Governance and the Common Good

Abstract

audit committees, auditors, board of directors, common good, governance,

Impact of board independence on the quality of community disclosures in annual reports

“…Similarly, Persons (2009) finds that firms with earlier voluntary ethics disclosures are those for which audit committees met at least four times annually, with at least three audit committee members. Carcello (2008) argues that audit committee meeting frequency can be a good measure of audit committee diligence and effectiveness in the monitoring of management activities and calls into question the diligence of an audit committee that rarely meets. Li et al (2008) also finds a strong association between the disclosure of intellectual capital and both audit committee size and audit committee meetings' frequency.…”

Do Auditing and Reporting Standards Affect Firms’ Ethical Behaviours? The Moderating Role of National Culture

“…As a legal and institutional determinant, corporate governance is seen as a vital mechanism for the prevention of unethical corporate behaviours (Carcello 2009;Felo 2011). Corporate governance is a broad concept that surrounds all internal (company-specific) and external (country-specific) mechanisms with a role in monitoring management to protect all stakeholders' rights (García-Osma 2006).…”

Signposts or Weathervanes? The Curious Case of Corporate Social Responsibility and Conflict Minerals

“…Rather than more narrow contract responsibility the latter calls for full responsibility for the human rights impacts that are linked to operations upstreaming the value chain (SchrempfStirling et al 2012;Reinecke and Ansari 2015). Here we join a conversation in the Journal of Business Ethics on the responsibilities of the corporate citizen in developing contexts (Agbiboa 2012;Janssen et al 2013;Rotter et al 2013), CSR ''rhetoric'' (Driver 2006;Kallio 2007;Sethi 2014) and public good (Carcello 2009;Morrell and Clark 2010;O'Brien 2009). Our specific contribution to this debate is to highlight the wavering nature of rhetoric on both sides of the divide.…”

“…On one side of the dialectic is the view of the firm as a 'trader' or nexus of contracts (Jensen and Meckling 1976); where corporations have no special social responsibilities and so stricter auditing requirements in relation to supply chain transparency can be disputed purely on economical and practical grounds. On the other side of the dialectic is the view of the corporation as a moral actor or 'citizen', with responsibilities in relation to the public good (Carcello 2009;Morrell and Clark 2010;O'Brien 2009); where auditing can be used to ascribe to corporations responsibilities that extend beyond those currently enshrined in law.…”

“…An alternative conception of the corporation as ''citizen'' provides a different vantage point for viewing the company's role in, or responsibilities towards society or the public good (Carcello 2009;Morrell and Clark 2010;O'Brien 2009). Under the notion of ''corporate citizenship'', corporations have an ''obligation to constituent groups in society other than stockholders'' (Jones 1980, p. 59).…”