Has Corporate Governance Really Improved?

Despite working in a world that has been shaken to its core by a continuing volatility as well as business scandals, there is a deepening chasm between business ideals and its actual practice.

As easy as it is to ask "Why?" or more accurately "Haven't we learned anything?" the answer is probably no.

When looking at the state of business in the world today it is probably most natural to make our first examination of business itself, in particular corporate governance, and its mechanisms and roles of management, shareholders, and other stakeholders. Whether the ethics education comes from executive education, they are there, instilled for everyone to use. Unfortunately, it is often pointed out that it's not in the classroom or seminar that ethics are actually practiced. It's on the floor, in the offices and cubicles where ethics are carried out.

Of course, corporate governance must carry its share of the blame for what has and will probably continue to happen, but to lay the blame entirely at the boardroom or executive office doors would be a cop-out. Business scandals and failures have always happened whenever there was pressure from those above to do more and more with less and less, thus giving what is perceived an excuse to cut corners and cheat.

The truth is that executive education programs can continue to churn out ethics philosophy by the boatload, but until everyone in the business world embraces those practices that lead to more ethical business environments, scandal and failure will continue.

It might be a bigger problem that business leaders have in reality embraced the ideals of competition and succeed at any cost for a more ethical business world to take root, but one might argue that ethics are worth it.

It only takes one short look at the shelves of business books available in any book seller to see that ethics is a popular subject on the minds of readers everywhere. It's refreshing that this interest has spiked but at the same time one has to wonder why this interest has taken so long to come about as well as why it is necessary to only now cause this interest to grow. Are ethics so alien to business people today that specialized books about it need to be published? Perhaps that is more evidence that corporate governance benefits are finally being understood as more than ivory tower talk.