Contemporary corporate governance – shifting of the accents

Abstract

Corporations came into being in the Middle Ages with the benevolent purpose of creating opportunities for monasteries, colleges, hospitals and other social institutions to contribute to the society’s welfare as independent legal entities. In the seventeenth century, the establishment of profit-making corporations marks the beginning of a new economic era distinguished for accumulation of huge capitals, attenuation and depersonalization of ownership and green light for limited liability, limited responsibility respectively. After the Second World War a period of founding transnational corporations and concentrating huge economical and political power in their hands commences. Today we are living in a world, in which 51 of the 100 largest economies are corporations and 49 are countries � (Anderson and Cavanagh �000). „Сorporations create the larger share of the wealth of nations and determine the manner in which it is created yet they are not directly accountable to the people on who they depend for their existence” (Turnbull �003). Legal irresponsibility and anonymity of corporate ownership imply two acute problems in corporations, known as “veil of incorporation” and “externalization of costs”. We believe that a reversal to the inherent nature of the corporation “uniting in one body” 3 the interests of all for whom it is created is imperative and that the social responsibility of corporate capital should be placed to the fore.