Fundamental and Ethics Theories of Corporate Governance

History has revealed that there is a never-ending evolution of theories or models of corporate governance. One of the reasons is due to the very essence of social consciences that is minimal and profit making took center stage. All over the world, companies are trying to instill the sense of governance into their corporate structure. With the surge of capitalism, corporation became stronger while governments all over the world had to succumb to its manipulations and dominance. Hence, this article is a review of literature on the range of theories in corporate governance. The fundamental theories in corporate governance began with the agency theory, expanded into stewardship theory and stakeholder theory and evolved to resource dependency theory, transaction cost theory, political theory and ethics related theories such as business ethics theory, virtue ethics theory, feminists ethics theory, discourse theory and postmodernism ethics theory. However, these theories address the cause and effect of variables, such as the configuration of board members, audit committee, independent directors and the role of top management and their social relationships rather than its regulatory frameworks. Hence, it is suggested that a combination of various theories is best to describe an effective and good governance practice rather than theorizing corporate governance based on a single theory.