The Courts and Corporate Executive Compensation in Canada

Corporate executive compensation in Canada, as in many developed economies, has risen significantly since the 1980s relative to that of the average worker. This has posed an issue for corporate governance due to concerns that the trend may not be serving the corporation and its stakeholders well, and also an issue for society as a whole due to its impact on income inequality more generally. This has raised interest in the role played by institutions in shaping executive pay decisions and also in what role they might play in resolving these issues. This paper looks at the role played by one such institution, the courts, with two ends in mind. The first is to gain an empirical understanding of what the courts actually do with respect to executive pay disputes. It does so by examining a set of decisions by Canadian courts between 1876 and 2018 collected by the author in which the claim of a corporate executive to their pay was at issue in order to get a better picture of how the courts are accessed, who relies on them, what rules they use, how the courts respond and how trends in these have evolved over time. It finds that the litigation of executive pay disputes has varied widely over time with a variety of stakeholders using a variety of legal areas – corporate law, contract law and bankruptcy/arrangement law in particular – to dispute the entitlement of executives to their pay. In recent years however litigation has come to be dominated by oppression remedy applications, with plaintiffs being successful in challenging pay in a majority of decisions. This paints a significantly different picture of the role of the courts than that developed in the American literature which focuses almost exclusively on shareholder use of derivative actions to monitor pay decisions. The second is to examine how better use might be made of the courts in order to remedy the broader problems for corporate stakeholders and society as a whole that corporate executive pay practice presents. It suggests that an expanded role for the oppression remedy by corporate employees should be considered as a policy option which would better reflect a stakeholder model of governance and address broader inequality concerns at the same time.

Executive bonus compensation and financial leverage: do growth and executive ownership matter?

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of executive bonus compensation on a firm’s financial leverage policy and the extent to which this compensation–leverage relation is moderated by firm growth and executive ownership. Design/methodology/approach Using data from 213 non-financial and non-utility UK FTSE 350 firms for the period 2007–2015, generating a total of 1,784 firm-year observations, panel econometric methods are used to test the model. Findings Drawing insights from agency theoretic view, this paper uncovers that managerial cash bonus compensation is negatively and significantly related to financial leverage. However, stock bonus compensation has a positive and significant impact on leverage. This study also observes that compensation–leverage is moderated by both firm growth and executive ownership. The results remain robust to alternative econometric models. Originality/value While this paper builds on the risk-motivated argument of executive bonus compensation literature, it is the first – to the best of the knowledge – to explore the bonus compensation-corporate financial leverage and, particularly, examine the extent to which firm growth and corporate executive ownership matter in this relationship.

Leadership challenge: lateral systems integration for healthcare

PurposeGovernment imperatives that drive integrated care are challenging corporate executive leadership. Conspicuous by its absence in both government's imperatives and the literature, is any reference to corporate executive leadership in transitioning a hierarchically oriented health system to a laterally integrated health system referred to, in this paper, as an integrated health system. This lack of reference to executive leadership involvement conveys either significant consequences or opportunities for corporate healthcare executives. The purpose of this qualitative, multi-case study is to explore corporate executive leadership in transitioning a hierarchically oriented health system to an integrated health system.Design/methodology/approachBetween December 2017 and February 2018, a qualitative methodology and multi-case study design facilitated one hour telephone interviews with 11 presidents and four senior vice presidents. Critical case sampling was used to select the study sample from a target population of 246 corporate healthcare executives representing Ontario's major acute healthcare organizations/systems.FindingsCorporate healthcare executives possess the requisite skills and knowledge to transition a hierarchically oriented to a laterally integrated the health system but are constrained by an undefined partnership role with government and fear of government changes.Originality/valueThis paper provides corporate executive leaders with a systematic leadership approach to organizational readiness, in transitioning to an integrated health system. Features and outcomes of the approach are illustrated.

What’s in a name? Complications in overcoming reputational damage during the corporate recovery process

Purpose It is an unfortunate and sometimes entirely avoidable prospect that very successful companies can suffer self-inflicted reputational harm due to poor corporate executive decision making. One contemporary example is seen with the once popular and rapidly growing pizza chain, Papa John’s as the company has been facing an uphill battle to recover its reputational standing following recent scandal. This article examines the recovery process and the very specific complications with the company itself. Design/methodology/approach This is a case study approach examining corporate reputational recovery using a four-pronged turnaround model of replacing the leadership, restructuring the organization, redeveloping the strategy, and re-branding the product. Findings While the four pronged approach of replace, restructure, redevelop, and re-brand, appears to be a model that can work across industries, there are some challenges depending on corporate specifics. The major challenge with Papa John’s seems to be in the ongoing connection to the founder with related problems dealing with the legacy of the corporate culture. After all, it is very difficult to move beyond reputational damage for a company still bearing the name of the corporate executive who had been the source of the scandal as well as a company that is largely intact structurally. Originality/value This article examines the corporate recovery process for Papa Johns Pizza using a four step model for corporate recovery. The new four pronged approach centers on replacement of the corporate leadership, restructure of the organization, redevelopment of strategy and the re-branding of the product. Papa Johns continues to struggle to regain traction following public relations stumbles in 2017 and 2018 and the four pronged corporate recovery model serves as a valuable analytical tool to examine the impact and effectiveness of their efforts thus far as well as their future prospects.

The Idea of Femininity in Cinematic Rites of Passage in Bollywood Cinema

Most movies pre-2000 focused on feminine stereotypes conceived within the confined ambit of societal constructs. It is only with the millennium that scriptwriters became bolder in their conception of femininity. Directors and women actors have begun experimenting with unconventional feminine roles which are definitively plausible. The portrayals of new-age peripatetic women like Deepika Padukone's single and successful architect Piku Banerjee, living with her septuagenarian father or Paravathy's urbane, sophisticated, English speaking, corporate executive, the widowed Jaya Shashidharan, prove that fixities have given way to flexibilities in portrayal and form. This chapter seeks to undertake a comprehensive study of the idea of femininity in cinematic rites of passage through an in-depth analysis of Shoojit Sircar's Piku (2015) and Tanuja Chandra's Qarib Qarib Singlle (2017), and show how itinerant women protagonists are negotiating identities by challenging alterity.

The Role of the School Principal in Educational Reform

The quality of educational leadership, and that of the school principal in particular, is an important factor in school reform. This essay addresses concerns that the teaching profession and, as a result, the prospect of school reform is under threat from forces that seek to transform the role of school principal to that of corporate executive. It does so by identifying and examining persistent themes in the work of the Fordham Institute and confronting them with arguments and research that challenges this view.

Delivering Green: The Communication of the Information

Chapter 5 begins with a vignette about a corporate executive tasked with turning round her firm’s sustainability reputation. She must develop a holistic strategy for communicating the company’s environmental goals, progress, and achievements to its diverse stakeholders. It introduces and provides examples of the different forms, interfaces, and architectures by which corporations, government agencies, non-profit organizations and individuals can use to effectively deliver environmental information to their intended audiences. Possible delivery mechanisms include labels on products, ratings in a press release, data on a website, awards on a billboard, or slogans on a boycott sign. Concepts such as prominence, intelligibility, and feasibility are introduced and used to evaluate these different communication strategies. The chapter concludes with a further discussion of the noteworthy communication practices being used by existing information-based environmental governance initiatives.