The Remaking of Television New Zealand 1984–1992 by Barry Spicer

Author:Barry Spicer [Spicer, Barry: Powell, Michael and Emanuel, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 1996-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Boards of Management and Associated Investments

As legal subsidiaries BCL and SPP are overseen by boards of directors. This board structure was extended in the form of boards of management to other operating SBUs such as TVNZ Networks, Avalon, Moving Pictures, TVNZ Enterprises, and International Operations. Two or three corporate-level executives (corporate directors) and the senior management of the SBU sit on each board.

The principal role of each such board has been to monitor, oversee, and co-ordinate the strategies, plans, and activities of the subsidiary or SBU. The chief executive of the TVNZ group in 1992, Brent Harman, explained:

In a company of our size and diversity, the reality is that the chief executive alone is not going to be able to monitor the achievement of SBU’s business plans and help each manager with the problems he or she is going to encounter. I want each manager to look to the future and to grow the business. The role of the board of management is the same as a board of directors. I see them fulfilling exactly the same role as my parent company board does with me.

However, the system has not been without its critics, who claimed that it involved the expense of an additional layer of management at the corporate level. While conceding that the SBUs and related boards of management were not without problems, Harman defended their use arguing that they played an important role in the management of the group not only by helping to reduce spans of control, but also by providing a means of management training and cross-fertilisation within the TVNZ group of companies.

Considerable attention was also given to managing TVNZ Ltd’s relationships with associated company investments, the most important of which is TVNZ’s investment in Clear Communications Ltd. TVNZ’s lead director on CLEAR’s board was the deputy chief executive, Darryl Dorrington, who also chaired BCL’s board. These related positions allowed the important interface between these two companies to be carefully managed. TVNZ’s other director on CLEAR’s board was TVNZ’s group chief executive. A subsidiary, TVNZ Investments Ltd, held the shares in the associated companies Sky Network Television Limited, Clear Communications Limited, and the New Zealand Listener (1990) Limited. This separation helped to quarantine the risk associated with these investments from the core businesses of TVNZ Ltd.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.