Governance Regimes in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The change that has taken place over the past decade in the structure of companies and their boards has been nothing short of dramatic. By 2003, ten years after the implementation of what became known as the ‘Cadbury Code’ in the UK, codes of best practice had been drawn up by a wide spectrum of countries. These embraced not only Western Europe and North America, but also former Communist nations of Eastern and Central Europe as they prepared to join the European Union (EU) in 2004, in addition to Latin America, South Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Far East.2 Global and pan-European institutions, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Commonwealth, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), likewise jumped on the bandwagon. So too did institutional investor organisations,3 publishing their own sets of guidelines for sound standards in business and corporate practice.4 This represents a resounding endorsement of the Code of Best Practice published by the Cadbury Committee in December 1992 under the title of The Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance.5KeywordsEuropean UnionCorporate GovernanceFamily FirmPension FundSupervisory BoardThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.