Do Independent Fiscal Institutions Enhance Parliamentary Accountability in the Eurozone?

Independent fiscal institutions (IFIs) have been established or reformed in all eurozone countries following the reform of economic governance. As they are expected to counter the deficit bias of the governments and the information asymmetry of the legislatures and the public over the management of the budget, IFIs may support or even strengthen parliamentary accountability. This hypothesis is tested with regard to three IFIs, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, the Italian Parliamentary Budget Office, and the Spanish Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility. Although the economic context in which the IFIs were created was similar in the three eurozone countries, as was their mandate, these institutions have a rather different institutional positioning, being within the Parliament, in Italy; within the Executive, in Spain; and a stand-alone body in Ireland. This is likely to influence the IFIs’ contribution to parliamentary accountability, we hypothesize that the closer the position of an IFI and its contacts to the parliament, the stronger is the scrutiny of the executive on budgetary policies. The analysis of parliamentary questions, hearings, and of the activation of the ‘comply or explain’ procedures shows that, overall, the IFIs’ potential role to enhance parliamentary accountability has remained underexploited by the three legislatures, with no significant differences as for the institutional positioning of the IFI.

Considerations Regarding Correlated Analysis between Comply or Explain Declaration and Non-Financial Reports

Corporate governance still remains a topic of great interest to both researchers and practitioners, as a result of the on-going challenges that companies face. The current economic and pandemic context and the need for a sustainable development bring new requirements to the governance, imposing a rethinking of strategy and business processes. The new challenges require consolidated implementations of corporate governance. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the companies’ alignment to the governance requirements is reflected in “comply or explain” declarations as well as in the non-financial reports and emphasize some identified vulnerabilities, most of them being determined by the obvious limitation of transparency and the attempt of minimizing the importance of some nonconformities. The objective of the study is to identify the barriers occurred in a solid corporate governance implementation and sustainable development of companies, as these aspects are emphasized in the reports of companies from various industries listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange. The companies’ governance consolidation process, on all its pillars, encompasses the social responsibility coordinate, and remains for the Romanian companies a process that must be accelerated and assumed entirely. The conclusions of this study offer important reflection points and might represent a solid basis for improvement of corporate governance and implicitly of stakeholders' benefits.

Selbstregulierung mit Corporate Governance Kodizes für nachhaltige Unternehmensführung in Gemeinwirtschaft und Nonprofit-Organisationen

Good Governance und nachhaltige Unternehmensführung sind für Gemeinwirtschaft und Gemeinwohl von besonderer Bedeutung. Allerdings zeigen empirische Studien nach wie vor gravierende Governance-Defizite. Selbstregulierung mit Corporate Governance Kodizes wird relevante Potenziale zugewiesen und die Notwendigkeiten und Chancen zur Einführung und Überarbeitung werden für öffentliche Verwaltungen, gemeinwirtschaftliche Unternehmen, Nonprofit-Organisationen, Genossenschaften, kirchliche Einrichtungen, internationale Nichtregierungsorganisationen und weitere gemeinwohlorientierte Organisationsformen vielfach betont. Selbstregulierung ist sowohl ein Policy-Instrument als auch ein Governance-Mechanismus für die Erreichung von Politik- und Organisationszielen als Alternative oder zur Ergänzung von gesetzlichen Maßnahmen. Dieser Beitrag möchte für die weitere Diskussion um Effekte von Corporate Governance Kodizes in gemeinwohlorientierten Kontexten zu einem vollumfänglichen Verständnis des international einschlägigen comply-or-explain Prinzips als zentralem Gestaltungselement von Corporate Governance Kodizes beitragen, auf ein relevantes systemisches Forschungsgefälle zusätzlich aufmerksam machen und Impulse für die zukünftige Erforschung der Effekte von Corporate Governance Kodizes in verschiedenen organisationalen Kontexten in Interaktionen mit weiteren Faktoren liefern.

6. Corporate governance

Each Concentrate revision guide is packed with essential information, key cases, revision tips, exam Q&As, and more. Concentrates show you what to expect in a law exam, what examiners are looking for, and how to achieve extra marks. This chapter discusses the UK corporate governance system and some of the key corporate governance topics. It begins by looking at what corporate governance is and how the UK’s corporate governance system has evolved. The chapter then discusses the effectiveness of the ‘comply or explain’ approach. It also discusses a number of key corporate governance mechanisms, namely institutional investors, non-executive directors, and directors’ remuneration.

The “comply-or-explain” principle in directive 95/2014/EU. A rhetorical analysis of Italian PIEs

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of the comply-or-explain principle in the Italian context. In particular, the analysis will evaluate, which factor impact on firms' voluntary adoption of this tool to adequate their non-financial reports to the legal requirements of Directive 95/2014/EU. Design/methodology/approach The methodology consists of two different levels of analysis. The first part is statistical descriptive, and it consists of a rhetorical analysis on the justifications provided by the firms about their omissions to comply with Directive 95/2014/EU. The second part is inferential and its aim is to evaluate, which factors impact on comply-or-explains adoption. Findings The findings reveal how the comply-or-explain application in Italy has been characterized by several criticisms. The result highlight how the justifications adopted by the firms is influenced by their sector of activity and omission's type. Moreover, the analysis suggests how the sector of activity and the level of adherence to global reporting initiative influenced the average number of omissions. Research limitations/implications The limitations of the research are represented by the focuses on a single country and by the short period of analysis. In this sense, future research could be addressed to the analysis of countries different from Italy. Moreover, accounting scholars could provide further contributions to the political debate through the evolution of the “comply-or-explain” principle’s strategies over the years. Practical implications The practical implications connected to the present research are twofold. The first one is represented by the possibility for policymakers to increase the degree of attention about the use of comply-or-explain as legitimization's tool. The second one is represented by the possibility for practitioners to identify a new reporting framework. Social implications The social implications are represented by the possibility for stakeholders to evaluate the reliability's degree of the disclosure produced by Italian public interest entities after the implementation of Directive 95/2014/EU. Originality/value Despite the growing attention paid by academics regard Directive 95/2014/EU, this is the first attempt to analyze the comply-or-explain from a rhetorical perspective.

The end of 'comply or explain' in UK corporate governance?

N/A