Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
Corporate governance, a term that scarcely existed before the 1990s, is now universally invoked
wherever business and finance are discussed. The subject has spawned consultancies,
academic degrees, encyclopaedias, innumerable articles, conferences and speeches. Almost all
the OECD nations are currently revising their corporate governance practices or have recently
done so (OECD, 2003), while the establishment of a viable corporate governance system has
become a priority objective for emergent economies from Latin America to China. In the
midst of so much interest, the underlying issues of the subject are always in danger of being
swamped. Moreover, since 'good governance', like 'fair trade' and 'free competition', is an
abstraction that commands near-universal respect but diverse interpretation, it has also become
the destination board fo ... read full excerpt from Corporate Governance: Accountability, Enterprise and International Comparisons ebook
