All corporate entities, from the largest multinational conglomerate to the smallest tennis club, need effective governance. Some features of corporate governance are basic, common to all corporate entities: every governing body needs to think strategically and set policies to supervise ongoing management activities to ensure the entity is financially viable and is achieving its objectives.Every corporate entity has a governing body, whether it is called a board of directors, a comm...

In this Element the origins of corporate governance are reviewed, recognising that corporate entities have always been governed, that important developments took place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the huge significance of the invention of the joint-stock limited liability company. The development of corporate governance in the twentieth century around the world is explored, with complex groups, private companies, and top management dominating shareholder power appearing...

Traditionally, books on business ethics focus on CSR, companies’ relations with their stakeholders, and corporate citizenship. More recently, green credentials and sustainability have been added to that agenda. Unconventionally, this book argues that business ethics are basic to running business, not a separate subject. They are inherent to the governance and management of every organization, not an optional exercise in corporate citizenship. Business ethics concern behaviour in b...

The story of Oxford University and Management Education, including the text of key university reports on management studies in Oxford and personal sketches of major players.

The neo-liberalism that dominated economic thinking since the advent of Thatcher and Reagan is now seen to have serious flaws. Progressive Capitalism seeks to replace it with a new Progressive political economy, based on an analysis of why the growth rates of countries differ, and what firms have to do to achieve competitive advantage in today's global economy. The cornerstone of the political economy of Progressive Capitalism is a belief in capitalism. But it also incorporates the three d...

How governments can do a better job of supporting entrepreneurship and venture capitalSilicon Valley, Singapore, Tel Aviv—the global hubs of entrepreneurial activity—all bear the marks of government investment. Yet, for every public intervention that spurs entrepreneurial activity, there are many failed efforts that waste untold billions in taxpayer dollars. When has governmental sponsorship succeeded in boosting growth, and when has it fallen terribly short? Should...

There is an emerging consensus that all is not well with today’s market-centric economic model. Although it has delivered wealth over the last half century and pulled millions out of poverty, it is recession-prone, leaves too many unemployed, creates ecological scarcities and environmental risks, and widens the gap between the rich and the poor. Around $1 trillion a year in perverse subsidies and barriers to entry for alternative products maintain “business-as-usual” while obscuring their ...

Since her political independence from the British government in 1960, Nigeria has gone through different phases in the effort to develop the corporate sector. The intention was to drive the economy through corporate enterprises; however, the absence of effective corporate governance structure and conducive investment environment has no doubt been a source of concern for investors and successive governments.Meticulously researched and organized, this book takes the global view on co...

Outsourcing Economics has a double meaning. First, it is a book about the economics of outsourcing. Second, it examines the way that economists have understood globalization as a pure market phenomenon, and as a result have 'outsourced' the explanation of world economic forces to other disciplines. Markets are embedded in a set of institutions - labor, government, corporate, civil society, and household - that mold the power asymmetries that influence the distribution of the gains from glo...

Public money is one of the primary currencies of influence for politicians and public servants. It affects the standards by which they undertake the nation’s business and impacts the standard of living of the nation’s citizens. David A. Good’s The Politics of Public Money examines the extent to which the Canadian federal budgetary process is shifting from one based on a bilateral relationship between departmental spenders and central guardians to one based on a more compl...

This book explores Public Procurement novelties and challenges in an interdisciplinary way. The process whereby the public sector awards contracts to companies for the supply of works, goods or services is a powerful instrument to ensure the achievement of new public goals as well as an efficient use of public funds. This book brings together the papers that have been presented during the "First Symposium on Public Procurement", a conference held in Rome last summer and to be repeated agai...

Governments often use direct subsidies or tax credits to encourage investment and promote economic growth and other development objectives. Properly designed and implemented, these incentives can advance a wide range of policy objectives (increasing employment, promoting sustainability, and reducing inequality). Yet since design and implementation are complicated, incentives have been associated with rent-seeking and wasteful public spending.This collection illustrates the differen...