When The Conference Board Governance Center launched the Governance Center Blog more than two years ago, the United States and, indeed, the world, was still reeling from the financial crisis. Much of the governance community was focused on the debate over what additional regulatory reforms were required to prevent excessive risk taking and help restore confidence in financial institutions and companies in general. Today, we face a continued low growth environment and high unemployment in the US and Europe, while the congressional “Super Committee” addresses US deficit challenges and EU leaders struggle with a plan to address European debt issues. In this environment, companies and investors will continue to face not only the daily challenges of managing their operations in a difficult economic environment, but will also be faced with myriad governance challenges — including appropriately managing risks, communicating with their key constituencies, creating and maintaining a sustainable business model, and effectively and efficiently implementing increased regulations.
The Governance Center will continue to seek to be a thought and convening leader in helping to address these governance challenges. We hope the blog will serve not only as a place to provide information about developments, but engage the governance community in discussions on different views for managing issues and new or controversial ideas.
Going forward, we plan to engage many voices in the blog that reflect the diversity of issues faced by governance professionals, boards and management. These voices will include:
- Marcel Bucsescu, manager in our Corporate Leadership Group, who leads our work exploring evolving governance challenges such as corporate political giving
- Barbara Blackford, senior advisor to the Governance Center, advisor to The Conference Board Task Force on Executive Compensation, and former general counsel of a Fortune 750 company
- Joseph Caruso, Executive in Residence and former corporate secretary of Guardian Life Insurance
We will also be inviting thought leaders from across the governance spectrum to contribute their perspectives to these important and ongoing discussions.
I want to thank Gary Larkin for the outstanding work that he did in building the Governance Center Blog into a recognized leader in the business blog world.
We look forward to your continued support of the Governance Center and our blog and we welcome your suggestions and feedback as we move forward.
– R. William Ide, III, Chairman, The Conference Board Governance Center