A tale of corporate governance: lessons why firms fail

Purpose – To review the world's and Australia's notable firm failures associated with divergence of best practices, describing the link of how corporate sustainability depends on its corporate governance implementation.Design/methodology/approach – An array of existing theories and prior academic findings on corporate governance and corporate sustainability published between 1998 and 2004 are compared and contrasted, fitted with empirical evidence of what had happened with Enron, Inc. (Enron) and HIH Insurance (HIH). Matrices are developed to intercept the key good corporate governance perspectives with the study propositions.Findings – The study indicates that both Enron and HIH acknowledged good corporate governance as a prevailing framework, yet failed to implement it. Each of the principles had been violated and had served as an attribute to the firms’ failure.Research limitations/implications – This study is limited to the two notable cases, notwithstanding the implication that perhaps its applicabil...

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