If a shareholder has not paid in full for the shares he has agreed to buy, he can be force

re bought and sold by different people.

?Look at the statements below and the five extracts about companies.

?Which extract (A, B, C, D or E) does each statement (1-8) refer to?

?For each statement (1-8), mark one letter (A, B, C, D or E) on your Answer Sheet.

?You will need to use some of these letters more than once.

A Separate Legal Entity

A unique feature of a company is that, no matter how many individuals have bought shares in it, it is treated in its dealings with the outside world as if it was a person in its own right. It is said to be a separate legal entity. Just as the law can create this separate legal person, the law also can eliminate it, but its existence can only be terminated by using the proper legal procedures.

Thus, the identity of the shareholders in a large concern may be changing constantly as shares are bought and sold by different people. On the other hand, a small private company may have the same shareholders from the date it is incorporated (the day it legally came into being), until the date when liquidation is completed (the cessation of the company, often known as "winding up" or being "wound up"). A prime example of its identity as a separate legal entity is that it may sue its own shareholders, or in turn be sued by them.

B Limited Liability

Most companies are "limited" companies. This means that any shareholder who has paid for the share(s) which he has bought cannot be forced to pay more money into the company if, for example, it is making losses or has gone into liquidation. Thus, the maximum amount of money any shareholder can lose by investing in a company is the amount he has invested. Unlike in sole traders or partnerships a shareholder in a limited company cannot be forced to sell his own property to pay the debts of the business.

If a shareholder has not paid in full for the shares he has agreed to buy, he can be forced to pay the balance owing on the shares. Once he has paid that amount he cannot be forced to pay any further amount. Thus, his liability is limited.

C Company Directors

The day-to-day management of a company is not carried out by the shareholders. Shareholders can normally attend, and vote at, general meetings of their company. At one of these meetings the shareholders will vote for directors, the people to whom the running of the company is entrusted. At each Annual General Meeting (AGM) the directors have to report to the shareholders. They write a directors' report and this is accompanied by a set of final accounts for the year. If there is a change in the directors of a company, for example, a new director being appointed or an existing director resigning, this change must be notified to the Companies Office within fourteen days of the change. The board of directors (usually known simply as "the board") is the term used to mean all of the directors.

D The Company Secretary

The company secretary must, among other things, attend all board meetings, consult with the chief executive on the agenda and keep a record of the minutes of board meetings and general meetings of the shareholders. It is normally the company secretary who makes returns to the Companies Office including notifying the Registrar of changes in the company's board, auditors, registered office etc. The company secretary is usually an individual although many companies pay firms of accountants to undertake this role.

E Share Capital and Dividends

A shareholder in a limited company obtains his reward for investing in the form. of a share of the profits made by the company, known as a dividend. The directors decide how much of the profits is to be retained in the company and used for expansion. Out of the remaining profits they propose the payment of a certain amount of dividend. The shareholders cannot propose a dividend for themselves higher than that already proposed by the directors. They

eels that the company can gain reputation if more of its employees publish articles in newspapers. You have been asked to write a proposal regarding the need to encourage the employees to write articles for newspapers.

?Write your proposal, including the following.

?a brief description of the employees' engagement in writing articles for newspapers

?an explanation of why published articles can contribute to the company's publicity in terms of its technical expertise

?recommendations for incentive measures that urge the employees to consider writing articles for journals.

Question 3

?Your company has planned to screen out socially inappropriate massages from all of its advertisements. You have been instructed to write a report about biased ads which might foster negative stereotypes of some group.

?Write the report for your manager, including the following information:

?what stereotypes of people have appeared in the ads

?why it is compelling to stop running or changing the ads in their current forms

?whet general lesson can be learnt from this incident.

Question 4

?Your company, which runs a transportation business, has received a letter requesting adjustment on damaged shipment from a client. You are responsible for writing letters to inform. clients of how reimbursement is made to clients under such circumstances.

?Writing the letter to this client:

?expressing your awareness of this affair and your apology for the damage

?informing him of the granted adjustment

?reminding him of what needs to be done before the reimbursement is made.

Investing

Your company wants to make some investments. You have been asked to submit ideas on how to invest. Discuss, and decide together:

?Which guidelines of investment you should follow

?What field you can invest in

&8226;Read this introduction to an article about an approach to management.

&8226;Choose the best sentence from the opposite page to fill each of the gaps.

&8226;For each gap (9-14), mark one letter (A-H) on your Answer Sheet.

&8226;Do not use any letter more than once.

Introducing T-shaped management

Despite their best efforts, most companies continue to squander what may be their greatest asset in today's knowledge economy. I am referring to the wealth of expertise, ideas and latent insights that lie scattered across or deeply embedded in their organisations. This seems a great shame, because capitalising on those intellectual resources - using existing knowledge to improve performance or combining strands of knowledge to create something altogether new - can help companies respond to a surprising array of challenges, from fending off smaller, nimbler rivals to integrating businesses that have been forced together in a merger.

(9) I suggest another approach, one that requires managers to change their behaviour and the way they spend their time. The approach is novel but, when properly implemented, quite powerful. I call it T-shaped management.

T-shaped management relies on a new kind of executive, one who breaks out of the traditional corporate hierarchy to share knowledge freely across the organisation (the horizontal part of the T) while remaining fiercely committed to individual business unit performance (the vertical part). (10) Although this tension is most acute for heads of business units, any T- shaped manager with operating unit obligations must wrestle with it.

You might ask, why rely so heavily on managers to share knowledge? Why not just institute a state-of-the-art knowledge management system? The trouble is that those systems are best at transferring explicit knowledge; for example, the template needed to perform. a complicated but routine task. (11) In fact, this implicit knowledge sharing is crucial to the success of innovation-driven companies. Furthermore, merely moving documents around can never engender the degree of collaboration that is needed to generate new insights. (12)

Effective T-shaped managers will benefit companies of almost any size, but they're particularly crucial in large corporations where operating units have been granted considerable autonomy. Although giving business units greater freedom generally increases accountability and spurs innovation, it can also lead to competition between units, which may hoard, rather than share, expertise. (13)

So, how do you successfully cultivate T-shaped managers and capitalise on the value they can create? Energy giant BP Amoco provides some provocative answers. My in-depth examination of their management practices highlighted five specific types of value that T-shaped managers can generate. (14) It is important to follow these, because the benefits of T-shaped management will not be realised if the concept is poorly implemented. Senior executives must put in place mechanisms that simultaneously promote and discipline managers' knowledge-sharing activities.

A However, direct personal contact is more typically needed to effectively transfer the kind of knowledge that must be creatively applied to particular business problems or opportunities.

B For that, companies really have to bring people together to brainstorm.

C Many companies have tried, with mixed success, to leverage this underused asset by centralising knowledge management functions or by investing heavily in knowledge management technology.

D The entire history of the T-shaped manager is one of evolution, a process that continues to this day.

E The successful T-shaped manager must learn to live with, and ultimately thriv

Practise discussing this task, and the questions which follow it, with a partner:

STAFF TRAINING REVIEW

The organisation you work for plans to review the training it currently provides for staff and to make improvements. You are part of the team that has been appointed to contribute to the review.

Discuss, and decide together:

&8226;how to evaluate the training currently provided

&8226;how to set about meeting training needs

Follow-up questions:

&8226;Do you think all members of a company should receive training?

&8226;Are there types of training which are not appropriate for a company to provide for staff?

&8226;What training would you most like to receive?

&8226;How can the effectiveness of training be measured?

&8226;Do you think the kinds of training that companies provide will change in the future?