Corporate governance and business ethics: Evidence from a sample of Algerian corporations

Corporate governance (CG) builds trust and creates a sustainable stakeholder’s value (Demise, 2005). The CG guidelines, rules, and regulations were introduced to guide corporations towards good governance practices. CG systems are developed to manage business corporations to enhance shareholder wealth and corporate accountability (Othman & Abdul Rahman, 2011). However, at the start of the new millennium, a series of corporate and financial scandals rocked corporations in different countries all over the world (Enron, WorldCom, Parmalat, Vivendi-Universal etc.). These firms were found guilty of accounting fraud, corruption, and governance malpractices; referring directly to flaws and shortfalls in the existing systems and structures of governance; highlighting the possible relationship between the corporations’ failures and the poor governance. These series of corporate scandals and failures seem to be contradicting the main objective of CG systems, making this paradox a major governance issue and giving the impression that there is something lacking in the present CG practices Abstract