Ethics and corporate governance: insights from UK business history

This chapter investigates the ethical foundations and historical development of UK corporate governance within the Anglo-Saxon tradition. By drawing on business history, it demonstrates how early joint-stock companies, the introduction of limited liability, and the prevalence of dispersed share ownership shaped patterns of managerial accountability and contributed to weak formal shareholder protection. The analysis contends that UK corporate governance has evolved through incremental, crisis-driven reforms rather than a single transformative event. This evolutionary process has produced a distinctive “comply or explain” framework that privileges self-regulation. While this model has facilitated flexible and dynamic markets, it has also generated persistent ethical challenges, such as short-termism and the marginalisation of broader stakeholder interests. The chapter concludes that the long-term legitimacy of UK corporate governance increasingly relies on integrating ethical judgment, sustainability, and stakeholder awareness into core board practices.