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The global financial crisis of 2008 raises many governance questions regarding the roles and responsibilities of executives and board members. Simultaneously, CEO duality in the USA and elsewhere has come under renewed scrutiny because of the perceived loss of checks and balances and resultant abuse of power. The authors suggest that the financial crisis presents a unique opportunity to explore the effects of, and attitudes, to CEO duality. The purpose of this paper therefore is to investigate whether CEO duality is associated with bank failure and whether bank regulators, as can be expected, are opposed to CEO duality.

The authors investigated the correlation between CEO duality and publicly traded banks in the USA that received Federal bailout funds, using available databases, and investigated bank regulators' attitudes to CEO duality using a series of structured interviews.

No correlation was found between bank failure and CEO duality. However, a strong correlation was found between bank ownership and receipt of Federal bailout funds in that publically owned banks were far more likely to have received bailout funds than banks which were privately owned. Surprisingly, it was also found that Regulators accepted CEO duality for several reasons and have no agenda to limit it.

The results suggest that CEO duality is a less significant issue factor in corporate management than suggested by many previous researchers and policy makers. This has clear implications for governance, regulation and legislation.

This study is the first to investigate the relationship between bank performance and CEO duality. The authors' results suggest that whilst there may be many good reasons for limiting CEO duality, the key measure of adverse effects on corporate performance in this sector is not one of them.

Even the most experienced and hardened negotiators tend to ‘lighten up’ when they step onto foreign soil. Current global conditions, however, allow for a systematic, diligent and professional approach to lease and purchase negotiations. This paper encourages corporate real estate professionals to do the right thing ‐ wherever they may be.

The purpose of this paper is to produce a critical history of MP3 technology in an effort to show how its stature as the digital music format of choice had nothing to do with music or associated industries and that its configuration as a product to be bought and sold was unintended.

The approach is reminiscent of Michel Foucault's critical histories, which sought to problematise our current understanding of existing cultural arrangements by unearthing the conditions that made the production of knowledge and their accompanying artefacts possible.

The paper documents how MP3s emerged by outlining the conditions that made its production viable, showing how before MP3s were profiled as commodities to be bought and sold online, the composite of technologies making up the standard MPEG1‐Layer III were objects of knowledge within the fields of electrical engineering and psychoacoustics, and later a process of compression used mainly by audio broadcasting professionals. The paper concludes by examining MPEG1‐Layer III's reconstitution as MP3: its formal configuration and valuation, first as a license for the broadcasting industry to compress sound and then as a “free‐ware” application distributed online.

The paper problematises the taken for granted status of commodities, in this case, MP3s, as digital music to be bought and sold, by revealing how they emerged. At a more parochial level, it produces a competing history of MP3 technology which until now has not been told.

The Interactive Open Learning Centre and Media Archive at the Open University Library is a collection of OU‐produced audio‐visual materials. The archive is being enhanced by the cross‐campus provision of online access to a showcase of locally‐ and externally‐produced multimedia software, and (as part of Carnegie Mellon University's Informedia project) by the creation of a automatically‐indexed collection of digital OU TV broadcasts. The OU plans to create a digital archive not just of its video materials, but also of its copyright photographs and printed course materials, as it works towards the establishment of a hybrid library.

This paper presents the results of a complex but challenging investigation into the global power play at the United Nations (UN) over the issue of international accounting regulation. It specifically attempts to explain why the host developing nations of most transnational corporations (TNCs), despite controlling a significant majority vote at the UN and thus possessing the necessary “political” power, conspicuously failed to impose their accounting disclosure agenda on the TNCs and on the (minority) developed nations. The political concept of power is used in examining the accounting standard setting process at the UN, in the context of regulatory reforms of the TNCs. While alternative models of power are considered, Robert Dahl’s decision‐oriented pluralistic model was adopted in the study because it proved to be the most consistent with the events, objectives and the empirical data presented. The research findings indicate that organized pressures from the TNCs, co‐ordinated under the joint forum of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the International Organisation of Employers (IOE), coupled with the economic and diplomatic manoeuvring of the developed market economy nations, had succeeded in overriding the rule of “one‐nation‐one‐vote” and securing a de facto veto over the majority view at the UN. The pioneering efforts of the UN in setting international reporting standards had been curbed and frustrated through the construction and use of such “veto” by the minority representation.

The purpose of this study is to propose to use the economic value added to measure firm performance against information security investments.

The authors develop a conceptual framework to capture non information technology (IT)-related and IT-related security investment factors and propose to study their holistic influences on firm performance.

The authors propose 14 propositions to understand the relationship between security investments and firm performance.

The authors propose a validation process to guide future research to further empirically capture all needed data and analyze the proposed relationships.

Managers can view security investment from a more comprehensive perspective and understand how to potentially contribute each of the non IT-related and IT-related factors to firm performance.

This is one of the early attempts studying information security investment vs firm performance from a comprehensive conceptual angel.

Index by subjects, compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management Volumes 8‐17; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐17.

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐18; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐18; Property Management Volumes 8‐18; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐18.

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management Volumes 8‐17; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐17.

Index by subjects, compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals: Facilities Volumes 8‐18; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐18; Property Management Volumes 8‐18; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐18.