Introductory description

Corporate governance is key to business performance. High-performing companies successfully engage with their stakeholders (i.e., with their shareholders, employees, suppliers, customers and local communities). These stakeholders often make valuable contributions to the company's long-term success. However, they only keep making these contributions if they see that the company protects their interests. This leads to fascinating questions: How should managers protect the interests of shareholders and other stakeholders? How should decision-making teams (including project teams, managerial bodies, committees at all levels of the organisation, and the board) reconcile the interests of different stakeholders when developing and implementing a business strategy? What is the relationship between governance structures and mechanisms (e.g., private equity, shareholder activism, family businesses) and business performance? How does a company retain its 'licence to operate' by complying with society's unwritten rules?

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Governance as a foundation for business performance.
Analysing stakeholders: implications for strategic management.
Governance theories: developing mechanisms for aligning behaviour.
Managing stakeholders under pressure.
How dynamics inside decision-making teams influence successful outcomes.
Society’s unwritten rules and the “licence to operate”.
Case study preparation.
Private equity, shareholder activism, family businesses and performance.
Group project presentations.
Connecting governance topics.
National differences in governance and their impact on performance.
Eliciting stakeholder participation.
Diversity, governance and performance.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a broad knowledge and understanding of organisations, the external context in which they operate and how they are managed.
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the development of appropriate policies and strategies within a changing environment, to meet stakeholder interests.
• Demonstrate an understanding of pervasive issues, such as sustainability, globalisation, corporate social responsibility, diversity, business innovation, creativity, enterprise development, knowledge management and risk management.
• Ground new knowledge within the base of professional experience challenge preconceptions and remove subject and functional boundaries so as to handle complex situations holistically.
• Reflect on and learn from prior experience and be able to integrate new knowledge with past experience and apply it to new situations.
• Demonstrate strengths in analysing, synthesising and solving complex unstructured business problems.
• Demonstrate creativity, critical evaluation and decisionmaking skills.
• Use information and knowledge effectively: scanning and organising data, synthesising and analysing in order to abstract meaning from information and to share knowledge.

Indicative reading list

Tricker, B. (2015), Corporate Governance: Policies and Practises (4th edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Research element

Examining cases, collecting additional information, analysing and synthesising the conclusions.

Interdisciplinary

Very interdisciplinary, joining psychology, economics, sociology, and political science.

International

International case studies, and often international guest speakers.

Subject specific skills

Demonstrate intellectual breadth by making integrative links across the various areas of organisations.

Transferable skills

Written communication.
High personal effectiveness: critical self awareness, self-reflection and self management; time management.
Sensitivity to diversity in people and different situations and the ability to continue to learn through reflection on practice and experience.