Forty years ago a British Conservative
Prime Minister coined the phrase ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’
to describe the practices of some companies. This month David Cameron,
the current British Conservative Prime Minister, honourably returned to
the same theme.
Like any Conservative, Cameron
recognizes that good companies are essential for mass prosperity. Their
core attribute is to be effective organizations, able to make ordinary
people productive: government must not frustrate this process by
burdensome regulation. But good companies can be menaced by bad companies as well as by bad governments.
Bad companies are those with bad governance. If governments could
protect good companies from this menace, they would provide a solution
rather than constitute a problem. Bad corporate governance takes three
salient forms.
