GIGS: A THOUGHT-LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE
GIGS Mission Statement
The Global Initiative for Governance and Suitability (GIGS-Initiative) supports research, education, and thought leadership on four aspects of corporate governance and sustainability for both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations: governance structures, sustainability, risk management, and ethics.
Governance structures include both internally oriented and externally oriented structures. Within organizations, governance includes responsibility structures and the evaluation of responsibility. Governance with its external environment includes both the organization’s relationship with its various stakeholders (such as investors, creditors, political and regulatory partners, as well as society as a whole) and its degree of transparency with those stakeholders. Globally, a variety of factors inherent to the business setting shape the effectiveness of both internal and external governance mechanism. Some of these factors include the following:
-
Efficiency of local capital markets
-
Extent to which the legal system provides protection to all shareholders
-
Reliability of accounting standards
-
Enforcement of regulations
-
Societal and cultural values
​
GIGS-Initiative aims to inform practitioners, standards setters, and national and international policy makers, and academics on the type of governance mechanisms required to curb value destruction and corruption, reduce inequality, and promote equity, diversity, and inclusion.
With regards to Sustainability, competing frameworks, absence of a standard, measurement uncertainty, different measures of materiality, inconsistent reporting and auditing methods, boilerplate language, and comparability are numerous challenges among others hindering the widespread adoption of sustainability reporting, and these challenges are interrelated. GIGS-Initiative aims to inform various stakeholders, and to be an active participant in shaping the future course of ESG practices and reporting. Our various task forces will collectively address these sustainability challenges that are of critical importance to all the the stakeholders.
1
Risk management
of corporate governance includes both proscriptive and descriptive studies of behaviour. This includes the application of ethical theories to specific individual and organizational activities, either within the organization or between the organization and its external environment.
2
The ethical perspective
of corporate governance includes both proscriptive and descriptive studies of behaviour. This includes the application of ethical theories to specific individual and organizational activities, either within the organization or between the organization and its external environment.
3
The GIGS-Initiative
The GIGS-Initiative embraces an interdisciplinary academic perspectives, research methodologies and levels of analysis. It engages in effective knwoledge dissimination, learning and collaboration with business leaders, regulators, policy makers, and its global network of eminent experts, academics, and students.
