Good Governance

Governance exists to ensure organisations can fulfil their purpose. Good governance builds a framework that enables you to run your organisation in a way which is efficient and effective to sustain long term success. But what does good governance actually look like? Good governance is both hard to define and hard to recognize. This poses a fundamental problem for stakeholders - investors, employees, pension fund beneficiaries or members of the general public - because they have a vested interest in good governance but lack the tools and insights to measure and influence it.

The Great Governance Debate – Towards a Good Governance Index for Listed Companies

Since 2014, Z/Yen have been working with the Institute of Directors (IoD) and Cass Business School to launch a new Corporate Governance initiative in order to develop and test different ways of measuring and reporting on corporate governance in UK listed companies and to stimulate a public debate on the importance of corporate governance in rebuilding the reputation of the UK business community. The research sought to explore two questions:

What is good governance?
How do we measure it?

This free-to-download report was prepared by Z/Yen and published by IoD, Cass Business School and Z/Yen:

The Great Governance Debate – Towards a Good Governance Index for Listed Companies

by Michael Mainelli and Mary O'Callaghan, Z/Yen

Z/Yen Group Limited, IoD and Cass Business School

June 2015

32 pages

The resulting report sets out the initial findings of six months of research into the measurement of corporate governance in UK-listed companies. In particular, it includes, for the first time, the results of a survey of how the governance of major UK companies is perceived by business practitioners. The report also identifies about 50 factors which, on the basis of publicly available information, provide an indication of the magnitude of governance risk at individual companies.

Take The Questionnaire

Please contribute to the next edition by rating a selection of companies that you are familiar with. The questionnaire should take no more than five minutes. It runs continuously, so you can rate more companies at any time.

Media Coverage

16^th June 2015: "IoD index to put spotlight on worst corporate governance", Jill Treanor, The Guardian.
16^th June 2015: "G4S perceived as having worst performing board in UK", David Oakley, Financial Times.
16^th June 2015: "Top bosses: Corporate governance needs to go beyond box-ticking ", Lauren Fedor, City A.M.
15^th June 2015: "'Financial Crisis Was Not Caused By Lack Of Rules': A Call To Rethink U.K.'s Corporate Governance", Dina Medland, Forbes.

Related Events

2^nd March 2015: "Putting Passion into Governance – Just theory or real world benefit?"
London South Bank University Conference, London.
22^nd January 2014: "Frontline Fund Governance for the New Pension Paradigm"
Long Finance & CISI seminar, London.
24^th November 2010: "Long Governance: Is Reform Still Needed?"
Long Finance seminar in collaboration with ACCA, Quakers & Business, London.