Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The purpose of this research was to investigate the social and cultural constructions of leadership and how search committee members evaluate candidates for leadership positions. Moreover, how they conceptualize, measure, and evaluate leadership potential of candidates. To explore this issue, the following research questioned were answered: How do members of an executive search committee construct their views of leadership?; In what ways do the individual, social, and cultural constructions of leadership held by search committee members influence behaviors and outcomes of a search committee? In this study, I investigated how members of a search committee constructed their views of leadership and in turn how this influenced the search process for an executive leader. In order to explore this issue, this study is approached through the constructivism paradigm and informed by critical inquiry, using case study methodology. I followed one executive search process from the charge meeting until the committee made its recommendation to the hiring authority. The unit analyzed in this search employed a leadership competency model and tools which mapped to this model, in an effort to mitigate the influence of bias. I used semi-structured interviews with committee members to understand their views on leadership. I supplemented interviews with observations and document analysis as means of collecting data for the study. Three findings emerged through data analysis: the role of background and identity on views of leadership, the influence of personal and societal constructions of leadership on individual behaviors and search outcomes, and the application or utility of using a leadership competency model. Through my findings, I demonstrated how individual’s background and identity shaped their perceptions of what it meant to be a leader. Additionally, how they rated and talked about candidates matched their individual views about leadership rather than the leadership competency model they were asked to use. More specifically, analysis illuminated that minoritized search committee members had drastically different beliefs about leadership and experiences serving on the search committee. I concluded the study by outlining implications for policy, future practice, and future research, including offering a conceptual framework and tools for an equity-minded search process.

This study examines the association between the extent of legal intensity in firms’ financial reports and their financial reporting quality. Firms’ financial reports contain embedded legal content arising from contracts and agreements underlying their operations. Accountants interpret the contract provisions and conditions to determine the timing and amounts recognized in financial reports. Legal content is technical and complex, creating a potential for misinterpretation and errors in accounting for transactions, thus adversely affecting financial reporting quality. Using legal tags in companies’ 10-K XBRL filings, I construct a measure of the legal intensity of financial reports. I document an inverse association between legal intensity of financial reports and financial reporting quality, proxied by accruals quality, analyst earnings forecast errors and dispersion, earnings informativeness, and accruals informativeness. The inverse association is driven by firm-specific legal content rather than common legal content. There is also some evidence that the inverse association is strengthened by high operational uncertainty and attenuated by accounting experts on the audit committee. Collectively, this study increases our understanding of challenges in translating legal content into financial reports and the benefit of audit committee accounting experts in this setting. / Business Administration/Accounting

This study examines decisions relating to the composition of audit committees by foreign private issuers (FPIs) that are listed on US exchanges. A firm listed on the US stock market must have an audit committee consisting of at least three financially literate independent directors, and disclose if it has at least one financial expert. Although FPIs are exempted from these requirements, 72 percent of FPIs choose to opt into complying with them. I find that FPIs from countries with a greater number of differences in audit committee requirements compared to US requirements are less likely to opt-in. Firms from weak investor protection countries are more likely to opt-in. Because FPIs are not mandated to follow US audit committee requirements, their opt-in choices indicate greater benefits (possibly from “bonding” to a rigorous regulatory setting) than compliance costs. Further investigation into the consequences of opting in show that FPIs opting into the US audit committee requirements are less likely to restate their financial statements or disclose internal control material weaknesses, have less earnings management, and hence have better financial reporting quality. / Business Administration/Accounting

This study was made with the hope that the findings may encourage the administration and teachers in Van Zandt county Texas to analyze the Ten Social-Economic Goals set up by a committee on the National Education Association.

No description available.

Wildlife management requires understanding resources and involving stakeholders. The process Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) and Virginia Tech used to develop a black bear (Ursus americanus) management plan during 1999-2001 provided me with opportunities to understand diverse stakeholders and examine influences of participation on stakeholder knowledge, attitudes, and opinions concerning bear management. I used focus groups (with 5 key stakeholder groups), pre- and post-planning surveys, and interviews. I surveyed VDGIF biologists and managers (N = 21), members of a stakeholders advisory committee (N = 15), and members of 3 constituent groups representing bear hunters (N = 459), beekeepers (N = 442), and environmental interests (N = 500). I interviewed advisory committee members to validate survey results and evaluate the bear management plan. Participation apparently improved constituents' knowledge about bear management and their image of VDGIF bear management, and increased their support for controversial management options (e.g., lethal methods), but did not affect their opinions about bear hunting. Participation apparently had little effect on VDGIF staff opinions about bear management. Knowledge varied widely among constituent organizations. Bear hunting continues to be one of the most central, yet divisive, bear management issues in Virginia. Advisory committee members and VDGIF staff expressed satisfaction with the bear management plan and the planning process. Recommendations for wildlife decision-making processes include: balance science and public values in management, use multiple public involvement techniques, establish collaborative forums among stakeholders, reach out to all stakeholders, and nurture relationships with constituents during implementation. / Master of Science

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

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As financial intermediaries, banks are "special" because they play an important role in transferring funds from surplus spending units to deficit spending units and serve as a channel of monetary policy. Therefore, the safety and soundness of banks is essential to the financial stability and economic development. This study investigates how bank governance mechanisms, namely, executive compensation and board of directors, affect bank safety. Given the unique nature that bank assets are opaque, bank governance is expected to be different from corporate governance of industrial firms. This study also investigates how the opaqueness nature of bank assets affects the compensation design of bank executives. Chapter 1 investigates the association between asset opacity and CEO pay-performance sensitivity of bank holding companies (BHCs). Contrary to the monitoring cost hypothesis according to which when information asymmetry is high firms rely more heavily on equity-based compensation, I find that when the share of opaque assets in total assets increases, pay-performance sensitivity in BHCs declines. This finding supports the view that when the share of opaque assets increases, managers can pursue risky projects to a greater extent in the interests of shareholders but at the expenses of bondholders, and, hence, the optimal compensation structure in BHCs with larger share of opaque assets has a lower pay-performance sensitivity to restrain managerial risk-taking incentives, reducing the conflicts of interests between shareholders and bondholders. The negative effect of asset opacity on pay-performance sensitivity is robust after accounting for the endogeneity of asset opacity and using various compensation measures. In addition, I find that higher pay-performance sensitivity generally leads to a greater share of opaque assets in total assets. The results of this study suggest that asset opacity is an important determinant of compensation structure in the banking industry. BHCs should use caution when using stocks and options to promote prudent risk taking under bank asset opacity conditions because opaque bank assets make risk-shifting behaviors induced by equity-based compensation difficult to monitor, threatening the bank stability. Regulators should also account for this opacity effect. Chapter 2 investigates the relationship between insolvency risk and executive compensation for BHCs over the 1992-2008 period. I employ CEO compensation sensitivity to risk (vega) and pay-share inequality between the CEO and other executives as measures of compensation and employ a simultaneous equation model to account for the endogeneity problem between vega and risk. Five main results are obtained. First, CEO compensations in BHCs have risen in response to deregulation to resemble those of the industrial firms. Second, higher vegas lead to greater bank instability. Third, the association between bank stability and managerial compensation is bi-directional; higher vegas induce greater risk and vice versa. Fourth, BHCs in the next to the largest-size group increase CEO vegas the most and have the strongest potential to create instability in the financial industry, such as the one witnessed in 2007-2009. Fifth, increased pay-share inequality has effects opposite to those of the increase in vega; greater pay-share inequality is associated with greater bank stability. Implications of executive compensation effects on instability for depositors, deposit insurers and regulators are drawn. Chapter 3 investigates the association between the structure of board of directors and risk taking of bank holding companies. I use the number of directors on the risk committee and the frequency of its meetings to measure the strength of risk management exercised by bank boards. Several interesting findings are obtained. First, banks with stronger risk committees, namely risk committees with a greater number of directors and more frequent meetings, are associated with more diversified loan portfolios, greater amounts of safer loans, less mortgage-backed securities, and lower market risk. These results continue to hold even after controlling for the possible endogeneity problem using the dynamic panel GMM estimator. Overall, these results suggest that stronger risk management by bank boards has a positive and significant impact on banks' safety and soundness. Second, the percentage of banks having a risk committee has been increasing steadily since 1999, suggesting bank boards have gradually taken a greater role in risk management and their fiduciary duties have expanded beyond shareholders to include depositors. However, less than half of bank boards have a risk committee before 2007, suggesting weak risk management at the top level and the possibility that bank boards may have failed to control the excessive risk-taking in the banking industry leading to the recent financial crisis. Finally, the percentage of banks with a risk committee is still less than 60% after the crisis, suggesting that depositors and bank supervisors could enhance the stability of banks by further improving the effectiveness of internal risk control at bank boards. / Business Administration/Finance

The purpose of this study is to analyze the overall rhetorical structure of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during 1960-1968. The criteria used in this study were adapted from: Joseph R. Gusfield, "Protest, Reform, and Revolt - A Reader in Social Movements;" Dan F. Hahn and Ruth Gonchar, "Studying in Social Movements: A Rhetorical Methodology;" Kurt Lang and Gladys Lang, "Collective Dynamics;" Leland M. Griffin, "The Rhetoric of Historical Movements;" Herbert W. Simons, "Requirements, Problems, and Strategies: A Theory of Persuasion for Social Movements." Gusfield's definition of a movement as "socially shared activities and beliefs directed toward the demand for change in some aspect of the social order" is utilized. To examine the rhetorical structure, it is necessary to divest it from the complex structural aspects of a movement. Simons' theory of the "grand flow" of a movement's persuasion guided this study. The rhetorical requirements of a movement are introduced in Chapter I. The requirements tend to fall into the following sub-categories: the ideology, the strategy, the goals, the membership, and the leadership. Chapter II is devoted to the setting during which the movement was founded. It includes a brief history of social unrest in civil rights struggles in the United States between the years 1950-1960. Chapter III examines the structure of SNCC based upon the philosophy of love and nonviolence, approximately 1960-1964. Chapter IV examines the structure of SNCC based upon a philosophy of hatred and rejection, approximately 1964-1968. The chapter also includes a postscript discussing SNCCts progressive movement away from the philosophy of nonviolence after 1968.