The pillars of Corporate Governance

Corporate governance is the system of rules and processes that ensures that you and your colleagues can run your organisation properly, efficiently, and responsibly. A good corporate governance policy ensures a correct alignment of the interests of all internal and external stakeholders. This is only possible if the pillars of corporate governance are anchored in your organisation.

Integrity

Integrity is the degree to which someone behaves in accordance with a system of internal and external values and norms. It is one of the basic principles of good corporate governance policy. Integrity is not a binary property. Depending on the time and space you are in, you can have more or less integrity. This has important consequences for your organisation. When do you have integrity and how do you maintain integrity?

Structure and rules

Organisations have to deal with internal and external rules. Internal rules are agreements with employees and stakeholders to guarantee the optimal functioning of the organisation. External rules are laws that are imposed from the outside to protect stakeholders and society. Structure and rules determine the boundaries within which you can work with your organisation. How do you determine and monitor these boundaries?

Accountability

The responsibilities and liabilities of directors and supervisors and their reporting and accountability obligations are inextricably linked. The duty of internal accountability is unfortunately often less strictly enforced because this can put pressure on the relationships between the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board and sometimes also internally within the Supervisory Board. How do you combine business honesty with human diplomacy?

Transparency

Transparent communication ensures that your organisation appears reliable to employees and all other internal and external stakeholders. How do you ensure that everyone in your organisation shares the right and just enough information at the right time? And how do you ensure that this information does not end up with the wrong people? Confidentiality and transparency must remain in balance. Not evident!

Role awareness

In itself, there is a clear division of roles between the executive board, the supervisory board, and the shareholders of an organisation. Each party has rights and obligations towards each other to ensure the continuity of the organisation, prevent abuses and allow the organisation to grow. Nevertheless, supervisory directors in particular often appropriate more responsibilities and rights than stipulated in the articles of association. How do you deal with this?

Culture

The culture within your organisation as well as the socio-cultural, economic, political and ecological environment outside your organisation can have a major impact on the functioning of the Executive Board, Supervisory Board and shareholders and therefore also on the results and continuity of your organisation. Is your company culture in order? How do you respond to changes that affect your organisation?