No abstract

In the 1990s various committees (Cadbury, Greenbury, Hempel) reported on governance issues, including the role played by non-executive directors in promoting``best practice''. Following public concern at cases of``excessive'' pay awards to executive directors and ®nancial irregularities the government has recently appointed the Higgs Committee to review again the contribution of non-executive directors. This paper presents an empirical study of the involvement of non-executives in large UK companies, assesses the extent to which these companies now``conform'' to the recommendations of``best practice'' proposed by the earlier committees and looks at the general and speci®c controversies surrounding the employment of non-executives as part of companies corporate governance structures.

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Animal‐borne data loggers (ABDLs) or “tags” are regularly used to elucidate animal ecology and physiology, but current literature highlights the need to assess associated deleterious impacts including increased resistive force to motion. Previous studies have used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to estimate this impact, but many suffer limitations (e.g., inaccurate turbulence modeling, neglecting boundary layer transition, neglecting added mass effects, and analyzing the ABDL in isolation from the animal). A novel CFD‐based method is presented in which a “tag impact envelope” is defined utilizing simulations with and without transition modeling to define upper and lower drag limits, respectively, and added mass coefficients are found via simulations with sinusoidally varying inlet velocity, with modified Navier‐Stokes conservation of momentum equations enforcing a shift to the animal's noninertial reference frame. The method generates coefficients for calculating total resistive force for any velocity and acceleration combination, and is validated against theory for a prolate spheroid. An example case shows ABDL drag impact on a harp seal of 11.21%–16.24%, with negligible influence on added mass. By considering the effects of added mass and boundary layer transition, the approach presented is an enhancement to the CFD‐based ABDL impact assessment methods previously applied by researchers.

Over the past 40 years major theoretical developments have occurred in the areas of longer‐term investment and financial decision making. Many of these new concepts and the related techniques are now being employed successfully in industrial practice. By contrast, far less attention has been paid to the area of short‐term finance, in particular that of working capital management. Such neglect might be acceptable were working capital considerations of relatively little importance to the firm, but effective working capital management has a crucial role to play in enhancing the profitability and growth of the firm. Indeed, experience shows that inadequate planning and control of working capital is one of the more common causes of business failure.