scholarly journals A comparative analysis of strengths and weaknesses of corporate governance practices between two jurisdictions; UK and South Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
King Costa ◽  
Thelela Ngcetane-Vika

This paper is an exploration of theoretical aspects underpinning the practice of Corporate Governance (CG) in the United Kingdom and South Africa. Because of several corporate scandals and failures in the twenty and twenty first siècles, Corporate Governance has been a significant and crucial subject and field of study in business schools in recent years. Leadership and Management of business entities and alignment to prescripts that are statutory formulated for prevention of corporate decline and enhancement of sound business principles continue to be highly contentious issues. A theoretical and exploratory narrative synthesis was conducted to unearth the strengths and weaknesses of contextual explication, practice and legal application of Corporate Governance in both the United Kingdom and South Africa. In terms of the UK, the study found out that the CG is designed and benchmarked on international best practice, seamlessly fitting within all the Codes on Key Aspects of Corporate Governance. Secondly, another major element of strengths determination were found to be inherent in the practice of voluntary compliance. However, the greatest criticisms of Corporate Governance theories in the UK was the fact that their focus is largely on public corporations, especially those listed in London stock exchange and thus, leave behind small and medium enterprises. The cultural diversity is also found to be a cause for concern in terms of practice and legal application. On the other hand, in South Africa, the study found out that consideration for diversity is one of the greatest strengths in CG practice and legal application, which is likely to contribute effectively to good and sound decision-making, reflective of all people. Weaknesses continue to be the delay in realisation of board equity in terms of gender while on the other hand, corruption and lack of adherence to retributive prescripts remain problematic.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-43
Author(s):  
Ruzita Azmi ◽  
Adilah Abd Razak ◽  
Siti Nur Samawati Ahmad

Debtor’s pre-rehabilitation is a measure given to a debtor in order to avoid bankruptcy once he failed to fulfil his financial commitment with his creditors. The pre-rehabilitation schemes can be obtained through court or out of court’s settlement. The most common type of pre-rehabilitation that court based in the United Kingdom (UK) is Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA), which usually applicable to debtors with a large number of debts. Meanwhile, for a debtor with a smaller amount of debts, and disqualified from IVA, may resort to Debts Relief Order (DRO) and Administration Order (AO). On the other hand, Malaysian debtors may only resort to Voluntary Arrangement (VA) modelled after the IVA practised in the UK to avoid bankruptcy. Considering the importance to give more options for pre- rehabilitation schemes for Malaysian debtors, this paper examines the provisions on DRO and AO in the UK. The authors collected primary and secondary data from judicial decisions, textbooks, reports and articles from both law and non-law journals. This paper concludes by showing that if Malaysia emulates the UK and introduces DRO and AO, debtors in Malaysia will have two more bankruptcy pre-rehabilitation to complement the VA.


Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Paul Miller

Racism in any society is fuelled by a number of factors, often acting independently of each other, or, at times, in concert with each other. On the one hand, anti-racism efforts rely on the alignment of four “system conditions” to stand a chance of successfully engaging and tackling racism. On the other hand, where these “system conditions” are not present, or where they are not in sync, this leads to “system failure”—a situation where racism is writ large in society and in the institutions therein, and where anti-racism efforts are severely hampered. Drawing on evidence from within the education sector and elsewhere in UK society, this paper examines how a lack of alignment between “system conditions” hampers antiracism efforts, and simultaneously reinforces racism in society and in institutions—leading to gridlock or “system failure” around anti-racism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Riska Hendika Rani

Chris Cleave‟s novel entitled The Other Hand pictures an African refugee‟s life in the United Kingdom and her struggle to survive in the country. As an illegal refugee from Africa who smuggles herself into a tea ship, Little Bee, the refugee, has to stay in the immigration detention center when she arrives in the United Kingdom. She deals with identity issues during her two-year-stay in the immigration detention center. The questions such as „why don‟t British people treat her in a good way‟ and „why do British people get respect and she does not‟ make her want to be treated like a British, which she assumes, being treated nicely in the United Kingdom. Under the paradigm of social identity theory which contains the three stages of identity formation proposed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, this study attempts to explain Little Bee‟s process of identity formation. Focusing on Little Bee‟s struggle in the United Kingdom as an illegal refugee from Africa, this study analyzes the three stages of identity formation that Little Bee has been through during her social identity transformation, as well as the factors influencing her and her struggle during the process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachma Puspitasari ◽  
Raldi Koestoer

The ocean is a source of mega-biodiversity that is supposed to perform optimally for current and future generations. The health of the ocean must be evaluated by measuring heavy metals in sediment because they can be accumulated and stored in long term. This metal can be released and absorbed by an organism, and affect the ecological risk and human health. The purpose of this article is to share viewpoints and those in a comparative study in terms of the metal database of both countries, the UK and Indonesia. The methodology used in this paper is critical review and analysis to compare a success story about compiling metal data into a national database in the United Kingdom (UK). Indonesia already has an open public access database issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. The further step is to strengthen collaboration between research institutes, universities, and government to assign a Standard Operational Procedure (SOP) to collect, analyze and report the data to a national depository. This database will be worthwhile to describe the pollution status in Indonesia and basic data for best practice decisions. 


Author(s):  
Emma JS Ferranti ◽  
Joanna Ho Yan Wong ◽  
Surindar Dhesi

AbstractAs leaders of civil society, governments have a prime responsibility to communicate climate change information in order to motivate their citizens to mitigate and adapt. This study compares the approaches of the United Kingdom (UK) and Hong Kong (HK) governments. Although different in size and population, the UK and HK have similar climate change agendas to communicate to similarly educated and prosperous populations. The study finds that whilst both governments use similar means: policy, education, campaigns, internet and social media, these have different characteristics, with different emphases in their climate change message. The UK’s top-down approach is more prominent in its legally binding policy and well-defined programmes for adaptation and risk assessment. HK has more effectively embedded climate change education across the school curricula, and has a more centralized and consistently branded campaign, with widespread use of visual language to connect the public to the problem. HK frames climate change as a science-society problem, and has a greater focus on self-responsibility and bottom-up behavioral change. Thus, the UK and HK governments have polarized approaches to motivating their citizens into climate action. Moving forwards, both governments should consider best practice elements of the other to develop their communication of climate change.


2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis Wright ◽  
Simon Kirkham ◽  
Alex Millward ◽  
Robert MacAdam

Abstract Aims The aim of this study was to analyse if the COVID-19 pandemic had any effect on the number of emergency laparotomies performed each month at a single NHS Foundation Trust. Methods This single-centre retrospective observational study included all patients that underwent an emergency laparotomy that was registered as part of the National Emergency Laparotomy Audit (NELA) at Whiston Hospital in Merseyside, UK, between January 2019 and October 2020. The rates recorded throughout March and April 2020 (COVID) were then compared to the preceding 12 months until the first COVID death was recorded in the UK on March 5th, and the 6 months following the initial national lockdown. Results The number of emergency laparotomies performed each month declined from an average of 14.7 (95% CI 13.2 – 16.1) in the preceding 12 months to 5 during COVID (95% CI 5 – 5); a decrease of 65.9%. Following the easing of lockdown rules in early May, this decline was partly reversed with an average of 9.7 (95% CI 8.9 – 10.5) performed each month until October 2020, reflecting a 34.1% reduction from the pre-COVID baseline. The percentage of patients that achieved the NELA best practice tariffs also fell during COVID to 71% from an average of 79.3% (95% CI 76.0 – 82.7) due to fewer high risk laparotomies being admitted to Critical Care post-operatively. Conclusions During the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency laparotomy rates fell and have only partially recovered to pre-pandemic rates. Post-operative admission to critical care for high risk laparotomies also declined during this period. 


Author(s):  
Yeasy Darmayanti ◽  
Teti Susanti

The practicing of earnings management in banking companies certainly has pro and con's from the stockholders, because it tends to harm the users of information and the service of financial report. This research, therefore, aims to investigate the effect of application of PSAK 50/55 (2006 revision) toward earnings management with corporate governance as the moderating variable. This research was implemented in banking companies that listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange. This research used 28 banking companies that published financial report in period of 2009 — 2011 completely. The test result indicated that the application of PSAK 50/55 (2006 revision), moderation of foreign ownership, composition of commissioner council, standard of KAP and committee of audit as the moderator did not have any significance effect toward the practicing of earnings management in banking companies that listed in ISE. On the other hand, the application of PSAK 50/55 (Revision 2006) moderated by the KAP size had the positive effect toward practicing of earnings management.


Author(s):  
Michael Keating

Unionists have defended the United Kingdom as a social or ‘sharing’ union in which resources are distributed according to need. It is true that income support payments and pensions are largely reserved and distributed across the union according to the same criteria. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are net beneficiaries. On the other hand, welfare has been detached from older understandings of social citizenship and ideas of the deserving and undeserving poor (strivers and skivers) have returned. Spending on devolved matters including health, education and social services is not equalized across the union. Instead, the Barnett Formula, based on historic spending levels and population-based adjustments, is used. Contrary to the claims of many unionists, there is no needs assessment underlying it, apart from a safeguard provision for Wales. The claim that the UK is a sharing union thus needs to be qualified.


1980 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 8-26

The United Kingdom economy remained almost stagnant in 1979 with GDP being only 0.6 per cent higher than in 1978. Not only is this a dismal end to a generally depressed period of seven years but the outlook for the beginning of the 1980s is even worse, as we discuss in chapter II on the home economy. In comparison with the United States, Japan, West Germany, France and the OECD countries as a whole the UK performance has been slow, as is clear from chart I. However if similar comparisons with the other countries had been made in 1969 or 1959 the UK performance would also have been seen to be relatively slow. This picture of a stagnant aggregate economy in 1979 covers up an underlying picture of considerable fluctuation in the components of the economy.


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