Keeping Good Company: A Study of Corporate Governance in Five Countries

Keeping Good Company: A Study of Corporate Governance in Five Countries by Jonathan Charkham (389 pages, Oxford University Press, 1995)

Except for the team at the top, and a handful of academics, corporate governance may not be the sexiest of business topics. Jonathan Charkham, a former adviser to the governor of the Bank of England and a member of several boards of directors, acknowledges as much implicitly in the course of his good-humored book, Keeping Good Company: A Study of Corporate Governance in Five Countries. The urgency of actually doing business tends to drive the need for modifying the context in which it is conducted down the list of an executive's priorities. Mr. Charkham's particular interest in corporate governance was sparked by his service on the Cadbury Committee, a blue-ribbon commission, as Americans would say, that looked into financial accountability at British companies during the early 1990's.

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