Abstract
The Corporate Governance guidelines, rules and regulations were introduced to guide corporations towards good governance practices. However, there seem to be contradicting events that projected otherwise. The series of corporate scandals seems to be giving the impression that there is something lacking in the present corporation governance practices among the corporations, in particular, the public listed companies. Several opinions were gathered in answering this lacuna and the outcome seems to pin point to the lack of moral element in the present corporate governance practices. Thus, this study attempts to explore ethics aspects as a moral substance in relation to corporate governance. Guided by the subjectivity of the research issue, the qualitative approach was used to investigate the subject matter. Specifically, purposive sampling was used. The study found various ways to embed ethics in promoting morality in corporate governance practices among the corporations in the study. The ethical content developed in the corporations guide the corporate business practices, and, hence, motivates good governance, i.e. accountability, responsiveness, responsibility and transparency. Ethical principle, ethical position and ethical structures are the three main elements of ethics that emerged from the analysis of the research data that drive the corporations towards inclusive governance practices. In addition, process of integrating morality in governance is also part of the initiatives able to guide towards good governance. Overall, the study described a new scope of corporate governance framework. The various emergent patterns answered the question ethics is the moral substance that can be incorporated into corporate governance practices. Generalization of the findings would be difficult due to the limitations of the scope, hence an in-depth case study is proposed for future research to generate deeper and rich description of the issue.
Highlights
The desire to achieve high standards of corporate governance practices is clearly emphasized by the Malaysian High Level Finance Committee in the Report on Corporate Governance, February 1999, which states: “The statement of best practices is designed to guide companies into achieving the necessary high standards of corporate behavior”
Diagram 1 offers a conceptual model of inclusive governance based on the categories of the themes that emerged from the data
The diagram depicts the conceptual description of the findings of the ethical dimension that is found to influence inclusive governance practices among the study sample
Summary
The desire to achieve high standards of corporate governance practices is clearly emphasized by the Malaysian High Level Finance Committee in the Report on Corporate Governance, February 1999, which states: “The statement of best practices is designed to guide companies into achieving the necessary high standards of corporate behavior” (para 2.5, p.11). In the last two decades standards of corporate behaviour received criticism. There are debates on the standard of corporate governance among corporations worldwide. The main issue is the inadequacy of the present structure of corporate governance (Arjoon, 2005). The inadequacy of the corporate governance structure is often related to the lack of focus on moral obligation. The focus of corporate governance structure as stated is designed to fit economic logic, the focus has always been on structure rather than the morals of the practice. Several corporate governance scholars (Letza, 2007) have indicated that there is a need to understand corporate governance from a moral perspective. This study attempts to explore ethics as a moral substance, in the context of corporate governance practices
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