The Architecture of Corporate Governance and Workplace Democracy

Abstract

This chapter offers a theory of corporate governance through a two-pronged approach, one that sails closer to the contractarian, pluralist account, the other closer to the rationalist, concession theorists. In the first instance, we look to the values that are explicitly or implicitly endorsed by a particular corporation and then ask if its organization and actions are cultivating relationships consistent with those values. This approach is pluralist in nature, adopting the status quo assumption that we ought to be more deferential to individual corporations’ choice of “normative cores.” The second approach starts with the liberal values implicit in society and then asks whether corporations are structured and regulated to produce relationships consistent with those values. This approach represents a more radical departure from the status quo. Taken together these approaches provide a spectrum of prescriptive analyses of the corporation, ranging from more deferential to more regulative.