Business Ethics and Corporate Governance, Second Edition

CAPITALISM AT CROSSROADS

The beginning of the twenty-first century was marked by the emergence of corporate governance, as a solution to the collapse of several high-profile corporations, both in the USA and elsewhere. The business world was shocked beyond belief with both the scale and degree of illegal and unethical corporate practices. As a result, ‘the need for the adoption of good corporate governance principles has been reinforced, and inevitably and inextricably, efforts to this end have gathered momentum every time a new corporate scandal came to light’.¹

Corporates in the very citadel of capitalism, the United States of America, were mired in problems and were going through a grave crisis of credibility during the very early years of ...