Corporate Governance and Accountability

Since a corporation is the collaboration of many groups, there are many ideologies on how to run the corporation. Corporate governance is the subject matter on who should control the corporation. Ethical programs are developed to ensure that the employees do their job right and not act in an unethical or illegal behavior. Corporate accountability, corporate ethics, and corporate governance are all ways to have a corporation work correctly.

In a corporation, the shareholders have the power. They have the rights to control and the rights to the profits. The shareholders, along with other investors, provide the capital, but, also assume all the risk. Contractual and stakeholder theories are conflicting ways of running the corporation. Contractual theory supports stockholder conception of the corporation but the stakeholder theories suggest that the corporation be operated for the benefit of those who have stake in the enterprise, such as the employees and local community.

Corporate ethics programs focus on individual decision making and developing an ethical workplace environment. Many companies have adopted programs due to serious scandals in the workplace, but others have them to prevent scandals from occurring. Ethics programs include having a code of ethics, ethics training for employees, means of communicating