluntary form of "conform or explain." In the United States, reforms came in the more authoritative form of legislation the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), sponsored by Senator Paul S. Sarbanes and Congressman Michael G. Oxley. The law was passed in response to various recent corporate debacles. It is not the first such reform, nor will it be the last, although due to its legal force it is the most conspicuous in recent history. Although SOX applies to listed companies, many boards of nonprofit organizations and units of local government mistakenly thinking SOX is the last word in good governance have tried to apply its provisions to their own situations voluntarily. In fact, SOX does improve many widespread corporate practices, but it is not a complete gover nance system and in fact does nothing to address the nature of corporate governance itself. In other words, SOX, along with less legalistic reforms around the world, provides some useful patches for the primitive state of corporate governance but leaves it only in a newly patched condition. The following article originally appeared in Directors Monthly. [source]

Strategic Influences of Technological Innovation in Greece

BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001
Vangelis Souitaris
This exploratory paper analyses the ,importance' and ,awareness' of a set of established ,strategic' influences of technological innovation in the context of a European newly-industrialized country. The author interviewed 105 Greek manufacturing firms (mainly SMEs) and measured their perceived innovation rate as well as 17 ,strategic' factors regarding top-management practices and characteristics. Using correlation and regression analysis the initial group of factors was reduced to a subset of five ,major importance' influences of innovation, namely: incorporation of technology plans in the business strategy, managerial attitude towards risk, perceived intensity of competition and rate of change of customer needs, and finally status of the CEO (owner-CEOs were associated with higher innovation rate than appointed CEOs). The ,statistical' results are exploratory and have to be treated with caution, as they are highly dependent on the accuracy of the respondents' perception of their company's innovation rate and top-management practices and characteristics. The ,statistical' results were then compared with the managers' perception on the important factors determining innovation (also measured during the interviews). Overall the perceptual analysis confirmed the significance of the statistically important variables, with the exception of a disagreement in the direction of association between the status of the CEO and the rate of innovation. In general, top-management characteristics proved more important ,strategic' influences of innovation for the Greek SMEs than corporate practices. The study also indicated that the important influences of innovation were generally scarce in the Greek institutional context. The highly innovative companies were the ones to overcome country-specific innovation barriers such as the low supply of technology, the low level of competition and the risk-averse national culture. [source]

Determinants of the adoption of sustainability assurance statements: an international investigation

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, Issue 3 2010
Ans Kolk
Abstract This paper explores the factors associated with voluntary decisions to assure social, environmental and sustainability reports. Since the market for assurance services in this area is in its formative stages, there is a limited understanding of the demand for this emergent non-financial auditing practice, which is evolving rapidly across different countries. Drawing from extant literature in international auditing and environmental accounting, we focus on a set of country-level institutional factors to explain the adoption of sustainability assurance statements among an international panel of 212 Fortune Global 250 companies for the years 1999, 2002 and 2005. Consistent with our expectations, our results provide evidence that companies operating in countries that are more stakeholder oriented and have a weaker governance enforcement regime are more likely to adopt a sustainability assurance statement. Further, the demand for assurance is higher in countries where sustainable corporate practices are better enabled by market and institutional mechanisms. Our exploratory findings also indicate that the likelihood of choosing a large accounting firm as assurance provider increases for companies domiciled in countries that are shareholder oriented and have a lower level of litigation. We conclude the paper by suggesting three directions of research in the area of sustainability assurance that have relevant academic and practical implications. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]