Reference no: EM133475882

Assessment:

Acting as a corporate governance consultant, you are required to evaluate an organisations corporate governance practices, board structure and board diversity against relevant principles, guidelines, and theories. You will also investigate and analyse which legislation and corporate governance principles your selected organisation must comply with or voluntarily follows. The audience of your presentation is the board of your chosen company. You will prepare PowerPoint slides and an oral presentation of your analysis.

Learning Outcome 1: Demonstrate advanced understanding of contemporary corporate governance theory, frameworks and practice.

Learning Outcome 2: Critically evaluate and effectively communicate complex concepts to recommend improvements relating to corporate governance and organisational issues.

Learning Outcome 3: Apply corporate governance laws, theory, and techniques to professional practice in an ethical manner.

Step 1

Select a company and one of its competitors (preferably publicly listed companies due to data availability) and retrieve relevant corporate governance information. As explained in Activity 1.2 Board structure, 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 any other company statements. For example, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia provides governance information in its annual report: Commonwealth Bank annual report (2022). You can usually find these documents on the organisation's or regulator's website.

Step 2
Based on the disclosed information, your oral presentation should evaluate your selected organisation's governance practices according to the following perspectives below:

1. Board structure: Critically discuss and compare the overall board structure (in terms of unitary vs two-tier, executive versus non-executive directors, connected vs independent directors, CEO duality versus CEO separation, any additional directorships of other boards, etc.) of your selected organisation, with those of the competitor.

2. Board diversity: Critically discuss the board diversity of your selected organisation with that of the competitor firm, including diversity in skill and experience, gender, age and any other social or cultural aspects of directors.

In the critical analysis of the board structure and diversity, discuss relevant corporate governance principles, guidelines and theories that are applicable. Draw out and discuss the implications of your findings for the conformance and performance functions of the board.

3. Board recommendations for your selected organisation: Provide constructive suggestions for improvement to the board of the chosen organisation (i.e., not the competitor but for the chosen organisation only).

To ensure effective communication throughout the presentation:
• Keep things simple. Slides are better to be less complicated or busy.
• Avoid text (or bullet-point) overload. Slides are meant to support a speaker.
• Limit animation on each slide. The audience does not need to be "dazzled" by special effects; it is the content that should be the star of the slides.
• Use high-quality, appropriate graphics (only where relevant). Graphics/tables/images should not be included to impress the audience but should only be used if relevant and if they enhance the story told in the slides.
• Keep your slides interesting and engaging.