6 - Interpreting public governance: representation and debate signify a new step towards democratization

Summary

How do contemporary developments in corporate governance fit in with the broader deployment of the ideological and political project of liberalism, such as we have been analysing in this book? More particularly, what new answers arise to the question of ‘who has the right to direct the corporation’? It is not enough, from our point of view, merely to describe the growth in the shareholding body and the increasing role of finance in the economy, as set forth in the previous chapter and documented in a large number of studies. We need to interpret the significance of these developments in terms of the general evolution of modern society, in order to understand the emerging model of corporate governance.

The two settings we described in the preceding chapter imply that in the post-managerial model of corporate governance the entrepreneurial force of direction can be held by two different economic actors, investors or shareowners. One might therefore conclude that two different models are emerging, one applying to the publicly quoted corporation with widely dispersed capital that is oriented towards the financial markets (the investor as entrepreneur), and one applying to the publicly quoted corporation with closely held, concentrated capital that is oriented towards the activist shareowner (the shareowner as entrepreneur). If true, such a conclusion would be very problematic, both in terms of verisimilitude and in terms of coherence.