Knowledge management theory has struggled with the concept of `knowledge creation'. Since the seminal article of Nonaka in 1991, an industry has grown up seeking to capture the knowledge in the heads and hearts of individuals so as to leverage them for organizational learning and growth. But the...

For many in academia and industry, corporate social responsibility (CSR) was long seen as a fad and fashion of transitory nature, similar to other management fashions (Abrahamson 1996). Results from empirical research into the business value of CSR were ambiguous (Weber 2008). During this time...

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...

Shareholder activism is an exercise of power, sometime benign, sometimes threatening to the interests of corporate management, boards and other shareholders. The complexity of these combinations helps to understand how difficult it is for directors to operate in shareholders' interest. What we...

How should corporate directors determine what is the right decision? For at least the past 30 years the debate has raged as to whether shareholder value should take precedence over corporate social responsibility when crucial decisions arise. Directors face pressure, not least from ethical...

Boards operate notionally in a liminal, non-hierarchical space, neither inside the company nor outside, creating ambiguity between service and control functions and fostering tolerance of it. With repeated corporate governance crises, however, new prescriptions institutionalized in law,...

Codes of conduct seek to institutionalize certain practices and govern the actions of those who accept the regime. As they arise and seek to displace established ways of life in organizations, they provide examples institutional development and change. This paper examines how the UK code of...

Purpose – This paper examines how board evaluations have emerged as an important tool in public policy and corporate practice for enhancing board effectiveness.Design/methodology/approach – We review the extensive literature on effectiveness and the emerging literature on board evaluation to...

This paper is the first chapter of a book published by Sage Publications examining the principles considered in contesting theories of the field, and then the issues facing boards of directors in dealing with matters within the board, between boards and owners, between different types of owners,...

Q. Why are there so many books about strategy? A. Because it is a subject we know so little about. There is an element of truth in this old joke. Strategy is both amorphous and important. Unlike most other subjects in business and management, it has no agreed beginning and certainly no end. It...