Effective corporate governance is crucial. As a Chinese proverb says, 'The fish rots from the head' and so it is with businesses and other organisations - the buck starts and stops in the boardroom. This third edition of Bob Garratt's bestselling book has been extensively updated following the corporate scandals of the early 2000s - Enron, WorldCom, Tyco - and the abysmal boardroom standards that the recent credit crunch and ensuing global financial crisis brought to light.

This edition builds on the Learning Board model developed by the author, now widely used internationally by corporations and public sector organisations such as the NHS. The result is a thought-provoking and highly practical book that will be invaluable to all those with responsibility for corporate governance - and also to those who subject them to scrutiny.

As Sir Adrian Cadbury, whose committee's groundbreaking report on corporate governance was published nearly twenty years ago, said about the first edition: 'No director can afford to ignore this book'.