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Would You Want Carl Icahn to Run Your Company?

Harvard Business Review

"We have a dysfunctional corporate governance system in the United States and nobody can attack it and nobody can do anything about it because it's like the feudal system." That's Carl Icahn, in a fascinating interview with Reuters BreakingViews (thanks to Jeff Glekin and Lucy Marcus for pointing me to it).

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Women Directors Change How Boards Work

Harvard Business Review

Whether one agrees with quotas as a mechanism for an increase or not (spoiler: men are less likely to ), a new look at Norway, which has a mandatory quota system of 40%, is helpful in understanding why having at least three women on a board is important. Phillips , the Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics, and others have found.

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How Companies Can Use Investors to Their Advantage

Harvard Business Review

It would implement targets linked to shareholder value, including ROE and ROIC. It would enhance its governance structure, improving transparency in leadership appointment, adding more diversity to the board and installing a more effective system for evaluating executive management performance.