Sex, Trust, and Corporate Boards
![handle is hein.journals/haswo18 and id is 183 raw text is: Sex, Trust, and Corporate Boards
Joan MacLeod Heminway
I. INTRODUCTION
Many have indicated, directly or indirectly, that the highly publicized
corporate fraud at Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, Adelphia, and other
public companies represents or reflects a crisis of trust in corporate
America.' Directors of these corporations trusted corporate executives and
each other, corporate executives trusted each other, and investors trusted
both corporate directors and executives; in each case to his or her
respective detriment. The result? Distrust of and among corporate
constituencies.2
* Associate Professor, The University of Tennessee College of Law; A.B. 1982,
Brown University; J.D. 1985, New York University School of Law. This Article was
presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association and at the 2006
Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools. The author thanks
participants in these meetings for their helpful suggestions on this piece. Special thanks are
owed to Jayne Barnard and Lynne Dallas in this regard.
1. E.g., TAMAR FRANKEL, TRUST AND HONESTY 9-24 (2006); andre douglas pond
cummings, Ain't No Glory in Pain : How the 1994 Republican Revolution and the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act Contributed to the Collapse of the United States Capital
Markets, 83 NEB. L. REV. 979, 1072 (2005) (The litany of corporate fraud cases has
undermined the public trust and generated support for more regulations.); Sarah Helene
Duggin & Stephen M. Goldman, Restoring Trust in Corporate Directors: The Disney
Standard and the New Good Faith, 56 AM. U. L. REv. 211, 223, 259-63 (2006) (Today,
we are once again in the throes of a crisis in corporate trust.); Gregory Todd Jones, Trust,
Institutionalization, & Corporate Reputations: Public Independent Fact-Finding From A
Risk Management Perspective, 13 U. MIAMI BUS. L. REV. 121, 124 (2005) (In recent times
... we have witnessed an avalanche of corporate wrongdoing or incompetence that has led
to widespread 'cris[es] of social legitimacy and [a] loss of public trust.').
2. See Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Daniel F. Spulber, Trust and Incentives in
Agency, 15 S. CAL. INTERDIS. L.J. 45, 45-46 (2005); Duggin & Goldman, supra note 1, at
223. Two key corporate governance scholars explain this phenomenon well when they note,
signs of lack of trust and trustworthiness tend to be self-fulfilling. Once
players in a social dilemma game come to believe that their fellows intend to
defect, they themselves defect, and distrust prevails ....
Margaret M. Blair & Lynn A. Stout, Trust, Trustworthiness, and the Behavioral
Foundations of Corporate Law, 149 U. PENN L. REv. 1735, 1776 (2001).
HASTINGS WOMEN'S LAW JOURNAL](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/haswo18&div=16&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Sex, Trust, and Corporate Boards
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most