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5 - Post-managerial governance (from c.1970): ownership of the large corporation reaches unprecedented mass and fragments into multiple poles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Pierre-Yves Gomez
Affiliation:
EM Lyon
Harry Korine
Affiliation:
London Business School
Pierre-yves Gomez
Affiliation:
Professor of Strategic Management EM Lyon; Director French Corporate Governance Institute IFGE, Lyon
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Summary

Managerial governance was based on a clear separation of powers, between management on the one hand and shareholders on the other, with unions playing the role of external counterweight. Management was strong and united by the ties of shared expertise, professional standards, schooling, and social convention; shareholders were weak, but united in the passive stance generally adopted towards management (control) and the narrowly focused interest in the profits of the corporation. From the 1970s onwards, with the shareholding bodies of large corporations spreading ever more widely in the population and thereby gaining unprecedented mass, the managerial model started to unravel. Governance by managerial expertise was severely challenged by the resultant change in the balance of power between management and shareholders and came under sustained attack (1). Shareholders fragmented into multiple poles of interest, each demanding that the corporation satisfy different criteria: in other words, the unity of the shareholding body dissolved. As a consequence, corporate governance also underwent a major change, and the function of the entrepreneur was reinterpreted to accord a significant role to investors in the financial markets and long-term shareowners. A new model of governance has emerged, a model that we call public governance, to stress the critical role played by the larger public (2). Unlike the transition from familial governance to managerial governance which took place many years ago, the transition from managerial governance to public governance is not yet complete.

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Chapter
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Entrepreneurs and Democracy
A Political Theory of Corporate Governance
, pp. 136 - 172
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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