Modern Organisational Governance: Volume 12

In this chapter the operation of governance in a variety of contexts is shown to be both essential and problematic. Reasons involve contextual and cultural differences as well as different understandings. This led to a consideration of the desirability of global governance and the problems in regulating international markets. The relationship of governance with sustainability and with corporate social responsibility is also examined. In doing so this chapter provides an introduction to the volume and sets the scene for the other contributions.

In the era of financial capitalism, how to manage and hold global corporations accountable has become too multifarious a topic for a solitary focus of one theme, to sufficiently outline the whole gamut and implications of their activities. Capitalism is characterized by several well-organized antinomies and contrasts, with reflections of critical dualities that bear a resemblance to the primeval paradoxes of Hellenic philosophy. The challenge of governance of capitalism to be effectual entails breaking out of the entrenched precincts of habitual academic silos. Various standpoints while reasonably informative falls short to explain fully the complex interlinkages between the concept of global governance and the state’s capacity to put into effect its will on corporate power.

Spotlighting on assessing the praxis of political economy at global and national level and the corporate reality, this chapter aims to provide a renewed thrust for the focused recalibration of global regulatory regime. In this chapter, the inquiries take the regulation as the main explanandum for elucidation of the shifting governance framework.

In this chapter, I analyze the notion of corporate responsibility from the person-centric perspective. I offer a four-dimensional exposition in terms of which I examine the corporate moral personhood view. These four dimensions are explained and critiqued to arrive at a definition of moral responsibility and status appropriate to corporations. I suggest that a corporation cannot be construed as a person in the sense in which individuals are persons. Since a corporation cannot be an independently existing entity, it cannot have an independent moral personality of its own as individual persons have. Therefore, I argue that a reasonable construal of corporate moral personhood has to exploit a different point of view altogether. With this difference of standpoint, I develop what is called the institutional personhood view. I argue that corporations do acquire a sort of collective institutional moral personality.

Corporate governance has experienced numerous changes in chime with the exigencies of the time during which it has been introduced or the context in which it has been practiced. Its gestation can be divided into three stages of development namely the traditional governance, the current transitional governance, and the upcoming sustainable governance. Traditional governance refers to the period hitherto the industrial revolution when corporations have not yet been formed, in today’s sense, but the governance structures were already in place in the existing entities at the time. Transitional governance refers to a period between the industrial revolution and the information age when corporations started to rise as a new economic entity. Reviewing the dominant corporate governance models are integral to understanding the transitional era. At the end of the transitional governance era, a transmogrification in corporate governance is underway to prepare itself for the coming age of sustainability. Sustainable governance integrates the principles of systems thinking and appreciates the complexity of decision-making environment, contrary to its former iterations that welcomed oversimplification of interactive messes (systems of problems). The objective of this chapter is to review corporate governance developmental transition toward sustainable governance and its role in the age of sustainability.

This chapter is concerned with the use of resources in the manufacture of products and services, both at the level of the individual firm and at the level of the market and particularly with what happens in an environment of resource depletion and as resources become scarce. The argument is that this is a new environment for the economic systems of the world which has not currently been recognised within economic planning. This new environment needs new approaches and this chapter is concerned with this situation. The aim therefore is to understand this new environment where resources are constrained by their limited availability and to develop strategies and techniques to manage in this environment.

China and the United States represent the two largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world. Studies on how US companies react to the natural environment are plentiful and show that stakeholders are one of the key drivers for green decisions. However, we have limited understanding of the stakeholder pressure faced by firms in China. Drawing on stakeholder theory, this study builds from in-depth interviews with 32 businesses in China. We show that government, customers, employees, suppliers, investors, and community are stakeholders most mentioned. Interestingly, findings also seem to suggest that the perceived pressures of non-profit organizations (NGOs) differ by the form of ownership. Multinational firms often view NGOs as allies, while Chinese firms downplay them as powerless and unimportant. Although stakeholders are seen as both threat and opportunity, two-thirds of those surveyed in this study focused on opportunity as opposed to threat.

This chapter aims to determine the extent of stakeholder engagement in the sustainability accounting and reporting process in three Australian local councils. The frameworks of Arnstein (1969) and Friedman and Miles (2006) and the case study methodology are used to assess the stakeholder engagement practices of three best practice Australian local councils. The findings highlight the existence of five levels of stakeholder engagement ranging from informing to empowering. However, the extent of stakeholder engagement varied depending on the nature and purpose of engagement. This study adds to the limited literature on stakeholder engagement in sustainability accounting and reporting, especially in a public sector context. This study provides practical insights into engagement with stakeholders and is useful to both organizations and their stakeholders. Although focused on a public sector and Australian context, the findings of this study have implications for stakeholder engagement in various local and global contexts.

The objective of this chapter is to explore the anti-corruption practices in Indonesian CSR best practice companies using the institutional theory. The methodology was based on focus group interview involving 10 CSR best practice companies; it was undertaken to obtain broader perspectives on anti-corruption practices. All respondent companies were involving their employees in anti-corruption practices in many ways. This study found that the institutionalization of anti-corruption practices is derived from both normative and mimetic isomorphism. Greater emphasis on integrating anti-corruption practices into CSR best practices would assist in enhancing awareness of the importance of anti-corruption practices, which in turn would improve the level of company’s trust and reliability. The anti-corruption practices in Indonesian CSR-based practice companies are applicable for general business activities and not specifically on CSR activities, such as charitable, sponsorship, donation, and community involvement. This is the first qualitative study that explores the anti-corruption practices in Indonesian companies. The study is important as corruption issues have been widely discussed in this country, and the Government is putting great efforts to combat corruption. Thus, this study brings valuable implications and insights to both academic and practical areas.

The principles of sustainable development argue that organizations should make decisions not only based on economic or financial factors but also based on the long-term social and environmental consequences. The Code on Corporate Governance is one of the drivers for corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in Malaysia. Additionally, the way managers execute their responsibilities may be affected by their own tradition, beliefs, values, and culture. Thus, this chapter aims to examine the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and CSR disclosure and to investigate the influence of cultural values (Board’s Culture Domination) on the relationship between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. A sample of 150 companies from the main board of Bursa Malaysia for year ended 2006 are chosen for the purpose of this study due to the year of the introduction of Bursa Malaysia CSR Framework. Based on available data, a CSR index is constructed. Hierarchical regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between the CSR disclosure index and the independent variables and also the moderating effect of Board’s Culture Domination. Results show that government ownership and audit committees have a positive and significant influence on CSR disclosure. Furthermore, the findings show that the Board’s Culture Domination moderate the relationship between audit committee, number of shareholders, foreign ownership, and CSR disclosure.

This study contributes to the existing literature that corporate governance consist of internal and external governance behavior which refers to the complementarity of the elements of (1) competing values framework and (2) corporate legality framework theories and proper orientation in the provisions of the elements leads to a good corporate power in the modern legal environment. A questionnaire is designed, a survey is conducted based on the constructed corporate governance model in the study, which investigates the evolutionary background of the elements with the view of establishing the right corporate culture and corporate legality behavior. The empirical results revealed that there is a positive linear relationship between the elements of corporate culture provisions with internal governance behavior and a significant positive association between the elements of corporate legality provisions with external governance behavior. The model does not take into account long-term external factors. Therefore, measuring corporate governance may not be an easy task and may not be suitable for specific countries that have strong legal systems and corporate ownership. The elements in the model are practical to implement and facilitates corporate to improve shareholder involvement and governance reporting and hence prevent failure. The constructed model span almost every attribute embedding high quality corporate social responsibility and corporate governance for corporate to identify areas for improvement and contributes to existing corporate governance literature that, connecting corporate culture and corporate legality behavior positively affect financial markets and firm performance.

All forms of organization have governance requirements and procedures. Often, these are quite similar despite the form and mission of the organization in question. They only consider governance in the organization environment and rarely look beyond their immediate stakeholders. In many corporations, the immediate stakeholders are even considered to be the investors and only those regardless of the apparency of other close stakeholders such as workers, customers, suppliers, authorities, and interest groups or non-governmental organizations. Even corporations with such narrow views and organizations with a broader stakeholder view are relatively unrealistic and are inappropriate in the modern global world, which we inhabit. Organizations of any form and size need to recognize both the need to consider radical changes in the modern global environment and the opportunities and possibilities presented by the current environment. Therefore, this chapter takes a broad approach and considers governance requirements in the modern world seen from a global perspective for all forms of organization. With global perspective, organizational governance is, here, called New Governance, and it includes the idea, that even the smallest decision can have a dramatic social, economic, or geopolitical impact in other parts of the world. The idea of New Governance is to put on the global lenses when making decisions to consider the potential effect – positive as well as negative – on the local as well as the global perspective, even on the unknown future and on future generations to come. Some may call this sustainable governance, but in this chapter, it is embedded in the New Governance as a concept, which can be nothing else but sustainable in its core idea. The future requirements for New Governance in any kind of organization are discussed, as the relationship between organizations and its global and future stakeholders, and how they form these requirements.