Font Size: 

In recent years, we have witnessed unprecedented changes in the conduct of business. Technological advances, political shifts and social development have combined to transform companies, industries and markets in ways unforeseeable just a few decades ago. We are challenged to take full advantage of emerging opportunities, while at the same time confronting the difficulties implicit in superimposing established practices upon divergent cultural milieus. We must also face critical questions of balance between the economic exploitation of developing regions and the economic empowerment of populations heretofore unable to participate fully in the global market. Never before has it been so critical to muster the very best and most experienced thinkers across the widest possible range of disciplines to examine these issues. There have been many proposals about how to properly govern a firm. In the past decade, these proposals have increasingly tilted toward the American model as representing the appropriate pool of practices that should be applied globally. More recently, there has been renewed interest in European practices, especially financially accounting. For many countries, these practices, if adopted and implemented, would represent a radical improvement in corporate governance, especially for public companies whose shares are traded in stock markets. We fully endorse recommendations to improve corporate governance practices by identifying “best practices” regardless of their national origins. However, we do not endorse recommendations that favor a single type of a corporate government system. There is frequent confusion between systems of governance and corporate governance practices. This confusion lies at the heart of much mischief; hence, we begin by making a distinction between the two