Convergent and divergent trajectories of corporate governance

David Gindis,Hugh Willmott,Jeroen Veldman

doi:10.1177/1024529420944017

Abstract

This Special Issue revisits the classic question of comparative corporate governance research, namely whether national corporate governance systems are converging. More specifically, it focuses on several ‘convergence vectors’ which comprise the political, legal, economic and social arrangements that influence or drive the international trajectories of governance systems towards a common denominator. Taken together, the contributors to this Special Issue invite us to think critically about the functional explanations commonly mobilized in favour of convergence and consider instead the convergence debate from a broader and more interdisciplinary point of view.

Highlights

The Special Issue opens with the provocative suggestion that the narratives and conversations about the legitimacy and suitability of imported norms, which must be involved in any process of convergence, may have potentially performative powers
The complex narratives, behaviours and institutional changes that accompanied the weakening of managerial capitalism in the 1970s and its gradual replacement by the agency-theoretic shareholder value maximization approach, Veldman and Willmott contend, present a clear case of ‘performativity in action’ where, in this example, agency theory contributes to creating conditions that lend credibility to its claims
Andreas Jansson (2020) shows that in the Swedish case, prior to its formal adoption across the EU in 2005, the gradual integration of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) was accomplished on a voluntary basis and accompanied by narratives revolving around the importance of capital markets and the inevitability of global standards, which political economy scholars have long argued are essential to the process of financialization (e.g. No€lke and Perry, 2007)

Summary

Introduction

The Special Issue opens with the provocative suggestion that the narratives and conversations about the legitimacy and suitability of imported norms, which must be involved in any process of convergence (and institutional change more generally), may have potentially performative powers.

Results

Conclusion