RiskMetrics, the owner of corporate governance adviser ISS, has just delivered its assessment of the latest round of annual shareholder meetings in the US, also known as the proxy season. Its verdict?

Simply put, the bear market mauled the 2008 proxy season… The collapse of Bear Stearns on the eve of the season let most of the air out of the shareholder activism balloon.

Deteriorating economic conditions meant shareholders were more likely to back management and refrain from ousting directors, while activist pension funds and unions sensed which way the wind was blowing and decided to rein in their demands. RiskMetrics also said companies were getting better at talking to investors on contentious issues.

Yet it added that one type of investor has been pursuing its own agenda in muscular fashion during the market turmoil. It pointed out that many boards - including those of The New York Times Co and Tiffany - have in recent months agreed to yield one or more seats to hedge funds unperturbed by the choppy waters.

My colleague Jonathan Moules has found a rare example of a small supplier managing to stand its ground against a much-bigger customer that decided unilaterally to change payment terms (in the big company’s favour, of course).

MTa International is a family-run training business. It rebelled when Alliance Boots, a pharmacy chain owned by private equity, said it would pay suppliers 75 days after receiving an invoice, having previously paid after 30 days. Last week, MTa managed to exempt itself from this diktat after threatening to withdraw its services.

Justifying the general hardening of its payment terms, Alliance Boots said it was “committed to working with suppliers for mutual long-term benefit”.

In the same spirit of partnership, I have decided to take two-and-a-half times longer to pay at my local Boots store. Please be patient if you are stuck in the queue behind me as I pat every pocket laboriously in a pantomime search for my wallet, or attempt to fill out a loyalty card application form at the till using only a No 7 eyeliner pencil.

In the meantime, here are some tips on how to manage exposure to slow payers in today’s horrible credit climate.

Fear is ruling many an office right now. How should managers make decisions in such a nervy climate?

Professor Baba Shiv of Stanford Graduate School of Business is a specialist in the science behind decision-making. He believes senior managers can weather a downturn by emulating Star Trek’s emotionless Mr Spock.

In a new FT Management podcast, he says one way they can unleash their inner Vulcan is to stop watching TV news - or, to be more precise, to get someone else to watch it for them - in order to avoid doom-laden and emotive images that might cloud their judgment.

Prof Shiv uses the example of a private equity boss trying to invest a fat chunk of cash to illustrate the weakness of the “sequential” approach to making decisions, in which options are evaluated as and when they come up, as opposed to the “simultaneous” approach of just choosing between the best options that exist at any one moment.

The latter strategy is also a good one to follow if you are single and trying to find a mate, he adds, as I lure him off-topic at the end of our 9½ minute chat.

Previous podcasts can be found here and include: a 3-part interview with Tom Peters; IMD’s Peter Killing on setting strategic priorities; Weber Shandwick’s Leslie Gaines-Ross on corporate reputation; plus Rotman’s Roger Martin on leaders who avoid false either/or choices.

It can be easy to close a deal when the economy is booming. But when growth has slowed - or gone into reverse - negotiation becomes an art.

Adam Galinsky, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, says one of the keys to successful  negotiation when times are tough is the ability to understand the perspective of the person on the other side of the proposed deal and then use that knowledge to find creative ways of resolving deadlock.

“In a downturn what you really need to do is figure out what people’s core interests are and whether there are ways in which you can provide for their core interests and also get the best outcome for yourself,” he says.

One way of doing this is to give the other side of the negotiation multiple options rather than presenting them with just one offer, Prof Galinsky suggests.

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With some major economies decelerating - or in outright recession - many younger managers are getting their first experience of cyclical business pain. What do these callow youths need to know to adjust to a harsher economic climate?

For the first in a series of occasional posts on this issue, I spoke to Tony Cram of Britain’s Ashridge Business School about one of the most important things to get right when economic confidence is evaporating: pricing. He says that managers should do three things when they set prices during a slowdown or a recession.  

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