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The events surrounding the financial crisis of 2008 are well known, and subject to a broad level of agreement. Less accepted are theories regarding the larger context within which this crisis was able to unfold. Much has been made of the financialization of the American economy and the lax regulation of new financial instruments, both of which stem from the trend toward a laissez-faire economic policy that has characterized the United States since the late 1970s. I do not take issue with these claims. Instead, I argue that these developments have an earlier and deeper source: a breakdown in the ability of large American corporations to provide collective solutions to economic and social problems, a phenomenon that I term “the decline of the American corporate elite.” From a group with a relatively moderate political perspective and a pragmatic strategic orientation, this elite, through a series of historical developments, became a fragmented, largely ineffectual group, with a high degree of societal legitimacy but a paradoxical lack of power. I trace the history of this group, from its origins in the early 1900s, through its heyday in the post-World War II period, to its decline beginning in the 1970s and escalating in the 1980s. I argue that the lack of coordination within the American business community created the conditions for the crises of the post-1980 period – including the massive breakdown of 2008 – to occur.

The purpose of this paper is to question the profiles of female directors on top French company boards. It explores the legitimacy attributes of current female directors to identify the profiles sought recently, as firms approach the need to make many new appointments to fulfill gender quotas for supervisory boards, given that the proportion of women on a corporate board must reach 40 percent by 2017, with an intermediate level of 20 percent by 2014.

The authors gathered numerical and qualitative biographical data on all SBF 120 (French stock exchange index) firms’ female directors from annual reports and web sites over seven years (from 2003 to 2009). The authors constructed an SPSS database to categorize the individuals into various orders of legitimacy.

Drawing on director bio-data, the authors extend previous work on four legitimacy assets (family ownership; academic excellence; strong ties to the State; and top career), by adding a fifth asset (representative director), and contribute a gender dimension to the literature on personal legitimacy. Owning-family ties and academic excellence are still particularly salient in explaining legitimacy of women directors. A new source of female directors since 2005 is the pool of foreign women, outside the elite Grandes Ecoles system.

The authors had data for directors of 115 companies out of the SBF 120 firms. The authors also lacked data for seven women out of 144 appointed during the period, despite efforts to track down data from public sources.

These legitimacy profiles present different challenges for management development as those responsible for appointing several women to their boards in a short space of time will find out.

The authors highlight that with the diminishing role of family members on large corporate boards, more women directors need to be found, developed and mentored. If this approach is followed, new female directors with solid achievements can be appointed, without having their legitimacy as directors challenged by resistant males. Women will thus be able to take their legitimate place in French boardrooms and contribute their diverse experiences and knowledge.

This paper questions the legitimacy assets of female directors, which can be clustered into three groups: combined elite education and top corporate career; owning-family membership; and representative directors. These legitimacy profiles present different challenges for management development as those responsible for appointing several women to their boards in a short space of time will find out.

In their well-known contribution to the “varieties of capitalism” debate, Peter Hall and David Soskice (2001, Ch. 1) highlight the distinction between a “coordinated market economy” as exemplified by Germany and a “liberal market economy” as exemplified by the United States. Under the heading, “Liberal Market Economies: The American Case”, Hall and Soskice (2001, p. 27), argue:Liberal market economies can secure levels of overall economic performance as high as those of coordinated market economies, but they do so quite differently. In LMEs, firms rely more heavily on market relations to resolve the coordination problems that firms in CMEs address more often via forms of non-market coordination that entail collaboration and strategic interaction. In each of the major spheres of firm endeavor, competitive markets are more robust and there is less institutional support for non-market forms of coordination.

Reviews French particularities in the field of high potential managers development. Stresses some mechanisms in the building of the managerial élite. After a presentation of the main ways of gaining access to the top (through a historical perspective) suggests new trends that will affect top management development for the next decade.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether characteristics of French organizations can be found in the Airbus Group, ancient European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) Group, and how these characteristics have evolved over time in comparison to German ones.

This article presents an in-depth case study by using a contextual approach, considering influential factors which are likely to influence the evolution of organizations.

The analysis shows that the Airbus Group reflects characteristics of French organizations: the importance of strategy, the principle of honour, centralization of decision and power, the role of the state in the capital and its influence via professional networks of its elite coming from the Grandes Ecoles. These findings confirm a relative continuity of national peculiarities over time. The recent evolution of the company also highlights the German influence, notably in terms of shares and management positions.

The case study demonstrates that the Airbus Group has become a multinational company where contextual elements and organizational structures regulate intercultural relationships of interests, influence and power.

Five contextual factors are proposed, which allow to understand and structure the peculiarities of French organizations, in comparison to German ones as well as power distribution within the Airbus Group.

Looks at the reasons for the collapse of both regimes and considers the importance of repression with these developments. Contrasts the methods of Imperial Russia with the Bolsheviks looking at Court proceedings, prison conditions, education and propaganda in prison, exile and the secret police. Concludes that whilst social support is usually seen as essential for survival of a system, repression is not regarded as a positive element but can become the method for a system’s survival and stability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of accounting in the enactment of the Napoleonic imperial project in Tuscany and the Kingdom of Naples in the early nineteenth century.

The study adopts the Foucauldian theoretical framework of governmentality and a comparative approach to highlight similarities and differences between the two regions.

The presence of different cultural understandings and structures of power meant that in Tuscany accounting mirrored and reinforced the existing power structure, whereas in the Kingdom of Naples accounting practices were constitutive of power relations and acted as a compensatory mechanism. In the Kingdom of Naples, where local elites had been traditionally involved in ruling municipalities, control of accounting information and the use of resources “re-adjusted” the balance of power in favour of the French whilst letting local population believe that Napoleon was respectful of local customs.

The ability of accounting technologies to act as compensatory mechanisms within governmentality systems paves the way to further investigations about the relationships between accounting and other governmentality technologies as well as the adjustment mechanisms leading to accounting resilience in different contexts.

By identifying accounting as an adaptive instrument supporting less obvious practices of domination the study helps unmask a hidden mechanism underlying attempts to know, govern and control populations which still characterises modern forms of imperialism.

The comparative perspective leads to a new specification of the multifaceted roles that accounting plays in different cultural and political contexts in the achievement of the same set of imperial goals and enhances understanding of the translation of politics, rhetoric and power into a set of administrative tasks and calculative practices.

This paper aims to examine the contribution made to climate change issues by the élite French accounting journals of La Revue Francophone de Comptabilité and Comptabilité, Contrôle, Audit, for the period 2000‐2005.

The climate change contributions made by top French to top Anglo‐Saxon journals are compared.

While Anglo Saxon élite journals place the natural environment outside the fold of the élite accounting academia, French élite accounting organs infuse climate change issues with subtle motives and meanings, providing symbolic power to a plethora of communicators who want to show that accounting can respond to the global environmental risks caused by human problems.

Stress is placed on the fact that Anglo‐Saxon accounting academics approve and endorse the present system of accounting journal ranking. It does not rank France's top journals very highly and makes no room for discourses outside the mainstream.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how an environmental threat (possible quotas for female supervisory directors) might change supervisory board gender composition in SBF120 French company boards between 2008 and 2010.

From a census of supervisory board membership of SBF120 companies in France in January 2008 and December 2010, data were obtained to test hypotheses relating to changes in gender composition of boards and demographic differences between new and earlier director appointees. The authors drew on institutional theory to inform the discussion of this paper’s findings.

The authors reveal significant increases over 2008-2010 in SBF120 board female representation and significant cohort differences between recent and earlier appointees. Newer female appointees differed from male peers and from earlier appointed females and males, bringing youth and international experience. New females were more likely to gain CAC40 seats than their male peers. There was an increase in boards with multiple female directors.

Actual motivations for increase in female appointments are unknown, but institutional theory provides possible explanations, as suggestion of coercive forces loomed. Chairmen of larger firms may have made strategic choices to attract younger and English-speaking foreign women, before the rush. Limitations include the descriptive nature of the paper, but it sets a benchmark for later studies to monitor progress in depth.

The talent pool for female directors has widened to include foreign English-speaking women, bringing a range of new insights and experience of international governance practice to traditional French boardrooms. However, this could be seen as further discriminatory practice that requires female appointees to bring more human and social capital than that required of their male peers.

This is the first paper charting the changes in supervisory board composition during the three-year period of environmental unrest as quotas were proposed and legislated in France and comparing new and existing cohort French director demographics.