Some time ago the swine flu bug swept across the U.S. Suppose now that a new flu bug (the “feline” flu) is threatening the health of U.S. residents. Assume that you work for the Harvard School of Public Health, and that you need to quickly determine how the American public is responding to the current feline flu issue. The objective is to find out how people’s behavior might have recently changed because of their concerns about contracting the flu. For example, it is well established that such simple behaviors as covering one’s coughing (with a forearm), keeping a “social distance” of 3 to 6 feet from others, and washing one’s hands frequently (either with soap and hot water or with hand sanitizers) can dramatically reduce the transmittance of the disease. Your subordinates have come up with two possible research plans to address your goal:

(A)   The first is a short pencil-and-paper questionnaire to be administered in a parking lot intercept survey (e.g., outside of supermarkets and ATM machines).

(B)    The second is a series of quick focus groups conducted using office workers, college students and younger pupils at locations nearby workplaces and schools.

Your co-workers have been unable to decide which of the two approaches to use (only one can be undertaken). They have turned to you make a decision. Which of the two approaches do you recommend? Assume the cost of using either approach is not relevant to your decision. Begin your answer with either A or B and briefly defend your choice. roughly 200 words.

Incentives

Economics is about how people (or governments, firms, etc) make choices under uncertainty. We assume that people are rational, meaning that when they make decisions, they weigh the costs and benefits of the different choices, and then choose whatever will make them better off. Incentives are a reward or punishment. Combined with our rational actor, incentives give us a framework for trying to influence behavior. If we want people to drive more slowly in a school zone, we can change the costs of speeding or the benefits of driving slowly. Fines and cameras are (negative) incentives to get people to slow down. If we want people to stay at home during a pandemic, we just need to change the incentives. We are seeing this happen in real-time: some localities are arresting or fining people that ignore the stay at home order, raising the cost of leaving the house for an approved reason. Other approaches have tried to encourage people to stay home by increasing the benefit. For example, HBO has made many of their old shows available free online to encourage people to stay home (If you haven't seen them Silicon Valley and Barry are both highly recommended)

Incentives and Vaccines

We desperately need a vaccine if we are ever going to return to anything resembling normal life. So how can we use what we know about incentives to encourage people to develop new ideas like a vaccine? Watch the following video and then write a paragraph (or so) about incentives and vaccines.

1. Megan Berry is a freshman at University of Minnesota. She has some financial questions for the next three years of school and beyond. (4 pts)
   1. If Megan’s tuition, fees and expenses for books this year total $12,000, what will they be during her senior year (three years from now), assuming costs rise 4% annually? (Use Appendix A or one of the links below) _____________________
      

      Equation 1.4 Future Value of a Lump Sum
      Present Value	$1,000.00
      i = Interest Rate	8.00%
      n = Number of Periods	4
      Future Value	$1,360.49
      *For monthly compounding; n = number of months, i = the annual interest rate divided by 12

2. Megan is applying for a scholarship currently valued at $5,000. If she is awarded it at the end of next year, how much is the scholarship worth in today’s dollars, assuming inflation of 3%. (Use Appendix A or one of the link in part a) __________________

3. Megan is already looking ahead to graduation and a job and she wants to buy a new car not long after graduation (1-3 years). If after graduation, she begins an investment program of $2400 per year in an investment yielding 6%, what will be the value of the fund after 4 years? (Use Appendix A or one of the links in part a)______________ After 6 years? ____________

4. Megan’s Aunt Carol told her she would give Megan $1,000 at the end of each year for the next 3 years to help with her expenses. Assuming an interest rate of 2%, what is the present value of that stream of payments? (Use Appendix A or one of the links in part a) __________________

Consider whether each of the following practices is appropriate or inappropriate for the age level, according to the principles of Piaget and contemporary researchers following in his tradition. Question 1 A high school science teacher asks students in a chemistry lab to answer thequestion “Does water boil faster when more heat is applied?” He gives them the equipment theyneed and shows them how to use it safely, and he monitors their procedures to make sure theyare following his safety guidelines. The students are able to conduct their investigations fairlyindependently, but seem to benefit from the teacher’s occasional guidance about how they mightmodify their procedures for clear-cut results. Appropriate Not Appropriate As she sits in her high chair, 6-month-old Deena keeps throwing the toys her father places on her tray, despite her father’s pleas that she stop. Exasperated, the father scolds Deena and puts her in her crib—where there are no toys at all—to show Deena that toys are not meant to be thrown. Appropriate Not Appropriate When a third-grade class takes a field trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, a park ranger gives a short lecture explaining how the Rocky Mountains were formed by forces pushing upward from within the earth. Not Appropriate Appropriate Question 7 After reading a children’s book that describes Columbus’s voyage to the New World in 1492, a first-grade teacher asks students to consider what might have happened if Columbus had never made the trip. Appropriate Not Appropriate

Miller Cereals is a small milling company that makes a single brand of cereal. Recently, a business school intern recommended that the company introduce a second cereal in order to “diversify the product portfolio.” Currently, the company shows an operating profit that is 20 percent of sales. With the single product, other costs were twice the cost of rent.

The intern estimated that the incremental profit of the new cereal would only be 7.5 percent of the incremental revenue, but it would still add to total profit. On his last day, the intern told Miller’s marketing manager that his analysis was on the company laptop in a spreadsheet with a file name, NewProduct.xlsx. The intern then left for a 12-month walkabout in the outback of Australia and cannot be reached.

When the marketing manager opened the file, it was corrupted and could not be opened. She then found an early (incomplete) copy on the company’s backup server. The incomplete spreadsheet is shown as follows. The marketing manager then called a cost management accountant in the controller’s office and asked for help in reconstructing the analysis.

Required:

As the management accountant, fill in the blank cells. (Do not round intermediate calculations. Round your final answers to the nearest whole number. Enter all amounts as positive values.)

Miller Cereals

Projected Income Statement

For One Year

Again, look back on everything that is known about Bill’s, and the situations that Patrick faced. Please answer questions (a) and (b) Before you read the epilog, then answer questions (c) and (d) After reading the epilog.

1. Before epilog: Based upon the previous case discussions and everything you’ve learned in this course, what level(s) of OB are most in need of change. Why?  
2. Before epilog: What recommendations for organizational change do you think would be most appropriate and why?
3. After epilog: What is your initial reaction to the epilog?
4. After epilog: In looking at what Patrick has done, how would have you responded similarly? Differently? How and why?

Epilog:

This case actually took place between mid-2011 and early 2012. While some of the details have been changed or modified, much of the case is very real. Patrick is a real person, and made some real decisions; some of them good, some not-so-good. Here is what Patrick actually did:

1. Patrick fired Troy, put in new maintenance manager (Jamaal) with positive attitude. He put 2 new layers of hierarchy into the maintenance department to give maintenance employees more room for growth/promotion as well as more oversight. He also created a very specific set of goals for the maintenance department that were linked to the goals of the organization. Maintenance employees’ raises were dependent upon reaching those goals. Within a week of replacing Troy with Jamaal and developing the new goals, overall machine downtime was reduced by 28%, and further reduced by 51% within a month.

2. Patrick closed all 3 R&D facilities and moved willing employees to a location in a leased space 2 miles away (he wanted R&D to be inside of the factory, but there was not enough space to house them). While the overall result was positive and it reduced communication problems, they lost several design engineers in the process (those who were not willing to move to a new location) and thus lost a great deal of company knowledge. But, the financial cost savings were significant and immediate.
3. The hourly employees were really angry—they felt that every time they began to work harder (overtime on Sunday, following Patrick’s new machine attendance rules) they were “rewarded” by losing their jobs and/or their overtime. Because the plant paid lower wages than many others in the area, compensation was a constant issue. Patrick could not offer a pay raise, but did promise that in the future when productivity increased, he would NOT do a lay-off or other means of reducing head-count of wages. He also offered one more break per day, so long as the breaks were taken at staggered times, so that all machines could continue to run. This was how the walk-out was averted.
4. Patrick fired two key supervisors who had been known to be especially difficult to work with, and replaced them with known leaders at the hourly level.
5. Patrick had supervisors attempt to place people back on work schedules that better matched their original work schedule (to ease the burden of the lay-off on their personal lives).
6. Patrick started requiring full safety gear for all employees—no exceptions.
7. Patrick implemented a maintenance program that included hourly employees doing some of the preventive maintenance on equipment themselves. This change required a significant investment in training, and broadened the responsibilities or hourly employees (job design/enhancement!). It also reduced the burden on the maintenance department to do all machine maintenance.
8. Patrick instituted monthly town hall meetings in which he discussed a general overview of the financials of the company with all employees. In order to accommodate all shifts, he performed 3 town hall meetings on the same day; one for each shift. He performed them himself, in an effort to have more direct communications with hourly employees.
9. Bill is still not making contact, but all of his duties have been reassigned so as to reduce the impact of his absence on the organization. There is little that Patrick can do about that situation.

Bills Grills Update as of July 2017:

Between 2013 and 2017, several important changes were implanted at Bill’s. First, the company divested the high-production, low-end (and low-margin) part of the business, keeping its high-end and special order business (i.e. it divested the cheap-grill portion of the business). This change is both good and bad—it has been exceedingly helpful due to the strong economy, but may put Bill’s at risk if another economic downturn is to take place (it is harder to sell at $10,000 grill in a down economy). This divestiture brought interesting changes: employees of the smaller, high-end and special order site became more engaged and morale improved. In addition, turnover among production employees was reduced. Any idea why?

In addition to the divestiture, there has been major turn-over in management. Patrick moved on from Bill’s, making Jose the plant manager. Janet has also moved on. Upon the divestiture, the R&D department was also downsized. While they had become somewhat more integrated into the culture of the company after the move to Texas, members of the R&D group never truly integrated into the rest of the organization. Several R&D engineers have been replaced with customer quality engineers—what do you think this signifies? Do you think it is a good choice, given the situation and what does it say about the company’s culture?  

Finally, on-time delivery continues to be an issue at Bill’s. While the divestiture reduced the need for high-speed manufacturing, the push toward custom manufacturing has created some problems, as lead-times and parts inventory have necessarily increased (it takes longer to build custom and you need a lot more diverse set of parts and raw materials). The increase in inventory cost has not had a good deal of impact on the company, however in the future it may. But, the lead-time issues have led to conflict between supervisors and production managers. These remain unresolved.  

Bill’s is finally making a solid profit.

DO IN JAVA

If you have downloaded this book’s source code (the companion Web site is available at www.pearsonhighered.com/gaddis), you will find the following files in the Chapter 07 folder:

• GirlNames.txt – This file contains a list of the 200 most popular names given to girls born in the United States for the years 2000 through 2009.

• BoyNames.txt – This file contains a list of the 200 most popular names given to boys born in the United States for the years 2000 through 2009.

Write a program that reads the contents of the two files into two separate arrays, or ArrayLists. The user should be able to enter a boy’s name, a girl’s name, or both, and the application will display messages indicating whether the names were among the most popular.

BoyNames:

Jacob
Michael
Joshua
Matthew
Daniel
Christopher
Andrew
Ethan
Joseph
William
Anthony
David
Alexander
Nicholas
Ryan
Tyler
James
John
Jonathan
Noah
Brandon
Christian
Dylan
Samuel
Benjamin
Zachary
Nathan
Logan
Justin
Gabriel
Jose
Austin
Kevin
Elijah
Caleb
Robert
Thomas
Jordan
Cameron
Jack
Hunter
Jackson
Angel
Isaiah
Evan
Isaac
Mason
Luke
Jason
Gavin
Jayden
Aaron
Connor
Aiden
Aidan
Kyle
Juan
Charles
Luis
Adam
Lucas
Brian
Eric
Adrian
Nathaniel
Sean
Alex
Carlos
Bryan
Ian
Owen
Jesus
Landon
Julian
Chase
Cole
Diego
Jeremiah
Steven
Sebastian
Xavier
Timothy
Carter
Wyatt
Brayden
Blake
Hayden
Devin
Cody
Richard
Seth
Dominic
Jaden
Antonio
Miguel
Liam
Patrick
Carson
Jesse
Tristan
Alejandro
Henry
Victor
Trevor
Bryce
Jake
Riley
Colin
Jared
Jeremy
Mark
Caden
Garrett
Parker
Marcus
Vincent
Kaleb
Kaden
Brady
Colton
Kenneth
Joel
Oscar
Josiah
Jorge
Cooper
Ashton
Tanner
Eduardo
Paul
Edward
Ivan
Preston
Maxwell
Alan
Levi
Stephen
Grant
Nicolas
Omar
Dakota
Alexis
George
Collin
Eli
Spencer
Gage
Max
Cristian
Ricardo
Derek
Micah
Brody
Francisco
Nolan
Ayden
Dalton
Shane
Peter
Damian
Jeffrey
Brendan
Travis
Fernando
Peyton
Conner
Andres
Javier
Giovanni
Shawn
Braden
Jonah
Cesar
Bradley
Emmanuel
Manuel
Edgar
Erik
Mario
Edwin
Johnathan
Devon
Erick
Wesley
Oliver
Trenton
Hector
Malachi
Jalen
Raymond
Gregory
Abraham
Elias
Leonardo
Sergio
Donovan
Colby
Marco
Bryson
Martin

GirlsNames:

Emily
Madison
Emma
Olivia
Hannah
Abigail
Isabella
Samantha
Elizabeth
Ashley
Alexis
Sarah
Sophia
Alyssa
Grace
Ava
Taylor
Brianna
Lauren
Chloe
Natalie
Kayla
Jessica
Anna
Victoria
Mia
Hailey
Sydney
Jasmine
Julia
Morgan
Destiny
Rachel
Ella
Kaitlyn
Megan
Katherine
Savannah
Jennifer
Alexandra
Allison
Haley
Maria
Kaylee
Lily
Makayla
Brooke
Mackenzie
Nicole
Addison
Stephanie
Lillian
Andrea
Zoe
Faith
Kimberly
Madeline
Alexa
Katelyn
Gabriella
Gabrielle
Trinity
Amanda
Kylie
Mary
Paige
Riley
Jenna
Leah
Sara
Rebecca
Michelle
Sofia
Vanessa
Jordan
Angelina
Caroline
Avery
Audrey
Evelyn
Maya
Claire
Autumn
Jocelyn
Ariana
Nevaeh
Arianna
Jada
Bailey
Brooklyn
Aaliyah
Amber
Isabel
Danielle
Mariah
Melanie
Sierra
Erin
Molly
Amelia
Isabelle
Madelyn
Melissa
Jacqueline
Marissa
Shelby
Angela
Leslie
Katie
Jade
Catherine
Diana
Aubrey
Mya
Amy
Briana
Sophie
Gabriela
Breanna
Gianna
Kennedy
Gracie
Peyton
Adriana
Christina
Courtney
Daniela
Kathryn
Lydia
Valeria
Layla
Alexandria
Natalia
Angel
Laura
Charlotte
Margaret
Cheyenne
Mikayla
Miranda
Naomi
Kelsey
Payton
Ana
Alicia
Jillian
Daisy
Mckenzie
Ashlyn
Caitlin
Sabrina
Summer
Ruby
Rylee
Valerie
Skylar
Lindsey
Kelly
Genesis
Zoey
Eva
Sadie
Alexia
Cassidy
Kylee
Kendall
Jordyn
Kate
Jayla
Karen
Tiffany
Cassandra
Juliana
Reagan
Caitlyn
Giselle
Serenity
Alondra
Lucy
Kiara
Bianca
Crystal
Erica
Angelica
Hope
Chelsea
Alana
Liliana
Brittany
Camila
Makenzie
Veronica
Lilly
Abby
Jazmin
Adrianna
Karina
Delaney
Ellie
Jasmin

People across the United States are fearful - and fed up- with crime. Dogs for protection, special locks, and security systems have never been more popular. And no wonder: Almost half of U.S. adults claim that they are afraid to walk alone at night in the vicinity of their own homes. Government spending on crime prevention has risen steadily during the past thirty years, but so has the crime rate. At the same time, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, violent crime has gone down in the last few years. New York City is a case in point: Murders in the Big Apple dropped from 2,245 in 1990 to 803 in 1997. Are we beginning to learn something more about controlling crime? Three factors seem to account for the New York turnaround. First, more police are on the streets than ever before. Second, a program of "community policing" makes police commanders directly responsible for controlling crime in their district. Third, and probably more important, police are less focused on making arrests and more concerned with preventing crime in the first place. For example, police officers have begun stopping young men for jaywalking or even spitting on the sidewalk in order to check them for concealed weapons (as a result the word is getting around that you risk arrest for carrying a gun) and even blocking off streets to traffic if that's what it takes to put local drug dealers out of business (the policy seems to work: the drug trade is down). Travis Hirschi (author of control theory) offers his own version of a community approach to crime. Hirschi notes that criminals today have two things in common. The first is age; most offenders are young. Crime rates are high in the late teens and early twenties, and they fall quickly thereafter. Second, most offenders take a short-term view of their lives. Lawbreakers, as Hirschi sees it, are people who have trouble working toward any long-term goal, including an educational degree, a career, a successful marriage, or even keeping a steady friendship. More than anything else, in fact, offenders are people characterized by low self-control. That is why, according to Hirschi, our present criminal justice system can never control crime effectively. For one thing, going to jail is too uncertain (most crimes go unpunished) and too far removed in time (catching, trying, and jailing criminals often takes a year or more) to deter the typical offender. Thus, Hirschi explains, popular calls for "stiffer sentences" actually have little effect in suppressing crime. Moreover, by the time many offenders are sent to prison, they are moving beyond the "crime years" simply because they are growing older. Statistically speaking, then, offenders aging in prison represent a crime threat already shrinking on its own. Therefore, rather than locking up adults, Hirschi argues that society needs to focus on younger people before they commit crimes. /similar to the new approach in New York City, Hirschi's approach calls for closer attention to teenagers - those at highest risk for criminal behavior. Effective crime control depends on devising policies to keep teens away not only from guns and drugs, but also alcohol and, if necessary, cars. Ultimately, though, the most effective way to control crime, Hirschi concludes, is to teach children self-control . This is a reasonability that falls upon parents. Government can help, however, by intervening in dysfunctional families and by developing strategies that help build strong-preferably two parent- families. Eliminating pregnancy among teenage girls would do far more to reduce crime, Hirschi contends, than all the actions of today's criminal justice system. QUESTIONS 1. Do you thing we need more prisons? Is that an effective way to deal with the crime problem? What else might be done? 2. Hirschi's recommendations are controversial because he opposes the popular practice of building more prisons. What do you thing? 3. If we don't lock up today's offenders swiftly and surely, how can we satisfy society's demand for retribution? 4. Do you think that New York City's new crime approach and Hirschi's suggestions attack the broader conditions that breed crime, such as poverty, racial prejudice, and weak families? Why or why not? 5. Does lethal injection illustrate the "medicalization of death"? How or how not? 6. Does lethal injection "sugar coat" capital punishment by making suffering less apparent? Is lethal injection more humane? Why or why not?

please, I need 7-8 meaningful sentences as an answer ( reply saying how i liked the post or adding some details to it) to this post. I would really appreciate it

ACTIVITY BASED COSTING AND ANALYSIS

Because overhead cannot be applied to the units of production in the same manner that direct labor and direct materials can, we assign overhead costs by using one of three allocation methods. The three different methods of assigning overhead costs are a single plantwide overhead rate, departmental overhead rates, and activity-based costing (ABC) rates. A plantwide overhead rate is the easiest and cheapest method to implement because it uses just one single rate to apply overhead to production. The other two methods, however, use multiple rates and are therefore more difficult to implement. While a single plantwide overhead rate is the simplest allocation system, it can distort the cost of a particular product. In fact, if there is more than one type of unit being produced, it will almost certainly distort the overhead cost per unit at least to some extent. In the plantwide overhead rate system, the total budgeted overhead costs are all merged into a single overhead cost pool. It is then divided by the selected allocation base – a volume-related measure such as direct labor hours or machine hours – to become a single overhead rate. This rate is applied to all products based off of this chosen allocation base. The problem with this method is that it assumes all of the factory overhead costs correspond exactly with the single overhead rate. When different products are produced, the overhead used to produce each product will appear the same under the plantwide allocation method, which distorts the true costs of each product. This is because some products require expensive machinery and/or more labor to produce, while others may require cheaper machinery or less labor to produce, for example. Therefore, the more diverse a company’s products are, the greater the distortion will be.

Review The Case of Women Directors found on pages 91 - 96 in the textbook Boards, Governance and Value Creation. Review the case using the Graduate Case Study Format to structure a comprehensive analysis. The case is below.

The case of women directors

This in-depth summarizing case concerns the Norwegian law designed to increase the number of women on corporate boards. Norway has received attention in the international corporate governance debate because of the introduction in 2006 of a law requiring at least 40 per cent of the board members in corporations to be women.

Background

Norway has been at the forefront of moves to include employees in the governance of corporations. Laws regulating co-determination have been enacted as a result of wide-ranging discussions that took place in the 1960s. One of the debates centered on the question of what corporations are and what they are for. The other area of discussion concerned the workers’ role in business development.42 The outcome of the debate was that employees received the legal right to be represented on corporate boards at the beginning of the 1970s. The Company Act of 1976 was a result of joint Nordic efforts and cooperation.

In 1988 the Nordic Council of Ministers issued a statement to the effect that Nordic cooperation with respect to company law should continue. As the need for a new Company Act became apparent at the beginning of the 1990s, there was also a desire to make adjustments and to harmonize this Act with company laws and regulations in the European Union. At that time Denmark was a member of the EU but the other Nordic countries were not; as a result it was difficult to achieve the same kind of inter-Nordic harmonization and cooperation as there had been in 1976, as Denmark had also to obey EU law.

There were several features in the development of Norwegian society that made it urgent to have a new company law. One core aspect was the adjustments to EU regulations. This adjustment led, as expected, to a separation between big ‘public’ companies and small ‘private’ firms. Another aspect was the development of economic crime and the misuse of the corporate form. This was significantly more extensive at the beginning of the 1990s than it had been in the 1970s: the extent of bankruptcies, including ‘black’ bankruptcies, had increased considerably.

Proposals for new company laws were given to the Ministry of Police and Justice in March 1996, and the laws were ratified in June 1997, coming into force in January 1999. There were two laws: one dealt with private companies, with the suffix AS, and the other with public companies, ASA.43 The major advance in these laws compared to earlier laws was that they spelt out the responsibilities of the board. This led to renewed discussions about liability insurance for board members, and concerns that in the future it would be difficult to get qualified board members.

The laws also had other concrete stipulations, including requirements for CEO working descriptions, board instructions, voting rules and financial reporting to the board. The requirement for board instructions was only for companies with employee representatives on the boards. The intention of the board instruction stipulation was to ensure that employee-elected board members had real – rather than only nominal – influence on board decision-making.

Women on corporate boards

One aspect of the laws that created considerable debate was the proposal to have a quota of women on corporate boards. The subject of having quotas of women on boards was originally an equal opportunity issue, and rules concerning gender representation on boards were introduced in 1981 in the Act about Equal Opportunity. Becoming effective in 1988, paragraph 21 of the Act of Equal Opportunity had the following wording: ‘When a public body appoints a committee, board or council, etc. with four members or more, then each gender must be represented with at least 40 per cent of the members. Both genders must be represented in committees with two or three members. These rules are also valid for subsidiary members.’

The requirement concerning gender representation was motivated by social justice and a societal need. It was also argued that the particular interests of women would be better taken care of by women than by men, and that women had different background experiences from men. The objective was to accelerate this development by a quota system. This regulation had major effects. Between 1979 and 1987 the ratio of women board members in public boards and councils increased from 22 per cent to 40 per cent; since then this figure has been constant.

In 1992 there were 764 board member positions in the companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Only twenty-six of these positions, or 3.4 per cent, were held by women. In some industries there were no women at all as board members. In 1996 the ratio of women board members increased to 7.5 percent, but the increase was mainly due to the acceptance of new types of firms on the Oslo Stock Exchange: savings banks were now allowed to enter. Around this time, however, attention became focused on this issue once more, input to the discussion coming from the NHO (the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise), the government’s Equality Centre, various feminist groups and the debates in other countries, in particular Sweden. The motivation for increasing the number of women directors changed from an equality and societal issue to a firm profitability issue, as newspapers started to report research findings about positive relationships between the ratio of women on boards and board performance.

Programmes to increase the number of women directors started to mushroom. Various programmes designed to train women as board members were introduced, mentorship programmes and women’s net- works were established, and databanks, registers or archives of women board candidates were launched.

Since the mid-1990s the political situation in Norway has been quite volatile, with frequent changes of government between a social democratic Labour administration and one headed by a Christian Democratic or Christian People’s Party Prime Minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik. In 1999 the Equality Department in the Ministry of Children and Families in Bondevik’s first Cabinet submitted for hearing a proposed reform to have at least 25 per cent female board membership in all companies – private and public alike. The proposal involved a change in the Equality Act between the genders, and it led to a strong reaction from men as well as from women. In 2000 the ratio of female board members fell to 6.4 per cent in the companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. In 2002 the ratio of women board members in all public companies (ASA) was also reported to be 6.4 per cent.

This proposal, which had originated with the first Bondevik Cabinet, was acted on by the first administration headed by Jens Stoltenberg (Norwegian Labour Party). The changes in the Act of Equality were implemented without the requirements for board representation, but a new proposal for quotas for women on corporate boards in public companies was submitted in 2001. In the hearing, it was suggested that the ratio of women to men could be as high as 40 per cent in public companies (ASA companies). The proposal received only mixed support, however, with the NHO and the financial community the most negative in their reaction.

In 2002 the Minister of Industry in the second Bondevik administration presented a law proposal, derived from the two previous hearings, to the effect that each gender should have at least 40 per cent representation in all public companies. There were no exceptions to this rule for board members elected by employees; the gender representation rule was to apply to the whole board. The law proposal was ratified by the Norwegian Parliament in 2003. However, the implementation rules for the Act dictated that the law did not need to be enforced if the mandatory 40 per cent representation for each gender had been achieved on a voluntary basis before 1 July 2005. As this was not achieved, the law requiring 40 per cent of corporate board members to be women was put into effect in January 2006 – by which time the actual figure had increased to around 13 per cent. However, the representation of women on boards in corporations with more than 5000 employees had risen to more than 20 per cent by then. All companies were given two additional years’ grace before any sanctions would be imposed.

The Norwegian debate about women directors was characterized by many simplistic and partially wrong arguments. Nevertheless, the discussion and the law proposal have probably had a greater impact on the development of good board practice than was suggested in the public discussions themselves. In the Norwegian corporate community, probably no single event has contributed as much to a thorough rethinking of the contribution of boards, board tasks and board composition as the debate regarding women directors – probably more so even than the waves of shareholder activism and the evolution of codes of best practice. The contribution from these discussions has been that board member selection has, by and large, moved from being an informal and often unconscious search through professional and social networks to a professional and rational search process containing specifications of competence and qualification requirements of board members.

Summary

This chapter has looked at board members’ characteristics and compensation and board composition, which constitute the core concepts of the chapter. I relate characteristics to each individual board member, whereas compensation refers to the individual board member’s incentive structure and composition is a description of the board members as a group. It is important to identify the three concepts and to distinguish between them. However, characteristics, compensation and composition should not be viewed separately from each other when exploring boards and value creation, as the three attributes interact. Both competence and motivation are needed at the individual level, and the composition of the board should reflect the need to balance the various task expectations.

Board member characteristics is a broad term. A sub-group is competence. Seven types of board member competence criteria were presented based on arguments from theory and board task expectations:

Firm-specific knowledge may, for example, be about the main activities of the firm, the firm’s critical technology and core competence, the weak points in the firm and in its products and services, the development of the firm’s customers, markets, products and services, the bargaining power of suppliers and customers, threats from new firms or new products or services in the industry, etc.

General and function-oriented competence may, for example, be in finance, accounting, law, marketing, human resources, organizational behavior and design, strategy or just general management experience.

Process-oriented competence may include knowledge about how to run a board.

Relational competence includes the abilities the board members have to build relationships with internal and external actors.

Competence is related to the personalities and personal characteristics of the directors.

Negotiation skills.

Ownership.

Characteristics are also related to who the board members are, where they live, their age, etc.

We have used the term ‘compensation’ to describe the board members’ incentives and motivation. Included are internal as well as external incentives, and the incentives go beyond independence and share- holding. Motivation arising from liability, reputation and personal and professional standards were also introduced. Composition is about the size and configuration of the board with respect to the board members’ competence, characteristics and compensation. Board size, out- sider ratio and diversity were the main types presented. The discussion and arguments about compensation and composition were also based on competing theoretical perspectives and board task expectations.