The East India Company - Organization Structure, Control and Governance

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Governance Contd...

* All accounts shall be examined by the respective committees and pass the Court of Directors quarterly and no money shall be advanced to any clerk or warehouse-keeper after Quarter-Day, until his last quarter's accounts are settled.
* No motion shall be made in the General Court to forgive any offenses committed by any of the Company's servants or to make any grants of any sum of money out of the Company's cash without previous notice of at least seven days given in writing by the persons who have any such motions to propose.
* When any Director goes to reside beyond the sea, the Company shall make a vacancy of his directorship and whenever there shall be a vacancy of the place of a Director, by death, resignation incapacity or otherwise, another person shall be chosen within a convenient time.
* Any person guilty of the breach of the By-Laws rendered incapable of any employment in the Company
* None of the existing By-Laws and any that shall thereafter be made, shall be altered, repealed or suspended without the consent and approbation of two General Court to be called for that purpose.

Thus, the EIC had a well-defined code of governance which can be compared with the code of corporate governance of many present day companies. Though historical evidences show that there were violations of the code and many top officials of the EIC made fortunes by playing with the laws and orders, but that the Company had such a well defined code of corporate governance even in those days is in fact praiseworthy.

References

1. Chaudhuri, K.N. The Englis h East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint Stock Company, 1600-1640, Frank Cass & Co Ltd, London, 1965.
2. Chaudhuri, K.N. The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company- 1660-1760, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978.
3. Banerjee, D.N. Early Administrative System of the East India Company in Bengal, Vol I (1765-1774), Longman, Green & Co. Ltd, 1943.
4. Carey, W.H. The Good Old Days of Honorable John Company, Edited by Prof. Nisith R. Ray, Riddhi India Calcutta, First Edition 1882, Riddhi Edition 1980.
5. By-Laws, Constitutions, Orders and Rules for the Good Governance of the Corporation of the United Company of Merchants of England, Trading to the East-Indies and for Better Carrying on and Managing the Trade of the said Company, 1774.
6. Keay, John. The Honourable Company, A History of The East India Company, Harper Collins, London, 1993.
7. Edwardes, Michael. A History of India, The New English Library, London, 1967.
8. Wilson, John E. An Empire of Free Trade: The East India Company and the making of the Colonial Marketplace, Addison Wesley Longman Higher Education, 2003.
9. Farrington, Anthony. Trading Places: the East India Company and Asia, History Today, 2002.
10. Micklethwait, John & Adrian Wooldridge. The Company: A short history of a revolutionary idea, Modern Library Chronicles, 2003.
11. Lawson, Philip. The East India Company-A History, Longman Group, UK, 1993.