مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد حاکمیت شرکتی برای تحقیقات حسابداری انتقادی – الزویر 2017

While frequently used in a way that presumes certainty, corporate governance constitutes quite a malleable and imprecise term, the boundaries of which vary along agendas and interests. Definitions abound in the public arena – each aiming, more or less subtly, to impose some viewpoint on the audience. For instance, Wikipedia (2016) defines the term as “the mechanisms, processes and relations by which corporations are controlled and directed” – thus promoting the view that a corporation’s overall business performance and even its destiny are within the purview of controllability. Another definition emphasizes the extent of social benefits that state-of-the-art governance practices can achieve when appropriately implemented: “The framework of rules and practices by which a board of directors ensures accountability, fairness, and transparency in a company’s relationship with its [ . . . ] stakeholders” (BusinessDictionary.com, 2016). Other definitions conceive of the board of directors as an entity with key responsibilities, which it is able to meet as a result of its members’ capacities and skills (e.g., BRC report, 1999). The point is that definition rivalry characterizes the domain of corporate governance – opposing groups and actors with different views and interests on what governance is and how it can or should be achieved (Sikka, Puxty, Willmott, & Cooper, 1998). In spite of these definitional dynamics, one dominant trend in the corporate governance discourse relates to the extent of hope it promotes toward to reining in or mitigating many of the imperfections, anomalies or fragilities of corporate behavior. For instance, corporate failures are typically viewed, from an ex post perspective, as the partial outcome of some specific deficiency in the way the organization was governed. As the “problem” is framed through a “best-practices” implementation template, the apparent conclusion is that corporate failures are (hopefully) unlikely to happen when competent and independent actors in the boardroom are provided with appropriate resources. This interpretation was already quite obvious in influential reports that brought the work of the audit committee to the fore in the 1990s (BRC report, 1999; Dey report, 1994). In a way, it is as if the legitimacy of today’s political economy (partially but significantly) depends on the credibility of corporate governance as a mechanism to establish discipline and morality in the corporate board environment. Yet from a critical angle, Jackson and Carter (1995) liken corporate governance to a “monster” created by capitalism to secure its legitimacy but which is very difficult to control. The important point is that significant effort will be invested, in the field, in developing and maintaining the institutions that support the credibility of the corporate governance apparatus. Much is at stake.