Good governance is the process of measuring how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources and guarantee the realization of human rights in a manner essentially free of abuse and corruption and with due regard for the rule of law. Governance is "the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented ". Governance in this context can apply to corporate, international, national, or local governance as well as the interactions between other sectors of society.
Corporate governance is defined, described or delineated in diverse ways, depending on the writer's purpose. Writers focussed on a disciplinary interest or context often adopt narrow definitions that appear purpose-specific. Writers concerned with regulatory policy in relation to corporate governance practices often use broader structural descriptions. A broad (meta) definition that encompasses many adopted definitions is '“Corporate governance” describes the processes, structures, and mechanisms that influence the control and direction of corporations'.
An investor is a person that allocates capital with the expectation of a future financial return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some species of property. Types of investments include equity, debt, securities, real estate, infrastructure, currency, commodity, token, derivatives such as put and call options, futures, forwards, etc. This definition makes no distinction between the investors in the primary and secondary markets. That is, someone who provides a business with capital and someone who buys a stock are both investors. An investor who owns a stock is a shareholder.
Governance is the process of interactions through the laws, norms, power or language of an organized society over a social system. It is done by the government of a state, by a market, or by a network. It is the decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem that leads to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions". In lay terms, it could be described as the political processes that exist in and between formal institutions.
In a corporation, a stakeholder is a member of "groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist", as defined in the first usage of the word in a 1963 internal memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute. The theory was later developed and championed by R. Edward Freeman in the 1980s. Since then it has gained wide acceptance in business practice and in theorizing relating to strategic management, corporate governance, business purpose and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The definition of corporate responsibilities through a classification of stakeholders to consider has been criticized as creating a false dichotomy between the "shareholder model" and the "stakeholders model" or a false analogy of the obligations towards shareholders and other interested parties.
Corporate law is the body of law governing the rights, relations, and conduct of persons, companies, organizations and businesses. The term refers to the legal practice of law relating to corporations, or to the theory of corporations. Corporate law often describes the law relating to matters which derive directly from the life-cycle of a corporation. It thus encompasses the formation, funding, governance, and death of a corporation.
Corporate transparency describes the extent to which a corporation's actions are observable by outsiders. This is a consequence of regulation, local norms, and the set of information, privacy, and business policies concerning corporate decision-making and operations openness to employees, stakeholders, shareholders and the general public. From the perspective of outsiders, transparency can be defined simply as the perceived quality of intentionally shared information from the corporation.
A Company Secretary is a senior position in a citizen sector establishment. Also known as Compliance Officers, it is one of the positions that is a part of the key managerial personnel of any company. In large American and Canadian publicly listed corporations, a Company Secretary is typically named a Corporate Secretary. A Company Secretary is responsible for the efficient administration of a company, particularly with regard to ensuring compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements and for ensuring that decisions of the board of directors are implemented.
Mervyn Eldred King is a South African corporate attorney, arbitrator, mediator, corporate director, commission chair, author and speaker. A former judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa, he is currently chairman of the IIRC, chairman emeritus of the Global Reporting Initiative and director of the Association of Business Administrators of Southern Africa. He is best known for chairing the King Committee on Corporate Governance, which issued three comprehensive reports in 1994, 2002 and 2009 endorsing an integrated and inclusive approach to corporate governance in South Africa.
Management is a type of labor with a special role of coordinating the activities of inputs and carrying out the contracts agreed among inputs, all of which can be characterized as "decision making". Managers usually face disciplinary forces by making themselves irreplaceable in a way that the company would lose without them. A manager has an incentive to invest the firm's resources in assets whose value is higher under him than under the best alternative manager, even when such investments are not value-maximizing.
Corporate sustainability is an approach aiming to create long-term stakeholder value through the implementation of a business strategy that focuses on the ethical, social, environmental, cultural, and economic dimensions of doing business. The strategies created are intended to foster longevity, transparency, and proper employee development within business organizations. Firms will often express their commitment to corporate sustainability through a statement of Corporate Sustainability Standards (CSS), which are usually policies and measures that aim to meet, or exceed, minimum regulatory requirements.
ISO/IEC 38500 is an international standard for Corporate governance of information technology published jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It provides a framework for effective governance of IT to assist those at the highest level of organizations to understand and fulfill their legal, regulatory, and ethical obligations in respect of their organizations’ use of IT. The standard is heavily based on the AS 8015-2005 Australian Standard for Corporate Governance of Information and Communication Technology, originally published in January 2005.
Legal Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance or "LGRC", refers to the complex set of processes, rules, tools and systems used by corporate legal departments to adopt, implement and monitor an integrated approach to business problems. While Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance refers to a generalized set of tools for managing a corporation or company, Legal GRC, or LGRC, refers to a specialized – but similar – set of tools utilized by attorneys, corporate legal departments, general counsel and law firms to govern themselves and their corporations, especially but not exclusively in relation to the law. Other specializations within the realm of governance, risk management and compliance include IT GRC and financial GRC. Within these three realms, there is a great deal of overlap, particularly in large corporations that have legal and IT departments, as well as financial departments.
Integrated reporting in corporate communication is a "process that results in communication, most visibly a periodic “integrated report”, about value creation over time. An integrated report is a concise communication about how an organization's strategy, governance, performance and prospects lead to the creation of value over the short, medium and long term."
Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is a framework designed to be integrated into an organization's strategy to unlock enterprise value. Value creation occurs when the scope of the organizational objective to create shareholder value is expanded to include the identification, assessment and management of sustainability-related risks and opportunities in respect to all organizational stakeholders and the environment.
Regulatory competition, also called competitive governance or policy competition, is a phenomenon in law, economics and politics concerning the desire of lawmakers to compete with one another in the kinds of law offered in order to attract businesses or other actors to operate in their jurisdiction. Regulatory competition depends upon the ability of actors such as companies, workers or other kinds of people to move between two or more separate legal systems. Once this is possible, then the temptation arises for the people running those different legal systems to compete to offer better terms than their "competitors" to attract investment. Historically, regulatory competition has operated within countries having federal systems of regulation - particularly the United States, but since the mid-20th century and the intensification of economic globalisation, regulatory competition became an important issue internationally.
Chris Bart is an educator, former university professor, professional speaker, business consultant and author. He is a notable authority on organizational mission and vision statements, and also for his knowledge both on the roles and responsibilities of corporate directors and the strategic governance of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
Masahiko Aoki was a Japanese economist, Tomoye and Henri Takahashi Professor Emeritus of Japanese Studies in the Economics Department, and Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Aoki was known for his work in comparative institutional analysis, corporate governance, the theory of the firm, and comparative East Asian development.
Yasser Akkaoui is a Lebanese-Swiss corporate governance activist and publisher. He advises companies and regulators in the Middle East on how to embed a culture of accountability and transparency in their corporate culture. Akkaoui has been the publisher of Executive magazine since 2001, a platform he uses to advocate for reforms in the Middle East. He is often invited to speak at international conferences on the topic of corporate governance and his insight has contributed to the publication of reports discussing the development of policies and reforms in the Arab World.
Sustainable capitalism is a conceptual form of capitalism based upon sustainable practices that seek to preserve humanity and the planet, while reducing externalities and bearing a resemblance of capitalist economic policy. A capitalistic economy must expand to survive and find new markets to support this expansion. Capitalist systems are often destructive to the environment as well as certain individuals without access to proper representation. However, sustainability provides quite the opposite; it implies not only a continuation, but a replenishing of resources. Sustainability is often thought of to be related to environmentalism, and sustainable capitalism applies sustainable principles to economic governance and social aspects of capitalism as well.
