Role of Coupons in Retail Marketing
What is Retailing? The sale of products to the customers from a fixed location (malls, department stores, super markets and so on) in small quantities for their end use is called as retailing. Coupons play an important role in promoting the retail stores and making the brand popular amongst the masses. What are Coupons? Any […]
Observation Method
The observation method involves human or mechanical observation of what people actually do or what events take place during a buying or consumption situation. “Information is collected by observing process at work”. The following are a few situations:- Service Stations – Pose as a customer, go to a service station and observe. To evaluate the […]
Outdoor Advertising – Billboards, Buses, Cabs, Subways and Walls
Outdoor advertising communicates the message to the general public through highway billboards, transit posters and so on. Outdoor advertising is a very important form of advertising as the ads are huge and are visible to one and all. The important part of the advertising is that the message to be delivered should be crisp and […]
Why Selling Online is Expensive?
In many countries across the world, small retailers are against e-commerce websites. This is because they believe that these websites use unfair trade practices like predatory pricing in order to put them out of business. However, e-commerce websites refute this charge. They often encourage small retailers to sell on their websites. After all, in theory […]
B2B Marketing Vs. B2C Marketing in the E-Commerce Industry
E-commerce has taken many companies across the world by storm. Giants like Alibaba.com and Amazon have been created in the past few years thanks to the sudden boom in the e-commerce industry. Alibaba and Amazon are both similar in the sense that they are websites where people buy and sell products, i.e. e-commerce portals. However, […]
Any public limited or a private company needs to have a board of directors which would ratify the management decisions taken by the leadership. These decisions can be financial or operational that affects the day to day running of the company. Further, the board of directors is expected to give a direction to the company in terms of strategic and visionary terms as to how the company expects to grow without having to abandon the ethical and normative rules of conduct. Note the emphasis on the term ethical and normative rules as the board of directors is the final arbiter of decisions taken by the company and hence, they must only approve a certain decision only when they are convinced that it would be in the best interests of the company and its shareholders.
The board of directors is often held responsible for the decisions taken by the company and hence, it is answerable to the shareholders as well as the regulators. In this context, it becomes necessary for the board of directors to be composed of individuals of exceptional abilities and leadership traits as well as being visionary.
The role of the board of directors can be summed up in one single sentence: the buck stops with them and hence they are the final authority as far as the company is concerned. The duties of the board of directors are similarly to be the ones who would take the decisions that have the stamp of authority and hence become the yardstick by which the company is judged.
Apart from these roles and duties, the board of directors is also answerable to the shareholders and the regulators. So, this means that the board of directors must take decisions that are in the larger interests of the shareholders and they must protect the interests of the shareholders at all costs. Further, whenever there is a scandal in the company, the regulators write to the board of directors so as to elicit information on what happened. For instance, when the Satyam scandal broke, the regulators and the press turned to the board of directors for guidance and information. It is another matter that in this particular case, the board was compromised as well.
This brings us to the final aspect that the board of directors has to have a coherent approach towards managing the company and hence, must be consensual in its decision making. Unless the board of directors agrees on decisions either unanimously or through a majority vote, there cannot be movement for the company. Hence, it is clear that boardroom battles and directors with hidden agendas be avoided to the extent possible in the larger interests of good corporate governance. Since the board has the final say in matters concerning the company, the CEO and the leadership have to present the information truthfully and accurately. In the case of Satyam, there were allegations that the CEO and some of the compromised members of the board kept the other directors in the dark about some key decisions. This should not be allowed to happen.
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