Introduction

The human capacity for rationalization of own and observed behaviour can be a formidable barrier to rational judgement and decision-making. This book critically investigates the quality of monitoring of the activities of executive management in large corporations. It seeks to provide greater realism in understanding agent behaviour within a corporate governance setting. The argument is developed that an over-reliance on rational choice models of decision-making may prevent a more thorough discussion of unexpected corporate collapse, and corporate governance in general. Policies based on the assumptions of rational models of choice-making may underestimate the intrusion of bias in the decision-making of agents in corporate governance.