The ethics of shareholder value: duty, rights and football

How does a board of directors decide what is right? The contest over this question is frequently framed as a debate between shareholder value and stakeholder rights, between a utilitarian view of the ethics of corporate governance and a deontological one. This paper uses a case study with special circumstances that allow us to examine the conflict between shareholder value and other bases on which a board can act. In the autumn of 2010 the board of Liverpool Football Club sold the company to another investing group against the wishes of the owners. The analysis suggests the board saw more than one type of utility on which to base its decision and that one version resonated with perceived duties to stakeholders. This alignment of outcomes of strategic value with duties contrasted with the utility of shareholder value. While there are reasons to be cautious in generalizing, the case further suggests reasons why boards may reject shareholder value in opposition to mainstream notions of corporate governance, without rejecting utility as a base of their decisions

Institutional logics in research supervision

According to Halse and Malfroy (2010) research supervision should be viewed as a profession. Professions have their own institutional norms, of course; explicit norms are what makes something a profession, rather than a craft. But in the world of contemporary higher education, where the word "institution" is often used to denote the organization of the university and the bureaucracy of HE policy-making, the institutionalized aspects of professional life can get lost. This paper examines the growing literature on research supervision through the lenses of a) knowledge theory, with its tacit, explicit and latent dimensions; and b) new institutional theory, with its focus on the diffusion of norms of social practices through isomophorism. It identifies three competing institutional logics: the traditional "craft" approach, an emerging "factory" mentality of measurable outcomes and target, and a middle way – a "professional" logic. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of accountability and how it influences the legitimacy of these competing institutional logics

Alternatives within corporate ‘ownership’

Institutional investors have long played a central role in corporate governance but no more so than since the financial crisis of 2007-09. To counteract short-termism, the UK Stewardship Code (Financial Reporting Council, 2010) encouraged investors to engage with the companies in which they invest came first and develop a sense of ownership. France (Commission Europe, 2010; ORSE, 2011) and Germany (discussed in Roth, 2012) took similar actions. The European Union (European Commission, 2011, 2013) included investor engagement in its review of corporate governance, while in the US the Dodd-Frank Act (Library of Congress, 2010) gave shareholders new voting powers and made it easier to raise shareholder resolutions. Some funds that favour this approach now call themselves “shareowners” rather than “shareholders” (Butler & Wong, 2011). This approach assumes shareholders are able to prevent corporate excess and might want to. But obstacles arise from the changing structure and power balances in institutional investment: hedge funds, funds-of-funds, sovereign wealth, and the revival of shareholder activism. This paper takes its cue from a parallel debate about changes in structure and power in corporations. In his paper “After the corporation”, Davis (2013) provocatively argues that scholarship on organizations and industrial policy are based on an outdated conceptualization of the corporation. He describes how companies including Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are now giants in the eyes and portfolios of institutional investors. They are giants by market capitalization, but pigmies by employment. The disaggregation of production functions across industries makes the corporation of yore a relic of a previous industrial age. In the US at least, the old giants made up a large part of the social structure and services that has held society together. What happens to the structure of society “after the corporation”, he asks? This paper turns that spotlight on investors. The policy push towards stewardship evokes both a bygone era of family-owned enterprises and corporations controlled by grand financiers. But the patient capital of Warren Buffett is a model few follow, or could. New money from end-investors flows instead into funds-of-funds, detaching the end beneficiary even further from control. Setting public policy to make finance serve the whole economy as envisaged in the “universal owner” (Hawley & Williams, 2007; Urwin, 2011) - modelled – on the large pension fund seems a laudable goal. The economic interests of these investors lie more in long-term social advances than short-term trading profits. But such policy prescriptions may privilege a dying class of investor against other more vibrant ones. Moreover, they may legitimate shareholder primacy at a time when scholars and the rest of the policy framework question it (Armour, Deakin, & Konzelmann, 2003; Bainbridge, 2010; Stout, 2013). We – scholars, policymakers and practitioners alike – need to consider alternatives. Within the system of wealth creation and like the corporation, the traditional investor – that is, the universal owner – remains an important economic force. But what alternatives within the system will work as these investors decline as a social force? What alternatives arise “after the owner”

Places and spaces: Control or experimentation in corporate governance?

For a quarter of a century, corporate governance in many countries has been viewed as a process of institutionalising codes of good conduct. Episodic shocks, induced by spectacular corporate failures, have created opportunities for more radical change, but such codes have proved resilient. But has this been process firmed up a thickening core? With each revision, the corporate governance community has come to live in a field increasing dominated by the ideas traditional actors – corporate management and mainstream institutional investors – who colonized the ill-defined territory of corporate governance at the outset. Over time, however, the changing investment landscape has undercut some of the principles on which this domination was based. Let us explore the philosophical underpinnings basis of the code, drawing on concepts from the writings of de Certeau (1984) and Turner (1977), to reflect on places, spaces, rituals, and explorations, to understand what creates and constitutes control and resilience, and what it says about the possibilities for innovation and experimentation

Double quantum dot with tunable coupling in an enhancement-mode silicon metal-oxide semiconductor device with lateral geometry

We present transport measurements of a tunable silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor double quantum dot device with lateral geometry. Experimentally extracted gate-to-dot capacitances show that the device is largely symmetric under the gate voltages applied. Intriguingly, these gate voltages themselves are not symmetric. Comparison with numerical simulations indicates that the applied gate voltages serve to offset an intrinsic asymmetry in the physical device. We also show a transition from a large single dot to two well isolated coupled dots, where the central gate of the device is used to controllably tune the interdot coupling.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Applied Physics Letter

Enhancement mode double top gated MOS nanostructures with tunable lateral geometry

We present measurements of silicon (Si) metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) nanostructures that are fabricated using a process that facilitates essentially arbitrary gate geometries. Stable Coulomb blockade behavior free from the effects of parasitic dot formation is exhibited in several MOS quantum dots with an open lateral quantum dot geometry. Decreases in mobility and increases in charge defect densities (i.e. interface traps and fixed oxide charge) are measured for critical process steps, and we correlate low disorder behavior with a quantitative defect density. This work provides quantitative guidance that has not been previously established about defect densities for which Si quantum dots do not exhibit parasitic dot formation. These devices make use of a double-layer gate stack in which many regions, including the critical gate oxide, were fabricated in a fully-qualified CMOS facility.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Surgical Management of Inguinal Hernias at Bugando Medical Centre in Northwestern Tanzania: Our Experiences in a Resource-Limited Setting.

Inguinal hernia repair remains the commonest operation performed by general surgeons all over the world. There is paucity of published data on surgical management of inguinal hernias in our environment. This study is intended to describe our own experiences in the surgical management of inguinal hernias and compare our results with that reported in literature. A descriptive prospective study was conducted at Bugando Medical Centre in northwestern Tanzania. Ethical approval to conduct the study was obtained from relevant authorities before the commencement of the study. Statistical data analysis was done using SPSS software version 17.0. A total of 452 patients with inguinal hernias were enrolled in the study. The median age of patients was 36 years (range 3 months to 78 years). Males outnumbered females by a ratio of 36.7:1. This gender deference was statistically significant (P=0.003). Most patients (44.7%) presented late (more than five years of onset of hernia). Inguinoscrotal hernia (66.8%) was the commonest presentation. At presentation, 208 (46.0%) patients had reducible hernia, 110 (24.3%) had irreducible hernia, 84 (18.6%) and 50(11.1%) patients had obstructed and strangulated hernias respectively. The majority of patients (53.1%) had right sided inguinal hernia with a right-to-left ratio of 2.1: 1. Ninety-two (20.4%) patients had bilateral inguinal hernias. 296 (65.5%) patients had indirect hernia, 102 (22.6%) had direct hernia and 54 (11.9%) had both indirect and direct types (pantaloon hernia). All patients in this study underwent open herniorrhaphy. The majority of patients (61.5%) underwent elective herniorrhaphy under spinal anaesthesia (69.2%). Local anaesthesia was used in only 1.1% of cases. Bowel resection was required in 15.9% of patients. Modified Bassini's repair (79.9%) was the most common technique of posterior wall repair of the inguinal canal. Lichtenstein mesh repair was used in only one (0.2%) patient. Complication rate was 12.4% and it was significantly higher in emergency herniorrhaphy than in elective herniorrhaphy (P=0.002). The median length of hospital stay was 8 days and it was significantly longer in patients with advanced age, delayed admission, concomitant medical illness, high ASA class, the need for bowel resection and in those with surgical repair performed under general anesthesia (P<0.001). Mortality rate was 9.7%. Longer duration of symptoms, late hospitalization, coexisting disease, high ASA class, delayed operation, the need for bowel resection and presence of complications were found to be predictors of mortality (P<0.001). Inguinal hernias continue to be a source of morbidity and mortality in our centre. Early presentation and elective repair of inguinal hernias is pivotal in order to eliminate the morbidity and mortality associated with this very common problem

Observation of the Isospin-Violating Decay Ds∗+→Ds+π0D_s^{*+}\to D_s^+\pi^0

Using data collected with the CLEO~II detector, we have observed the isospin-violating decay $D_s^{*+}\to D_s^+\pi^0$. The decay rate for this mode, relative to the dominant radiative decay, is found to be $\Gamma(D_s^{*+}\to D_s^+\pi^0)/\Gamma(D_s^{*+}\to D_s^+\gamma)= 0.062^{+0.020}_{-0.018}\pm0.022$.Comment: 8 page uuencoded postscript file, also available through http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN

Observation of a New Charmed Strange Meson

Using the CLEO-II detector, we have obtained evidence for a new meson decaying to $D^0 K^+$. Its mass is $2573.2^{+1.7}_{-1.6}\pm 0.8\pm 0.5$ {}~MeV/$c^2$ and its width is $16^{+5}_{-4}\pm 3$~MeV/$c^2$. Although we do not establish its spin and parity, the new meson is consistent with predictions for an $L=1$, $S=1$, $J_P=2^+$ charmed strange state.Comment: 9 pages uuencoded compressed postscript (process with uudecode then gunzip). hardcopies with figures can be obtained by sending mail to: [email protected]