L’amitié entre un administrateur et un PCD (CEO) peut interférer avec les responsabilités de fiduciaire*

Voici un compte rendu, paru dans le NYT, d’un article scientifique, publié dans The Accounting Review en juillet 2014, qui montre que les administrateurs ayant des relations d’amitié avec le président et chef de la direction (PCD) de l’entreprise sont moins enclins à exercer une supervision serrée des activités de la direction.

Cependant, le fait de divulguer ces relations personnelles n’a pour effet de raffermir les devoirs de diligence et de vigilance des administrateurs, mais sert plutôt de prétexte pour les dédouaner en leur permettant d’être encore plus tolérants des actions de leur PCD.

Les auteurs tirent deux conclusions de ces résultats : (1) le fait de divulguer des conflits ou des relations personnelles n’élimine pas les conséquences négatives reliées à cette divulgation et (2) les actionnaires doivent se méfier des liens trop étroits que certains administrateurs entretiennent avec leur PCD.

Rappelons-nous que trop près n’est pas préférable à trop loin. Un juste équilibre doit s’imposer !

L’étude “Will Disclosure of Friendship Ties between Directors and CEOs Yield Perverse Effects? » a été conduite par Jacob M. Rose et Anna M. Rose de Bentley University, Carolyn Strand Norman de Virginia Commonwealth University et Cheri R. Mazza de Sacred Heart University. En voici quelques extraits. Bonne lecture !

The C.E.O. Is My Friend. So Back Off

…

But the research makes a counterintuitive finding as well. The conventional wisdom holds that when you disclose personal ties, you create transparency and better governance. The experiment found that when social relationships were disclosed as part of director-independence regulations, board members didn’t toughen their oversight of their chief-executive pals. Rather, the directors went easier on the C.E.O., perhaps believing that they had done their duty by disclosing the Relationship.

…

Now for the results: Among the directors who counted the C.E.O. as a friend, 46 percent said they would cut research and development by one-quarter or more to ensure a bonus payout to their pal. By contrast, only 6 percent of directors with no personal ties to the chief executive agreed to reduce research and development to generate a bonus.

That’s to be expected.

The results get more interesting when disclosure is added to the mix. An astonishing 62 percent of directors who disclosed a friendship with the C.E.O. said they would cut $10 million or more from the budget — the amount necessary to generate a bonus. Only 28 percent of the directors who had not disclosed their relationship with the executive agreed to make the cuts necessary to generate a bonus.

Only one director with no ties to the executive agreed to cut the budget by $10 million or more.

Mr. Rose, an author of the paper, said he and his colleagues were surprised that so many directors said they’d be willing to put the company at risk to ensure a bonus for their pal, the C.E.O. “If just by mentioning that you’re friends with the C.E.O. it affects their decision-making, we think the effects going on in the real world are much, much larger than what we picked up in the lab,” Mr. Rose said in an interview last week.

Even more disturbing, he said, was that so many directors seemed to think that disclosing their friendships with the C.E.O. gave them license to put the executive’s interests ahead of the company’s.

“When you disclose things, it may make you feel you’ve met your obligations,” Mr. Rose said. “They’re not all that worried about doing something to help out the C.E.O. because everyone has had a fair warning.”

…

____________________________________

* En reprise

Comportements néfastes liés au narcissisme de certains PCD (CEO) | En reprise

Il est indéniable qu’un PCD (CEO) doit avoir une personnalité marquante, un caractère fort et un leadership manifeste. Ces caractéristiques tant recherchées chez les premiers dirigeants peuvent, dans certains cas, s’accompagner de traits de personnalité dysfonctionnels tels que le narcissisme.

C’est ce que Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic soutien dans son article publié sur le blogue du HuffPost du 2 janvier 2014. Il cite deux études qui confirment que le comportement narcissique de certains dirigeants (1) peut avoir des effets néfastes sur le moral des employés, (2) éloigner les employés potentiels talentueux et (3) contribuer à un déficit de valeurs d’intégrité à l’échelle de toute l’organisation.

L’auteur avance que les membres des conseils d’administration, notamment ceux qui constituent les comités de Ressources humaines, doivent être conscients des conséquences potentiellement dommageables des leaders flamboyants et « charismatiques ». En fait, les études montrent que les vertus d’humilité, plutôt que les traits d’arrogance, sont de bien meilleures prédicteurs du succès d’une organisation.

La première étude citée montre que les organisations dirigées par des PCD prétentieux et tout-puissants ont tendances à avoir de moins bons résultats, tout en étant plus sujettes à des fraudes.

La seconde étude indique que les valeurs d’humilité incarnées par un leader ont des conséquences positives sur l’engagement des employés.

Voici en quelques paragraphes les conclusions de ces deux études. Bonne lecture !

In the first study, Antoinette Rijsenbilt and Harry Commandeur assessed the narcissism levels of 953 CEOs from a wide range of industries, as well as examining objective performance indicators of their companies during their tenure. Unsurprisingly, organizations led by arrogant, self-centered, and entitled CEOs tended to perform worse, and their CEOs were significantly more likely to be convicted for corporate fraud (e.g., fake financial reports, rigged accounts, insider trading, etc.). Interestingly, the detrimental effects of narcissism appear to be exacerbated when CEOs are charismatic, which is consistent with the idea that charisma is toxic because it increases employees’ blind trust and irrational confidence in the leader. If you hire a charismatic leader, be prepared to put up with a narcissist.

In the second study, Bradley Owens and colleagues examined the effects of leader humility on employee morale and turnover. Their results showed that « in contrast to rousing employees through charismatic, energetic, and idealistic leadership approaches (…) a ‘quieter’ leadership approach, with listening, being transparent about limitations, and appreciating follower strengths and contributions [is the most] effective way to engage employees. » This suggests that narcissistic CEOs may be good at attracting talent, but they are probably better at repelling it. Prospective job candidates, especially high potentials, should therefore think twice before being seduced by the meteoric career opportunities outlined by charismatic executives. Greed is not only contagious, but competitive and jealous, too…

The Dark Side of Executive Narcissism: How CEOs Destroy Companies’ Reputation and Employee Morale

If we can educate organizations, in particular board members, on the virtues of humility and the destructive consequences of narcissistic and charismatic leadership, we may see a smaller proportion of entitled, arrogant, and fraudulent CEOs — to everyone’s benefit. Instead of worshiping and celebrating the flamboyant habits of corporate bosses, let us revisit the wise words of Peter Drucker, who knew a thing or two about management:

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit.

Vidéo de formation sur les tendances en matière de gouvernance de sociétés au Canada et aux États-Unis | Une réalisation du CAS

Récemment, le Collège des administrateurs de sociétés (CAS) a répondu à la demande de l’organisme « ecoDa » (The European Confederation of Directors Associations) de produire une capsule vidéo de formation sur les tendances en matière de gouvernance de sociétés au Canada et aux États-Unis. Cette vidéo sera présentée par ecoDa à chaque offre de son cours « New Governance Challenges for Board Members in Europe » présentée en classe à Bruxelles en Belgique, siège social de l’ecoDa.

Ce mandat a été réalisé avec succès grâce à la contribution de Gilles Bernier, directeur des programmes du CAS, qui a réuni Mme Alexandra Lajoux, Chief Knowledge Officer de la National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) aux États-Unis et M. Chris Bart, Founder and Lead Faculty du Directors College en Ontario.

Intitulé « Where is Corporate Governance Going : The View from Canada and the USA », cette vidéo de formation vise à sensibiliser les participants à l’évolution des pratiques de gouvernance à l’extérieur de l’Europe.

D’une durée de 20 minutes, les experts invités discutent des sujets suivants :

(1) le rôle du CA à l’égard de la stratégie et du risque

(2) la réglementation et les enjeux touchant les investisseurs

(3) les nouvelles tendances en matière de gouvernance des TI et celles touchant la gouvernance des principales sociétés œuvrant dans le secteur technologique

(4) l’importance du talent et de la diversité sur les conseils, ainsi que l’importance de la formation des administrateurs de sociétés.

La capsule vidéo (en anglais) est disponible sur la page You Tube | CASulaval.

Bon visionnement !

Cinq questions d’éthique au cœur des actions des hauts dirigeants | Comment y faire face ?

Voici un court article de Mark Pastin publié dans Chief Executive magazine qui présente cinq erreurs en éthique, souvent commises par le président et chef de la direction de nos entreprises.

Il est très important de bien comprendre la portée de ces erreurs parce que, comme dit l’auteur, celles-ci peuvent être évitées. Je crois que les énoncés qui suivent sont assez évidents !

Je vous souhaite une bonne lecture et je souhaiterais recevoir vos commentaires.

The Biggest Ethical Mistakes Made by CEOs and How to Avoid Them

Mistake #1: Assuming that a business practice is acceptable because it’s common practice in the industry

This depends on which companies in an industry you compare yourself to. For example, Enron was the most admired company in the energy industry—until it wasn’t. If you are the first one in an industry caught doing something wrong, you often pay the price for the entire industry correcting its practices. There is a scene in the movie Tin Men in which two aluminum siding salesmen sit outside a congressional hearing saying to one another, “We only did what everyone was doing.” If this sounds a bit lame, avoid putting yourself in the same position.

Mistake #2: Confusing legal advice with ethical advice

The job of legal counsel is to tell you the legal consequences of various courses of action—not whether you should take those actions. It is the job of the CEO to decide which risks to take and which to avoid. An action can be legal but still be unethical. Many of the investment activities that led to the 2008 recession were perfectly legal—and also perfectly unethical. It is a mistake to use your legal counsel as your conscience just because you are used to disclosing confidential information to your lawyers. Once you step outside of the domain of legal advice, legal counsel is no more able to give good ethical advice than any of your other advisors.

Mistake #3: Trusting the managers potentially implicated in an ethical issue to investigate the issue

While it is important to show managers that you trust them, it is more important to protect the reputation of your company. It is hard for managers to admit they made an ethical mistake or that an ethical mistake was made on their watch. The CEO should have resources, such as a compliance officer or director of internal audit, outside the line of command to investigate potential legal and ethical breaches. When these resources are regularly used to investigate serious matters, line managers will not be surprised when they are called upon to investigate an ethical issue. They will not conclude that you don’t trust them if they know that this is how serious issues are always addressed.

Mistake #4: Fixing a problem going forward without owning the problem’s history

This would be like GM fixing its ignition problem going forward without owning the problem in cars currently on the road. This never works, but it is very tempting to CEOs who don’t want a past problem dragging their organization down. How often have you heard a CEO or company say, “As soon as we learned of the problem, we fixed it.” That is simply not good enough. You need to show that the organization recognizes the harm caused by an unethical practice and is taking steps to rectify past harm, while avoiding repeating the same action again. Everyone will be asking, “What about everything leading up to the present?” So you have to be ready to answer this question.

Mistake #5: Judging the information you receive by the person from whom you receive it

I know of no ethical fiasco that did not present clearer warning signs. Somehow these signs were ignored—and not without reason. The information that enables you to prevent an ethical crisis often comes from individuals who are afraid of taking any risks, whine about everything, and have a chip on their shoulder. I have just described one type of whistleblower. Whistleblowers are more protected and rewarded under current law than many CEOs realize. This is especially true of the defense, financial services, and healthcare sectors where whistleblowers are not only protected, but can sometimes even receive bounties in the tens of millions of dollars. Sharp CEOs ignore the source of troubling information and evaluate the information without bias. An ethical leader is always asking, “What if this information, although from a questionable source, is true? Would I gamble the future of my organization on it not being true?”

All of these ethical mistakes can be avoided if you are on the lookout for them. The most important way to avoid ethical mistakes is by paying attention to information you would rather ignore or believe to be untrue. Ethical mistakes tend not to go away. The longer you know of an unethical action without reacting to it, the worse the consequences of eventually admitting the mistake for the organization—and its leader. CEOs know that such mistakes, even if not involving illegal activities, can destroy the reputation of an organization. And they know that ignoring or covering up such a mistake simply compounds the consequences of mistakes.

Ethical leadership is not just about having and acting on sound values; it is about confronting the facts no matter how uncomfortable it may be to do so.

Management: cinq idées reçues qui ont la vie dure

Recruter des profils similaires, capitaliser sur ses points forts… Ces « archaïsmes managériaux » sont à revoir, selon Pascal Picq, paléoanthropologue au Collège de France. Car la clef de l’évolution est dans la diversité. Décryptage.

Source: lentreprise.lexpress.fr

Vouloir coller parfaitement à un modèle idéal préétabli est une vue universaliste des choses qui nie les contraintes mouvantes et nos capacités à y répondre en innovant. Car l’homme est l’espèce qui a la plus grande plasticité comportementale, physique et cognitive. D’où l’importance pour un manager de dépasser les clichés du « bien agir » qui figent les comportements et freinent l’élan créatif et adaptatif.
En savoir plus sur http://lentreprise.lexpress.fr/rh-management/management/management-cinq-idees-recues-qui-ont-la-vie-dure_1614209.html#c1kIkRIcVqUuvVpy.99

La séparation des pouvoirs entre PCA et PCD : une règle de bonne gouvernance !

L’article de Paul Hodgson publié dans Fortune affiche est une position très nette en ce qui concerne la séparation des rôles de président du conseil d’administration (PCA) et de président et chef de la direction (PCD) : C’est une mauvaise stratégie sur toute la ligne !

Plusieurs études ont montré l’inefficacité de cette approche, en plus de démontrer clairement les risques de conflits entre le devoir de fiduciaire de l’administrateur et le rôle de premier dirigeant.

Alors que la plupart des modèles de gouvernance dans le monde se fondent sur la séparation des rôles, pourquoi constate-t-on une si forte résistance dans le cas des entreprises américaines ?

L’auteur apporte plusieurs arguments qui expliquent la lenteur des changements aux É.U. Voici un aperçu des grandes lignes de l’article.

Bonne lecture ! Vos commentaires sont appréciés.

Should the chairman be the CEO?

Put simply, no. Splitting the roles saves money and improves a company’s performance. So why isn’t Corporate America listening?

Brian Moynihan, chairman and chief executive officer of Bank of America Corp.

A study published in 2012 found that the cost of paying one person as CEO/chairman was significantly higher than paying two people as CEO and non-executive chairman. The study also found that long-term shareholder returns were significantly better at companies that had separated the roles. This model—an executive CEO and a non-executive chairman—has been adopted in most other economies. Why is the U.S. so resistant?

…

So why is it important to have a separate chairman and CEO? Put simply, the CEO is the primary manager of a company and the chairman is the head of the board, which oversees management. There’s really no good reason why one person should do both jobs. And there’s really no sense in recombining the two roles when a company’s problems are resolved. It’s silly to believe that new problems, the kind that will require an independent board’s insight, won’t arise in the future.

…

Finally, appointing an executive chairman, especially when it is a former CEO, is just a bad idea. It puts two managers—or, in the case of Oracle, three managers—in place where one is sufficient, and there is still no independent check on management. And, really, when a former CEO becomes chair, no one is really in any doubt as to who remains in charge.

…

Most, if not all, companies would be wise to appoint an independent chairman and make the position permanent in the company’s bylaws, so the decision can’t be reversed without shareholder approval.

Le point de vue sans équivoque de l’activiste Carl Icahn

Depuis quelques années, on parle souvent d’activistes, d’actionnaires activistes, d’investisseurs activistes ou de Hedge Funds pour qualifier la philosophie de ceux qui veulent assainir la gouvernance des entreprises et redonner une place prépondérante aux « actionnaires-propriétaires » !

Pour ceux qui sont intéressés à connaître le point de vue et les arguments d’un actionnaire activiste célèbre, je vous invite à lire l’article écrit par Carl Icahn le 22 août sur son site Shareholders’ Square Table (SST).

Vous aurez ainsi une très bonne idée de cette nouvelle approche à la gouvernance qui fait rage depuis quelque temps.

Je vous invite aussi à lire l’article de Icahn qui s’insurge contre la position de Warren Buffet de ne pas intervenir dans la décision de la rémunération globale « excessive » à Coke, suivi de la réponse de Buffet.

My article from Barron’s on Warren Buffett’s abstention from a vote on Coke’s executive-pay plan

À vous de vous former une opinion sur ce sujet ! Bonne lecture !

The Bottom Line | Carl Icahn

Among other things, I’m known to be a “reductionist.” In my line of work you must be good at pinpointing what to focus on – that is, the major underlying truths and problems in a situation. I then become obsessive about solving or fixing whatever they may be. This combination is what perhaps has lead to my success over the years and is why I’ve chosen to be so outspoken about shareholder activism, corporate governance issues, and the current economic state of America.

Currently, I believe that the facts “reduce” to one indisputable truth which is that we must change our system of selecting CEOs in order to stay competitive and get us out of an extremely dangerous financial situation. With exceptions, I believe that too many companies in this country are terribly run and there’s no system in place to hold the CEOs and Boards of these inadequately managed companies accountable. There are numerous challenges we are facing today whether it be monetary policy, unemployment, income inequality, the list can go on and on… but the thing we have to remember is there is something we can do about it: Shareholders, the true owners of our companies, can demand that mediocre CEOs are held accountable and make it clear that they will be replaced if they are failing.

I am convinced by our record that this will make our corporations much more productive and profitable and will go a long way in helping to solve our unemployment problems and the other issues now ailing our economy.

…….

Les C.A de petites tailles performent mieux !

Selon une étude du The Wall Street Journal publié par Joann S. Lublin, les entreprises qui comptent moins d’administrateurs ont de meilleurs résultats que les entreprises de plus grandes tailles.

Bien qu’il n’y ait pas nécessairement de relation de type cause à effet, il semble assez clair que la tendance est à la diminution de nombre d’administrateurs sur les conseils d’administration des entreprises publiques américaines. Pourquoi en est-il ainsi ?

Il y a de nombreuses raisons dont l’article du WSJ, ci-dessous, traite. Essentiellement, les membres de conseils de petites tailles :

sont plus engagés dans les affaires de l’entité
sont plus portés à aller en profondeur dans l’analyse stratégique
entretiennent des relations plus fréquentes et plus harmonieuses avec la direction
ont plus de possibilités de communiquer entre eux
exercent une surveillance plus étroite des activités de la direction
sont plus décisifs, cohésif et impliqués.

Les entreprises du domaine financier ont traditionnellement des conseils de plus grandes tailles mais, encore là, les plus petits conseils ont de meilleurs résultats.

La réduction de la taille se fait cependant très lentement mais la tendance est résolument à la baisse. Il ne faut cependant pas compter sur la haute direction pour insister sur la diminution de la taille des C.A. car il semblerait que plusieurs PCD s’accommodent très bien d’un C.A. plus imposant !

Il faut cependant réaliser que la réduction du nombre d’administrateurs peut constituer un obstacle à la diversité si l’on ne prend pas en compte cette importante variable. Également, il faut noter que le C.A. doit avoir un président du conseil expérimenté, possédant un fort leadership. Un conseil de petite taille, présidé par une personne inepte, aura des résultats à l’avenant !

Voici deux autres documents, partagés par Richard Leblanc sur son groupe de discussion LinkedIn Boards and Advisors, qui pourraient vous intéresser :

« Higher market valuation of companies with a small board of directors« : http://people.stern.nyu.edu/eofek/PhD/papers/Y_Higher_JFE.pdf

« Larger Board Size and Decreasing Firm Value in Small Firms« : http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1403&context=facpub

Je vous convie donc à la lecture de l’article du WSJ dont voici un extrait de l’article. Bonne lecture !

Smaller Boards Get Bigger Returns

Size counts, especially for boards of the biggest U.S. businesses.

Companies with fewer board members reap considerably greater rewards for their investors, according to a new study by governance researchers GMI Ratings prepared for The Wall Street Journal. Small boards at major corporations foster deeper debates and more nimble decision-making, directors, recruiters and researchers said. Take Apple Inc. In the spring when BlackRock founding partner Sue Wagner was up for a seat on the board of the technology giant, she met nearly every director within just a few weeks. Such screening processes typically take months.

But Apple directors move fast because there only are eight of them. After her speedy vetting, Ms. Wagner joined Apple’s board in July. She couldn’t be reached for comment.

Smaller boards at major corporations have more nimble decision-making processes, directors, recruiters and academic researchers say. Eric Palma

Among companies with a market capitalization of at least $10 billion, typically those with the smallest boards produced substantially better shareholder returns over a three-year period between the spring of 2011 and 2014 when compared with companies with the biggest boards, the GMI analysis of nearly 400 companies showed.

Companies with small boards outperformed their peers by 8.5 percentage points, while those with large boards underperformed peers by 10.85 percentage points. The smallest board averaged 9.5 members, compared with 14 for the biggest. The average size was 11.2 directors for all companies studied, GMI said.

« There’s more effective oversight of management with a smaller board, » said Jay Millen, head of the board and CEO practice for recruiters DHR International. « There’s no room for dead wood. »

Many companies are thinning their board ranks to improve effectiveness, Mr. Millen said. He recently helped a consumer-products business shrink its 10-person board to seven, while bringing on more directors with emerging-markets expertise.

GMI’s results, replicated across 10 industry sectors such as energy, retail, financial services and health care, could have significant implications for corporate governance.

Small boards are more likely to dismiss CEOs for poor performance—a threat that declines significantly as boards grow in numbers, said David Yermack, a finance professor at New York University’s business school who has studied the issue.

It’s tough to pinpoint precisely why board size affects corporate performance, but smaller boards at large-cap companies like Apple and Netflix Inc. appear to be decisive, cohesive and hands-on. Such boards typically have informal meetings and few committees. Apple directors, known for their loyalty to founder Steve Jobs, have forged close ties with CEO Tim Cook, according to a person familiar with the company. Mr. Cook frequently confers with individual directors between board meetings « to weigh the pros and cons of an issue, » an outreach effort that occurs quickly thanks to the board’s slim size, this person said.

Mr. Cook took this approach while mulling whether to recruit Angela Ahrendts, then CEO of luxury-goods company Burberry Group PLC for Apple’s long vacant position of retail chief. Private chats with board members helped him « test the thought » of recruiting her, the person said. She started in April.

Ms. Wagner, Apple’s newest director, replaced a retiring one. The board wants no more than 10 members to keep its flexibility intact, according to the person familiar with the company, adding that even « eye contact and candor change » with more than 10 directors.

Apple returns outperformed technology sector peers by about 37 cumulative percentage points during the three years tracked by GMI. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Netflix, with seven directors, demonstrated equally strong returns, outperforming sector peers by about 32 percentage points. Board members of the big video-streaming service debate extensively before approving important management moves, said Jay Hoag, its lead independent director.

« We get in-depth, » he said. « That’s easier with a small group. »

Netflix directors spent about nine months discussing a proposed price increase, with some pushing back hard on executives about the need for an increase, Mr. Hoag said. Netflix increased prices this spring for new U.S. customers of the company’s streaming video plan, its first price bump since 2011.

A board twice as big wouldn’t have time for « diving deeper into the business on things that matter, » Mr. Hoag said.

….

Les relations d’amitié entre un administrateur et son PCD (CEO) peuvent influer sur ses obligations de diligence !

Rappelons-nous que trop près n’est pas préférable à trop loin. Un juste équilibre doit s’imposer !

The C.E.O. Is My Friend. So Back Off

…

That’s to be expected.

Only one director with no ties to the executive agreed to cut the budget by $10 million or more.

…

Le bon « comply or explain » selon la Commission européenne

Ce billet est une synthèse d’un article, plus long et davantage juridique, que le professeur Ivan Tchotourian publiera sur le blogue du BDE (Bulletin de Droit Économique de la Faculté de Droit de l’Université Laval).

Lorsque le blogue du BDE publiera l’article, le lecteur sera renvoyé à l’article de notre blogue. Bonne lecture !

Le bon « comply or explain » selon la Commission européenne

par Ivan Tchotourian

Le 9 avril 2014, la Commission européenne (1) a présenté dans la lignée du Plan d’action qu’elle a diffusé en décembre 2012 une proposition de Recommandation sur la qualité de l’information sur la gouvernance d’entreprise [1]. Certes non obligatoire, le signal envoyé par l’Union européenne n’en est pas moins significatif sur ce que devrait dorénavant être une bonne politique de « comply or explain » (2) de la part des entreprises. Que propose finalement la Commission européenne pour améliorer la situation ? Pas de recette miracle, mais des préconisations de bon sens qui sont les suivantes :

(1) Étendre la portée de la déclaration : les sociétés devraient rendre compte de la manière dont elles se sont conformées aux codes applicables en ce qui concerne les aspects susceptibles d’être les plus importants pour les actionnaires (paragraphe 5);

(2) Améliorer l’accessibilité de l’information : les sociétés sont encouragées à mettre en ligne les informations contenues dans leurs déclarations (paragraphe 6);

(3) Faire preuve d’une grande pédagogie dans la fourniture des informations…

(a) … De conformité : « Les informations peuvent être présentées sous la forme d’une déclaration générale ou bien disposition par disposition, du moment qu’elles sont informatives et utiles aux actionnaires, aux investisseurs et aux autres parties prenantes. Les sociétés devraient éviter de faire des déclarations trop générales, qui pourraient ne pas couvrir certains aspects importants pour les actionnaires, ainsi que des déclarations dans lesquelles elles se contentent de cocher des cases et qui n’ont qu’une faible valeur informative. De même, elles devraient également éviter de fournir des informations trop longues, qui pourraient ne pas permettre une bonne lecture » (considérant 16).

(b) … D’explication en cas de dérogation : la Commission européenne explicite la philosophie de la Section III de la Recommandation qui est le cœur de son initiative dans les considérants 17 et 18 que nous reprenons ici. « Il est très important que des informations appropriées sur les dérogations aux codes applicables et les raisons de ces dérogations soient communiquées, afin que les parties prenantes puissent prendre des décisions en connaissance de cause au sujet des sociétés. […] Les sociétés devraient clairement indiquer à quelles recommandations du code elles ont dérogé et, à chaque fois, fournir une explication concernant la manière dont la société y a dérogé, les raisons de cette dérogation, comment la décision de déroger à une recommandation a été prise, les limites dans le temps de la dérogation et les mesures qui ont été adoptées pour garantir que l’action de la société reste conforme aux objectifs de la recommandation et au code. Lorsqu’elles fournissent ces informations, les sociétés devraient éviter d’utiliser des formules toutes faites et mettre l’accent sur le contexte spécifique à la société qui explique la dérogation à une recommandation. Les explications devraient être structurées et présentées de telle manière qu’elles puissent être facilement comprises et utilisées. Il sera ainsi plus facile aux actionnaires d’engager un dialogue constructif avec la société ».

(4) Mettre en place un suivi efficace pour inciter les sociétés à se conformer à un code de gouvernement d’entreprise ou à expliquer le non-respect de ce code ((paragraphe 11).

__________________________________________

[1] Commission européenne, « Recommandation sur la qualité de l’information sur la gouvernance d’entreprise (« appliquer ou expliquer ») », 2014/208/UE, 9 avril 2014 : JOUE L. 109/43 12 avril 2014.

[2] Le « comply or explain » se trouve davantage explicité dans ses aspects juridiques sur le blogue « Gouvernance et services financiers » du Bulletin de droit économique : http://www.droit-economique.org/?page_id=2304.

La présidence du conseil d’administration (PCA) | Une fonction essentielle au succès des organisations

J’ai répertorié un article d’Andrew Saunders paru dans Management Today en juin 2014 qui décrit toute l’importance du rôle de leader du président du conseil d’administration (PCA).

Selon l’auteur, les fonctions du PCA sont de plus en plus reconnues, au point où il est souvent plus facile de trouver un PDG qu’un grand leader du conseil. L’article présente la fonction de PCA comme consubstantiel au succès de l’entreprise et montre les caractéristiques-clés de ces grands leaders.

J’ai souvent fait référence à l’importance accrue des présidents de conseil dans mes billets précédents. Cet article va plus loin, et plus en détail, sur ce qui fait le succès d’un bon patron du conseil.

Voici un extrait de cet excellent article que je vous invite à lire.

« The chief executive may get the glory and the salary, but leading the board is an increasingly important role, requiring subtlety, maturity and an iron grip on the agenda »

The importance of being a chairman

By contrast, the chairman’s role is less obvious and much less well understood. The task of running the board rather than running the company can appear limited and process-heavy, a lot of dull admin to be tackled while the CEO has all the fun.

But there is much more to it than that: a good chairman is at least as important for the long-term prosperity of a business as a good CEO, and often harder to find. How different might the outcome at Manchester United have been if veteran manager Sir Alex Ferguson had not been allowed to pick his own successor?

A strong chairman should influence the decision-making process, if not always its outcome, greatly for the better. And yet, by comparison with the wide-ranging executive authority enjoyed by the CEO, the chairman’s powers are distinctly limited.

‘As chairman you only really have absolute control of two things,’ says Roger Parry, the chairman of MSQ Partners and a former chairman of Johnston Press and Future Publishing, among others. ‘Firstly, you have (or should have) a lot of influence over hire and fire – you pretty much get to decide who is on the board.

‘And the second crucial thing is that, in the board meeting, you can control what is discussed and for how long. Not only the agenda itself, but the amount of time to be spent on each item. A good deal of the agenda is fixed – you have to discuss health and safety, performance against budget, remuneration and so on – but the weight of emphasis can be shifted by the chairman.’

GOOD CHAIRMEN

Do

Pick NEDs who are sufficiently diverse and strong-minded to challenge the executive directors.

Maintain a five-year perspective. The executive directors are focused on this year, the senior managers on this month. Your job is to take a longer view.

Support chief execs as best you can, know their personal circumstances, priorities and how long they want to stay.

Put your network and wider business experience at the disposal of the board.

Don’t

Dole out non-exec jobs to your old mates.

Get too chummy with CEOs: if you go on family holidays together, it will be much harder to sack them if and when the time comes.

Pull rank on a director in front of their boardroom colleagues.

Ever let the words: ‘This is how we did it when I was the chief executive …’ pass your lips in a board meeting.

Comportements néfastes liés au narcissisme de certains PCD (CEO) *

La seconde étude indique que les valeurs d’humilité incarnées par un leader ont des conséquences positives sur l’engagement des employés.

Voici en quelques paragraphes les conclusions de ces deux études. Bonne lecture.

In the first study, Antoinette Rijsenbilt and Harry Commandeur assessed the narcissism levels of 953 CEOs from a wide range of industries, as well as examining objective performance indicators of their companies during their tenure. Unsurprisingly, organizations led by arrogant, self-centered, and entitled CEOs tended to perform worse, and their CEOs were significantly more likely to be convicted for corporate fraud (e.g., fake financial reports, rigged accounts, insider trading, etc.). Interestingly, the detrimental effects of narcissism appear to be exacerbated when CEOs are charismatic, which is consistent with the idea that charisma is toxic because it increases employees’ blind trust and irrational confidence in the leader. If you hire a charismatic leader, be prepared to put up with a narcissist.

In the second study, Bradley Owens and colleagues examined the effects of leader humility on employee morale and turnover. Their results showed that « in contrast to rousing employees through charismatic, energetic, and idealistic leadership approaches (…) a ‘quieter’ leadership approach, with listening, being transparent about limitations, and appreciating follower strengths and contributions [is the most] effective way to engage employees. » This suggests that narcissistic CEOs may be good at attracting talent, but they are probably better at repelling it. Prospective job candidates, especially high potentials, should therefore think twice before being seduced by the meteoric career opportunities outlined by charismatic executives. Greed is not only contagious, but competitive and jealous, too…

The Dark Side of Executive Narcissism: How CEOs Destroy Companies’ Reputation and Employee Morale

If we can educate organizations, in particular board members, on the virtues of humility and the destructive consequences of narcissistic and charismatic leadership, we may see a smaller proportion of entitled, arrogant, and fraudulent CEOs — to everyone’s benefit. Instead of worshiping and celebrating the flamboyant habits of corporate bosses, let us revisit the wise words of Peter Drucker, who knew a thing or two about management:

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit.

* En reprise

Pourquoi séparer les fonctions de président du conseil (PCA) et de président et chef de la direction (PDG) ? *

Très bonnes réflexions d’Yvan Allaire sur le dogme de la séparation des rôles entre PCA et PDG. À lire sur le blogue Les Affaires .com.

Rien à rajouter à ce billet de l’expert en gouvernance qui , comme moi, cherche des réponses à plusieurs théories sur la gouvernance.

Plus de recherches dans le domaine de la gouvernance serait grandement indiquées… Le CAS et la FSA de l’Université Laval mettront sur pied un programme de recherche dont le but est de répondre à ce type de questionnement.

Pourquoi séparer les fonctions de président du conseil (PCA) et de président et chef de la direction (PDG) ?

Yvan Allaire - World Economic Forum Annual Mee... — Yvan Allaire – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010 Davos (Photo credit: World Economic Forum)

Bien que les études empiriques aient grande difficulté à démontrer de façon irréfutable la valeur de ces deux dogmes, ceux-ci sont, semble-t-il, incontournables. Dans le cas de la séparation des rôles, le sujet a pris une certaine importance récemment chez Research in Motion ainsi que chez Air Transat. Le compromis d’un administrateur en chef (lead director) pour compenser pour le fait que le PCA et le PDG soit la même personne ne satisfait plus; le dogme demande que le président du conseil soit indépendant de la direction ».

______________________________________________

* En reprise

Énoncés de principes de bonne gouvernance 2012 | Business Roundtable *

Voici un document publié par l’organisation américaire Business Roundtable qui est la plus importante association de PCD (CEO) aux É.U. et qui regroupe les plus grandes sociétés avec un total de $6 trillion en revenus annuels et plus de 12 million d’employés. Ce document présente le point de vue des hauts dirigeants de ces sociétés sur les pratiques de bonne gouvernance. Le rapport est représentatif de ce que les membres pensent que devraient être les pratiques exemplaires en matière de gouvernance. C’est une lecture vraiment très pertinente.

Principles of Corporate Governance – 2012

« Business Roundtable supports the following guiding principles:

First, the paramount duty of the board of directors of a public corporation is to select a chief executive officer and to oversee the CEO and senior management in the competent and ethical operation of the corporation on a day-to-day basis.

Second, it is the responsibility of management, under the oversight of the board, to operate the corporation in an effective and ethical manner to produce long-term value for shareholders. The board of directors, the CEO and senior management should set a “tone at the top” that establishes a culture of legal compliance and integrity. Directors and management should never put personal interests ahead of or in conflict with the interests of the corporation.

Third, it is the responsibility of management, under the oversight of the board, to develop and implement the corporation’s strategic plans, and to identify, evaluate and manage the risks inherent in the corporation’s strategy. The board of directors should understand the corporation’s strategic plans, the associated risks, and the steps that management is taking to monitor and manage those risks. The board and senior management should agree on the appropriate risk profile for the corporation, and they should be comfortable that the strategic plans are consistent with that risk profile.

Fourth, it is the responsibility of management, under the oversight of the audit committee and the board, to produce financial statements that fairly present the financial condition and results of operations of the corporation and to make the timely disclosures investors need to assess the financial and business soundness and risks of the corporation.

Fifth, it is the responsibility of the board, through its audit committee, to engage an independent accounting firm to audit the financial statements prepared by management and issue an opinion that those statements are fairly stated in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, as well as to oversee the corporation’s relationship with the outside auditor.

Sixth, it is the responsibility of the board, through its corporate governance committee, to play a leadership role in shaping the corporate governance of the corporation and the composition and leadership of the board. The corporate governance committee should regularly assess the backgrounds, skills and experience of the board and its members and engage in succession planning for the board.

Seventh, it is the responsibility of the board, through its compensation committee, to adopt and oversee the implementation of compensation policies, establish goals for performance-based compensation, and determine the compensation of the CEO and senior management. Compensation policies and goals should be aligned with the corporation’s long-term strategy, and they should create incentives to innovate and produce long-term value for shareholders without excessive risk. These policies and the resulting compensation should be communicated clearly to shareholders.

Eighth, it is the responsibility of the corporation to engage with longterm shareholders in a meaningful way on issues and concerns that are of widespread interest to long-term shareholders, with appropriate involvement from the board of directors and management.

Ninth, it is the responsibility of the corporation to deal with its employees, customers, suppliers and other constituencies in a fair and equitable manner and to exemplify the highest standards of corporate citizenship.

These responsibilities and others are critical to the functioning of the modern public corporation and the integrity of the public markets. No law or regulation can be a substitute for the voluntary adherence to these principles by corporate directors and management in a manner that fits the needs of their individual corporations ».

___________________________

* En reprise

Articles reliés au sujet :

Les dirigeants d’entreprises privées font-ils de bons administrateurs d’OBNL ?

Est-ce que les hauts dirigeants, reconnus pour leurs habiletés de gestionnaires, font de bons administrateurs d’organisations à buts non lucratifs (OBNL) ?

La thèse de William G. Bowen* (1994) est à l’effet que beaucoup de représentants du monde des affaires, siégeant sur des conseils d’administration d’OBNL, le font pour une multitude de raisons n’ayant pas toujours de relations avec les intérêts de l’organisation, mais servent plutôt à faire avancer leurs intérêts personnels !

Eugene H. Fram**, expert en gouvernance des OBNL et auteur du billet publié sur le blogue Nonprofit Management, croit qu’il faut peindre un portrait plus nuancé en 2014. Selon lui, les comités de gouvernance et de mise en nomination ne devraient cependant jamais prendre pour acquis que l’efficacité d’un gestionnaire dans une entreprise privée sera garante d’une valeur ajoutée pour l’OBNL.

Les perceptions de ceux-ci sont trop souvent à l’effet que les OBNL sont plus permissives, moins exigeantes, moins sérieuses … La réalité est tout autre et les dirigeants devraient y penser à deux fois avant de s’engager sur un C.A. d’OBNL ! Plusieurs témoigneront que les réunions de ces conseils sont très souvent complexes, sensitives, moins structurées et, souvent, éprouvantes pour des « gestionnaires chevronnés »…

On a ici un beau sujet d’étude (de recherche) car le modèle d’affaires des OBNL suppose toujours une contribution remarquable des gens d’affaires !

Pensez-vous que la situation a beaucoup évoluée depuis l’affirmation de Bowen, il y a 20 ans ? La gouvernance des OBNL a-t-elle changée au point de modifier les perceptions des gens d’affaires ?

Vos commentaires sont les bienvenus. Bonne lecture !

Do Today’s Business Leaders Make Effective Nonprofit Directors?

The names of the new board nominees have been announced. They include several outstanding recruits from the business community. Will these new formidable directors perform well in the nonprofit environment? William G. Bowen, a veteran director in both the for-profit and nonprofit environments, raised the following questions about such beginnings in a 1994 article:* Is it true that well-regarded representatives of the business world are often surprisingly ineffective as members of nonprofit boards? Do they seem to have checked their analytical skills and their “toughness” at the door? If this is true in some considerable number of cases, what is the explanation?

An example of the U.S. Nonprofit Organization postage meter marking made with a Pitney Bowes mailstream system. Letter. 2007. Русский: Пример штампа франкировальной машины системы Pitney Bowes, имеющего тариф « Nonprofit Organization » (США, 2007). Письмо. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are Bowen’s observations about directors’ questionable motivations for accepting director positions still applicable in the 21st century? He noted that some nonprofit directors accept board positions because they are dedicated to the organization’s mission, vision and values. But he also hypothesized that business leaders are sometimes motivated to join nonprofit boards for a variety of other reasons. They may regard board membership as a “vacation from the bottom line … or the enjoyment of a membership in a new ‘club’.” Also they perhaps join nonprofit boards to “soften” community perceptions that, as tough bottom-line executives, they also may care as much about human issues as they care about shareholder returns. (It would probably be costly or impossible to obtain objective data of this observation.) Press reports through the years, since 1994, have indicated that such attitudes still hold leadership sway in nonprofit organizations. (See: Nonprofit Board Crisis.com)

In today’s nonprofit environment, there may remain senior business leaders or groups who are less serious about the responsibilities incumbent upon board members, as noted by Bowen. If this is the situation, a high level of board permissiveness, allowed by business-oriented directors and others, is still causing a level of board dysfunction business leaders would never allow on their own boards.

…

____________________________________

21st Century Reflections on Bowen’s Observations

Since Bowen’s 1994 observations, there have been some improvements. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has driven some of the changes in audit committee’s procedures, overviews of internal controls, whistle-blower requirement, CEO’s & CFOs signatures attesting to financial statement accuracy, etc. Although not required by law, some larger nonprofits have adhered to all the provisions of the Act. I also feel business leaders now think more deeply about joining a nonprofit board, especially after the Penn State scandal and the reputation embarrassment the board encountered.

But do these changes indicate substantial change reducing the permissiveness in the nonprofit environment Bowen described? Anecdotally, here is a typical comment that I continue to hear, this one from the board chair large nonprofit with 300 employees. “We don’t expect the same standards of management performance that the business organization has.”

However, I am optimistic about the future. As nonprofit boards select more professional type CEO’s to lead their organizations, whether they are hired internally or externally, more change will take place. Hopefully, if boards want to retain these people, this movement should place some subtle pressures on board nomination committees to seek more candidates whose motivation is to focus on mission, vision and values, along with balanced budgets. A new breed should readily understand that this focus has the same meaning to nonprofit stakeholders, as a profit focus does to business stakeholders.

_____________________________________________

* William G. Bowen (1994), “When a Business Leader Joins a Nonprofit Board,” Harvard Business Review, September-October. Bowen currently is president emeritus of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and former president of Princeton University in Princeton. He has served as an outside director for a wide variety of for-profit and nonprofit organizations.

**Eugene H. Fram PRACTITIONER AND PROFESSOR OF MARKETING AND MANAGEMENT, AUTHOR & CONSULTANT. ALSO SIGNIFICANT EXPERTISE WITH BUSINESS & NONPROFIT BOARDS OF DIRECTORS.

Comment échapper aux mythes trompeurs de la rémunération des PCD ?

Voici un texte de Michael Dorff, professeur à Southwestern Law School, qui se questionne sérieusement sur le processus de rémunération des CEO (PCD), plus particulièrement sur les indicateurs utilisés pour en établir la valeur.

Dans son livre à paraître bientôt, « Indispensable and other myths : The empirical truth about CEO pay », il avance qu’il faut échapper à l’envie d’utiliser l’approche de la comparaison (Benchmark) avec les pairs pour fixer les rémunérations des PCD, et à l’idée de relier trop étroitement leurs rémunérations avec la capitalisation boursière de l’entreprise.

Selon lui, il n’y a pas de marché pour les talents des PCD et ceux-ci ont peu de possibilités de trouver un poste similaire dans une autre entreprise. Pourquoi alors entretenir le mythe de leur situation monopolistique, toute puissante ?

L’auteur présente une vision assez révolutionnaire de la manière de concevoir la rétribution des présidents et chefs de direction (PCD).

Je reproduis ci-dessous le billet paru sur son site Indispensable and other myths. Quel est votre point de vue sur le sujet ?

Quels sont les critères les plus raisonnables pour établir la rémunération des hauts dirigeants ? Vos commentaires sont les bienvenus !

Escaping the Conformity Trap

Pearl Meyer & Partners has just released their contribution to the NACD’s new Governance Challenges 2014 and Beyond report, “Escaping the Conformity Trap: Aligning Executive Pay Programs with Business and Leadership Objectives.” I love the overall theme, which is that companies should not default to cookie-cutter measures of executive performance just because their peer companies do. The report also indicates that companies shouldn’t defer to peers on the amount of pay, though this point is less prominent. I make a similar — though more sweeping — argument in my forthcoming book, Indispensable and Other Myths: Why the CEO Pay Experiment Failed, and How to Fix It. (The book should be out around the end of May.)

Office Politics: A Rise to the Top (Photo credit: Alex E. Proimos)

Unfortunately, while there’s a lot in the Pearl Meyer report that is laudable, there’s also a fair amount of rehashing of typical errors. On page 18 (the report starts on p. 17 for some reason), the report describes the growth in CEO pay of 12% from 2009-2012 in Fortune 100 firms as “comparatively conservative.” This is technically true, if by “comparatively conservative” Pearl Meyer means that there have been much steeper rises in executive pay. But the rationale seems to be different. The report points out that the market capitalization of Fortune 100 firms increased by 50% over this same period, and credits external scrutiny of CEO pay and a desire to remain within peers’ norms for restraining CEO pay.

The clear implication here is that CEO pay should rise in proportion to the company’s stock price. (The report says this more explicitly on page 19 when it says total shareholder return is often a good performance metric.) As I point out in Indispensable, this is a dangerous fallacy. CEOs do not control their companies’ stock price. They can influence price (especially in the short term), but careful empirical studies have repeatedly demonstrated that executives’ actions account for only a small percentage of share price movement. The external environment broadly — and in the industry more particularly — drive the bulk of share price movement. So why should companies peg CEO pay to the growth in share price that for the most part is independent of their actions? This sort of rhetorical move is particularly disappointing in a report whose laudable aims seems to be to move companies in precisely the opposite direction, away from easy, off-the-shelf measures like share price that fail to capture what companies should really care about.
The report also backtracks when it comes to using comparable companies to set the amount of CEO pay. Despite having at least hinted that this is a poor strategy elsewhere in the report, it states (on p. 18):

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with providing executives with pay opportunities that reflect market norms for comparable positions in similarly sized and oriented companies. With well-designed long-term performance metrics and goals, establishing pay opportunities at market median will help ensure that actual, realizable pay is appropriately positioned based on relative performance outcomes.

But there absolutely is something wrong with this. As Charles Elson and Craig Ferrere have recently demonstrated, there is no market for CEO talent. Since CEOs have little ability to move to another company, why should a company care what its competitors are paying their own CEOs? Why not try to get a bargain by paying less, if the CEO can’t get a comparable job elsewhere? Scholars have advanced plenty of rationales (which I explore in the book but don’t have room to delve into here), but none of them work very well.

Although I’m disappointed that the report does not go nearly far enough, I was heartened that a major compensation consultant is at least beginning to question the conventional wisdom. It’s a small step, but at least it’s in the right direction.

Comportements néfastes liés au narcissisme de certains PCD (CEO)

La première étude citée montre que les organisations dirigées par des PCD prétentieux et tout-puissants ont tendances à avoir de moins bons résultats, tout en étant plus sujettes à des fraudes. La seconde étude indique que les valeurs d’humilité incarnées par un leader ont des conséquences positives sur l’engagement des employés.

Voici en quelques paragraphes les conclusions de ces deux études. Bonne lecture.

In the first study, Antoinette Rijsenbilt and Harry Commandeur assessed the narcissism levels of 953 CEOs from a wide range of industries, as well as examining objective performance indicators of their companies during their tenure. Unsurprisingly, organizations led by arrogant, self-centered, and entitled CEOs tended to perform worse, and their CEOs were significantly more likely to be convicted for corporate fraud (e.g., fake financial reports, rigged accounts, insider trading, etc.). Interestingly, the detrimental effects of narcissism appear to be exacerbated when CEOs are charismatic, which is consistent with the idea that charisma is toxic because it increases employees’ blind trust and irrational confidence in the leader. If you hire a charismatic leader, be prepared to put up with a narcissist.

In the second study, Bradley Owens and colleagues examined the effects of leader humility on employee morale and turnover. Their results showed that « in contrast to rousing employees through charismatic, energetic, and idealistic leadership approaches (…) a ‘quieter’ leadership approach, with listening, being transparent about limitations, and appreciating follower strengths and contributions [is the most] effective way to engage employees. » This suggests that narcissistic CEOs may be good at attracting talent, but they are probably better at repelling it. Prospective job candidates, especially high potentials, should therefore think twice before being seduced by the meteoric career opportunities outlined by charismatic executives. Greed is not only contagious, but competitive and jealous, too…

The Dark Side of Executive Narcissism: How CEOs Destroy Companies’ Reputation and Employee Morale

If we can educate organizations, in particular board members, on the virtues of humility and the destructive consequences of narcissistic and charismatic leadership, we may see a smaller proportion of entitled, arrogant, and fraudulent CEOs — to everyone’s benefit. Instead of worshiping and celebrating the flamboyant habits of corporate bosses, let us revisit the wise words of Peter Drucker, who knew a thing or two about management:

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit.

Comment composer avec l’asymétrie de l’information entre le C.A et le management ?

Le document ci-dessous présente la problématique, bien réelle, de l’asymétrie de l’information entre les membres du conseil (le Board) et la direction de l’entreprise (le management). Il y a un gap naturel entre ce qui est communiqué par le management et ce qui est requis par le Board pour bien faire son travail. Ce dernier a besoin d’une information de qualité, c’est-à-dire une information complète (quoique synthétique), représentative de la réalité, la plus objective possible et, à jour.

Le rapport, préparé par la NACD (représentant le point de vue des administrateurs) et la firme comptable McGladrey (représentant le point de vue du management), présente un excellent compte rendu des problématiques soulevées par le manque de communication entre les administrateurs et la direction et propose plusieurs pratiques susceptibles de combler le gap d’information.

On y présente les résultats des « conversations » issus de quatre panels composés d’administrateurs et de membres de la haute direction. Le compte rendu fait ressortir les principaux problèmes de communication dans les domaines suivants : (1) La stratégie et le risque, (2) la rémunération des hauts dirigeants, (3) la planification de la succession du PCD, et (4) l’évaluation du Conseil.

Je crois que les personnes intéressées par cette question, c’est-à-dire les administrateurs de sociétés et les membres des directions d’entreprises, devraient prendre connaissance de ce document afin d’être mieux renseignés sur les moyens à prendre pour pallier l’asymétrie de l’information.

Bridging Effectiveness Gaps : A Candid Look at Board Practices

Voici un court extrait du document. Bonne lecture.

« Effective board oversight demands information that is as current and relevant as possible. There are, however, natural gaps between what management communicates and what the board needs to know. The information flow between management and the board may not always be perfect, and board committees may have similar troubles bringing the full board « up to speed » on certain issues. The purpose of this report is to address these issues, which we call the « effectiveness gap. »…

Plus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The goal of this report is to offer some tips and strategies to improve communications between the full board, C-suite, and committees. In particular, we focus on four areas of concern: strategy and risk, executive compensation, CEO succession planning, and board evaluations. These four areas are traditionally of high importance to board members yet have also presented challenges.

To help bridge the gaps in effectiveness, it was necessary to speak directly with individuals from both management and the board. While the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) is able to assess the director perspective, we needed the C-suite perspective as well. We partnered with McGladrey to host four small gatherings of executives and directors in an effort to find ways of improving communications and relationships. The conversations that occurred during these gatherings provided the material for this document ».

Un argumentaire en faveur du choix d’administrateurs externes au C.A.* (jacquesgrisegouvernance.com)

Rémunérations des administrateurs et pratiques de gouvernance | Survey du Conference Board 2013* (jacquesgrisegouvernance.com)

Le « risque réputationnel » : Une priorité des Boards* (jacquesgrisegouvernance.com)

Pourquoi séparer les fonctions de président du conseil (PCA) et de président et chef de la direction (PDG) ?*

Très bonnes réflexions d’Yvan Allaire sur le dogme de la séparation des rôles entre PCA et PDG. À lire sur le blogue Les Affaires .com.

Rien à rajouter à ce billet de l’expert en gouvernance qui , comme moi, cherche des réponses à plusieurs théories sur la gouvernance. Plus de recherches dans le domaine de la gouvernance serait grandement indiquées… Le CAS et la FSA de l’Université Laval mettront sur pied un programme de recherche dont le but est de répondre à ce type de questionnement.

Pourquoi séparer les fonctions de président du conseil (PCA) et de président et chef de la direction (PDG) ?

« Parmi les dogmes de la bonne gouvernance, la séparation des rôles du PCA et du PDG vient au deuxième rang immédiatement derrière « l’indépendance absolue et inviolable » de la majorité des administrateurs. … Bien que les études empiriques aient grande difficulté à démontrer de façon irréfutable la valeur de ces deux dogmes, ceux-ci sont, semble-t-il, incontournables. Dans le cas de la séparation des rôles, le sujet a pris une certaine importance récemment chez Research in Motion ainsi que chez Air Transat. Le compromis d’un administrateur en chef (lead director) pour compenser pour le fait que le PCA et le PDG soit la même personne ne satisfait plus; le dogme demande que le président du conseil soit indépendant de la direction ».

______________________________________________

*Je suis en congé jusqu’à la fin septembre. Durant cette période, j’ai décidé de rééditer les billets considérés comme étant les plus pertinents par les lecteurs de mon blogue (depuis le début des activités le 19 juillet 2011).

L’ancienneté du PCD (CEO) nuit-elle à la performance ?

La longueur de l’exercice du mandat d’un président et chef de direction (PCD) nuit-elle à la performance ? Il semble bien que oui selon l’étude de Xueming Luo, Vamsi K. Kanuri et Michelle Andrews, publiée dans HBR The Magazine.

Les implications pour les C.A. sont discutées dans l’article. Et vous, qu’en pensez-vous?

Long CEO Tenure Can Hurt Performance

It’s a familiar cycle: A CEO takes office, begins gaining knowledge and experience, and is soon launching initiatives that boost the bottom line. Fast-forward a decade, and the same executive is risk-averse and slow to adapt to change—and the company’s performance is on the decline. The pattern is so common that many refer to the “seasons” of a CEO’s tenure, analogous to the seasons of the year.

New research examines the causes of this cycle and shows that it’s more nuanced than that. We found that CEO tenure affects performance through its impact on two groups of stakeholders—employees and customers—and has different effects on each. The longer a CEO serves, the more the firm-employee dynamic improves. But an extended term strengthens customer ties only for a time, after which the relationship weakens and the company’s performance diminishes, no matter how united and committed the workforce is.

We studied 356 U.S. companies from 2000 to 2010. We measured CEO tenure and calculated the strength of the firm-employee relationship each year (by assessing such things as retirement benefits and layoffs) and the strength of the firm-customer relationship (by assessing such things as product quality and safety). We then measured the magnitude and volatility of stock returns. All this allowed us to arrive at an optimal tenure length: 4.8 years.

The underlying reasons for the pattern, we believe, have to do with how CEOs learn. Previous research has shown that different learning styles prevail at different stages of the CEO life cycle. Early on, when new executives are getting up to speed, they seek information in diverse ways, turning to both external and internal company sources. This deepens their relationships with customers and employees alike.

But as CEOs accumulate knowledge and become entrenched, they rely more on their internal networks for information, growing less attuned to market conditions. And, because they have more invested in the firm, they favor avoiding losses over pursuing gains. Their attachment to the status quo makes them less responsive to vacillating consumer preferences.

These findings have several implications for organizations. Boards should be watchful for changes in the firm-customer relationship. They should be aware that long-tenured CEOs may be skilled at employee relations but less adept at responding to the marketplace; these leaders may be great motivators but weak strategists, unifying workers around a failing course of action, for example. Finally, boards should structure incentive plans to draw heavily on consumer and market metrics in the late stages of their top executives’ terms. This will motivate CEOs to maintain strong customer relationships and to continue gathering vital market information firsthand.

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*Xueming Luo is a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and a distinguished honorary professor at Fudan University, in China. Vamsi K. Kanuri and Michelle Andrews are PhD candidates.

CEO Succession–Promote from Within (sophisticatedfinance.typepad.com)

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Le bon « comply or explain » selon la Commission européenne

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« The chief executive may get the glory and the salary, but leading the board is an increasingly important role, requiring subtlety, maturity and an iron grip on the agenda »

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