Keeper, Trish --- "Codes of Ethics and Corporate Governance – A Study of New Zealand Listed Companies" [2012] ELECD 394; in Vasudev, M. P.; Watson, Susan (eds), "Corporate Governance after the Financial Crisis" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Corporate Governance after the Financial Crisis

Editor(s): Vasudev, M. P.; Watson, Susan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857931528

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Codes of Ethics and Corporate Governance – A Study of New Zealand Listed Companies

Author(s): Keeper, Trish

Number of pages: 24

Extract:

12. Codes of ethics and corporate
governance ­ a study of New
Zealand listed companies
Trish Keeper

INTRODUCTION

Corporate ethics and codes of ethics have received a great deal of atten-
tion in recent years; years that have been colored by numerous high-profile
corporate scandals and changes. These events emphasize that compli-
ance with the law does not guarantee ethical behavior and that `moral
responsibility in the corporate domain cannot be reduced to obeying the
law' (Kaptein and Wempe 2002, p. 23). As the Enron collapse illustrated
`[w]hatever law, and whatever kind of law, is put in place for controlling
business, it is mined for opportunities for circumvention' (McBarnet 2006,
p. 35). However, while society, and for the most part companies and those
who manage them, now accepts that corporations should behave ethically,
there continues to be a degree of ambivalence with regard to attributing
corporations with ethical responsibilities for wider stakeholder and soci-
etal interests (Kaptein and Wempe 2002, p. 39). Primarily, this reluctance
flows from a theoretical disagreement as to the nature of a company.
Those who advocate that a company's principal objective is to maximize
the return to shareholders contend that it is unethical for a company to
consider the rights and interests of any other group (Friedman 1970). On
the other side are those who reject this strict profit maximization approach
in favor of some wider responsibility.
Among proponents of the viewpoint that corporations do have ethical
responsibilities beyond share value maximization (either as ...