The purpose of this research was to explore the relationship between diversity within the boards of directors of American companies and firm financial growth. Specifically, this study sought to determine the question of whether a relationship exists between medium-term growth in a firm’s accounting returns and the inclusion of a) minority women, b) ethnic minorities, or c) women on its board of directors. The supporting analysis for this inquiry included an in-depth examination of the five-year growth rates in ROE, ROA, and profit margins of 439 companies between 2011 and 2015. These companies operate across eight industry groups and are listed either on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ stock index. Results of the statistical analyses show significant increases in financial growth for companies with gender- and ethnically-diverse boards (when compared to boards consisting solely of white men). However, based on effect sizes, the most significant increases were found in the profit margins of companies with minority directors.

The purpose of this study is to determine how well the list published by the Texas Board of Education meets the requirements established by studies in the field by comparing it with a number of other lists of known value, which have been compiled by experts on the basis of the studies mentioned.

Falling, an epidemic most prevalently seen in the elderly population, accounts for the majority of injury-related cases seen by emergency departments across the United States. Unfortunately, with no large-scale institutionalization of a solution, the problem is only expected to exacerbate as our planet’s population approaches the 7 billion mark. In the wake of the recent surge of falls among the elderly, Japan has implemented a program to include unicycling in the physical education curriculum for elementary schools across the country. The goal for this program is to encourage children to establish strong fundamental balancing skills, which could potentially alleviate the pain—physical, emotional, and financial—incurred from falls in the elderly. This senior thesis study builds off Japan’s unicycling program by investigating ways to improve wobble board balancing, a more practical alternative to unicycling. In previous research, the skill of stick balancing, a motor task that has been shown to behave with the same power laws as wobble board balancing, has been improved with the use of vibrations. Here, we show that learning to wobble board balance is not expedited and wobble board balancing skill is not improved with the employment of vibrations, unlike stick balancing. Nonetheless, those who learned to wobble board balance with background vibrations went on to later outperform those who learned to wobble board balance without vibrations. These results suggest that vibrations (50 Hz, 0.18 mm amplitude) have a beneficial effect on the development of skill for wobble board balancing that is not related to the direct physical effects of the vibration. The observations also suggest that in the presence of vibrations, the nervous system develops more robust strategies for controlling balance.

The popularity of social networking sites on the World Wide Web has exploded during the past two decades. As more and more K-12 public school teachers choose to actively participate on social networking sites, school leaders and school boards face the increasingly difficult decision about whether or not to enact policies which will enable them to discipline teachers for their online behavior. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the development, interpretation, and significance of one such policy.

This study aims to answer the main questions "Does the motivation of Co-operative Board of Directors affect the Co-operative's performance in Thailand, and to what extent?", and "Which factors affect the motivation of Co-operative's Board of Directors?" The methods used consist of both quantitative and qualitative approaches: Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and in-depth interview, respectively. The study result suggests that the motivation of Co-operative Board of Directors significantly affects the Co-operative's performance with a standardized factor loading of 0.144. Surprisingly, the types of motivation that affect the Co-operative's performance are not those of altruism, but they are those of personal interests, i.e. to gain reputation from the community or society, to obtain honors or awards, and to gain the feelings of accomplishment from working. However, this result is subject to the condition that cooperative performance is measured solely in financial terms and quality of management. This is due to the current limitation in standardizing the measurement of cooperative performance in social terms and should be left for future research. Factors that are found to affect Board Member motivation include the knowledge, skills and experience possessed by the Board Members, Board authority and function, the composition of the Board (the presence of external persons) and lastly, the quality of the Board meetings. Specifically, Board authority and function is the characteristic determining whether the Board is involved in the Co-operative operation. Factors whose relationship with Board motivation was not found included the one person one vote principle, Board size, chairman-manager duality, Board term, and Board structure (the presence of a compound Board).

Primary and secondary liability of members of the Board of Directors against third persons The aim of my thesis is to analyse thoroughly the regulation of primary and secondary liability of members of the Board of Directors against third persons (so-called 'outside liability') under the laws of the Czech Republic. The reason for choosing this topic is that it is relatively overlooked by most of the authors since they primarily focus on liability of the Directors against their own company (so-called 'inside liability'). By conducting my research I intend to redress such an omission and prove the significance of this issue. Chapter one provides a general overview of the inside liability issue. It explains why the Directors are in discharging their duties primarily accountable to the company for the damage caused by a breach of their duties and why third persons are entitled to claim damages from the Directors only in cases laid down in special statutory provisions. Chapter two together with chapter three form a substantial part of the text and provide the basis for the analysis in the subsequent chapters. Examining the currently effective regulation, these chapters deal with special provisions which constitute direct liability of the Directors for the damage caused to the third persons (most...

1 Abstract Remuneration of members of the governing bodies of joint stock companies The goal of this thesis is to analyze the law regarding remuneration of members of the governing bodies of joint stock companies. The topic is a timely one, since high bonuses were one of the causes of the financial crisis. The thesis primarily devotes its attention to the law contained in the Commercial Code. The amendments to the Act on Business on the Capital Market are also mentioned. The recommendations of the European Commission and Directive of the European Parliament and Council are then subjected to analysis. Basic issues are addressed in the introduction to the thesis. The governing body of a joint stock company is the Board of Directors and deciding on its remuneration falls within the competence of the General Meeting. Frequently members of the Board of Directors also hold concurrent office in the company as employees. The difference between claimable and non-claimable bonuses and fixed and variable bonuses is explained. A member of the Board of Directors is in principle entitled to at least the usual bonus for performing his or her office according to the average use of the mandate contract. If the parties so agree or the law so stipulates, performance of the office is not paid. The actual declaration of the...

IN ENGLISH: This thesis is focused on the monistic structure of joint-stock companies. The aim of the thesis is to analyse board structures in selected countries, subsequently to identify the features which are typical for a monistic governance structure and, finally, to compare these findings with statutory provisions in the Act on Commercial Corporations. The thesis is divided into seven separate chapters. Chapter One is subdivided into two parts. Part One is an introduction to the topic and attempts to define the term corporate governance. Part Two explains the importance of internal company structure for corporate governance. Chapter Two analyses board structures in Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, in the Czech version of Societas Europaea and also, for the purpose of comparison, the typical dualistic internal corporate structure known from Germany. The subjects of the analysis are the relevant statutory provisions on the one hand, and the functioning of governance structures in practice on the other hand. Chapter Three identifies features which are typical for monistic company structure, particularly the existence of a single board of directors which performs a strategy-setting function as well as supervision of management. Chapter Four discusses...

RTEMS is an open source real-time operating system used in embedded devices across a wide range of processor architectures. Lego Mindstorms NXT is a programmable robotics kit from Lego, which may be used as an educational tool to build a model of an~embedded system with computer-controlled electromechanical parts. The goal of the thesis is to allow development of RTEMS-based applications for Lego Mindstorms NXT platform with the aim of employing the results of the thesis as a runtime platform used in the Embedded and Real-Time Systems Course. The thesis thus identifies a suitable way of porting RTEMS to Lego NXT, provides the corresponding runtime environment and discusses basic means for deployment and debugging of RTEMS application on Lego Mindstorms NXT. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

This study extends previous research on the effects of executive board diversity by examining the relationship between age-, gender- and nationality diversity on firm performance in the Netherlands. Based on a sample of 79 Dutch listed firms studied over the period 2010-2015, this study reports a positive link between board diversity and firm performance. Firm performance is, hereby, estimated using a forward-looking market performance measure (Tobin’s Q) and a backward-looking accounting measure (ROA).