Introduction

This chapter builds on the discussion in Chapters 5 and 6 of this book, which dealt with how corporate governance is regulated in Australia (both the sources of regulation, and the regulatory bodies), and introduced the so-called ‘pyramid’ of regulation developed by Ian Ayres and John Braithwaite in their 1992 book, Responsive Regulation. Reflecting on this material, in this chapter we make reference to a variety of sources of research (both in law and management), many of which are cutting edge, to identify recent and historical trends in the context of corporate governance regulation, and determine where regulation of corporate governance should be directed in the future. In this chapter, when discussing the ‘regulation of corporate governance’, in the Australian context we mean the ASX Principles of Good Corporate Governance and Best Practice Recommendations and the various formal corporate governance benchmarks now contained in the Corporations Act – mainly as a result of CLERP 9. We do not include other areas of law, for example taxation law, which may impact on the governance practices of companies.