Governance
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Would businesses still choose good governance if nobody required it?
For much of the last two decades, the direction of travel on corporate governance appeared relatively clear. Governments and international organisations were asking more of businesses, while investors were paying greater attention to how companies were run. Anti-corruption compliance programmes became more established, and expectations around responsible business conduct continued to expand. The direction of travel is no longer obvious. Geopolitical fragmentation and concerns about regulatory burden are changing the conversation. In some parts of the world, there has been a total retreat from the ESG agenda. This has reopened questions about what should be required of businesses and what they might choose to do voluntarily. Would businesses still choose good governance if nobody required it? Some undoubtedly would. Others might not. The answer depends, at least in part, on what businesses believe governance is for. If businesses invest in governance and compliance structures primarily because somebody requires them to, then reduced regulation weakens the incentive to make that investment. If, though, stronger governance helps organisations make better decisions, its value looks different. This question is particularly interesting for small and medium-sized enterprises SMEs , which mostly face fewer formal governance requirements than larger or listed companies. It was also at the centre of a recent webinar delivered by the Basel Institute on Governance for the Malaysian Institute of Management MIM as part of its anti-corruption certification programme. Focusing particularly on SMEs, the session explored what governance and compliance mean in practice and how internationally recognised principles can be applied without creating unnecessary bureaucracy. It also looked at the relationship with organisational culture and at what happens when an integrity challenge is bigger than any one company. The discussion provided the starting point for many of the reflections in this article.
Publications
Policy Brief 17: Protecting border spaces from risks of corruption and criminal behaviours
Working Paper 63: Anticipating future corruption
Working Paper 11: A framework to assess governance of health systems in low income countries
As awareness of the role governance in the performance of health systems has increased, so has the need to come up with systematic means to evaluate governance shortcomings to develop adequate interventions.
This working paper describes a framework to assess governance in the health systems of low-income countries that is intended to have empirical applicability with a problem-driven approach. The analysis is grounded on a re-categorization of governance dimensions for greater heuristic power, with an emphasis made on the importance of strategic systems design and accountability.
The proposed methodology includes mapping of both formal and informal institutions, actors and networks. This underscores the idea that in order to properly address governance weaknesses it is of utmost importance to have an insight into whether the interplay of formal and informal norms facilitates or undermines system performance.
About this Working Paper
This paper is part of the Basel Institute on Governance Working Paper Series, ISSN: 2624-9650. It is a Diamond Open Access publication, also hosted on the Basel University Library’s open publishing platform eterna as part of our Basel Institute on Governance Working Paper Journal, with DOI: 10.12685/bigwp.2011.11.1-22.
Working Paper 10: Accountability for better healthcare provision
Strengthening accountability in public service provision is increasingly recognized as a precondition to improve the performance of the health sector in low-income countries. However, progress in this field has been hampered to a great extent because of empirical difficulties in measuring and assessing accountability.
This article provides a clear operational definition of the concept and discusses how and why accountability in public health service provision presents distinct challenges to the institutional capabilities of most developing countries. On the basis of both elements a set of guidelines to empirically assess accountability in health services is offered.
About this Working Paper
This paper is part of the Basel Institute on Governance Working Paper Series, ISSN: 2624-9650. It is a Diamond Open Access publication, also hosted on the Basel University Library’s open publishing platform eterna as part of our Basel Institute on Governance Working Paper Journal, with DOI: 10.12685/bigwp.2011.19.1-22.