Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

Beyond The Dichotomous Worlds Hypothesis: Towards A Plurality Of Corporate Governance Logics, Jordan Otten

Jordan Otten

The dichotomous worlds hypothesis holds that corporate governance systems worldwide are either based on the Anglo-American shareholder model or the Eurasian stakeholder model. We suggest a more fine-grained classification, based on five corporate governance logics –socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which all parties involved in economic productive activities structure their material interdependencies and provide meaning to the social reality of corporate life. These logics are discovered through a content analysis of the corporate governance reform codes of 38 countries.

Corporate Governance Reform And The 'New' Corporate Social Responsibility, Douglas M. Branson

Articles

The history of corporate governance "reform" begins with Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means's "The Modern Corporation and Private Property," first published in 1932. That book posited the "separation of ownership from control," discussed in the first section of this essay.

The subsequent history of corporate governance reform has been the postulation, by academics and others, of solutions to problems posed by the separation of ownership from control.

One subset of proposed reforms, those of the 1970s, formed the "corporate social responsibility movement." During that era, reformers urged governmental intervention which, as a matter of general corporate law, would expand corporate …