The most influential approach of corporate governance, the view of shareholders’ supremacy does not take into consideration that the key task of modern corporations is to generate and transfer firm-specific knowledge. It proposes that, in order to overcome the widespread corporate scandals, the interests of top management and directors should be increasingly aligned to shareholder’ interests by...

Machine loading problem in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) encompasses various types of flexibility aspects pertaining to part selection and operation assignments. The evolution of flexible manufacturing systems offers great potential for increasing flexibility by ensuring both cost-effectiveness and customized manufacturing at the same time. This paper proposes a linear mathematical prog...

Public sector agencies are an important front in the day-to-day battle for political supremacy between the executive and the legislature. The executive’s key agents in this conflict are his appointees, who frequently play one of two roles: Congressional allies, where they help Congress implement policy and Congressional adversaries, where they fight with Congress to shift policy strongly toward...

Most of the research in comparative corporate governance has, implicitly or explicitly, taken the US as benchmark. But recent corporate scandals, such as Enron and Worldcom, question this alleged supremacy. What went wrong? In this chapter we claim that the problem is not just lack of appropriate disclosure or legislation, but a more fundamental one: deficient incentives for the media to expose...

Accepted2December2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R esearchers have long speculated on the factors that contribute to making an elite athlete. When a particular group appears to dominate a given domain, even more speculation and interest is generated. Current examples from sport include the American dominance of basketball and the Northern European dominance of Nordic skiing. ...

According to the adverse consequences that are brought by financial distress for companies, economy and financial –monetary institutions, the use of methods that can predict the occurrence of financial failure and prevent the loss of wealth is of great importance. The major models of credit risk assessment are based on retrospective information and using the methods which use the updated market...