Whois & Analysis for diligent.com

A corporation is a company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity (legally a person) and recognized as such in law.

Early incorporated entities were established by charter (i.e. by an ad hoc act granted by a monarch or passed by a parliament or legislature).

Most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new corporations through registration.

A company, abbreviated co., is a legal entity made up of an association of people, be they natural, legal, or a mixture of both, for carrying on a commercial or industrial enterprise.

Company members share a common purpose and unite in order to focus their various talents and organize their collectively available skills or resources to achieve specific, declared goals.

Companies take various forms such as:

Corporate governance broadly refers to the mechanisms, processes and relations by which corporations are controlled and directed.

Governance structures and principles identify the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in the corporation (such as the board of directors, managers, shareholders, creditors, auditors, regulators, and other stakeholders) and includes the rules and procedures for making decisions in corporate affairs.

Corporate governance includes the processes through which corporations' objectives are set and pursued in the context of the social, regulatory and market environment.

Governance mechanisms include monitoring the actions, policies, practices, and decisions of corporations, their agents, and affected stakeholders.

Corporate governance practices are affected by attempts to align the interests of stakeholders.

Interest in the corporate governance practices of modern corporations, particularly in relation to accountability, increased following the high-profile collapses of a number of large corporations during 2001–2002, most of which involved accounting fraud; and then again after the recent financial crisis in 2008.