How Directors Can Link Long-Term Performance with Public Goals (2009)

This report examines how efforts to build public trust and long-term value have coalesced to encourage many large, global corporations to pay greater attention to their longer-term interests by striking a balance between short-term commercial pursuits and such societal concerns as the environment, labor standards, and human rights. Many companies have also found ways to turn such concerns as the effects of climate change and other environmental damage into profitable commercial opportunities. This report also explores how all corporate boards could take a more active part in considering such issues and improving the reporting of financial and non-financial measures of corporate performance broadly conceived. In our view, directors could do more with their current authority to motivate managements to greater innovation, and to support managements in finding long-term value solutions to the numerous economic and societal pressures they face.

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• Summary

Summary of the three CED corporate governance reports: Private Enterprise, Public Trust: The State of Corporate Governance After Sarbanes-Oxley (2006); Built to Last: Focusing Corporations on Long-Term Performance (2007); and Rebuilding Corporate Leadership: How Directors Can Link Long-Term Performance with Public Goals.

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Focusing Corporations on Long-Term Performance (2007)

This report addresses the increasingly short-term focus by many business leaders that is damaging the ability of public companies to sustain long-term performance. This trend is hampering growth in the American economy. The report offers recommendations for corporations to improve performance by focusing on long-term goals. "Short-termism" is defined as an undue focus on meeting quarterly forecasts and a lesser emphasis on long-term planning.

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The State of Corporate America After Sarbanes-Oxley (2006)

The highly visible accounting scandals that surrounded the collapse of Enron, WorldCom and several other major companies -together with the revelation of fraud and other acts of malfeasance by corporate executive- aroused public outrage, called into question the values and ethics of business leaders, and undermined the public's confidence in public companies. CED is concerned about the reality, as well as the appearance, of corporate impropriety.

This policy statement examines the state of corporate governance in the United States and offers practical recommendations for restoring public trust in business.

2000

This report is sponsored jointly by CED and the Fund for Corporate Initiatives, with the generous financial support of the Ford Foundation. The goal behind this joint project was to move the issue of corporate diversity beyond the theoretical - and occasionally ideological - context into one where the focus was on practical results in the workforce and the marketplace. More specifically, the aim was to have an open, frank discussion between CEOs and senior minority and women executives about the barriers to their corporate advancement.

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