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Corporate governance (CG) needs to acknowledge the intentional part of governance, where an actor of governance uses the set of corporate governance mechanisms in order to influence the agent to create a performance that will satisfy the interest of the principal. This paper offers a conception of this activity through the concept of governance strategy. The concept is derived within the context of agency theory and applied to two empirical organisations seldom investigated in CG research: the organisation of a riding school in a democratic not-for-profit association and the organisation of multinational corporations in a business group. ; The project is financed by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. An earlier version was presented at the Academy of Management Conference, Atlanta. Georgia, August 11-16, 2006. The paper has benefited from comments by Elin Smith, Kristianstad University.

This study describes the Indian corporate governance system and examines how the system has both supported and held back India's ascent to the top ranks of the world's economies. While on paper the country's legal system provides some of the best investor protection in the world, enforcement is a major problem with slow, over-burdened courts and significant corruption. Ownership remains concentrated and family business groups continue to be the dominant business model. There is significant pyramiding and tunneling among Indian business groups and, notwithstanding copious reporting requirements, evidence of earnings management. However, corporate governance in India does not compare unfavorably with any of the other major emerging economies: Brazil, China and Russia. India ranks high on the ease of getting credit, and has a well-functioning banking sector with one of the lowest proportions of nonperforming assets. The two main Stock Exchanges have among the highest number of trades in the world, and the relatively young Securities and Exchanges Board of India has a rigorous regulatory regime to ensure fairness, transparency and good practice. Most importantly, the corporate governance landscape in the country has been changing fast over the past decade, particularly with the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley type measures and legal changes to improve the enforceability of creditor's rights. If this trend is maintained, India should have the quality of corporate governance necessary to sustain its impressive current growth rates.

Sustainable development is rapidly moving from the periphery to the mainstream of politics, business, and science. Over the past several years, a strong consensus has started to emerge that some of the major global problems can only be overcome through large-scale concerted action. Recent additions to the debate include the reports by the International Panel on Climate Change, the Stern Report on the economics of climate change, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and, perhaps less known, the Potsdam Memorandum1. The latter communication was recently presented by a broad group of Nobel laureates and is titled "The Great Transformation." The statement pleads for fundamental changes in our economies and societies and asks

Public well-being is directed to the welfare of all. The state is traditionally the solicitor of this noble good. Its mission is to balance out the different interests of the different social groups. Within this framework, the activities of the different economic actors are of special significance. In times of globalization, economic actors have been enormously dynamised, not always to the benefit of the individual. The much quoted primacy of economy threatens to become far too powerful, influencing all areas of life rather unfavourably. If public well-being is considered a significant social factor, the question of how the different economic agents can contribute to it on an economic level, stands in the foreground. The microeconomic actors can indeed - also because of their different objectives - contribute essentially and in very different ways to public well-being as well as to a prospering economy and society, in spite of all current deficits. There is also a demand for reaction on the political level. More than ever, the state is stipulated to provide ethic bases and to act accordingly in an assortative, long sighted and in the most positive sense of the word regulating way, as well as with social and ecological responsibility.

The thesis analyses the role of policy instruments for dynamics of governance, using case studies on 'emissisons trading' and 'network access regulation in the utilities'. It opens by observing a paradox: Policy instruments are criticised for misrepresenting the complex and contested reality of public policy-making by portraying it as technical problem-solving, yet, policy instruments play an increasingly central role in policy analysis, design and public debate. The first part of the thesis develops a conception of policy instruments as 'designs on governance'. This implies a double life: as models of governance and as configurations that work in real world governance contexts. Understanding the role of policy instruments requires to study the development of trajectories in governance patterns that result from the interaction of models and configurations. Concepts from innovation studies are mobilised and the notion of an 'innovation journey' is adopted as a heuristic framework. The second part of the thesis presents two case studies examplifying different innovation patterns: design push (case of emissions trading) and dynamics pull (case of network access regulation). For each pattern typical phases and transitions as well as ironies that undermine the instrumentality of designs on governance are discussed. Conclusions of the thesis address the co-evolution of policy instruments with broader governance dynamics and specify conditions under which momentum of instruments may dominate over dynamics of problem formulation and political authority, or vice versa. Key insights are formulated with respect to the division of design labour between local and global in the context of emerging cosmopolitan governance regimes, the social life of policy instruments and the ambivalent role of technical models of governance for effectiveness as well as democratic legimitacy of public policy.

International audience ; As with European experiments, in various regions in France, territorial intelligence projects have been initiated since 2003. (see the regions of Lower Normandy, Lorraine, Réunion Island, the Aquitaine region, etc.).The objective of these is to gather and exploit information which is not confined to particular sectors and the collective processing of which can contribute to durable development. Apart from institutions, civil society and the inhabitants of the territory, it is observed that companies and in particular small and medium sized enterprises are natural partners who show interest in such initiatives. Both the different economic chains and the participating organizations thus derive considerable benefit in terms of the anticipation of threats and in the reaffirmation of the territory as a common resource worth defending. Above and beyond the information processing systems operating within these organizations or economic chains, the articulation of internal actions to generate informational capital in terms of local territorial intelligence, produces a leverage effect with visibility of European or even worldwide visibility (Herbaux, 2007)52. Nonetheless these experiments lead to widely differing results, of which the progressive abandonment of the project by the companies involved is one of the most commonly observed. To support a theoretical contribution as a thread for this communication, we report on the results of a Delphi type survey completed in 2006 and covering 53 companies in the Nord- Pas de Calais region involved in a process of territorial intelligence since 2003. This revealed that 43 companies out of the 53 concerned had not followed through on their internal information sharing project and contented themselves, by default, with the results by economic sector derived from public regional surveillance Beyond this apparent disengagement from the process initiated, we may be curious about this apparent discretion of a group of actors concerning local government. This ...

International audience ; As with European experiments, in various regions in France, territorial intelligence projects have been initiated since 2003. (see the regions of Lower Normandy, Lorraine, Réunion Island, the Aquitaine region, etc.).The objective of these is to gather and exploit information which is not confined to particular sectors and the collective processing of which can contribute to durable development. Apart from institutions, civil society and the inhabitants of the territory, it is observed that companies and in particular small and medium sized enterprises are natural partners who show interest in such initiatives. Both the different economic chains and the participating organizations thus derive considerable benefit in terms of the anticipation of threats and in the reaffirmation of the territory as a common resource worth defending. Above and beyond the information processing systems operating within these organizations or economic chains, the articulation of internal actions to generate informational capital in terms of local territorial intelligence, produces a leverage effect with visibility of European or even worldwide visibility (Herbaux, 2007)52. Nonetheless these experiments lead to widely differing results, of which the progressive abandonment of the project by the companies involved is one of the most commonly observed. To support a theoretical contribution as a thread for this communication, we report on the results of a Delphi type survey completed in 2006 and covering 53 companies in the Nord- Pas de Calais region involved in a process of territorial intelligence since 2003. This revealed that 43 companies out of the 53 concerned had not followed through on their internal information sharing project and contented themselves, by default, with the results by economic sector derived from public regional surveillance Beyond this apparent disengagement from the process initiated, we may be curious about this apparent discretion of a group of actors concerning local government. This ...

On 29th - 30th March 2007, SUERF and the Central Bank of Cyprus jointly organized a Seminar: Corporate Governance in Financial Institutions. The papers in the present publication are based on a sample of the presentations at the Seminar. Together, the papers illuminate a number of key issues in corporate governance in a variety of financial firms. In the first paper based on a keynote address, Spyros G. Stavrinakis, Central Bank of Cyprus gives an overview of the legal framework for corporate governance in financial institutions in Cyprus. According to a Central BankDirective issued in 2006, implementation of corporate governance principles is mandatory for all banks incorporated in Cyprus and their overseas branches and for some Cyprus branches of foreign banks domiciled outside the European Economic Area. Banks are obliged to have a robust internal governance framework, consistent lines of reporting and effective risk identification, management, monitoring and reporting procedures for all the risks to which credit institutions are actually or potentially exposed. The board of directors should take the lead in establishing and approving ethical standards and corporate values for itself and for the bank's senior executive management. Potential conflicts of interest should be identified, prevented or appropriately managed. Each bank should maintain a compliance function that monitors compliance with rules, regulations and policies. Clear lines of responsibility and accountability should be set and enforced. New members of the board of directors as well as the senior executive managers of banks have to be vetted and approved by the Central Bank of Cyprus for their " fitness and properness." In order to ensure transparency concerning the implementation of the principles, each bank's corporate governance framework should be disclosed in the bank's annual report and on its public website. In the second paper by Christian Harm, University of Muenster, "The Governance of the Banking Firm" the author builds on the literatures on corporate governance and financial regulation. In relation to governance of financial institutions, agency theory has both merits and shortcomings. It provides good explanations in many delegation situations but it has severe difficulties in dealing with institutions with several stakeholders and complex objective functions for the management. Firms guided by shareholder value may work more effectively than firms guided by stakeholder cacophony. Depositors are important stakeholders in banks. Since they are typically incapable of managing the supervision of their claims on the bank, they rely on regulators to do it for them. Remuneration systems for bank managers should provide proper incentives. According to the author, incentives should be structured such as to reward particular strategic achievements. Banks can apply executive stock option plans, but should confine options to a secondary place behind other long-term incentives based on success criteria that further shareholder interests without compromising the regulatory mission. Such an incentive framework tends, however, to be very complex so that the general ambiguities associated with the concept of governance could imply that in the banking firm, selecting managers with a proper intrinsic motivation may be superior to defining complex remuneration programs. In the third paper "Corporate Governance Issues in Non-Shareholder Value Financial Institutions: ACase Study of Mutual Building Societies in the UK", David T. Llewellyn, Loughborough University, focuses on corporate governance in non-incorporated financial firms. The author describes the relevant stakeholders and the nature of agency problems in different types of financial firms. He compares monitoring mechanisms, incentives, abilities and feasibilities of managers and members of mutuals. Mutuality raises specific corporate governance issues: Corporate governance is less clearly defined because the firm's objectives are less clearly defined. Conflicts of interest between managers and owners are less easily identified and it is more difficult to create management incentives. The almost exclusive source of capital is retained profits and each member has a non-exclusive and non-marketable claim to residual net worth. Voting rights are typically not proportional to the size of the ownership stake. There is no market in ownership claims and therefore no effective market in corporate control. Consequently, there is ample scope for mutuals to be inefficient. There is, however, no evidence that the efficiency and performance of mutuals are poorer that that of incorporated financial firms. In the fourth paper "Corporate Governance in Emerging Market Banks", Bridget Gandy, Fitch Ratings Ltd., and her co-authors from the rating agency look at the framework for corporate governance of banks in a sample of emerging market countries. Since the crisis in the late 1990s in Latin America and Asia, there has been a marked improvement in corporate governance of financial institutions in the regions under observation. Many countries have taken legal steps to develop functioning market economies with a view to the need to satisfy the demands of international capital markets. Several banks have listed their shares on stock exchanges in developed markets and foreign bank ownership and involvement in local banking systems have increased. In Central and Eastern Europe, countries' desire for EU-accession has impacted on the development of their corporate governance systems. At the individual bank level, Fitch Ratings looks at bank board independence and quality, oversight and the importance of related party transactions, the integrity of the audit process, acceptability of executive and director remuneration, ownership structures and transparency. In evaluating the quality of governance at the country level, the authors apply a three-pillar approach in line with Montesquieu: Powers and responsibilities need to be separated between a representative legislature, a competent and accountable executive branch and a fair and independent judiciary. The paper contains an interesting table in which a number of key regulatory initiatives in a sample of emerging market countries are compared. The authors point out that large scale privatizations have reduced the importance of state-owned banks in many countries. There are, however, still several examples with complex holding structures involving banks with potential negative implications for corporate governance quality and problems with related party transactions. Acquisitions by foreign banks with developed corporate governance standards have generally had a positive impact and also listing of bank shares on foreign stock exchanges with tough disclosure and transparency requirements have contributed positively to the quality of corporate governance in emerging market banks. Read together, the four papers give a good overview of the development of corporate governance practices and remaining problems in financial institutions of different types and with domicile in different countries.

International audience ; As with European experiments, in various regions in France, territorial intelligence projects have been initiated since 2003. (see the regions of Lower Normandy, Lorraine, Réunion Island, the Aquitaine region, etc.).The objective of these is to gather and exploit information which is not confined to particular sectors and the collective processing of which can contribute to durable development. Apart from institutions, civil society and the inhabitants of the territory, it is observed that companies and in particular small and medium sized enterprises are natural partners who show interest in such initiatives. Both the different economic chains and the participating organizations thus derive considerable benefit in terms of the anticipation of threats and in the reaffirmation of the territory as a common resource worth defending. Above and beyond the information processing systems operating within these organizations or economic chains, the articulation of internal actions to generate informational capital in terms of local territorial intelligence, produces a leverage effect with visibility of European or even worldwide visibility (Herbaux, 2007)52. Nonetheless these experiments lead to widely differing results, of which the progressive abandonment of the project by the companies involved is one of the most commonly observed. To support a theoretical contribution as a thread for this communication, we report on the results of a Delphi type survey completed in 2006 and covering 53 companies in the Nord- Pas de Calais region involved in a process of territorial intelligence since 2003. This revealed that 43 companies out of the 53 concerned had not followed through on their internal information sharing project and contented themselves, by default, with the results by economic sector derived from public regional surveillance Beyond this apparent disengagement from the process initiated, we may be curious about this apparent discretion of a group of actors concerning local government. This ...

The concept of the globalisation has experienced an astonishing career in the 1990s. By the resolution of the Soviet block and the breakdown of the Berlin Wall the planet seemed to become all together from uniform principles of western-modern life creation interlace. If one wants to bring the spirit of the times of the last turn of the century on the concept, one can say that we have entered into the epoch of the globalisation. There remains to us no other alternative. The concept of the globalisation controls furthermore the headlines, without always becomes clear what is meant with it. Therefore, this present thesis offers an introduction to the topic. Globalisation is a many-faceted process which stamps the societies today radically. A network of growing density has broken open the Partikularismus in all life forms and speeds up in rapid tempo worldwide exchange, adaptation processes and mutual influencing in the area of economy, policy and society. The globalisation has hardened to a Kohärenz which presents itself not only to the focused field of vision of social-scientific analysis, but to the everyday object of experience of the individuals in all parts of the world asserts itself. If these are the technically ingenious possibilities of the globalized transfer of information and flow of communication, the worldwide exchange of persons, goods, services and money, the cultural-covering adjustment and Transfers of consumption customs or the global standardization of perception patterns and values – in all life connections becomes the globalisation immediately perceptible. However, with precise investigation of the globalisation process another picture will appear. Of a globalisation can be spoken only in several times limited sense. While more than 70 percent of the good exports move between the triad (the EU, Japan and the USA), less than 20 percent of the commercial volume are cancelled to nearly three quarters of the world population. The number of the trans-nationwide operating enterprises has risen ...

International audience ; As with European experiments, in various regions in France, territorial intelligence projects have been initiated since 2003. (see the regions of Lower Normandy, Lorraine, Réunion Island, the Aquitaine region, etc.).The objective of these is to gather and exploit information which is not confined to particular sectors and the collective processing of which can contribute to durable development. Apart from institutions, civil society and the inhabitants of the territory, it is observed that companies and in particular small and medium sized enterprises are natural partners who show interest in such initiatives. Both the different economic chains and the participating organizations thus derive considerable benefit in terms of the anticipation of threats and in the reaffirmation of the territory as a common resource worth defending. Above and beyond the information processing systems operating within these organizations or economic chains, the articulation of internal actions to generate informational capital in terms of local territorial intelligence, produces a leverage effect with visibility of European or even worldwide visibility (Herbaux, 2007)52. Nonetheless these experiments lead to widely differing results, of which the progressive abandonment of the project by the companies involved is one of the most commonly observed. To support a theoretical contribution as a thread for this communication, we report on the results of a Delphi type survey completed in 2006 and covering 53 companies in the Nord- Pas de Calais region involved in a process of territorial intelligence since 2003. This revealed that 43 companies out of the 53 concerned had not followed through on their internal information sharing project and contented themselves, by default, with the results by economic sector derived from public regional surveillance Beyond this apparent disengagement from the process initiated, we may be curious about this apparent discretion of a group of actors concerning local government. This ...

Obwohl Lateinamerika die demokratischste Entwicklungsländerregion weltweit ist und auch dort die demokratische Herrschaft eine Entwicklungsdividende gebracht hat, ist die Legitimationsbasis vieler der dortigen Demokratien prekär. Zwar ist das Gewaltmonopol nicht in dem Maße eingeschränkt oder repressiv wie in anderen Regionen. Doch gleichwohl existieren auch in etlichen lateinamerikanischen Ländern staatsfreie Räume, der Rechtsstaat ist meist defekt, und staatliche Strukturen sind vielfach dysfunktional mit Blick auf die Überwindung von Entwicklungsbarrieren. Eine maßgebliche Ursache für die verschiedenen Formen von Staatsversagen ist, dass es in vielen Demokratien Lateinamerikas nicht gelungen ist, stabile und demokratische Parteiensysteme zu etablieren. Die Fragmentierung dieses "Mittelbaus" zwischen Bürger und Staat hat nicht nur kohärente Reformen erschwert, sondern auch populistisches Regieren mit autoritären Zügen begünstigt. Die Förderung von Good Governance sollte daher, gerade aufgrund der im internationalen Vergleich immer noch günstigen Rahmenbedingungen, Schwerpunkt der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit bleiben.

International audience ; As with European experiments, in various regions in France, territorial intelligence projects have been initiated since 2003. (see the regions of Lower Normandy, Lorraine, Réunion Island, the Aquitaine region, etc.).The objective of these is to gather and exploit information which is not confined to particular sectors and the collective processing of which can contribute to durable development. Apart from institutions, civil society and the inhabitants of the territory, it is observed that companies and in particular small and medium sized enterprises are natural partners who show interest in such initiatives. Both the different economic chains and the participating organizations thus derive considerable benefit in terms of the anticipation of threats and in the reaffirmation of the territory as a common resource worth defending. Above and beyond the information processing systems operating within these organizations or economic chains, the articulation of internal actions to generate informational capital in terms of local territorial intelligence, produces a leverage effect with visibility of European or even worldwide visibility (Herbaux, 2007)52. Nonetheless these experiments lead to widely differing results, of which the progressive abandonment of the project by the companies involved is one of the most commonly observed. To support a theoretical contribution as a thread for this communication, we report on the results of a Delphi type survey completed in 2006 and covering 53 companies in the Nord- Pas de Calais region involved in a process of territorial intelligence since 2003. This revealed that 43 companies out of the 53 concerned had not followed through on their internal information sharing project and contented themselves, by default, with the results by economic sector derived from public regional surveillance Beyond this apparent disengagement from the process initiated, we may be curious about this apparent discretion of a group of actors concerning local government. This ...

Das vorliegende Working Paper versteht unter Governance eine Perspektive auf Regieren: Governance dient der intentionalen Handlungskoordination unter einer Mehrzahl von Akteuren durch kollektiv bindende Entscheidungen. Der Mehrwert des Governance-Begriff s liegt in der Betonung der Kontingenz der Modi des Regierens und der beteiligten Akteure. Wir argumentieren, dass der Governance- Begriff schwach normativ ist. Der "dichte Begriff " des Regierens meint stets eine regelgeleitete Verteilung von Gütern im Unterschied zu Übeln. Jedes Regieren, das diesen Namen verdient, garantiert ein Mindestmaß an Erwartungssicherheit hinsichtlich überlebenswichtiger und Sozialität überhaupt ermöglichender Sachverhalte für eine defi nierte Gesamtheit von Regelungsadressaten. Die Übertragbarkeit dieses Governance- Begriff s auf Räume zerfallen(d)er Staatlichkeit ist aus zwei Gründen fraglich. Zum einen fehlt hier eine Instanz, die die Inklusion aller Betroff enen in die Governance-Leistungen letztverantwortlich garantieren kann, zum anderen ist in fragmentierten Gesellschaften umstritten, wer überhaupt dem Kreis der Regelungsadressaten angehört. Hieraus erwachsen normative und handlungstheoretische Probleme.

International audience ; As with European experiments, in various regions in France, territorial intelligence projects have been initiated since 2003. (see the regions of Lower Normandy, Lorraine, Réunion Island, the Aquitaine region, etc.).The objective of these is to gather and exploit information which is not confined to particular sectors and the collective processing of which can contribute to durable development. Apart from institutions, civil society and the inhabitants of the territory, it is observed that companies and in particular small and medium sized enterprises are natural partners who show interest in such initiatives. Both the different economic chains and the participating organizations thus derive considerable benefit in terms of the anticipation of threats and in the reaffirmation of the territory as a common resource worth defending. Above and beyond the information processing systems operating within these organizations or economic chains, the articulation of internal actions to generate informational capital in terms of local territorial intelligence, produces a leverage effect with visibility of European or even worldwide visibility (Herbaux, 2007)52. Nonetheless these experiments lead to widely differing results, of which the progressive abandonment of the project by the companies involved is one of the most commonly observed. To support a theoretical contribution as a thread for this communication, we report on the results of a Delphi type survey completed in 2006 and covering 53 companies in the Nord- Pas de Calais region involved in a process of territorial intelligence since 2003. This revealed that 43 companies out of the 53 concerned had not followed through on their internal information sharing project and contented themselves, by default, with the results by economic sector derived from public regional surveillance Beyond this apparent disengagement from the process initiated, we may be curious about this apparent discretion of a group of actors concerning local government. This ...