Corporate Governance Disclosure Practices: Do We Proceed Towards Global Convergence

Corporate governance is the set of processes, customs, policies, laws and institutions affecting the way a corporation is directed, administered or controlled. It also includes the relationships among many stakeholders involved and the goals for which the corporation is governed. The corporate governance structure specifies the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in the corporation, such as the Board, managers, shareholders and other stakeholders and spells out the rules and procedures for making decisions on corporate affairs. By doing this, it also provides the structure through which the company objectives are set and the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance. In this backdrop, this paper seeks to study global corporate governance disclosure practices with a specific objective to examine as to whether we proceed towards convergence. The paper basically has been divided into six broad sections. While Section I is introductory one, Section II focuses on Origin and Development of Corporate Governance Practices in US, UK and India. Corporate governance disclosure practices at international level are reviewed in Section III & Section IV. Section V makes a study on convergence of corporate governance practices. Finally, the paper makes a conclusion and recommendation of the study in Section VI.