Directors and the Ethics Components of Their Duties
Minh Nguyet Dang & Barbara Mescher
What the paper says
This article examines the duties of directors of public companies and specifically studies the ethical components of those duties. Most directors are well aware of their legal duties and that the source of these duties is found in the Corporations Act, in particular sections 180-184. In addition, further quasi-duties are expressed in the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) Corporate Governance Principles. This article argues that the black letter law contains within it an ethical foundation and the ASX Principles, especially Principle 3, actively promote ethical decision-making. The purpose of this article is twofold: firstly, to encourage directors to be aware of and focus upon the ethics components of their duties and secondly, to provide an interpretation of these components. An understanding and application of ethical principles within directors' duties will assist directors to avoid the moral hazards of the corporate world. While legal compliance is part of directors' corporate governance, so is integrity. This article applies the principles of virtue ethics with its emphasis on character as a suitable model to promote integrity. The principles of virtue ethics are supported by Kant's rules-based principles with its focus upon the duty of honesty.
1 citation
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.00 × 0.4 = 0.00 |
| M · momentum | 0.20 × 0.15 = 0.03 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.