Doctors take the ancient Hippocratic oath to “do no harm” when they enter the medical profession. Most patients still trust doctors to help them when they are sick, and give them the benefi t of the doubt when under their care. Contrast this with the way CEOs and corporate boards have been treated during the current economic slowdown. Stakeholders are quicker to judge and slower to forgive than ever, and the benefi t of the doubt is becoming harder for companies to achieve. Greater calls for transparency from all circles have moved the governance attribute to center stage, and made “doing what’s right” the new reputational imperative for these times.
There is little doubt that the rise of advocacy groups/non-governmental organizations (NGOs) over the last quarter century has heavily infl uenced the current debate on transparency. Shareholder activism began as an American phenomenon in the 1970s but crossed the Atlantic during the 1980s and today counts individual investors (like George Soros), socially responsible trade groups (like Social Investment Forum in the US, EuroSIF, Associate for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia, and the UN Environment Programme’s Principles for Responsible Investment) and advocacy groups (like Corporate Library and Institutional Shareholder Services) among its followers of greater transparency and better corporate governance.
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