ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the ethics as a framework for governance discourse within the context of a long-standing dynamic between business, government and society. It provides an overview of crises in governance and successive responses. The chapter examines the pattern of regulatory response to crisis evident from the history of corporate and market failures, and considers whether the fact that this cycle is played out on an increasingly public stage has any significance for the nature of response. Analysis of the circumstances prior to the collapse and subsequent unfolding of events has exposed failures of governance, culture and ethics in business and especially financial sector institutions. It has also identified shortcomings in the parties responsible for overseeing the governance of market actors and the instruments and methods employed to generate profit on financial markets—governments, regulatory authorities, gatekeepers and shareholders—and revealed gaps and weaknesses in the oversight architecture.
