BOARD COMPOSITION AND CORPORATE CONTRIBUTIONS RELATED TO CORONAVIRUS 2019 DISEASE: A REVIEW

The spread of COVID-19 has led to unexpected impacts on the country. Not only health, but the pandemic also affects the social, educational, and economic aspects which need some attention by the government as well as corporate citizens. As a group of individuals who govern the direction of a company, the board of directors plays an important role in shaping the company's philanthropic policy, especially in the challenging COVID-19 pandemic environment. Through the review of relevant literature, particularly to corporate governance and corporate philanthropy, this article discusses how the diversity of board members can influence decisions on the determination of COVID-19 related corporate contributions. Determining the type and amount of contributions to relevant recipients is crucial, particularly for groups of stakeholders who are really in need. Thus, relevant and diverse backgrounds of board members are able to bring wider perspectives and points of view as well as the understanding of the problems and needs of different stakeholders. Diversity in terms of education, experience, gender, and community influence is believed to bring different contributions in tackling problems posed by COVID-19. The discussion in this article contributes to the enrichment of the corporate philanthropy literature. It also gives the industry a perspective on the composition of the company's board of directors.

Corporate Core Competencies’ Essence, Contexts, Discovery, and Future: A Call to Action for Executives and Researchers

Research and managerial literatures on core competencies present them as essential to corporations because these competencies, proposed by the literatures to be difficult to acquire and imitate, are applied repeatedly to produce products and services delivering value to customers and wealth to corporations. Indeed, researchers and managers consider the significance of core competencies to be immense as they are the central intellectual means through which corporations produce valuable products and services. Paradoxically, though, rather than providing a clear, focused description, or picture, of what core competencies are and how they contribute to their host corporations, these same literatures present a sprawling, even fragmented picture of core competencies’ essence and contribution.In contrast, this book presents a clear empirical model of corporations’ core competencies’ essence; provides a clear conceptual treatment of how core competencies’ contextual, corporate contributions occur; presents valid methodologies for discovering and understanding corporations’ specific core competencies; and delineates an agenda for executives and researchers to collaborate in learning about core competencies and in using them to provide value for corporate stakeholders, especially customers. The book also places core competencies within their historical and social context, and it presents conceptual and methodological tools to assist in managing and discovering them.

“Sell first, repent later.”

This chapter examines how Chelsea Piers facilities, located directly up the Westside Highway from Lower Manhattan, had served a major role in disaster response from the earliest hours of the 9/11 attacks. The piers offered water stations for people fleeing from downtown and became a key debarkation point for the waterborne evacuation, delivering more than 10,000 people off the island from its docks. Then, the following day, more than 30,000 people arrived to volunteer their help and connect with other New Yorkers. In the days that followed, thousands of uniformed personnel were fed in an events center at Pier 60, hundreds of rescuers slept and showered in Chelsea Piers facilities, and truckloads of donations and supplies were assembled and processed for delivery to the trade center site. By Wednesday, the flood of private citizens' donations had been supplemented with massive corporate contributions arriving in bulk. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard was confronted with two opposing missions: protecting potential targets of a second-wave attack and continuing commerce in a port that regularly handled approximately 6,000 inbound and outbound containers daily, the closure of which created complications worldwide.

Political Contributions and Public Procurement: Evidence from Lithuania

This paper studies whether firms trade political contributions for public procurement contracts. Combining data on Lithuanian government tenders, corporate donors, and firm characteristics, I examine how a ban on corporate contributions affects the awarding of procurement contracts to companies that donated in the past. Consistent with political favoritism, donors’ probability of winning falls by five percentage points as compared to that of nondonor firms after the ban. Evidence on bidding and victory margins suggests that corporate donors may receive auction-relevant information affecting procurement outcomes in their favor.