This thesis consists of three essays on the performance implications of senior decision-makers in the banking industry. While the first chapter looks at one aspect of bank performance from a regulatory perspective, the next two chapters study performance from an investor perspective. The first chapter uses regulatory enforcement actions issued against US banks to show that both board monitoring and advising are effective in preventing misconduct by banks. While better monitoring by boards prevents all categories of misconduct, better advising prevents misconduct of a technical nature. Board monitoring increases the likelihood that misconduct is detected, increases the penalties imposed on the CEO, and alleviates shareholder wealth losses following the detection of misconduct by regulators. This chapter offers novel insights on how to structure bank boards to prevent bank misconduct. The second chapter seeks to understand how the characteristics of bank executives affect the market performance of US banks. To explore the expected performance effects linked to executive characteristics, the changes in the market valuation of banks linked to announcements of executive appointments are estimated. The chapter shows that age, education and the prior work experience of executives create shareholder wealth while gender is not linked to measureable value effects. Furthermore, these wealth effects are moderated by the level of influence of incoming executives, with their magnitude diminished under independent boards and higher if the incoming executive is also appointed as CEO. The results are robust to the treatment of selection bias. This chapter contributes to the current debate on whether and how individual executives matter for firm performance. The findings also shed light on the value of human capital in the banking industry. The third chapter explores how the cultural heritage of senior decision-makers affects bank outcomes. To study cultural heritage, this chapter focuses on US-born CEOs who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants. Using a hand-collected dataset that tracks the family tree of US bank CEOs, it is shown that the cultural characteristics prevailing in the country of a CEO’s ancestors influence firm performance under pressure. How CEOs respond to competitive pressure is driven by specific cultural dimensions and is causally related to corporate policy choices. To establish causality, I use variation in industry competition generated by a quasi-natural experiment, the staggered adoption of barriers to US interstate branching in the 1990s. I also use an out-of-sample test using a non-banking competitive shock, the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, and find robust results.

Framed as an instrumental case study, the purpose of this investigation was to understand how a select group of women, Black female athletic directors, define and negotiate their race, gender, and class identities. Data was collected via a qualitative indepth semi-structured interview methodology. The women who were chosen for this research are Black female athletic directors of NCAA Division I, II, and III intercollegiate athletic departments. The data analysis consisted of coding the data at two levels: first-level coding and pattern coding, and following the coding process, the emergent findings were compared with the identity negotiation theory (i.e. selfverification and behavioral confirmation processes) in order to understand how the Black female athletic directors negotiated their race, gender, and class identities. This investigation found that Black women athletic directors used two different denotations (i.e. African American and Black) to reference their racial identity, and race was the most salient identity because of their upbringings, childhood experiences, and dealings with racism. All of the women are heterosexual, but insufficient data did not allow a full understanding how they define their gender identity. In describing their class status, the majority of the women came from a traditionally defined lower socioeconomic class background, but as a result of their athletic director appointment they now reside in the middle or upper middle economic class status. In understanding how Black female athletic directors negotiate their identities within and outside the athletic department, and what factors are associated with the negotiation of their identities, this investigation found that the Black women athletic directors had to establish, maintain, and change their race, gender, and class identities with the utilization of various self-verification and behavioral confirmation strategies. These negotiations were conducted in response to the expectations that ensued as a result of their role in a leadership position, lesbian, intra- and inter-racial interactions, and exposure to lesbian, Mammy, and Sapphire stereotypes.

On 18th Mar 2000, Mr. Chen, Shui-Bian in Democratic Progressive Party was elected to be the new president. Taiwan experienced the first powershift. However, many state-owned banks as well as some government-shared companies re-structured their board of directors continually. In the view of politics, the powershift will be normal in Taiwan in the future. So we try to survey the the effects of powershift towards re-elections of boards and firm performance of state-owned enterprises. We discover that the major reason why government wants to intervene the operations of companies is policy. If this kind of industry is regulated or monopolistic, the government will has stronger motives to intervene its operation. On the other hand, after being intervened by the government, the cumulative abnormal return declined significantly from the event day to thirty days later. Besides, the firm performance didn¡¦t improve significantly through the view of TobinQ, EPS and Market return. So we can say that this time of powershift didn¡¦t improve the poor condition of corporate and firm performance significantly. So Taiwan corporate governance should abandon the relationship-based economic model and stride to the talent-based model.

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This thesis presents the results of a study of printed material concerning the use of a foreign language-English dialect for the stage, gathering its information from printed sources, old and new, that are available to help the director of a dialect play.

Athletic training is an allied healthcare profession which at the present time offers two routes for certification. Students can sit for the National Athletic Trainers Association Board of Certification (NATABOC) through successfully completing either an accredited curriculum program or an internship program and pass the NATABOC examination in order to practice as a certified athletic trainer. In January 2004, the internship option towards certification will be eliminated. If institutions want to continue to qualify students to take the NATABOC examination, they must develop curriculum programs that meet the Standards and Guidelines set by the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP) before this date. To develop an athletic training education program, Program Directors must implement the new standards into their programs in accordance with CAAHEP and institutional policies. The purpose of this study was to survey current Athletic Training Education Program Directors and identify how they developed their programs, with their available resources, to meet CAAHEP accreditation standards. The population selected to identify and describe the current trends of program development included Program Directors from all currently accredited undergraduate athletic training programs (N = 114). Of the 114 participants surveyed, 53 (46%) responded. Using Internet technology, a cross-sectional survey instrument was constructed to electronically survey current Program Directors of accredited undergraduate athletic training programs. The data gathered were primarily informational, and the analysis of this data was descriptive in nature. Data analysis identified, trends regarding the demographics of current Program Directors, curricular patterns, and institutional support roles. The new CAAHEP standards appear to necessitate greater institutional support in terms of faculty and resources, scientific and technological upgrades in curriculum, and clearly defined academic placement for Program Directors. / Ph. D.

This study explores the similar and different developmental influences that shape the practice of beginning and advanced spiritual directors. An examination of the contemporary literature on spiritual direction finds that in the main, two developmental influences shape the practice of contemporary spiritual directors: their capacity to adopt a contemplative stance towards their directees and their ability to be aware contextually of the factors that fashion the dynamic of accompaniment. While the review highlights the presence of these two influences, the literature is deficient in understanding the similarities and differences in how these two influences shape the practice of beginning and advanced spiritual directors. To address the deficiency, this study reviews three groups of Western Australian spiritual directors, Anglican, Churches of Christ and Roman Catholic. The investigation takes a qualitative, ethnographic approach, using focus groups. An analysis and discussion of the data confirms that the similarities and differences in the influences that shape their practice revolve around two key developmental influences namely, the capacity of directors to adopt a contemplative stance to their directees, and their ability to be aware contextually of the factors that fashion the dynamic of accompaniment. While both influences shape beginning and advanced directors, the former impacts more on the practice of beginning directors and the latter more affects advanced directors. Two factors may initiate and sustain the capacity of directors to adopt a contemplative stance. First, directors grow by noticing and attending to all the dimensions of their human experience. Second, directors develop by having their experience attended to in some form of therapeutic relationship or through participation in various developmental group processes. Directors may enhance their capacity to be aware contextually of the factors that fashion the dynamic of accompaniment through understanding paradigms about spiritual direction practice and spiritual development. Their appreciation of paradigms about spiritual direction may derive from two sources. The first is by how they distinguish more effectively spiritual direction from other therapeutic practices. The second is by how they grow in understanding relevant theological, philosophical, and psychological perspectives that inform good practice. Directors may further increase their comprehension of interpretive frameworks about spiritual development by redressing the attitudinal effects of fundamentalism and incorporating a multiplicity of approaches to spirituality. Training programmes are an important means to introduce and develop directors’ abilities to be aware contextually of the factors that fashion the dynamic of accompaniment. A person’s ecclesial role may influence the context in which a director commences practice. From this discussion, this study draws conclusions and offers recommendations applicable to practice and research.

This thesis presents a conceptual examination of the modernist director read through Gillian Rose's speculative lenses of the 'broken middle'. Highlighting the significance of speculative philosophy, I explore the meaning of the director as a mediating subjectivity. I demonstrate how a speculative reading of the director can act as a corrective to the received totalitarian, despotic image of the director. I urge for the rehabilitation of the director as a history and as a practice and I propose the emergence of this figure as being the outcome of a complex theatrical articulation entangled with the discipline of philosophy. Combining close readings of philosophical texts by Rose, Plato, Castoriadis, Badiou, Rancière, Laclau and Mouffe, among several other intellectual references in this study, I explore the director as a mode or trope of embodied philosophy. My argument also proposes the director as an Event, in Badiou's definition, and I trace this configuration as already taking place with the 'tragic' paradigm of the Athenian theatre. This Event of the director, I then argue, gets fully inaugurated in modernism as the Event of thought in theatre. I explore how the director acting as a mediator transforms theatre to what Puchner calls 'a theatre of ideas' while simultaneously philosophy becomes itself transformed to a theatre of thought. Chapter 1 outlines the key strands of Rose's thought and sets out the theoretical parameters of my examination. The chapter argues for a speculative reading of the director cross-examined with current positions within theatre historiography. The chapter paves a new understanding of the director, not historically, but conceptually, as a mode of embodied thought. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between the primacy and centrality of the aesthetic paradigm of theatre in philosophy and the role and practice of the poet - or 'chorodidaskalos' - who I consider as an early philosophical figuration of the modern director. I highlight speculative 'aporia' which in Rose indicates a path 'without a path' as the primary modality of thinking philosophically, already at work in tragedy, that renders the modernist director as a theatrical thinker. Chapter 3 puts forward the case of the director's mediating subjectivity by arguing for the Event of the director. I analyse Badiou's philosophy of the Event, making connections to speculative philosophy and illuminating the Evental dimension of this figure. Chapter 4 moves the examination to the Event of the director that I locate in Richard Wagner. My reading explores the philosophical dimension of Wagner as an artist and a thinker by which I rehabilitate his overtly negative image. I do this by reading Left Hegelianism, and anarchist philosophy more broadly, in Wagner's operatic works, writings, and political activism. Chapter 5 examines the 'speculative director' in the aesthetic project of Naturalism and Realism. The chapter includes a published section by which I explore the political mode of the director indirectly, by examining the articulatory discourse in Laclau and Mouffe's definition and the practice of affirmation. Chapter 6 looks at the avant-garde manifesto as a form of meta-language that seeks to actively re-shape theatre and the world as embodied, declaimed philosophy. The chapter repositions the avant-garde's aesthetic preoccupation with failure as a profoundly transformative project rather than as being incomplete. The included published article examines more closely the affinity between the Spartacus Manifesto by Rose Luxemburg (philosophy) and the more politicized forms of the Dada Berlin manifesto art (theatre). Chapter 7 is the concluding chapter by which I argue the case of the director finally having entered the theatre as a philosopher; that is, through Bertolt Brecht.

La figura professional del director de comptes en publicitat ha estat molt poc tractada a nivell acadèmic i són escasses les monografies sobre el tema. Aquesta tesi aborda aquest rol professional des de la perspectiva de la gestió de la comunicació de les marques. Per a això s'ha elaborat un marc teòric que pretén delimitar aquells aspectes relacionats amb la gestió de marques, per una banda, i els vinculats a la direcció de comptes, per l'altre; aquest marc dóna cobertura teòrica a la segona part del treball, un estudi empíric realitzat entre professionals de la direcció de comptes en agències de publicitat de Barcelona i que ha valgut per confirmar o refutar les hipòtesis plantejades. / La figura profesional del director de cuentas en publicidad ha sido muy poco tratada a nivel académico y son escasas las monografías sobre el tema. Esta tesis aborda este rol profesional desde la perspectiva de la gestión de la comunicación de las marcas. Para ello, se ha elaborado un marco teórico que pretende delimitar aquellos aspectos relacionados con la gestión de marcas, por un lado, y los vinculados a la dirección de cuentas por otro; este marco da cobertura teórica a la segunda parte del trabajo, un estudio empírico realizado entre profesionales de la dirección de cuentas en agencias de publicidad de Barcelona y que ha servido para confirmar o refutar las hipótesis planteadas. / The professional role of the account manager in advertising has not been widely explored at the academic level, and only a few monographs have been published on this subject. This thesis focuses on this professional role from the perspective of brand management communication. To do this, we have developed a theoretical framework to specify, on the one hand, those aspects related to brand management and, on the other, those related to account management; this theoretical framework constitutes the second part of the work, an empirical study carried out among professional account directors working in advertising agencies in Barcelona in order to confirm or refute the previous hypotheses.

Contextual experience with the practical application of accounting standards is important for independent audit committee members to effectively monitor managers’ financial reporting estimates and the audits of those estimates. Basic knowledge of accounting standards can be acquired by reading public documents and some degree of information regarding firm-specific application of standards can be obtained from public disclosures. However, real-world, contextual experience may best be obtained through performing or monitoring the reporting tasks themselves. This dissertation investigates how a firm’s (focal firm) financial reporting monitoring activities are affected by its audit committee members’ contextual experiences gained through connections, either as managers or audit committee members, with other firms (links or interlocks). I specifically estimate whether contextual experience with significant judgments and estimates, measured as interlocks with firms that likely performed extensive impairment analyses in the prior year (distressed firms), affects the likelihood of focal firm decisions to write off goodwill after controlling for economic indicators of impairment, managerial incentives to misreport, and ability of managers to exercise discretion. I find that the likelihood of write-off is significantly greater for firms with links to distressed firms than firms without links, consistent with audit committee contextual experience influencing financial reporting outcomes. The distressed firm interlock effect is significantly greater when the contextual experience at the linked firm is in the performance of estimates as a manager in contrast to the monitoring of estimates as an audit committee member. However, in a subset of large firms with ExecuComp data, I find that the overall probability of write-off is decreasing across quartiles of managerial incentives to misreport and received interlocks are only marginally significant in the second quartile, indicating that contextual experience may not be an effective monitoring mechanism when managerial incentives to misreport are high. Combined results suggest that contextual experiences obtained through audit committee network associations do affect focal firm financial reporting outcomes and are most influential when the contextual experience is as a manager, rather than a monitor. However, such monitoring mechanisms appear to be primarily imitative and may not be effective deterrents against managerial misreporting at large firms when managerial equity-based incentives are strong. / text