Poor corporate governance was identified as one of the root causes of the recent Asian financial crisis. The absence of effective disciplines on corporate managers, coupled with complicated and opaque relationships between corporations, their owners and their finance providers, affected severely investors’ confidence in the region’s corporate sectors. Economies that took early steps to improve corporate governance have been recovering from the crisis at a more rapid pace than those who have not addressed this issue. The Asian crisis showed that good corporate governance is important not only for individual corporations to raise capital but also for an economy to achieve sustainable growth. This publication includes papers submitted to the "Conference on Corporate Governance in Asia: A Comparative Perspective" held in Seoul in March 1999. These papers describe vividly the corporate governance practices in the region and the recent changes largely prompted by the crisis. Also included are papers on corporate governance in major OECD countries, which serve as a good source of comparative information on this issue. This review is part of the OECD's ongoing co-operation with non-Member economies around the world.

A l'heure de la mondialisation, de la décentralisation et des économies fondées sur le savoir, les gouvernements doivent aujourd'hui repenser le rôle des dirigeants dans le secteur public pour faire face aux nouveaux défis. En effet, cet environnement impose aux dirigeants de la fonction publique d'assumer de nouveaux rôles, notamment en tant qu'agents du changement, promoteurs de l'amélioration des performances, coordonnateurs des politiques gouvernementales et gardiens des valeurs du service public.

Au seuil du XXIe siècle, les bouleversements qui accompagnent la transformation de l’économie et de la société semblent devoir se poursuivre. L'intégration croissante des marchés, des nouvelles technologies révolutionnaires, la technicité de plus en plus marquée des activités humaines, tout indique la naissance d'un monde extrêmement complexe.

Good governance in modern times requires attention not only to shifting relations between governments, citizens and parliaments, but to the effective functioning of government itself. One important issue is "Distributed Governance" - a term coined in this publication to capture the notion of proliferating public organisations operating with some degree of separateness from core government ministries. Despite the fact that in many countries more than half of public employment and central public expenditure is carried out through such bodies, they have not been comprehensively studied from a governance perspective. Some important questions concerning these organisations that need to be addressed are: Does government have adequate oversight of them? How accountable are they? and To whom should they be accountable?