Task Write a 2,000-word report to discuss, compare, explain and evaluate an organisation you select. You will evaluate the corporate governance principles, structure, and functions to understand the...

Task

Write a 2,000-word report to discuss, compare, explain and evaluate an organisation you select. You will evaluate the corporate governance principles, structure, and functions to understand the alignment of your selected organisation to the theory, concepts or philosophy. Additionally, you will investigate and analyse which legislation and corporate governance principles your selected organisation must comply with or voluntarily follows.

You will compare your selected organisation with a peer organisation of your choice. Your comparison allows you to comprehensively discuss the two organisations’ boards conformance and performance approaches.

In practice conformance deals with accountability and supervising executive’s activities and is past and present focused. While performance is about strategy formulation and policy making mostly future focused. Accountability and strategy formulation are outward-looking but supervising executive’s activities and policy making are inward-looking.

Step 1

Select a company and one of its peers (preferably publicly listed companies from the same jurisdiction due to data availability and comparability) and retrieve relevant corporate governance information. As explained in Activity 1.2, you will find the corporate governance information disclosed in the company’s most recent annual report (Australian companies), proxy statement (US companies),management proxy circular(Canadian companies), company website or other company statements. For example, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia provides governance information in its annual report: (CBA Annual Report). You can usually find these documents on the organisation’s or regulator’s website.

Step 2

Based on the disclosed governance information and relevant governance principles, rules and theories, evaluate how your selected organisations board structure performs its conformance and performance functions, according to the following perspectives:

1. Corporate governance principles:Discuss which theory or philosophy most characterises your selected organisation and why. Explain what legislation and principles or guidelines your selected organisation follows.


2. Corporate governance structures: Evaluate the board structure of your selected organisation in comparison to a peer, including director appointments, attributes, competencies, and committees.


3. Corporate governance conformance and performance functions: Compare the board functions of your selected organisation with that of a peer organisation. Discuss the conformance and performance aspects of your selected organisation in comparison to a peer.


4. Board recommendations for your selected organisation: Provide constructive suggestions for improvement to the board of the chosen organisation (i.e. not the peer).

Requirements

• Discuss relevant corporate governance theories, legislation, and principles in relation to the selected organisation.


• Where possible, draw out and discuss implications (and limitations) for the board structure, and conformance and performance functions of the selected organisation and peer boards.


• Explicitly provide recommendations to the selected board from your report findings


• The required word length for this report is 2,000 words (plus 10% tolerance).


• You are required to use at least five (5) academic references for this report (in addition to any references for the disclosed corporate governance information such as annual reports).


• Your references should be from credible sources such as books, industry-related journals, magazines, or academic journal articles. Your grade will be adversely affected if your assignment contains no/poor citations and/or reference list and if your assignment word length is beyond the allowed tolerance level (see Assessment Policy available on AIB website).

Resources

• Please use publicly available secondary data only.


• Prescribed textbook and learning materials and readings from Modules 1–3.


• Disclosed governance information source: annual reports (Australian companies), proxy statement (US organisations),management proxy circular(Canadian organisations), company website, or other company statements


• Corporate governance codes: ASX CGOV Recommendations & Principles, OECD principles, NYSE CGOV guide, ECGI principles, AICD non-for-profit governance principles, TSX Corporate Governance guidelines.