Enhancing Board Effectiveness

11Corporate Governance Codes for Public Sector, Private Sector and Not-for-Profit Boards

Varied Rules and Structure or One Size Fits All

Olawale Ajai

Introduction

Corporate governance (CG) rules are prescribed in companies’ legislation and supplemented by capital market codes. On the heels of periodic corporate governance failures, like that of Enron, and the wish to be competitive sources of investment, national CG codes have now become the holy grail of global strategy to upgrade corporate governance quality (Eller, 2014). These have since been extended to SMEs, not-for-profits and public sector organizations.

The theory is that boards of directors are the fulcrum of corporate governance. CG codes dwell on the role, structure, composition, ...