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In the broadest sense, corporate governance can be defined as the stewardship responsibility of corporate directors to provide oversight for the goals and strategies of a company and to foster their implementation. Corporate governance may thus be perceived as the set of interlocking rules by which corporations, shareholders and management govern their behavior. These rules refer to individual firm attributes and the factors that allow companies to maintain sound governance practices even where public institutions are relatively weak. Such factors may include a corporation's ownership structure, its relationships with stakeholders, financial transparency, and information disclosure practices as well as the configuration of its managing boards.
Nations compete for investment capital, and the assurances investors seek as they decide to provide that capital are universal. Motivated by the growing appetite for a global benchmark of corporate behaviour, this paper examines the relationship between the measured quality of corporate governance at the firm level and national competitiveness. It begins by analyzing the perceived quality of institutions in the 23 largest capital markets. Hypothesizing that good corporate governance at the company level may compensate for perceived weaknesses in the institutional framework, the paper then focuses on the pilot governance index developed by the Financial Times and ISS and compares it with new survey evidence from the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report. Finally, the paper discusses corporate governance in the EU accession countries and the extent to which the quality of governance has affected the mode of entry for foreign investment.
