ABSTRACT

From the four cardinal virtues of temperance, courage, justice and practical wisdom flows the major business virtue of honesty, engendering the necessary trust for sustained business engagement (Malloch, 2011). Through much of the annals of finance, it is clear that those cardinal virtues have not attended business actions the way they should, for business misbehaviour at times has been rampant, especially since World War II. This is manifested by accounting and audit failure leading to the often poor, frequently misleading disclosure of corporate financial progress or regress that has frustrated informed investment, produced inept regulation, seen dishonest motives driving business decisions and distorted perceptions of managers’ responsibilities. The earlier works of Valance (1955), Haldane (1970), Chambers (1973a, 1978) and Briloff (1972, 1976), and more recently Jones (2011), Clikeman (2013) and the trilogy of Clarke et al. (1997, 2003), Clarke and Dean (2007) and Clarke et al. (2014), provide substantial evidence to support this claim.