Business Ethics and Corporate Governance

A code is a set of rules, which are accepted as general principles, or a set of written rules, which state how people in a particular organization or country should behave. But, a regulation is an official rule that lays down how things should be done. Both codes and regulations are “sets of rules” or “principles” or “standards” that are intended to control, guide, or manage the behaviour or conduct of individuals working in organizations.

This chapter analyses the importance of self-regulatory codes and presents the important points of various corporate governance codes developed by the Cadbury committee, the Kumara Mangalam Birla committee, the CII and the OECD. The roles and responsibilities of board of directors, as spelt out in the Companies Act, 1956, were also reviewed.