Corporate Governance and Boards of Directors

Corporate governance draws attention to a vast range of individuals and groups at all levels of economic and political activity, who are involved with and interested in matters of firm performance, market confidence, and the systemic legitimacy of capitalism. Corporate governance is a very broad topic with many national variations and intellectual perspectives. It is relevant to all kinds of organizations but it is mostly considered in relation to the ownership, control, and accountability of corporations. Since the early 1990's, the emergence and worldwide diffusion of Codes of Corporate Governance among nations and transnational institutions such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has also highlighted the importance of corporate governance for the development of countries and their host firms. The financial crisis, the latest development in the recurrent crisis of corporate governance, has not only renewed attention to the efficacy of corporate governance mechanisms and reform, but also promises to reshape the corporate governance agenda and ideology going forward. While relations between managers, directors, boards, and shareholders will remain core to the subject these relations will be conducted within a context wherein issues such as: the balance of law versus self‐regulation; the belief in the primacy of (short‐term) shareholder value; the governance responsibilities of shareholders and financial intermediaries; the morality of executive pay and reward; the representativeness of boards; the relationship between the corporation and the rest of society, are all subject to renewed scrutiny.

Accountability · Business · Context (archaeology) · Corporate governance · Corporate law · Corporation · Economics · Financial crisis · Market for corporate control · Political science · Public relations · Scrutiny · Shareholder · Shareholder primacy · Stakeholder · Accounting · Corporate Finance and Governance · Corporate Governance and Law · Corporate Insolvency and Governance · Finance · Law