Corporate Governance and Financial Crisis
April 3, 2025
The ongoing financial crisis has proved that Corporate America and the Corporates in other countries around the world have exhibited behavior that can be described as mismanagement and not keeping in tenets of good corporate governance. In this respect, some of the criticism that has been directed at corporate leaders and the bankers in particular…
The field of corporate governance exists in a symbiotic relationship between the management and the board of directors. It is impossible to talk about corporate governance without taking into account the roles and duties of the board of directors and the expectations from the management. To explain this fully, it would be useful to consider…
The previous articles discussed how good corporate governance is imperative to the existence of a structured and functioning economy. In this article, we look at the ways in corporate governance is practiced in the developed economies of the West and in the developing economies in the rest of the world. To start with, the ongoing…
The corporation has been defined in many ways as interpreted by individuals; however lawyers and economists call it a nexus of contracts. This means that a corporation is nothing but a sum of all the agreements which lead to its creation. Corporations are also defined as a device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
To define it more visually, a corporation is a structure established wherein different parties come together and each provides capital, labor or expertise to maximize profits for all of them. A corporation has wide variety of constituents and it needs to relate to all of them; like investors, shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, creditors, government and finally the community.
Legally, a corporation is identified as a fictional person for some purposes however the corporation itself is separate from its owners and employees. This means, what is owed to the corporation cannot be owed to the people who make the corporation. So is a corporation is sued or gets bankrupt, the individual members of the corporation are not liable to pay the debts.
Let us explore the evolution of corporations into the form we know today. To begin with, in the earlier times, the educational and religious corporations were given considerable independence and perpetual existence to evade the all encompassing power of the king. Later, corporations were set to address state’s specific needs like establishing colonies during the colonial era.
Initially, corporations were characterized by a few wealthy people who negotiated amongst themselves, invested capital and worked towards maximizing profits. However later in the nineteenth century; the rapid technological progress brought the idea of having larger firms employing hundreds and sometimes thousands of people.
The other significant aspect was the need for the capital which was earlier provided by a few wealthy members but now proved inadequate to support the operations of such large firms. The ramification of these changes was the emerging acceptance of the concept of private property which was hitherto unknown as all properties were considered to be belonging to the state or the religious institutions like churches.
There are certain critical features of the corporation which helped its popularity and laid the foundation for the modern day form as we know today.
Lastly the society can regulate corporate actions through taxes and fines and direct them to pursue not just economic but social goals as well. Corporations have also gone through the Darwinian principle of natural selection and evolution. So the processes and systems keep changing with the time and context in which the corporations operate.
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