Free Online Corporate Governance Courses

1. Corporate Governance

All the basics you need to start with are covered in this course, including organisational behaviour and why governments regulate business practices.

2. Ethics and Coporate Governance

A large part of good corporate governance is doing the right thing even if it doesn’t necessarily benefit your company. This course delves into the role ethics plays in running a corporation. 

3. How to be an Ethical Whistleblower

What if you’re on the board and you know about wrongdoing? Blowing the whistle on bad practices is daunting but important. This course explains how to protect whistleblowers and set up a reporting system in your organisation.

Simply put, corporate governance is the structuring and application of ‘mechanisms, processes and relations by which corporations are controlled and operated’, according to Wikipedia. In the same way that a country has a ‘government’ so a business or corporation has to have its own ‘government’. This consists of a board of directors who are responsible for ‘directing’ the company in a legal way, regardless of how well or poorly the company is doing. Good corporate governance means the business is meeting all its legal obligations to employees, shareholders, stakeholders, customers and tax entities.

Bad corporate governance can lead to bankruptcy, non-compliance, loss of reputation and even serious criminal charges like fraud. Poor decisions can lead to job losses, environmental pollution and even death. Corporations don’t exist outside society; good corporate governance ensures they play a positive role while still making a profit for shareholders.

Corporate governance isn’t only for the board of directors. If you are putting your own money into a company via an investment or buying shares, it will pay you to understand how well a company is governed before you give cash to one that is badly managed. If you want to do business with another company, you should understand corporate governance to see if it will be a legal, ethical and above-board joint venture. 

Lawyers, accountants and HR managers also all benefit from at least a basic understanding of good corporate governance practices to ensure they don’t get caught up in wrongdoing of any kind.