Predicting the challenges boards will face in the years ahead requires an understanding of how they and the governance they have provided has evolved in past years, as well as the challenges they will face in the years ahead. Since I have been serving on and doing research about public company boards over the past twenty-five years, I believe I have a clear sense of the state of corporate governance in the United States and in much of Western Europe. Not surprisingly, my crystal ball for predicting future developments and demands on boards cannot be so clear.
Youth Unemployment after the Financial Crisis: ‘Quo Vadimus’?
By Terence Tse, Mark Esposito, & Jorgo Chatzimarkakis
The financial crisis has damaged national economies but also hurt segments of societies, including youths aged 15 to 24, many of whom are struggling to find jobs as a result of the economic downturn. Below, Terence Tse, Mark Esposito, and Jorgo Chatzimarkakis warn that countries are bound to suffer significant losses if too few actions are taken to deal with youth unemployment.
The ICBC Path to Chinese Governance: Lessons for the Western and Emerging Markets
By Didier Cossin & Abraham Lu
Since its dual IPOs in 2007, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC), one of the largest commercial banks in China, has received a multitude of best governance awards adding to its global reputation. As recently as June 1999, however, international institutions and analysts broadly considered ICBC as “technically bankrupt” with the nonperforming loan (NPL) ratio reaching 47.59 percent. ICBC drastically improved through a governance transformation with the united effort of the government, the management team, and its employees. The transformation path had four steps: internal restructure, ownership reform, governance overhaul, and public IPOs. With each step, corporate governance became more sophisticated and comprehensive.
Global Social Process and the Evolving Character of Sovereignty
By Winston P. Nagan & Craig Hammer
The world’s most daunting challenges are outcomes of the current configuration of sovereign institutions. Below, Winston P. Nagan and Craig Hammer consider whether current understandings of authority and power justify this configuration, and suggest that the challenge is to evolve a constitutive process that more accurately reflects the prevailing distribution of power in the world.
Sovereignty, Rule of Law and Global Civil Society
Global society is increasingly expressing itself through globally identifiable institutions of civil society. In this article, Winston Nagan explores the inter-relationship of sovereignty, the Rule of Law, and individual identity in the scheme of evolving global governance and considers the Rule of Law and its potential for global constitutional development.
Putting the Patient in Charge: the future of healthcare
By Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, founder and CEO, Patients Know Best
Giving patients control of their own medical records and putting them at the centre of their own healthcare management makes sense for patients, for clinicians and for healthcare institutions wishing to improve the bottom line. In creating Patients Know Best, the world’s first patient-controlled medical records system, I have met a number of inspiring people. One doctor I met in 2006 taught me a very valuable lesson about why patients should be put back in charge.
When People Come First
By João Biehl & Adriana Petryna
The Global health community is an evolving and expanding field. Below, João Biehl and Adriana Petryna consider the importance of addressing the medical, social, political, and economic dimensions of the global health enterprise, and demonstrate the crucial role of ethnography as an empirical lantern in global health.
The Social Theory of Contemporary Capitalism
The sociology of capitalism developed by Max Weber and its critique developed by Marxists are unable to account for the transformed structure and practices of contemporary capitalism. The social theory of Chinese capitalism requires new fundamental concepts; the new democratic practices developed in India, South Africa or Brazil cannot be understood in terms of Western liberal democratic theory. Below, Partha Chatterjee discusses the necessity of seeing capitalism itself as lacking a single universal character.
EDITOR'S PICK OF THE WEEK
The Performance and Transformation Orchestrator: The CFO’s New Mandate in the Age of AI
By Terence Tse
CFOs are evolving into AI-driven transformation orchestrators, balancing finance, technology, and strategy while upskilling teams, managing risks, and driving measurable business value.
A key insight from this year’s AI for CFOs event, organized...
