Issues in Corporate Accountability and Governance

Abstract

IntroductionCorporate power in the twentieth century has clearly emerged as adominant social institution in the lives of citizens all over the globe. Thejoint stock company has been a great invention through its ability to createwealth, build economies, generate jobs, and even change societies.The scope of corporate power is considerable. Many modem corporationshave produced income even larger that the gross national productsof some respectable nations. The significance of this power, as argued bysome commentators, is the extent to which the corporation has evenreplaced the church as the dominant social institution in the lives of citizensof industrialized nations.’However, there are serious concerns over the excessive power of modemcorporations.Corporate power, clearly, is the predominant power in the society andthe problem is how to limit it. The concern for public policy, summedup in the phrase “social responsibility”: derives from the growing conceptionof a commercial society and the controls which a polity mayhave to impose on economic ventures that generate unforeseen consequencesfar beyond intentions, or power of control, of the initiatingparties.Thus, when corporations rape the environment or abuse us as guineapigs, suddenly we awaken to the realities of our individual powerlessnessand our dependence on their smooth and presumably benign ...