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This article addresses important policy issues raised in the latest Lehman dispute that directly impact the over the counter derivatives market and market participants, specifically in regards to the history and purpose of the Bankruptcy Code’s “safe harbor” provisions for swap agreements.

By examining the background of, and arguments presented in, the ongoing adversary proceeding, Moore Macro Fund, LP v. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and the related bankruptcy case, in re Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. the authors offer their interpretations of the scope and intent of the applicable safe harbor provisions concerning set-off rights in the context of terminating swap agreements.

Parties to ISDA agreements should carefully monitor this case, as the outcome could shape the enforceability of the Bankruptcy Code and the strategic analysis of counterparties following a counterparty’s or credit support provider’s bankruptcy.

Parties must also be cautious when assuming all contractual provisions in industry-standard master agreements will be enforceable. This case confirms that contractual provisions seeming to reflect the intent of the parties may still be called into question before a court.

Litigation analysis and practical advice on the ongoing changes to the physical, futures and derivatives markets from experienced derivatives/structured products and bankruptcy/commercial restructuring lawyers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between board of directors’ composition (independent directors’ ratio, board size, CEO-duality) and financial transparency and disclosure (T&D).

The paper analyzes board composition and financial T&D of Italian listed companies using multiple linear regression analysis.

The results of this paper show a significant link between board composition and the level of financial T&D. In particular, the authors found a positive and significant relationship between the independent directors’ ratio and the level of financial T&D and a negative relationship between board size and the level of financial T&D.

While this paper focuses on a sample of 100 Italian listed companies, the authors acknowledge the importance of extending the results to other national context and to other type of firms (e.g. non-listed firms or SMEs). Moreover, while this paper concerns the amount of information disclosed by firms, it does not look at the quality or accuracy of disclosure.

This paper reveals the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms (such as board composition) in enhancing the level of financial T&D. Indeed, the authors provide some indications to firms to improve their internal governance mechanisms (e.g. the importance of high proportion of independent directors and of small- and medium-sized boards of directors).

This paper provides interesting insights to firms which are under pressure to improve the level of information to stakeholders. Moreover, has the level of information that is not legally required vary among companies and countries, the authors shed light on a context characterized by high level of ownership concentration, where firms can experience different types of conflict of interests.

Communication studies have expanded significantly around the globe in the last decades. Due to new channels of communication and more and more mediatised societies, the role of communication has gained significance. In contrast, communication does not seem to be a topic of high priority for many corporate leaders. They often still value communication as a mere support function.

This chapter explores communication courses of business schools in the United States and Europe. It is hypothesised that only if communication courses are recognised in such programmes the profession of business communicators will realise entry into the highest levels of corporate decision-making.

The main question is how far top-ranked Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes integrate communication courses. This is investigated via website analysis and interviews. This chapter also provides explanations for the current status quo. The results will be of interest to all those responsible for shaping MBA curricula and give insights into how the communication discipline is viewed by leaders of business schools.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether a gender perspective contributes to or functions as a driving force for innovations in organizations. The following questions are addressed: how can a gender perspective generate innovations and what are the conditions that favour innovations driven by a gender perspective?

This study builds on a qualitative case study of an upper secondary school in Sweden, which has been showcased as a good example of gender awareness and gender mainstreaming in schools. Semi-structured interviews with representatives of the school were conducted and documents were analysed.

The gender perspective contributed to innovations by triggering them and supporting the innovative processes, ensuring that the innovations did not stop at essentialist solutions. New ways of performing core processes were developed with the innovative leverage of the gender perspective. The perspective must be actively used and integrated into the core processes if it is to work properly, which was the case in this school.

This study indicates the importance of conducting further studies on innovations in the public sector as well as acknowledging gender in innovation studies, not least because this study focuses on a local case in a specific national context.

This school exemplifies the use of a gender perspective as a driving force for innovations in organizations. The case points to important organizational conditions for innovation and actual gender-aware innovations.

The study expands the understanding of innovation(s) in organizations and elaborates on the gendered dimensions of innovation as both process and product.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the practices of positioning Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and other top executives in the public sphere and approaches to manage their communication activities.

A neo-institutional framework is used to explain the growth of CEO positioning in mediatisated societies. Research questions are derived from previous research and tested in a quantitative online survey with 512 heads of corporate communication in 21 countries across Europe and a qualitative survey with 42 communication leaders in 12 countries.

The majority of companies position their CEOs and/or other top executives, but only a minority guide these activities through a sound management process. European CEOs are primarily presented based on their functional and ethical competencies. A minority of communication leaders prefer the uniform positioning of their CEOs in different markets; others argue for localised approaches. More companies in high-power distance countries have a specific communication strategy for their CEOs, compared to companies in low-power distance countries. Significant differences were also identified between listed and privately owned companies.

The study indicates the importance of CEO positioning from the perspective of corporate communication leaders. Investigating the expectations and experiences of CEOs themselves might provide additional insights.

The paper presents the first large-scale study on CEO positioning, informs practitioners on the state of practice in Europe and identifies knowledge that can be integrated into education of business and communications students alike.

Most of the literature on the World Bank struggles to understand precisely how effective are the Bank’s projects and policies, emphasizing at the same time as reaffirming certain universal parameters with which to measure the good and the bad. This article, by contrast, argues for a different way of seeing the World Bank, that is, for scholarship that interrogates the political rationalities which underlie these distinctions and categories and which make these parameters and measures viable, necessary, and enduring. Indeed, most writings – including the innumerable self‐evaluations carried out by the Bank – simultaneously note the enormity of the Bank’s past misdeeds as well as its unique position as the only global institution up to the monumental task of translating global truths into global plans of action. Because of its unique role as the global development expert, the Bank is always two steps ahead of the pack, always re‐assessing and re‐tooling for improvement in ways that most national and international institutions cannot. Who else can respond so quickly to catastrophes around the globe – appearing one month in Thailand, the next in Argentina, and, in a bomb’s flash, in Afghanistan and Iraq? In a world in which global crises routinely erupt and “require” global experts of development to resolve them, the Bank and its affiliates in the World Bank Group have no rivals. But, rather than ask why the Bank’s responses are ultimately insufficient or flawed, we must first ask how problems get defined in terms of global crises and their solutions in terms of global development institutions in the first place? How did these ideas and institutions become so influential? What power dynamics do they embody?

This paper provides a review and synthesis of past research regarding financial disclosure management by nongovernmental nonprofit organizations and suggests directions for future study. The primary purpose of this review is to summarize the evidence on financial disclosure management to help regulators and other stakeholders understand why, how, and to what extent nonprofits engage in this behavior. The paper begins by defining disclosure management in nonprofit organizations and exploring the motivations for why it might occur. Next is a survey of the nongovernmental nonprofit financial reporting environment: objectives, common practices, and the informational needs of users of nonprofit financial reports. Research exploring the motives, methods, and consequences of disclosure management is summarized. The evidence suggests that nongovernmental nonprofit managers have a variety of incentives to manage reported numbers and that they do in fact alter spending decisions, choose accounting methods, and design cost allocations to achieve certain performance benchmarks. Furthermore, this review sheds light on the consequences of disclosure management and what can or should be done to limit it.