From a Facebook post by Dr. Steven Garber, I recently learned of the mutuality in business project by Mars Corporation and University of Oxford.

Quoting from the website:

A collaborative project with the Mars Corporation exploring mutuality as a new principle for organising business. Mutuality – a principle that emphasises the fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of a firm’s activities – is seen as a promising new organising value with the potential to strengthen relationships and improve sustainability.

“Mutuality in business” seems to be yet another term for social responsibility in business. We already have so many terms for the social business concept – blended value, business for good, CSR, creative capitalism, multi-stakeholder governance, natural capitalism, shared value capitalism, social entrepreneurship, social enterprise, social innovation, sustainability, triple bottom line. Many people are trying to create, differentiate, and mark their corner in this social business space.

Despite the addition of yet another social business term, the information at the website is interesting, especially the research projects. 

The Legal Skills Prof Blog has posted an article entitled Our Broken Bar Exam by Deborah Jones Merritt. The post discusses Merritt’s proposal for a task force on the bar exam. Merritt’s article states, among other things:

The bar exam is broken: it tests too much and too little. On the one hand, the exam forces applicants to memorize hundreds of black-letter rules that they will never use in practice. On the other hand, the exam licenses lawyers who don’t know how to interview a client, compose an engagement letter, or negotiate with an adversary.
 
This flawed exam puts clients at risk. It also subjects applicants to an expensive, stressful process that does little to improve their professional competence… The bar examination should test the ability of an applicant to identify legal issues in a statement of facts, such as may be encountered in the practice of law, to engage in a reasoned analysis of the issues, and to arrive at a logical solution by the application of fundamental legal principles, in a manner which demonstrates a thorough understanding of these principles… Why doesn’t our definition of minimum competence include cognitive skills that are essential for effective client representation? The answer does not lie in the fact that these skills are difficult to test on a written exam. Research, fact gathering, interviewing, and other lawyering skills are cognitive abilities.

We could test for these skills by directing test-takers to outline a research plan, interview approach, or negotiation strategy based on a mock client file. Test-takers could also identify potential pitfalls, fall back positions, and ethical issues associated with their plan. These questions are no more difficult to draft and grade than classic issue-spotter essay questions. The primary reason we don’t test bar candidates on these skills is that law schools don’t stress them. Schools teach some professional competencies (like appellate advocacy) quite effectively, but relegate others to a corner of the curriculum. Employers and state supreme courts have urged law schools to teach a fuller range of lawyer competencies, but most schools have resisted…

Here are some of the many ideas that the task force could consider:

  • Develop MBE and essay questions that test fundamental principles and legal reasoning, rather than memorization. As proposed above, practicing lawyers could serve as test subjects to validate these questions.
  • Allow test-takers to refer to notes, codes, and other sources while taking the bar exam. This practice would more accurately measure professional knowledge.
  • Develop tests for more of the competencies that new lawyers perform.
  • Replace some (or all) multiple-choice and essay questions with performance-oriented case files like those presented on the Multistate Performance Test (MPT).
  • Allow examinees to take portions of the exam at different times, including after the first year of law school.
  • Work with law schools to create lawyering classes that would substitute for portions of the bar exam, as the University of New Hampshire has done. Bar examiners could audit these classes for content and rigor.
  • Encourage bar associations, law schools, and other organizations to develop postgraduate lawyering institutes to replace some (or all) of the bar exam. Law graduates currently spend more than $100 million annually on bar review courses—in addition to the fees they pay to take the bar. That money could support six to eight week intensive summer programs to teach and assess new graduates’ lawyering competence.

I thought about these criticisms and recommendations as I graded my Business Associations exam this week. Every year, I dutifully spend time on GPs, LPs, and LLPs in class and test on them during exam time because the Florida bar tests on these business subjects every year. The bar pays scant attention to LLCs even though that’s the fastest growing business entity in my state. Indeed, I have had almost a dozen guest speakers in my startup law skills class, and all of the attorneys indicated that they deal almost exclusively with LLCs and corporations. I worry when I spend time on interviewing and negotiation skills in the doctrinal class because the bar won’t test on these topics, but these are precisely the skills my students will need in practice.

Perhaps I worry for nothing. After the administration of every bar exam, I receive notes from students indicating that they felt prepared for both the exam and for life after law school. But I fear that schools do too little to prepare students for either. I highly recommend that you read Merritt’s article and if you agree with her, work with your state bar and the NCBE on reform.


 


 

 

I received this call for papers and wanted to pass it on.

This Call for Papers invites contributions to the Cambridge Handbook of Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability. Those tentatively selected to contribute will be invited to a Cambridge Handbook Symposium in Oslo on 12-14 March 2018, with draft chapters to be submitted to the editors beforehand. Participation at the Symposium is not a condition to contribute to the Handbook, but it is strongly encouraged. The Symposium is expected to enhance the quality of the contributions, reinforce the cohesive nature of the volume, and contribute to the timeliness of the manuscript.

The Handbook will be edited by Professor Beate Sjåfjell, University of Oslo, and Professor Christopher Bruner, Washington and Lee University. Final confirmation of contributions for the Handbook will be contingent on review of the chapters and will be decided by the editors. . . .

More information is available here.  In case you need a bit of encouragement to make a proposal, I will add that (in case you do not know them) the editors are well-regarded scholars in the field and also great people.

Back in 2013, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic wrote Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? on the Harvard Business Law Review site.  He argues,

the main reason for the uneven management sex ratio is our inability to discern between confidence and competence. That is, because we (people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women. In other words, when it comes to leadership, the only advantage that men have over women (e.g., from Argentina to Norway and the USA to Japan) is the fact that manifestations of hubris — often masked as charisma or charm — are commonly mistaken for leadership potential, and that these occur much more frequently in men than in women.

He further notes that the qualities that the same traits that often lead to a male manager to get hired (i.e., be perceived as a leader) are the characteristics that get in the way of being an effective and successful leader.  ( “[L]eaderless groups have a natural tendency to elect self-centered, overconfident and narcissistic individuals as leaders, and that these personality characteristics are not equally common in men and women.”)  Thus, because we mistake confidence for competence, we pass up a lot of good people (and hire the wrong people).  These mistakes apply to both men and women, but Chamorro-Premuzic notes that (by nature and/or nurture) women are less likely to have those traits.  

He concludes 

there is no denying that women’s path to leadership positions is paved with many barriers including a very thick glass ceiling. But a much bigger problem is the lack of career obstacles for incompetent men, and the fact that we tend to equate leadership with the very psychological features that make the average man a more inept leader than the average woman. The result is a pathological system that rewards men for their incompetence while punishing women for their competence, to everybody’s detriment.

This is true, but I would also note that it’s also likely that the women who get hired because of the traditional traits he describes are also less likely to be successful. Most leaders, he notes fail, whether in politics or business: “Good leadership has always been the exception, not the norm.” 

This suggests that people doing the hiring (or voting) would be well served to change their criteria for assessing talent and quality, at least in some ways. We simply can’t keep using the same inputs and be surprised we keep getting the same outputs.    If we change our inputs, there is a good chance that we will have a greater diversity of leaders (particularly increasing the numbers of women) and may, in fact, choose more successful leaders. It seems to me worth a try. 

Call for Papers

Financial Inclusion: A Sustainable Mission from Microfinance to Alternative Finance

Social and Technological Paradigms

ITEM 8

Dijon, France

December 7-8, 2017

CEREN, EA 7477, Burgundy School of Business – Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté

Microfinance has sought to include individuals that financial institutions exclude. The mission has been progressively widening to alternative finance, which has thrived outside of conventional financial instruments and channels.

Alternative finance takes different forms, such as angel investment, asset funding, cash flow funding, crowdfunding, crypto-currencies (Bitcoin), fair investment, fintech, slow money, pension fund investments, social impact bonds, etc. All the types have resulted from social and/or technological innovations or a mix of both. They provide significant values to customers and investors. Some of the benefits include absence of lengthy applications, low documentation, almost no collateral, minimum or no credit score requirements, high approval rates, and fast funding.

Alternative finance has also widened the base of customers. While microfinance mainly aimed at making financial services available to people at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’, alternative finance has gone beyond to target not only the poor, but also small enterprises, young and innovative ventures, women, minorities, individuals with no credit history, and any other audience excluded by the conventional institutions. While microfinance’s target is mainly the poor, alternative finance’s finance is the excluded.

The Burgundy School of Business will organize the 8th edition of its annual conference “Institutional and Technological Environments of Microfinance” (ITEM) on “financial inclusion” in Dijon, France on 7th and 8th December 2017.

The conference welcomes research papers, monographies, case studies, PhD research-in-progress and experiential insights on different topics and experiments of alternative finance. ITEM encourages in particular reflections on the social and technological innovations, which broaden and deepen the range of alternative finance.

The leading topic is “Financial Inclusion: A Sustainable Mission from Microfinance to Alternative Finance–Social and Technological Paradigms”. However, the conference welcomes other related topics that scope out the perspective and discussion on financial inclusion.

As the preceding editions, the ITEM conference provides a forum for both academic researchers and practitioners to discuss and exchange.

Submission procedure:

Proposals: All contributions require a proposal in the first instance. A proposal is a short abstract between 300 and 500 words, containing the research objectives, methodology, findings, recommendations and up to five keywords, the full names (first name and surname, not initials), email addresses of all authors, and a postal address and telephone number for at least one contact author.

Submission period for the proposals: Up to September 15, 2017.

Acceptance of proposals: By September 30, 2017. Notifications will be sent out to relevant authors. Please indicate clearly the contact author(s) and their email address(es).

Full paper: Upon acceptance of proposal, full papers are required. The paper includes abstract, keywords, references and a text of less than 5000 words.

Due date for the full papers: Up to November 30, 2017.

Publication opportunity: Papers presented at the conference will also be considered for publication in collaborating journals.

Contacts:

Fees for registration:

  • 300 Euros for academic and professional participants and presenters
  • 250 Euros for early-bird (before October 31)
  • 100 Euros for students
  • 70 euros for early bird students (before October 31)

All are invited to complete registration and payment by November 30, 2017.
Details are also available on the ITEM 8 website.

Web site: http://item-8.blogspot.com

Special attraction: The flying club of Darois is willing to take you for an aerial trip over the historical wine region in a ULM (ultra-léger motorisé–ultra-light aircraft) for a modest fee. Depending on the number of people interested, they will fix the price.

If you’re like me, you’ve been absolutely riveted by the disaster that was Fyrefest.  For anyone who somehow missed the news, the basic recap is that a destination music festival – sold as a luxury getaway in the Bahamas featuring sandy beaches, rock stars, five-star accommodations, and gourmet meals turned out to be, well –

 

Instead of luxury villas, guests found soggy tents, port-o-potties, and a bank of lockers (without locks).  They had to hunt for their luggage in a large shipping container – with flashlights.  And so forth.

There have been a number of news articles attempting to deconstruct how things went so horribly wrong, but the focus of my particular interest is – incompetence or fraud?  There are already two class action lawsuits pending, so we’ll have more information soon enough, but reports so far indicate a rather stunning willful-blindness on the part of the promoter – 25-year-old Billy McFarland – coupled with the somewhat-contradictory fact that he’s still around, apologizing to disappointed ticketbuyers, and generally not, you know, running off to a country with no U.S. extradition treaty.

[More under the jump]

Continue Reading And don’tcha feel all warm and cozy, watching people out in the rain!

Job description

Carson-Newman University is a leading Christian Liberal Arts institution, recently ranked Best Undergraduate Teaching in the South by U.S. News & World Report and received the President’s Award for Community Service. Carson-Newman emphasizes academic excellence through innovative teaching, advising, mentoring of students, and service learning. The campus is located at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains and is surrounded by beautiful lakes. More information is available from the University website, www.cn.edu.

Carson-Newman University invites applicants for an Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor of Business Law, Management, and/or Finance in the Department of Business. The position is a full-time, 9-month, tenure-track position, to begin August 2017, or January 2018.

Candidates for the position must have a minimum of a Juris Doctorate or a terminal degree in a related business field with at least 18 graduate semester hours in law. Candidates with business and/or teaching experience are preferred.

Carson-Newman employs faculty and staff who are actively supportive, through a local church, of its aim as a university with a Christian commitment.

Candidates for the position of Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor will teach, advise, and mentor students, participate in the campus community through committee work, conduct appropriate research, and other work as assigned by the Department Chair or Provost.

The rank and salary will be commensurate with educational preparation and experience. Group health insurance as well as a 401K retirement plan are available on a participating basis.

How to apply

Only complete application packets will be considered. A complete application packet will include a letter of interest, a statement of Christian faith, a statement of teaching philosophy, references, and current vitae. Please send the packet electronically to:

Email: facultyrecruiting@cn.edu

Human Resources
Attn: Faculty Recruiting
Carson-Newman University
Jefferson City, TN 37760

www.cn.edu

CARSON-NEWMAN UNIVERSITY IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER