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Largest Companies (largest + company)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting60%
Humanities and Social Sciences40%

Selected Abstracts

A Profile of the Non-Executive Directors of Australia's Largest Companies

AUSTRALIAN ACCOUNTING REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
Dr Corinne Cortese
This paper presents a profile of the non-executive directors of Australia's largest public companies. Using descriptive data, it assesses the extent to which these companies adhere to the requirements set down in the Australian Stock Exchange's ,Principles of Good Corporate Governance'. In particular, board structure and composition is evaluated, and levels of remuneration and independence among non-executive directors are assessed. The paper concludes with a discussion of perceived versus actual independence of non-executive directors and the benefits of having non-executive directors present on company boards. [source]

The network of global corporations and elite policy groups: a structure for transnational capitalist class formation?

GLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 1 2003
William K. Carroll
This study situates five top transnational policy,planning groups within the larger structure of corporate power that is constituted through interlocking directorates among the world's largest companies. Each group makes a distinct contribution towards transnational capitalist hegemony both by building consensus within the global corporate elite and by educating publics and states on the virtues of one or another variant of the neo,liberal paradigm. Analysis of corporate,policy interlocks reveals that a few dozen cosmopolitans , primarily men based in Europe and North America and actively engaged in corporate management , knit the network together via participation in transnational interlocking and/or multiple policy groups. As a structure underwriting transnational business activism, the network is highly centralized, yet from its core it extends unevenly to corporations and individuals positioned on its fringes. The policy groups pull the directorates of the world's major corporations together, and collaterally integrate the lifeworld of the global corporate elite, but they do so selectively, reproducing regional differences in participation. These findings support the claim that a well,integrated global corporate elite has formed, and that global policy groups have contributed to its formation. Whether this elite confirms the arrival of a transnational capitalist class is a matter partly of semantics and partly of substance. [source]

Barriers to implementing e-learning: a Kuwaiti case study

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2008
Ghadah Essa Ali
The paper reports on a research project that encompasses two key objectives: (1) finding out about the barriers affecting or preventing e-learning from being adopted by companies as an integral part of their workforce's training and learning processes and (2) establishing a comparison between the barriers and the e-learning implementation models found in Kuwait and in the practice of Western companies. The practices from Western countries are used as a benchmark for the Kuwaiti experience. The collection of the primary data was carried out through the use of semi-structured questionnaires with human resources managers as well as IT managers in charge of the e-learning of 11 of the largest companies in Kuwait. The research results show that the key implementation barriers in Kuwait are (1) lack of management support; (2) language barriers; (3) IT problems; and (4) workload and lack of time. From these, two are common to Western countries (technology and time). The remaining two (management support and language barriers) are specific to Kuwait. Regarding the comparison between the two implementation models, the key finding was that the usual e-learning development cycle (plan,design,integrate,improve) was not followed in Kuwait. The planning, designing and improving stages were largely ignored, with the emphasis resting almost completely on integrating the e-learning tools and processes in the rest of the organization. This finding was found to be in line with barrier number one , lack of management support. The key lesson learned from this research is that the problem of e-learning implementation in Kuwait is not so much one of knowing what the barriers are but one of knowing what the appropriate management processes should be for companies to achieve business success. The paper also provides recommendations for an e-learning development plan to fit the current business environment in Kuwait. [source]

Does Risk Management Add Value?

JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 3 2005
A Survey of the Evidence
The fact that 92% of the world's 500 largest companies recently reported using derivatives suggests that corporate managers believe financial risk management can increase shareholder value. Surveys of finance academics indicate that they too believe that corporate risk management is, on the whole, a valueadding activity. This article provides an overview of almost 30 years of broadbased, stock-market-oriented academic studies that address one or more of the following questions: ,Are interest rate, exchange rate, and commodity price risks reflected in stock price movements? ,Is volatility in corporate earnings and cash flows related in a systematic way to corporate market values? ,Is the corporate use of derivatives associated with reduced risk and higher market values? The answer to the first question, at least in the case of financial institutions and interest rate risk, is a definite yes; all studies with this focus find that the stock returns of financial firms are clearly sensitive to interest rate changes. The stock returns of industrial companies exhibit no pronounced interest rate exposure (at least as a group), but industrial firms with significant cross-border revenues and costs show considerable sensitivity to exchange rates (although such sensitivity actually appears to be reduced by the size and geographical diversity of the largest multinationals). What's more, the corporate use of derivatives to hedge interest rate and currency exposures appears to be associated with lower sensitivity of stock returns to interest rate and FX changes. But does the resulting reduction in price sensitivity affect value,and, if so, how? Consistent with a widely cited theory that risk management increases value by limiting the corporate "underinvestment problem," a number of studies show a correlation between lower cash flow volatility and higher corporate investment and market values. The article also cites a small but growing group of studies that show a strong positive association between derivatives use and stock price performance (typically measured using price-to-book ratios). But perhaps the nearest the research comes to establishing causality are two studies,one of companies that hedge FX exposures and another of airlines' hedging of fuel costs,that show that, in industries where hedging with derivatives is common, companies that hedge outperform companies that don't. [source]

The Logic of Transnational Action: The Good Corporation and the Global Compact

POLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 4 2007
Lynn Bennie
This article examines corporate participation in the UN Global Compact programme. Using data on the world's 2,000 largest companies, we address the question of why companies voluntarily assume the programme's responsibilities and promote the rights of ,global citizenship'. Our analytic approach is to view transnational corporate political behaviour as a result of firm-level decisions shaped by country-level variation in political audience effects. Drawing on earlier research on more conventional forms of corporate political activity, we expect factors influential in the standard model of firm political activity to determine participation in the Global Compact. In addition, we argue that this highly visible, less instrumental dimension of a firm's political behaviour is driven by efforts to build a good environmental and human rights reputation with its audience of external actors. The importance of environmental and human rights concerns depends on the substance of the firm's business activities, the availability of investment and ,exit' options, and the home audience's bias towards the UN and human and environmental rights. We find support for political factors as well as firm and industry-level characteristics influencing the decision to participate in the Global Compact. [source]