Exploring the Issue of Corporate Governance in Central Europe and Russia: An Introduction

A religious leader once argued that “Wisdom is free, but it is also the most expensive thing there is, because we tend to acquire it through failure or disappointment or grief. That’s why we share our wisdom, so that others will not have to pay the price for it that we paid”. We have cited these great words of wisdom here because, the genesis of why and how a number of many advanced Western nations took the issue of good systems of corporate governance seriously was as a result of a number of unpalatable experiences of serious lapses in the corporate governance system of some large companies, which consequently proved too expensive for stakeholders in the length and breadth of our world. These stakeholders have had to pay very high prices for these failures and scandals, many of our readers could cite several examples of these companies globally. This has meant that some countries took the initiative before others to codify their corporate governance practices. They were unconsciously trying to share their wisdom with others in this issue to ensure that stakeholders both in their own countries and those in other parts of the world would not have to pay the high price their shareholders have had to pay for such lapses again.