Corporate Governance for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Governance relates to structures and processes within an organisation to ensure greater accountability, a higher sense of responsiveness, transparency, and rule of law. Corporate governance balances the interests of a company's many stakeholders, such as shareholders, customers, vendors, financiers, the government, the community, and, very importantly, its own employees. While traditionally corporates had one clear agenda—i.e., make more profits and increase the shareholders' wealth—the 21st century saw the corporates turning a new leaf and looking at their growth from a societal perspective, specifically those relating to sustainable development like environmental protection. In the classical case of poor corporate governance, in the year 1984, the city Bhopal in India witnessed the most nightmarish experience, with the death of 16,000 people due to the leakage of a poisonous gas.