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The chapter investigates three channels through which private benefits are hypothesized to be extracted in dual class companies: excess executive compensation, excess capital expenditures and excess cash holdings.

With a propensity score matched sample of S&P 1500 dual class and single class companies with concentrated control, the chapter analyzes the relationship between the valuation discount of dual class companies and measures of excess executive compensation, excess capital expenditure and excess cash holdings.

Executives in dual class firms earn greater compensation relative to their counterparts in single class firms. This excess compensation is more pronounced when the executive is a family member. The value of dual class shares is discounted most when cash holdings and executive compensation of dual class are excessive. Excess compensation is highest for executives who are family members of dual class companies. The dual class discount is not related to excess capital expenditures.

The research shows that the discount in the value of dual class shares in relation to the value of closely controlled single class company shares is directly related to the channels through which controlling shareholder-managers can extract private benefits.

Infanticide stands out as a crime which, in England and Wales, has been marked for at least 200 years by deep-rooted continuities in its representation and treatment by both the criminal justice system and the media, despite the massive political, economic, social, legislative and cultural changes that occurred over this period. Particularly remarkable about this long-standing discourse is its routine emphasis that the guilty mother is also a victim of tragic circumstances that led to the crime and deserving of sympathetic treatment. It also invariably sets infanticide apart as a ‘special case’ which does not necessarily fit with either medical or legal definitions of diminished criminal responsibility. Perhaps surprisingly, this framing of women who commit infanticide stresses not only their ‘normality’ prior to the offence but also their ‘respectability’, a sharp contrast to the sometimes overtly misogynistic representation of other types of women offenders. This chapter argues that it is above all ‘respectability’ that profoundly shaped the cultural script relating to infanticide in England and Wales between 1800 and 2000, and that this continues to exert a powerful legacy on the relatively small number of cases that now comes before the courts in the twenty-first century.

The purpose of this general review is to enhance understanding of the importance of a corporation’s whole ethics of governance regime and the connection to governance practices. This connection is often missing from corporate governance discussion. There is need for better business community awareness of a well-developed ethics of governance regime guiding appropriate board structure and composition choices subject to firm age and size, understanding of how these choices evolve as the firm matures and grows, plus the benefits from more emphasis in this area for company director training and development. This paper synthesises the theoretical and empirical insight from the ethics and corporate governance literatures to give guidance on best practice for large, medium size and small stock exchange listed companies. This synthesis of the literature evidences that the preferred Australian Institute of Company Directors agency theory prescription for a corporate board is not always optimal. In terms of practical implications advice is given on sound choices on board composition, director selection, plus director training and development that will give the best probability of effective board decisions and strong firm performance – this is not ‘one size fits all’ corporations advice. Future research should focus on whole ethics of governance regimes and governance practices in place for companies that have succeeded compared with companies that have failed. This will improve understanding in this area. This is a substantial future research agenda item as deeper knowledge of this contrast may add significantly to understanding of corporate success and failure.

Dynamic predictions of financial distress of the firms have received less attention in finance literature rather than static prediction, specifically in Malaysia. This study, therefore, investigates dynamic symptoms of the financial distress event a few years before it happened to the firms by using neural network method. Cox Proportional Hazard regression models are used to estimate the survival probabilities of Malaysian PN17 and GN3 listed firms. Forecast accuracy is evaluated using receiver operating characteristics curve. From the findings, it shown that the independent directors’ ownership has negative association with the financial distress likelihood. In addition, this study modeled a mix of corporate financial distress predictors for Malaysian firms. The combination of financial and non-financial ratios which pressure-sensitive institutional ownership, independent director ownership, and Earnings Before Interest and Taxes to Total Asset shown a negative relationship with financial distress likelihood specifically one year before the firms being listed in PN 17 and GN 3 status. However, Retained Earnings to Total Asset, Interest Coverage, and Market Value of Debt have positive relationship with firm financial distress likelihood. These research findings also contribute to the policy implications to the Securities Commission and specifically to Bursa Malaysia. Furthermore, one of the initial goals in introducing the PN17 and GN3 status is to alleviate the information asymmetry between distressed firms, the regulators, and investors. Therefore, the regulator would be able to monitor effectively distressed firms, and investors can protect from imprudent investment.

While Hemingway noted that all stories end in death, this story begins with a death in the family. I recount my mother's (Ma's) death from a sociological point of view, making use of an autoethnographic perspective. Such a perspective encourages a frank portrayal of my involvement in the story as well as more detached reflection of various behaviors (enacted by Ma, her children, her grandchildren, and her friends). I also focus on Ma as a child of the Depression, a young adult during World War II, and a casualty of a middle class lifestyle. Her death, while unwanted, allowed her to create and construct authentic encounters with her children, grandchildren, and friends – encounters that she had avoided while living the middle class life. Her story allows me to reflect on her death as encouraging an authentic understanding of my emotions.

This case dates back to 2017 and revolves around three budding entrepreneurs studying in a prestigious university in Haryana. A collaborative initiative by Abhishek Ganesh and Shine Varghese Saji to make the Onam festival in their university a huge success among their fellow mates initiated their journey of entrepreneurship. The three entrepreneurs got their first lesson that students are ready for a service if it is interesting and enjoying but not at a very high price. They studied the market and observed that there was a lack of substitutes providing high-quality but affordable travel services. With the three entrepreneurs gelling successfully, they decided to form a company that offered relaxing weekend gateways at high quality but at an affordable price. So, the company, The Great Expedist came into existence as a Partnership Company under the treasurer's name, that is, Anurag Bansal and started business from 5 February 2017. The aim of the company was to provide varied experiences to their customers including adventure sports, team building activities, historical learning and a comfortable stay that delivers a unique travel experience to students at an affordable price.

As every new initiative brings challenges along with it, the entrepreneurs had to face resistance from vendors, hoteliers and even students from other universities. But with their sheer grit backed by full support from their university entrepreneurship cell, they overcame the challenges smoothly.

But the issue of pricing was of prime concern for them. With students being a price-sensitive market coupled with vendor issues, they found it difficult to earn revenues. So, they decided to opt for mark-up pricing and offered 15% mark up on the costs incurred by the company in arranging for hotel, travel and other logistic arrangements. With passage of time and enhancement of negotiation power, they decided to offer more value-oriented services at similar price points. This enhanced their profit margins due to increase in volume of sales.

The targeted promotions and positive WOM were making them popular but the issue of customised service seemed a challenge. Each student had a different set of priorities in terms of travel, stay and food offered. The company wanted to enhance their profits so either the negotiation had to be great or the price to be enhanced. This issue landed them in a dilemma. They wanted to diversify, promote and research all of which required a lot of money. They even thought of diversifying into the senior citizen category. It was a lucrative segment with huge profit margins but with its own set of huge challenges too. So, they are stuck up with a dilemma. Should they negotiate with vendors or should they increase the price of the service package? Should they stick to their current target group of students or diversify to the segment of senior citizens or a completely new segment?

In Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) cases, a number of steps to ensure that the measurement of the latent constructs, variables, and indicators have been appropriate, reliable, and meet the rules of quantitative research that must be passed by researchers. One of them is the criteria for determining the presence (or not) of a discriminant validity violation, which is still a fierce debate among researchers today. The last recommended method is the Heterotrait–Monotrait ratio of correlation (HTMT) which seeks to revise the previously existing discriminant validity criteria such as the Fornell–Larcker and Cross-loadings criteria. This chapter discusses the implementation of HTMT in the case of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia with the aim of providing an illustration of how the HTMT is capable of detecting the violation of discriminant validity and the solutions that can be carried out following the recommendations given by the originators.

The Scandinavian penal exceptionalism literature has focused largely on imprisonment but has yet to explore other aspects of the penal field in detail. This chapter provides an overview of the penal field in Norway and how community sanctions and measures have evolved within it. The author uses the work of Wacquant and Bourdieu to argue that there are three important levels within the Norwegian penal field: political, policy and practice. The author also discusses how drivers from the political and policy levels are affecting community-based penal practice. Using McNeill’s dimensions of mass supervision, the author discusses the implications of these changes for three less-explored aspects of punishment in Norway: the serving of short sentences at home on electronic monitoring, supervision of people under 18 and ‘punishment debt’ enforcement.

This chapter considers the reasons for appointing external leaders to higher education institutions, and how to support and retain them. Outsiders can bring a particular set of skills that can be valuable to modern higher education institutions and which are complementary to the skillsets of ‘expert’ academic leaders. The success of injecting ‘otherness’ into institutions is an active and ongoing process if the benefits sought after are to be realised. Three scenarios are given particular attention: being recruited from a different sector; being recruited to a higher education institution in another country and arriving in the sector having followed a very different career path. For each scenario, factors are identified that can enable a positive impact and contribution. Some of the unintentional and unforeseen barriers that can hamper such leaders having the desired impact are also identified.

This chapter is not about the development of the child; I am making this clear from the outset because the title could easily be misinterpreted that way by the readers who are unacquainted with social studies of childhood. Although ‘development’ and ‘child’ are familiar concepts, which combined in notions of ‘development of the child’ or ‘child development’ are parts of a century long, successful and dominant discourse, the notion of ‘development of childhood’ is rather begging questions, such as if there at all is such a thing as a theory of childhood development and if we need it. To my mind the brief answer to the first question is ‘no’, but quite a few authors have made thoughtful formulations about it and about generational relations without necessarily having intended to be theory builders (cf. Alanen, 2009). The answer to the second question is ‘yes’, I believe we need such a theory to come to terms with how children's life worlds have changed and how they have related to contemporaries belonging to other generations – adulthood, youth and old age.