As Adam Smith, moral philosopher and political economist, pointed out in 1776, if company directors manage other people’s money rather than their own, ‘it cannot well be expected that they will watch over it with the same anxious vigilance’ (Smith, 1776: 233). In the early eighteenth century, deliberate fraud and incompetence played a significant part in the failure of companies (Pollard, 1968: 25–6).

How much evidence is there to suggest that managers should be trusted more today (Knights et al., 2001)? There currently appears to be a pervasive mistrust of the corporation in the popular consciousness, as a series of corporate corruption scandals have emerged (Fleming and Zyglidopoulos, 2009). In addition, managers in ‘unscrupulous multi-national organizations’ (Christian Aid, 2011: 1) use tax havens to dodge taxes. The International Monetary Fund has estimated that around a third of the world’s financial wealth is being held in small island tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. This shifts profits from developing countries, keeping the poor poor.