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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the roles of corporate governance reforms in Malaysia following the 1997/1998 Asian crisis from the perspectives of corporate managers.

Design/methodology/approach – The primary evidence used is drawn from a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews with Malaysian corporate managers involved in the overseeing of the governance structures within their companies.

Findings – This study shows that most interviewees believed that an appropriate corporate governance system could play a role in resolving the problems associated with the interlocking and concentrated corporate ownership structure in Malaysia. However, the effectiveness of the corporate governance reforms in dealing with this issue is questionable. It also reveals that Malaysian companies ‘changed’ their corporate governance practices predominantly to recover (foreign) investor confidence lost during the crisis and to fulfil the legal requirements enforced by the government, where the latter was under pressure from the international community (especially, the World Bank and IMF) to ‘improve’ the Malaysian corporate governance practices after the crisis.

Originality/value of paper – This paper adds to the literature on corporate governance, especially in the context of developing countries. Prior research investigating corporate governance issues in developing countries has been limited, particularly the lack of in-depth examination of corporate governance practices from the perspectives of corporate managers. This paper will be of great value to researchers and practitioners seeking to gain a better understanding of the roles of corporate governance in Malaysia.

The purpose of this general review is to enhance understanding of the importance of a corporation’s whole ethics of governance regime and the connection to governance practices. This connection is often missing from corporate governance discussion. There is need for better business community awareness of a well-developed ethics of governance regime guiding appropriate board structure and composition choices subject to firm age and size, understanding of how these choices evolve as the firm matures and grows, plus the benefits from more emphasis in this area for company director training and development. This paper synthesises the theoretical and empirical insight from the ethics and corporate governance literatures to give guidance on best practice for large, medium size and small stock exchange listed companies. This synthesis of the literature evidences that the preferred Australian Institute of Company Directors agency theory prescription for a corporate board is not always optimal. In terms of practical implications advice is given on sound choices on board composition, director selection, plus director training and development that will give the best probability of effective board decisions and strong firm performance – this is not ‘one size fits all’ corporations advice. Future research should focus on whole ethics of governance regimes and governance practices in place for companies that have succeeded compared with companies that have failed. This will improve understanding in this area. This is a substantial future research agenda item as deeper knowledge of this contrast may add significantly to understanding of corporate success and failure.

Many of the emerging and transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have been building their economies largely on the infrastructure inherited from Communist times. It is widely recognized that much of the infrastructure in both the private and public sectors must be replaced if those economies are to achieve acceptable rates of economic growth and participate successfully within the broader European Union (EU) economic zone (The Economist, 2003). Upgrading infrastructure includes the likely importation of technology and management expertise, as well as substantial financial commitments. In this regard, inward foreign direct investment (FDI) is a particularly important potential source of capital for the emerging and transition European economies (ETEEs). FDI usually entails the importation of financial and human capital by the host economy with measurable and positive spillover impacts on host countries’ productivity levels (Holland & Pain, 1998a). The ability of ETEEs to attract and benefit from inward FDI should therefore be seen as an important issue within the broader policy context of how these countries can improve and expand their capital infrastructure, given relatively undeveloped domestic capital markets and scarce human capital.

Purpose – This chapter discusses the role that indices of corporate governance have had in comparative corporate governance research.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The authors begin with a short discussion of what corporate governance is and its main debates. Then, the authors review the main indices (which are also summarized in Table 1), highlighting their strengths and limitations as well as describing some of the findings that emanate from them. Then, the authors discuss the methodological and conceptual assumptions of corporate governance indices that may compromise their construct validity. The authors conclude with some encouraging suggestions for key methodological and research design issues to take into account in future comparative corporate governance.

Findings – Many methodological issues in the measuring and analysis of (comparative) corporate governance remain to be solved. First, although corporate governance practices have a direct effect on some of the firms’ strategic decisions, they may only have an indirect effect on firm performance. Second, it is possible that, after all, causality goes the other way around, i.e., the firm performance explains the adoption of certain governance practices. Third, there are also important challenges in measuring firm financial performance as well as measuring and comparing corporate governance effectiveness between firms from different governance settings.

Originality/Value – This is one of the first chapter to give an overview of the most current corporate governance indices, both academic and commercial, to discuss their underlying assumptions and limitations, and, finally, to provide specific directions for future research regarding comparative corporate governance.

Applying the general question of aid effectiveness to the sector of education, this paper provides some evidence for a positive effect of development assistance on primary enrolment and completion. However, even the most optimistic estimates clearly show that at any realistic rate of growth, aid will never be able to move the world markedly closer towards the internationally agreed objective of “Education For All”. Universal primary education requires increased efficiency of educational spending by donors and national governments alike. Moreover, there is some evidence that the recipient countries' general political and institutional background matters. Under conditions of bad governance, the impact of aid on enrolment can actually turn negative.

In the context of a changing global environment, governance is understood as one of the main strategic pillars of the shifting paradigm. Governance is an evolved model of governing which is conceptualized as a system to define and implement strategies, in which decisions are the result of interaction between public and private institutions and society. They need to work together within a set of values and principles: openness, participation, consultation, dialogue, innovation, coordination, strong leadership, effectiveness, accountability, and more. In tourism, governance is increasingly becoming a consolidated system to create and implement inclusive management processes. Thus, governance becomes the cornerstone for the success of destinations to achieve sustainable development.

This chapter collects and categorizes the principal theoretical debates respecting corporate law in the United States. What emerges is not a synthetic whole but a dialectic framework. Corporate law's theoretical debates do not resolve; their arguments and conclusions are determined by metapolitical preferences and unverified notions about aligning productivity incentives. But despite the debates, the acknowledged premise that corporations exist to create wealth by producing goods and services at a profit directs all theories of corporate law to two objectives. First, corporate law encourages long-term investment and risk-taking by facilitating a delegation of decision-making authority from the providers of capital to the expert managers who deploy it. Second, corporate law facilitates investment in producing assets at the lowest possible cost of capital, securing the presence of liquid trading markets in corporate securities.

This article will attempt to answer the following question: what has been done to prevent corruption and promote a “good government” in Latin America, what are the results and what explains the current situation? After analyzing very different experiences, the following could be stated: (1) there is at least a formal concern for promoting integrity in several countries, but there are problems of diagnosis and formulation; (2) the examples of implementation failures are far too many in Latin America. In any case, the most important factor explaining failures of design and implementation is the presence of a social trap and a political trap. The social trap is expressed by the incoherence of society itself, which demands honesty from Government, but in practice incentivizes corruption by paying bribes, breaching rules, and demanding privileges within the framework of clientelist networks. The political trap emerges from the strong path dependency effect resulting from the consolidation of patronage or clientelist networks.