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This paper aims to present the outcomes from 40 one-to-one semi-structured interviews and 12 focus group sessions with company secretaries, chairmen, CEOs, chief financial officer (CFOs), senior independent director (SIDs) and NEDs, about the role of the company secretary.

Lukes’ (1974, 2005) third dimension of power is engaged in thematic analysis of this strategic leadership role and its contribution to Board effectiveness.

The findings identify “discretionary capacity” as being critical to effective role contribution.

Whilst the inquiry included international participants, e.g. multi-national Board members and company secretaries, it was conducted within the UK.

Having a range of discretion is particularly necessary at this time, when the new governance regime is broadening its demands on the role of the company secretary to interact with wider stakeholders.

Better Board effectiveness is critical to broader sustainability of business in society.

An emergent model of the company secretary role is offered as a tool for building discretionary capacity, based on key technical, commercial and social characteristics, in their contexts – understood together as “Breadth” and “Majesty”. Breadth establishes a competency, whereas majesty, the refined high-level social qualities. This study concludes that the company secretary role is highly dependent on the preferences of the chairman, in enabling them to make an effective contribution to the Board.

This study aims to examine the core challenges facing company secretaries in a two-tier board context. This study focuses on the key factors contributing to these challenges and how company secretaries can effectively address them.

An analysis of the narratives provided by 291 Dutch company secretaries in response to a series of open-ended questionnaire questions led to insights into the key challenges company secretaries face in their day-to-day work.

Company secretaries perceive a myriad of factors contributing to pressures on their time, the need to work for multiple organizational bodies and the processing of information. They believe process interventions and social interventions are needed to alleviate these issues.

The research highlights the need to deeply study boards from a holistic and systems point of view that recognizes the various actors, such as the company secretary, and their relationships in a boardroom context. Furthermore, the research shows how the two-tier board model may complicate these relational dynamics owing to the formal separation of decision management from decision control.

This study identifies various pragmatic ways to address the core challenges facing company secretaries so as to improve their contributions to decision-making at the apex of organizations.

This study sheds light on an important organizational actor (i.e. the company secretary) that hitherto has received scant attention in the governance literature.

This study aims to examine the antecedents of company secretaries’ behaviour and their relationship and effect on intended whistleblowing with the role of neutralisation as a moderating factor on an individual’s ethical decision-making in whistleblowing.

Using a modified version of the theory of planned behaviour as a framework and a quantitative research approach, a Likert-type scaled, self-administered questionnaire was conducted on a non-probability sample, totalling 208 company secretaries, currently working for various consultancy, audit and secretarial firms in Malaysia. The data obtained were analysed through structural equation modelling.

Findings indicated that attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, ethical obligation as well as self-identity were found to be predictors in a company secretary’s intended behaviour to whistle-blow. However, neutralisation was proved not to be a contributing factor in whistleblowing between intention and behaviour.

The quantitative measures of intention and behaviour are incompatible based on their levels of specificity or generality. Also, there may be an existence of social desirability bias among the respondents, indicating the need for a wider sample.

The study offers valuable knowledge by providing organisations and regulators with several insights into improving the company secretaries’ whistleblowing behaviour, including the need to strengthen whistleblowers’ support and alleged malpractice investigation and analysis systems. It also enables company directors and regulators to implement whistleblowing policies as an internal control mechanism, thus realising an individual’s intention to highly engage in whistleblowing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first research that has empirically tested the relationship and effect of antecedents of company secretaries’ whistleblowing intention and behaviour using a modified version of the theory of planned behaviour, thus adding to the stock of literature on this topic and showing that “neutralisation” had an insignificant effect on the possibility of fraudulent reporting.

The role of the secretary has recently become the focus for considerable research. Silverstone studied the variables related to the job satisfaction of office secretaries for her PhD and Vinnicombe for hers. The Unions such as APEX (1979) have considered the effect of technological office changes on the secretary's job. Others such as McCabe and Popham have written on the organisation structure changes necessary to support the technological changes, from typewriters to word processors, which will influence the secretary's job.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

This paper reports the findings of an empirical investigation into the disclosure of corporate accounting information to trade union decision makers. These findings are evaluated against earlier normative and descriptive literature on corporate disclosure to trade unions and an attempt is made to derive some implications for the design of accounting reports for use in the context of collective bargaining. The research methodology used was a case study of decision making in one trade union, the Amalgamated Textile Workers' Union (ATWU) which represents most of the manual workers in the Lancashire cotton industry.

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

The purpose of paper is to investigate the dissatisfaction and what specifically prompts multi-owned housing owners to change their body corporate management provider. Globally there has been a substantial growth reported in the number of residents living in multi-owned housing in recent years. There is increasing evidence that residents in these developments are experiencing dissatisfaction and frustration especially with the service received from their body corporate management company.

The paper includes a review of both the body corporate literature and customer switching literature which serves to inform the research. The investigation takes the form of a qualitative study comprising eight in-depth one-to-one interviews with residential body corporate owners who have recently switched to an alternative body corporate management provider.

The dissatisfaction experienced by body corporate owners leading them to change management companies bears a close similarity to the retail banking industry. The interviews record highly emotive responses from interviewees and the desire for an improved quality of service and better value for money from their service provider. These findings allow a deeper understanding of the outcome of studies that have been carried out previously in England and New Zealand.

The findings will assist directors of body corporate companies, property management and real-estate companies to understand the needs and wants of their clients and may also benefit property developers in their selection of a body corporate management company and legislators in providing a suitable legal framework.

This paper provides in-depth insights into switching behaviour within the context of body corporate management companies which has not before been published within academic journals.

This paper seeks to respond to recent calls for more engagement‐based studies of corporate social reporting (CSR) practice by examining the views of corporate managers on the current state of, and future prospects for, social reporting in Bangladesh.

The paper uses a series of interviews with senior managers from 23 Bangladeshi companies representing the multinational, domestic private and public sectors.

Key findings are that the main motivation behind current reporting practice lies in a desire on the part of corporate management to manage powerful stakeholder groups, whilst perceived pressure from external forces, notably parent companies' instructions and demands from international buyers, is driving the process forward. In the latter context it appears that adoption of international social accounting standards and codes is likely to become more prevalent in the future. Reservations are expressed as to whether such a passive compliance strategy is likely to achieve much in the way of real changes in corporate behaviour, particularly when Western developed standards and codes are imposed without consideration of local cultural, economic and social factors. Indeed, such imposition could be regarded as little more than an example of the erection of non‐tariff trade barriers rather than representing any meaningful move towards empowering indigenous stakeholder groups.

The paper contributes to the literature on CSR in developing countries where there is a distinct lack of engagement‐based published studies.

LIGHT rarely comes to people as swiftly as it did to Paul on the Damascus road. More often it is the slow accretion of knowledge through education and persuasion, the steady pressure of convinced advocates and the relentless force of events that opens their minds to new ideas.