KUALA LUMPUR: The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) has launched a report on "Enterprise Governance – restoring boardroom leadership", which looks at what boards need to do to be more effective and how management can support them in that task.

"Public expectations of corporate behaviour are now, understandably, greater than ever before. Both boards and executive management need to combine a commitment to the highest ethical standards and the long-term sustainability of their businesses with a keen awareness of the public interest dimension of what they do," CIMA chief executive Charles Tilley said in a statement today.

"Our new report provides a practical framework to help in this task. We place much emphasis on a constructive but challenging relationship between boards and their management. This does not mean a cosy complacent one! But we would argue that a board can only be as effective and as healthy as the underlying business that it governs," he said.

In the statement, CIMA said that in the wake of the failures in corporate governance that led to the global downturn, businesses should integrate long-term sustainability into their core activities.

It said that in setting the ethical direction of an organisation, the tone must come from the top — ie, from the executive and non-executive board directors.

"A key responsibility of the non-executive directors is to uphold values that put the long-term future of an enterprise above short-term profits. This also entails management providing non-executive directors with the most relevant and accurate management information available, data which would help the board identify if the company is cutting corners ethically to get quick returns," CIMA said.

For the report, see the CIMA website.