Summary |
This book is intended to help readers of all levels of business sophistication gain a current understanding of what corporate governance entails, particularly for business governed by the laws of the United States. Our primary focus will be the for-profit, publicly traded company, meaning firms that have issued stock that are traded on a public stock exchange, such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or NASDAQ. This book is not intended to be used as a substitute for the governing documents of any particular organization or for the laws and regulations under which an organization operates.
To being discussion of corporate governance, we should first explore the topic of governance in general. Briefly, governance refers to the act or process of governing. Obviously, governance has existed since the dawn of civilization. History tells us of the never-ending evolution of models of governance, with periods of advancement and enlightenment interspersed with those of retrenchment and at times, temporary darkness. Most recently, we have witnessed the widespread embracing of representative government, most commonly democracy by and for the people, which took hold in America in the late eighteenth century.
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