Executive Compensation and Corporate Governance Post COVID-19: The Nordic Perspective

COVID-19 outbreak has re-designed business activities and changed the priorities in our lives. Since the pandemic is a sign of overexploitation of our habitat, it has stressed the importance of sustainable and resilient businesses and ‘stakeholderism'. A recent survey conducted by Willis Towers Watson (WTW) revealed that 74 percent of the American companies proceed with their executive compensation frameworks widely consistent with last year's;only 12 percent stated that they will make substantive changes in their corporate governance and remuneration structures. Surprisingly, the survey result does not alter too much in the Nordic countries which are egalitarian and stakeholder-oriented. Three-fifth (57 to 61 percent) of the employers in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland expressed that they are not planning to change the structure of the executive schemes and that one-fourth (24 to 26 percent) are still unsure. Therefore, this book chapter, as a commentary, aims to disclose and interpret the survey results from the Nordic countries perspective and guide the practitioners and academics on how the corporate governance systems and executive compensation schemes should be modified to reach fair, resilient, and sustainable businesses based on the key takeaways from the COVID recession and stakeholder theory. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Energy Consumption in Office Buildings: A Case Study of an Australian University Campus

Building energy management, in terms of both adopted technologies and occupant consumption behaviour, is becoming an essential element of sustainability and climate change mitigation programs. The global COVID-19 pandemic and the consequential lockdowns and remote working had a notable impact on office building operations and provided a unique opportunity for building energy consumption studies. This paper investigates the COVID-19 effects on energy consumption in office buildings, particularly in the education sector. We studied different buildings at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) campus before and during the pandemic period. The results demonstrate that the changes in energy consumption due to COVID-19 in different UTS faculties are not as strongly correlated with occupant activity. The comparison shows that buildings with administrative offices or classrooms are easier to switch to a remote-working mode than those housing laboratories and special equipment. During weekends, public holidays, or conditions requiring working from home, the per capita energy consumption increases significantly translating into lower energy efficiency. Our findings highlight the essential need for some changes in office building energy management systems. We provide recommendations for office and commercial buildings in general to deal with similar crises and to reduce energy overconsumption in normal situations. © 2023 by the authors.

Future Prospects in Balanced Scorecard Research: Sustainability Perspective

This paper reviews the state of the research on a balanced scorecard (BSC) and sustainability balanced scorecard (SBSC) from 1990 to 2020. It aims to address the research question, "What are the future prospects in the BSC research from the perspective of sustainability?" using an integrative literature review method with bibliometric analysis. This study also reports the evolution and synthesis of published materials, citation analysis, themes, theories, and the literature gap and future research agenda, including the post coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) sustainability crisis. The findings of this study, which aim to advance the knowledge in the field, include the developed future research framework matrix and the proposed research questions regarding the research gap in the multidimensional, multi-disciplinary, and multi-cultural empirical research. This study is considered unique owing to its comprehensive, holistic, and up-to-date structure. Furthermore, such a research design facilitates interdisciplinary, theory-driven research with the review in multiple disciplines, which is new to the accounting literature. One limitation of this study is that it is a conceptual study;however, it can pave the way for future empirical and mixed-method studies in this field.

A prediction of prostate cancer deathsspiking by SARS-CoV-2 infection

COVID-19 is a global issue, with over 6.25 million cases in 213 countries and territories on June 1, 2020. Althoughthis virus infects all groups, data indicate that the risk for severe disease and death is much higher in older men, which coincides with the same group of patients at risk for prostate cancer. A recent Italian study investigated theprevalence and severity of COVID-19 in men with prostate cancer. This study indicated that of a total of 4,532 men with COVID-19, from the Veneto region of Italy, 9.5% (n=430) had cancer and out of those around 30% (n=118) hadprostate cancer. Data also indicated that male cancer patients had a 1.8-fold increased risk of COVID-19 infectionand developed a more severe disease. Interestingly, they observed that the prostate cancer patients (n=4) treated with androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) were less likely to develop COVID-19, and in those who were infected, thedisease was less severe. In this current study, we focused on determining the genetic basis of the higher COVID-19prevalence and severity in male patients and particularly for prostate cancer patients. Researchers found two genesthat are essential for severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). ACE2 is a SARS-CoV-2receptor, whereas the serine protease, TMPRSS2, primes the virus for cell entry through cleavage of the viral spikeprotein (S). The expression of TMPRSS2 is significantly high in normal prostate tissue and is regulated in large partby an androgen response element in the promoter region. Therefore, we decided to investigate the status of thesetwo genes in various tumors from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database using the cBioportal platform. Weanalyzed over 46,000 tumor samples from 176 studies and found that aggressive metastatic prostate cancer, including neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC), has significantly higher amplification (copy number alteration) ofthe ACE2 and TMPRSS2 genes compared to other cancers. Next, we focused on drugs that could simultaneouslytarget ACE2 or TMPRSS2 and oncogenic pathways and would be beneficial for prostate cancer patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. Although several inhibitors are validated in literature for both ACE2 and TMPRSS2, very limitedstudies were performed to see the effect on cancer cells. Therefore, we analyzed a cytotoxic effect database of over130,000 drugs on NCI-60 cell lines with COMPARE algorithm and found two relevant compounds, NSC-148958 (FT-701) and NSC-280594 (triciribine phosphate), which target ACE2 and TMPRSS2, respectively. Computational dataare currently validating different prostate cancer cell-lines and their response to these drugs. In summary, ourfindings provide the premise that men who are at risk for or diagnosed with prostate cancer may be moresusceptible to severe infection and death in response to SARS-CoV-2 due to the high expression of ACE2 andTMPRSS2, and triciribine phosphate and FT-701 could be a therapeutic intervention to target co-occurrence ofCOVID-19 and prostate cancer.