We haven’t had a meeting of the Compliance Week book club in a while, so let me share what I’ve been reading lately: A Real Look at Real World Corporate Governance, by David Larcker and Brian Tayan. If you want a book that lives up to its name—giving practical examples of corporate conduct, both good and bad, at actual companies; and debunking several standard notions of governance along the way—then download this sleek volume immediately. (Available as an Amazon Kindle e-book only, 131 pps., $9.99.)
Larcker and Tayan work at the Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University, and have a history of picking apart widely held beliefs about governance. In 2011 they published a paper, “Seven Myths of Corporate Governance,” looking at questions such as whether CEOs really are overpaid, or whether proxy advisory firms usually give good advice. (No to both questions, they argued.) Their newest work still has plenty of “pure” corporate governance issues—CEO succession, composition of the board of directors, CEO compensation—and they’ve expanded their scope to include financial reporting and internal control issues as well, with plenty of thought-provoking conclusions the corporate governance community can’t easily dismiss.
