Corporate Governance

Below is your interim assignment for this subject. Please read the brief and instructions thoroughly.

A contemporaneous corporate governance issue in practice and academia is diversity of directors in the boardroom of an entity. Diversity in the context of corporate governance can have various meanings. Diversity in the boardroom among directors could be in some circumstances attributable to entity type e.g. certain not for profit and charity entities, publicly listed firms in a sector or industry, etc. The characteristics or traits of diversity could, for example, include age (e.g. Loop, P & Bromilow, C 2018 – see embedded scholarship article), ethnicity, gender, race, religiosity, skills, among others.

Some reports in the media, or from peak body organisations and associations, suggest having quotas or future targets (e.g. 30% female board members by a certain date, etc.) to work towards implementing. Others suggest an appointment should be based on the ‘best person’ (i.e. meritbased approach) for the job regardless of gender, etc.

Embedded scholarship article

Loop, P & Bromilow, C 2018, ‘Is “age diversity” the next boardroom concern?’, The Corporate Board, vol. 39, no. 231, pp. 1014.

Report
Conduct a review of corporate governance diversity issues and write a report with your findings and recommendations. Use the concepts, tools and techniques learned in this subject to review the extent of diversity in general, or, a specific diversity type in the boardroom at an entity(ies), industry, sector or other jurisdictional levels.

These focus questions could guide you in writing your report:
In which aspects of diversity, with respect to corporate governance, has an entity you are familiar with (i.e. or entities in general) been reasonably successful? Discuss what has led to the success and how it could be sustained.

In which aspects of diversity, with respect to corporate governance, has an entity you are familiar with (i.e. or entities in general), failed, been criticised or been less successful? Discuss the reasons in terms of diversity for this and what can be done to address them.

Requirements
Your assessment must include:

A description of the issue related to the above brief. This description should be a short section only.

An outline of the bases or criteria for the review of diversity as it relates to governance issue(s). For example, mention which legislation, rules, standards or guiding principles are relevant for the review, discuss their importance and why it is appropriate for you to use them.

A critical review of the organisation’s governance applying the relevant concepts, principles,
standards or other tools and techniques learnt during this subject, in accordance with your diversity discussion above.

A brief list of recommendations for suggested improvement based on your review. The recommendations should only be a short section in the overall report.

To do well you need to structure your discussion appropriately, use credible source references, and clearly link recommendations to the description and analysis presented earlier in the report.

Important assignment instructions

The required word length for this assignment is 2500 words (plus or minus 10%).

In terms of structure, presentation and style you are normally required to use: o ABS preferred Microsoft Word settings o Author-date style APA referencing (6-12 references); which includes in-text citations plus a reference list.