Higher average incomes do not necessarily mean an improvement in average citizen’s well being

Introduction

Average income or Per capita income is achieved by dividing the total national income, which is measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), by the total population (Common & Stagl, 2005). Technically it is not average income as children and the economically inactive people are considered when calculating it. GDP per capita have been used over the years as a tool for measuring a country’s living standard.

Wellbeing is a subjective term, thus over the years despite the attempts measure wellbeing, it has never had a clear definition.In finding the wellbeing of a society, there are two approaches. One approach would be the hedonic tradition, which looks at happiness, life satisfaction, optimism and low negativity. The other is the eudemonic tradition of positive psychological functioning and human development (Dodge, et al., 2012).

Measures of Wellbeing

In the past, individuals, organisations and even government bodies have attempted to come up with more accurate ways of measuring a society’s wellbeing. One such measure is the Human Development Index (HDI), which was introduced in 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its annual Human Development Reports. HDI is calculated using three components that are basic necessities for the wellbeing of a society; longevity which is measured by life expectancy, knowledge which takes adult literacy rate into consideration, and standard of living which is measured by Real GDP per capita adjusted to Purchasing Power Parity (Todaro & Smith, 2011).

However the increase in globalisation has resulted in higher migration of labour and the UN has come to realise that literacy rates don’t accurately show the education levels of a country. Thus in 2010 November the UN introduced the New Human Development Index (NHDI). This was measured using Life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling and GNI per capita (PPP U.S. $).

Norway, Switzerland, Australia, and Sweden was in the top ten highest GDP per capita in 2012 (The World Bank, 2013), and also they achieved high HDI as to qualify within the top 10 in the UNDP website too(United Nations Development Programme, 2012). Whereas Eritrea, Guinea, Central African Republic, Niger, Congo Republic and Burundi are represented among the worst 10 in GDP per capita (The World Bank, 2013), as well in the HDI data (United Nations Development Programme, 2012). This shows that higher GDP per capita, actually contributes to better living standards of people.

However, NHDI even though widely used as a wellbeing measuring tool, does not accurately show a person’s wellbeing or living standard. For example, it does not show the unemployment rates, crime rates, deforestation, pollution, fertility rates, life satisfaction or any other components which affect a person’s wellbeing.

As the hedonic approach became more popular, the Gallup World Poll started a survey, where participants were asked to rate their life satisfaction and happiness on a ladder, known as the Cantril ladder, where zero meant the worst possible life and 10 depicts the best possible life (Sachs, et al., 2013).

Comparing the data between the Cantril ladder and GDP per capita, it is evident that Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Australia are among the top ten on both.Likewise comparing the worst ten countries on both the Cantril ladder and GDP per capita, it is apparent that Congo Republic, Burundi, and Central African Republic are on both lists (The World Bank, 2013)(Sachs, et al., 2013). Again, this shows that countries with higher average incomes are more happy and satisfied with life, thus are more improved in wellbeing.

On the other hand, people have unlimited wants with very limited resources to satiate them. So their life satisfaction is at the cost of depleting limited resources. For example, people want better and bigger houses, as a result real estate firms cut down trees to make space. This satisfies the people’s wants in the short run, but in the future they lose the luxury of picturesque green scenery, and this also has negative spill over effects which ultimately lead to global warming and ozone depletion. Ultimately in the long run, the whole world will suffer.Due to the magnitude of effect the depleting Mother Nature could have on all countries, it is important to factor the environmental friendliness of an economy into their measure of wellbeing. A measure of wellbeing that factors this is the Happy Planet Index.

The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is a new measure of progress introduced by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in 2006, with the main goal to focus on what matters: global sustainable well-being. The HPI depicts how well nations are faring in terms of supporting their citizens to live good lives now, while making surethat others could do the same in the future(Abdallah, et al., 2012). HPI is calculated using life expectancy, experienced wellbeing as measured using the Cantril ladder, and ecological footprint. Previously mentioned wellbeing indices were based on past data, whereas this measure shows the long term wellbeing, owing to this reason there is no apparent positive correlation between the HPI and the GDP per capita. For example, Costa Rica has attained the best HPI twice in a row by 2012 (New Economics Foundation, 2012), but their GDP per capita stands at $12,900, which is 12.6% of the highest GDP per capita that year (Central Intelligence Agency, 2013). Another observation would be that Qatar and Kuwait even though are among the top 10 highest GDP per capita,have two of the worst ecological footprint of 11.7 gha/capita and 9.7 gha/capita respectively, and thus are among the ten worst HPI (New Economics Foundation, 2012).

On the other hand, among the countries with the worst HPI, there are countries that were among the worst GDP per capita list too, like Niger and Central African Republic. This shows that for economies to maintain a decent level of wellbeing, a high GDP per capita alone is needed but that alone is not enough, rather a balance of income, health, past wellbeing and consideration of future wellbeing, by using resources at a similar rate as they are replenished, is necessary.

However there is a glitch in this measure of wellbeing too. It does not calculate the fertility rates, people living with HIV/AIDS, whether the country is in war, crime rates, etc. For example, Costa Rica has the highest HPI, but in 2013 (2012 information not available) it also had the 10^th highest Crime Index (Numbeo, 2013). When crime rates are high in a country there is always uncertainty and unrest among its citizen’s, so the HPI’s portrayal of Costa Rica as a society with better wellbeing is misleading.

The quest of wellbeing and happiness through material gains has always existed. Yet in contrast to the entire worlds’ attempts to measure their economic development, Bhutan has probably taken the right step by measuring their Economic growth by the Gross National Happiness (GNH), not GDP. The GNH Index is calculated using 33 indicators with 124 collective variables, so rather than limiting the people’s happiness to subjective wellbeing, Bhutan has successfully identified and incorporated some of many dimensions of happiness and wellbeing. The GNH goes beyond the Cantril ladder, HDI, Gross National Income (GNI), HPI, or Happiness Index, rather it uses all of these innovative measures and combines them and many others of their own localised measures to create the GNH Index. The GNH Index ultimately categorises the inhabitants as; 77%-100%: Deeply happy, 66%-76%: Extensively happy, 50%-65%: Narrowly happy and 0%-49%: Unhappy. This is again categorised to Happy above 66% and Not-Yet-Happy below that. Bhutan uses the GNH as they see that wellbeing of a nation should be seen in a holistic point of view, so simultaneous increase in material gains and spiritual development is necessary. Bhutan’s main aim is to bring the entire nation’s GNH above 66% GNH Index, thus making them a nation with people of universal values and meaningful lives (Sachs, et al., 2013). Believing that higher incomes alone is enough for wellbeing is moot, compared to Bhutan’s initiative to wellbeing.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is a famous establishment, which was created after World War 2, to encourage unity and peace between countries, and to uplift the economies. Now it has 34 member countries, and influences 40 countries who are responsible for 80% of investment and global trade (OECD, 2014). This organisation have started to recognise how important social wellbeing is for an economy and is presently coming up with guidelines to measure subjective wellbeing.

Again like the many independent bodies, OECD has recognised that material gains, quality of life and sustainability are allsimultaneously needed to improve the standard of living in a society. Better Life Index which was introduced in May 2011 is the initiative that OECD has yet released, which identifies all of these dimensions. Wealth and Income, housing, and jobs and earnings show the material conditions of people in the society, whereas quality of life is complex, owing to the fact that OECD is intent on making the index as accurate as possible. The components that OECD uses for the quality of life are; subjective wellbeing, civic engagement and governance, literacy and skills, sociability, quality of environment, work life balance, personal security, health status(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011).Also OECD considers how sustainable the achieved level of standard of level is in terms of resource availability for the future generations.

Considering the Better life index, it is clear that Australia has topped all other OECD countries and achieved the best standard of living score. On the other hand, Australia is also among the top 10 nations according to the GDP per capita (The World Bank, 2013). This shows that a country with high GDP per capita is in a more likely position to achieve better wellbeing. However it also requires better policy formulation and efficient economic management to ensure that all dimensions contributing to better wellbeing are satisfied. For example, even though Denmark has the 9^th highest GDP per capita across the globe (The World Bank, 2013), compared to other OECD countries, its wellbeing performance for 2013 was not satisfactory hence they were ranked 22^nd on the Better life index list (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2013).

Conclusion

All the economies have now realized or are on their way to recognizing that a society’s wellbeing cannot be measured by just their GDP per capita. Which is why as mentioned above many organisations have attempted to formulate better and more accurate measure to try to materialise the wellbeing of people into numbers.

For an economy suffering from poverty, a rise in income levels would mean better chances of access to education, more secure homes, better access to healthcare, access to clean water; basically better living standards. In this case, increase in GDP per capita positively correlates with the increase in wellbeing of the society (Sachs, et al., 2013). Thus it is accurate to say that high per capita income does have a hand in people’s wellbeing, but only up to a certain extent.  Researchers have found that income positively correlates with wellbeing only upto a GDP per capita of $10,000 per annum PPP, beyond that its only immaterial values that bring meaning to human lives.

Reference

Abdallah, S. et al.(2012)The Happy Planet Index: 2012 Report, London: The New Economics Foundation. Central Intelligence Agency (2013)The World Factbook. [Online] Available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html[Accessed 2 May 2014].

Common, M. & Stagl, S. (2005)Ecological Economics: An Introduction. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dodge, R., Daly, A. P., Huyton, J. & Sanders, L. D. (2012)The challenge of defining wellbeing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 2(3), p. 2.

New Economics Foundation (2012)Happy Planet Index. [Online] Available at: http://www.happyplanetindex.org/data/[Accessed 2 May 2014].

Numbeo (2013)Crime Index for Country 2013. [Online] Available at: http://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2013-Q1[Accessed 2 May 2014].

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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2011)Measuring well-being and progress, s.l.: OECD.

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Sachs, J. et al. (2013)World Happiness Report, s.l.: s.n.

Sachs, J. et al. (2013)World Happiness Report, s.l.: s.n.

Sachs, J. et al. (2013)World Happiness Report. [Online] Available at: http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Sachs%20Writing/2012/World%20Happiness%20Report.pdf[Accessed 29 April 2014].

The World Bank (2013)GDP per capita (current US$). [Online] Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?order=wbapi_data_value_2012+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc[Accessed 1 May 2014].

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THE BEST INTERNATIONAL MEASUREMENTS FOR WELLBEING

1         Executive Summary

Currently there has been an increase in awareness of the importance of giving priority to overall wellbeing of a society, when determining its improvement and measuring a country’s development. This report gives a brief on few of the popular wellbeing measures available today. The conclusion would be that Better Life Index and Gross National Happiness are the best measures yet, as they both have a wider scope, so would show the well being more accurately.

2         Wellbeing

Wellbeing has no definite definition, but has being described as the overarching concept of the quality of people’s lives.Samman, 2007, cited in Rees, et al., 2010, claims that there are two approaches in determining wellbeing; hedonic and eudemonic approach. Hedonic or rather subjective wellbeing considers the happiness, life satisfaction, positivity and negativity in life. Whereas psychological or eudemonic wellbeing includes personal development and sense of purpose of people.(Rees, et al., 2010). However some economists say that wellbeing cannot be defined as such, due to it being multi-dimensional(Stiglitz, et al., 2009).

3         Traditional Measure of Wellbeing

For years a country’s development has being measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country. This misguides people that if the GDP per capita of a country is high, that country’s citizens having high living standards.

GDP only reflects the market production in a country. It does not show the environmental damage caused by a society’s consumption and production, nor does it show the impact of this in the future. As said by Robert Kennedy (1968), GDP doesn’t measure the health, education, family life, intelligence, compassion or anything that makes life worth living.

As a result of these limitations economists have come up with many measures over the years, trying to accurately portray a society’s wellbeing.

4     Alternative Measures of Wellbeing

Currently there exists many indices to measure wellbeing, for example the Human Development Index (HDI), Satisfaction with Life Index, Quality of Life Index, The Cantril Ladder, Happy Planet Index, Better Life Index, Gallup-Healthways Well-Being 5, Canadian Index of wellbeing,etc.

4.1       The Cantril Ladder

The Cantril ladder, now excessively used by the Gallup World Poll, was introduced in 1965 by Dr.Hadley Cantril. The Cantril ladder takes the hedonic approach and requires the people to anchor themselves on a hypothetical ladder, where they have to rate their life on a scale of 0 to 10; 0 being the worst possible life, and 10 being the best possible life(Gallup,Inc., 2014).

Even though this measure looks at wellbeing through the society’s eyes, and the index is most likely to reflect people’s environment, it does not directly reflect those factors. Components like health, literacy levels, environmental pollution, crime rates, inequality of income distribution, access to clean water, political stability, and many more affecting an economy’s wellbeing is not considered here.

4.2       Happy Planet Index (HPI)

HPI was introduced in 2006 by the New Economic Foundation in order to measure the sustainable wellbeing of a society(Abdallah, et al., 2012). For example, even if Qatar had the third highest GDP in 2012 (The World Bank, 2014), it had 149^th position on the HPI(New Economics Foundation, 2012). This is due to their highly unsustainable use of non-renewable resources, mainly consisting of oil. HPI considers experienced wellbeing, Life Expectancy and Ecological Footprint, where the country with the smallest ecological footprint is ranked better.

Nevertheless, this measure too is not inclusive of all aspects of wellbeing, but takes the right step towards portraying the sustainability aspect by incorporating the environmental factor in it.

4.3       Better Life Index

Better Life Index was launched in 2011 by the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation Development (OECD) in order to capture the development of a society better in terms of wellbeing.The Better Life Initiative takes into consideration the individual wellbeing and sustainability of wellbeing overtime. The individual wellbeing aspect looks at 2 main components; Quality of Life and Material Living conditions.

Quality of life further explores 9 categories, which are health status, work and life balance, education and skills, social connections, civic engagement and governance, environmental quality, personal security, subjective wellbeing, all of which are essential for good living standards.

Material living conditions is equally important when it comes to wellbeing, because a person without income cannot afford good living standards, like good healthcare, secure homes, good education and healthy food. This takes into consideration 3 components; income and wealth, jobs and earnings, and housing (Durand & Smith, 2013).

4.4       Gross National Happiness (GNH)

GNH is a measure of wellbeing that exists in Bhutan to calculate their development in a more holistic way. This measure was introduced in 1972, by the 4^th king of Bhutan, but the concept of such a measure existed since 1729. They believe that real development in an economy happens when material gains and spiritual gains occurs simultaneously.

Measuring GNH is a complex procedure as it takes into consideration 9 domains, under which 33 indicators exists, and further has 124 variables. The main domains would be; psychological wellbeing, health, time use, education, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards(Ura, et al., 2012). All these would lead to people being categorised as; 0%-49%: Unhappy, 50%-65%: Narrowly happy, 66%-76%: Extensively happy, and 77%-100%: Deeply happy. The benefit of this measure is that now Bhutan’s development would be universal, whereas countries with increasing GDP would be delusional about their development(Sachs, et al., 2013).

5         Conclusion

Wellbeing measures that has been developed over the years does not accurately indicate the all rounded wellbeing and development of a country, but those initiatives are the stepping stone of the combined measures that are available today, like the better life index. Currently various governments and independent organisations are developing measures in order to capture wellbeing more accurately, as they have realised that development is material gain, as well as immaterial gain.

Currently the best measures that take into consideration many dimensions of wellbeing would be Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness and OECD’s Better Life Initiative. All the economies should try to adapt these measures and localize it, so that they too can see the actual development and wellbeing of their society, and take steps to improve their nation.

  

6         Reference

Abdallah, S. et al. (2012) The Happy Planet Index: 2012 Report: A global index of sustainability well-being, London: New Economics Foundation. Available at: http://www.happyplanetindex.org/assets/happy-planet-index-report.pdf[Accessed 26^th May 2014].

Durand, M. & Smith, C. (2013) The OECD Better Life Initiative: How's Life? and the Measurement of Well-being, Hong Kong: International Statistical Institute. Available at: http://www.iariw.org/papers/2013/DurandPaper.pdf [Accessed 26^th May 2014].

Gallup,Inc. (2014) Understanding How Gallup Uses the Cantril Scale: Development of the "Thriving, Struggling, Suffering"Categories. [Online] Available at:http://www.gallup.com/poll/122453/understanding-gallup-uses-cantril-scale.aspx[Accessed 26^thMay 2014].

Kennedy, R (1968) Remarks at the University of Kansas, transcript, John f. Kennedy presidential library and museum. Available at: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Remarks-of-Robert-F-Kennedy-at-the-University-of-Kansas-March-18-1968.aspx [Accessed: 25^th May 2014].

New Economics Foundation (2012) The Happy Planet Index: 2012 Report [ONLINE]. Available at:http://www.happyplanetindex.org/assets/happy-planet-index-poster.pdf[Accessed 26^th May 2014].

Rees, G., Bradshaw, J., Goswami, H. & Keung, A. (2010) Understanding Children's Well-being: A national survey of young people's well-being, London: The Children's Society. Available at: http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/tcs/research_docs/Understanding%20children's%20wellbeing.pdf[Accessed 26^th May 2014].

Sachs, J. et al. (2013) World Happiness Report, s.l.: s.n. Available at: http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/Sachs%20Writing/2012/World%20Happiness%20Report.pdf[Accessed 26^th May 2014].

Stiglitz, J. E., Sen, A. & Fitoussi, J.P. (2009) Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, Paris: Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. Available at: http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf[Accessed 26^th May 2014].

The World Bank (2014) GDP per capita(current US$). [Online] Available at: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?order=wbapi_data_value_2012+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc[Accessed 26 May 2014].

Ura, K., Alkire, S., Zangmo, T. & Wangdi, K. (2012) The nine domains and 33 indicators of the GNH index [ONLINE]. Available at:http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Short-GNH-Index-edited.pdf[Accessed 26^th May 14].

What steps can be taken and by whom to ensure that an Enron case never happens again?

Introduction

The Enron case was a terrible black mark on the corporate sector, and is a good lesson against an organisation having too much ambition, power and arrogance. This case may not have occurred in the first place if not for the fraudulent creative accounting by the selfish senior staff, auditors who supported it and the board of directors who did not control the firm. In this essay the possible precautions a firm could do to avoid such a scandal would be discussed.

I.   Board of directors

Giving financial incentives for employees for making deals and giving ideas ultimately made Enron a firm with many employees who had their own agenda, rather than all employees working towards the organisation’s vision, mission and values. Thus from the beginning of operations a firm needs to inculcate a culture where employees follow the corporate values, have a respectable standard of conduct, have minimum pressure to commit misconduct, and know to manage their risks and vulnerabilities. These must be implemented top-down by the board of directors, senior staff, employees of all levels and key stakeholders. The board must eradicate any flaw in the organisational structure and system that makes an employee step into unethical grounds, and enforce a mentality among the people that ethics is vital. These could be done for example by having workshops and training, controlled incentive schemes, constantly recognizing talent, etc.

Moreover the firm could establish their code of conduct and internalize their corporate values. Even so it is an insufficient measure on paper, rather the firm should encourage and recruit senior level managers to be strict concerning the ethical grounds. When the top level management is ethical, eventually it would spread to the whole organisational structure, as it would be widely known that in that particular firm no unethical practice is tolerated.

Furthermore the firm should have an independent corporate ethics office, and subject their staff to training and evaluate their compliance system, and provide effective protection for whistle blowers who revealed unethical or illegal activities done by other members in the firm. The firm could have hotlines for employees to discreetly communicate with the company about their conflicts in an ethical dilemma.

Another possible step is to publicly declare their code of ethics. In this instance the external auditors would be required to sign and comply with the terms of the firm’s code of ethics.

One of the main reason for the failure of Enron was working with Arthur Anderson for auditing as well as consulting purposes, causing high conflict for him and the employees. Independence of the auditing organisations are fundamental for a business’s success, as it identifies any flaws in the accounts, for which the firm would be able to find the root cause and remove it. As the board of directors don’t directly interfere with the managing of the firm these responsibilities must be bestowed upon the CEO, whom the board believes is ethical and has ideas to match with the corporate’s values.

II. Chief Executive Officer

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) must also follow all of the above, as well as it is best to follow the Management by Walking around (MBWA) approach (Peters & Austin, 1985).  Peters and Austin says that when the manager walks around the office regularly and have one on one conversations with the employees, this would improve the communication considerably and they would be able to understand the employee’s concerns better and remedy them. The benefit of this is that employees would know what is required of them (tasks and ethics) and how they are doing currently (task and ethics), thus they can take decisions in a situation where they are faced with an ethical dilemma.

III. Auditors

Accountants all have six fundamental principles they have to follow; integrity, objectivity, professional competence and due care, confidentiality, and professional behavior. Nevertheless like in the case of Arthur Anderson due to conflicts of interest as an auditor and consultant, the auditors may not comply with their standards. In such situations the auditors under Anderson should have taken steps to prevent the violation of their code of conduct. If the auditors were conflicted they should have contacted the professional accounting body they are affiliated with and asked about what to do. In the case of Enron they had a duty to disclose all fraudulent acts they were engaged in (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, 2014), for example hiding the investment loss in a subsidiary’s accounts.

Meanwhile the professional bodies could take steps to stress the dangers of not being compliant with the fundamental ethics in accountancy, like regular seminars for the professionals.

IV. Human Resource Manager

The Human resource department of an organisation deals with the people within, more specifically it deals with managing, recruiting, motivating, developing and supporting people in accordance with the employment and human rights standards (Strandberg, 2009). Thus it is the HR manager’s responsibility to impress upon the employees the right way to do things, for this the HR manager should change the corporate culture to a more suitable one that goes in parallel with the firm’s corporate values. Further the HR Manager should be able to instill the sense of belonging to the employees, so that they would get the “we” and “us” culture, and the firm could avoid or at the least minimize the number of misconducts occurred by individual greed.

V. Non-Executive Director

Non-Executive director’s role in a firm is to keep the company on the path towards its mission and goals, to set the strategy, ensuring adequate human and financial resources are available, review the management performance, communicating on behalf of shareholders and finally setting the company’s values and standards (Pinsent Masons LLP, 2010).  Thus when the firm is being led in the incorrect path the Non-Executive director should intervene to stop the corruption of it, so that like in Enron ultimately the shareholders would not suffer. Therefore the shareholders must elect a righteous person for this post.

Conclusion

The reason Enron failed was due to the overstated profits and understated debts, and the highly optimistic and rapid expansion of deals that failed, which all budded from the culture of individualism which was encouraged by Enron.

Employees are what makes a firm, as seen in the Enron scandal, the employees attitudes of personal gain was ultimately the end of that firm. Therefore an employee should have the moral obligation to not break their code of conduct at all times, especially the top level employees.They are the most influencing in a corporate environment, as they are directly involved with the employees, thus their positive actions would cause a ripple effect on the employees, however so does the negative actions.

In conclusion, for a firm to prevent from being the next Enron, the entire workforce should be working towards a common goal; that of the firm’s, the external auditors of the firm should be independent, the consultancy firm should not be related to the audit firm (like in the case of Enron), and each and every stakeholder should be ethical in what they do and report any misconduct occurring within the organisation. If so that organisation can flourish and look forward to a sustainable growth in the future.

Reference

Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (2014)Ethical Dilemmas: What would you do?.[Online]Available at: http://www.cimaglobal.com/Documents/Professional%20ethics%20docs/dilemmas%20FINAL.pdf [Accessed 23 June 2014].

Peters, T. J. & Austin, N.(1985)A Passion for Excellence. 1st ed. New York: Warner Books Incorporated.

Pinsent Masons LLP (2010)The role of the board, chairman and non-executive directors – the UK Corporate Governance Code. [Online] Available at: http://www.out-law.com/page-8215[Accessed 23 June 2014].

Strandberg, C.(2009)THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT , Burnaby: Strandberg Consulting.