Corporate Governance Research Symposium 2021

Social institutions on corporate governance tend to be overwhelmed by a dominant liberal shareholder primacy, where agencies hide behind (simple) information asymmetries. The workshop aims to play a thinking shaker to encourage new perspectives and to stimulate debate within this complex and multidimensional field. 

What if the world was a dream

And climate change just a steam

Poor earth is not moaning

But singing high pitch shivering theme

What if the human was a machine

The slaves are there watching

Laughing, what does it mean

They may vanish under the weight of digits

What if we missed the ring

Viruses and waves clamming tunes of freedom

And the rest waiting for the gem and the wing

Those who serve the financial market king

What if freedom is not beautiful

Governing it is hell to weep

Business schools turned swayful

We are the dishes in our heaps

What if critical and alternative were the answer

Not just a second-best-world thinking

We rather don’t want any grower

Just living in a land of prospecting

What if sustainability is not a choice

Planet boundaries may vanish

For transnational elites voice

The others can only dance or extinguish.

We invite academics (and practitioners alike) to present cutting edge research and thought leadership dealing with emerging issues in corporate governance for sustainability in society facing an era of social surveillance. We seek empirical and conceptual papers addressing a diverse range of topics that include, but are not limited to, the following debates:

• Are transnational corporations, organizations or similar institutions, in their present form, able to promote and implement sustainability?
• What new socio-political arrangements are needed to help corporations address climate change and equality challenges?
• Are concepts such as gender, ethnicity or identity still central to corporate governance? Are they part of the problem or part of the solution in the evolution of governance debates?
• How could local governance practices emancipate from international institutions’ domination and serve global sustainability?
• How could local governance practices of the ‘Big South’ economies help to address new forms of reflective and informed (corporate) governance with regard to global sustainability?
• How current governance mechanisms suit new factors of production, such as knowledge, intelligence, and digital technology, become central to overall social wellbeing? 
• Is it the role of corporations (and their governance structures) to provide solutions to sustainability issues? What main features characterize the sustainability challenge?
• What is the effective role of reporting guidelines and standards in preventing ‘bad’ governance of sustainability? What is the role of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in this regard?
• Can (innovative) accounting frameworks, such as biodiversity accounting, be considered effective approaches to balance the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainability in organizations?

Charles Okeahalam is a Nigerian economist and businessman. He has worked in both the private and public sectors and has lectured at universities on the African continent. He co-founded the investment firm AGH Capital Group in 2002. Charles has extensive board experience. From 2006 to 2007, he served as chairman of the steering committee establishing the Pan-African Infrastructure Development Bank. His other roles include advising a number of African central banks and government ministries, the World Bank and the United Nations. Dr. Okeahalam was a non-executive chairman of Societe Generale Bank Nigeria (now called Heritage Bank).

Charles has also worked as a policymaker in a number of African countries. He has led a number of initiatives, such as revision of prudential regulatory framework, deposit insurance schemes, capital market development and financing transnational infrastructure networks. He has significant strategic and operational experience in finance and banking, central banking, and financial sector reform.