Good Corporate Governance : The International Challenge

This paper provides an overview of some recent developments in the area of corporate governance and does this by examining a number of major global corporate governance debates and the issues underlying these debates. This will be done by reference to the debates around several major international reports which emerged in the 1990s and which have sought to contribute to the development of codes of good corporate governance. Good corporate governance is ultimately aimed at achieving ethical governance. One should however caution that the fascination of governments and industry associations with broad statements of "principle", which are increasingly found in this area, should be tempered by a reference to the actual application of such principles in the "real world". Too often there is a failure to embed or situate broadly based principles within the social practices of organisations. For the sake of convenience the paperI will draw these real world illustrations from corporate Australia. Without such regard for the social context of Codes, their broadly-based principles are likely to become an end in themselves and fail to relate to actual governance problems at the local level