Finance Minister Trevor Manuel on Wednesday called for a deepening of corporate governance and accountability, saying it was necessary to understand that sound corporate governance was not enough.
Manuel was addressing the annual conference of the International Corporate Governance Network at the International Convention Centre in Cape Town.
He said there was a shared interest as citizens, as responsible inhabitants of an abused planet, in being partners in the challenge of creating a fairer world in which opportunity and assets were more broadly held.
”These shared interests will not be addressed by corporations acting and keeping with their narrow self interest, nor can they be addressed by governments acting alone or even by governments and public international organisations acting in concert internationally.”
They also required a broader concept of corporate responsibility than the idea of governance that currently enjoyed popular currency.
Manuel said the conference provided an opportunity to reflect on the challenges and opportunities for deepening governance and accountability but also to explore beyond the frontiers of corporate identity.
”Just as we exist as human beings, through others, so also the responsible corporation has its identity in part through the values and commitment it shares with others.”
The corporate extravagance that captured headlines in more recent times had perhaps more often involved financial treachery than human brutality.
But it was still the case in the 21st century that respected corporations took advantage of exploitative labour conditions or weak environmental standards in developing countries.
”And so it is still the case, even with the great expansion of corporate statutes and the codification internationally of rights and responsibilities and obligations in more detail that anyone had patience for, that the law was not enough.
”Law is not enough and we surely would not want to live in a world in which we relied only on the law for the protection of human worth and the integrity of social partnerships.
”If the law is not enough, than compliance with the law is not enough, and we have to put the spotlight also on what we understand by fiduciary responsibility and corporate identity.”
”It is not so much that the law is inadequate, which it is, or that every codification leads to a plethora of innovative reactions which themselves require regulatory responses — it is not so much this ever-widening scope of the formal constraints, than it is the complementary relaxation of discretionary judgement in the boardroom that is of concern,” Manuel said. – Sapa