Through their impact on competitiveness and access to global capital markets, effective practices in structuring, controlling, and managing companies can encourage entrepreneurship, spur a country’s economic growth, and expand employment. This report emphasizes that although corporate governance should remain mostly a prerogative of the companies and industries themselves, governments must provide a regulatory framework that allows them to adapt their governance practices to rapidly changing international circumstances. There is no model or static governance structure that every country or corporation should emulate: experimentation and variety should be expected and encouraged within the limits of regulations emphasizing fairness, transparency, accountability, and responsibility. Given this framework, the Business Sector Advisory Group on Corporate Governance presents perspectives that should guide public policies affecting corporate structure and control, suggests voluntary actions that companies can take to improve their governance, and recommends further actions by the OECD to create common principles guiding national policy reviews and reforms of governance.
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